Gmail Themes Adds A Lil’ Something

Rai    Internet     customize, feature, gmail, igoogle, personalize, teahouse, themes

I am a simple person who requires no less than a simple layout for my mailbox. I would rather shy away from frills and lace and candies that adorn my mailbox or workspace, unless I want to induce a massive headache. A headache that would make me visit the office clinic to get a written note to allow to me to go home and rest. Ah, that would be nice thing to do tomorrow…

Anyway, Gmail has a new feature which allows you to customize the way your mailbox looks. I suppose this is not yet available to all users as of this writing, but I am sure it will be. The themes are available in your Settings Panel in Gmail, under the Themes tab.

I personally prefer the the Teahouse Theme, which dynamically changes based on time of the day. You can actually see the little fox do his chores around the dojo, depending on the time. He is picking sunflowers as I write this. And he is so cute. Kawaii! Some of the themes are also the same themes that can be found in customizing your iGoogle page.

One thing I noticed is that the themes are not yet customizable, like how we customize our Friendster and MySpace profile. Maybe Google has plans of doing it.

No, I do not have a headache – yet. My head is still perfectly fine. And I love my theme. I would probably use this forever.

Google Fun Facts

Rai    Internet, Society     facts, fun, gmail, google, page rank, trivia

I found these Google Fun Facts while I was messing around with my Gmail settings. Some people may already know about these facts but I want to put them here anyway.

• Google’s name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google’s play on the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.
• Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively (a combined 47 years old).
• Google’s index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.
• Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.
• Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth’s orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.
• Google has a world-class staff of more than 2,668 employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex.
• Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices, and has made it possible to enter a search using only one phone pad keystroke per letter, instead of multiple keystrokes.
• Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world’s largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.
• The basis of Google’s search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an “importance” value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that’s not why it’s called PageRank. It’s actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.
• Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company’s chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.

From http://www.google.com/press/funfacts.html

• Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
• Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.
• The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
• Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
• The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
• They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
• This wasn’t a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.
• Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It
• One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
• Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.

From http://www.gtricks.com/2008/03/interesting-facts-about-google.html

What Web Hosting Provider

Rai    Internet    

I have my own share of webhosting nightmares, just go through the archive section and you will see that like some other people, I was a victim of scam. It just so happen that I chose to buy a webhosting plan from a certain webhosting company and though the plans were cheap, their services were utter disaster and I was forced to cancel my subscription and move my site to another provider.

I have told my readers time and again to do a full and thorough research on web hosting company’s background before buying or entering into a contract. Reading other people’s reviews, preferably those who were customers, is highly recommended as the best reviews come to those who have experience with the service. And searching around the internet for web hosting rating is worth it. There are few web hosting directories scattered around the internet and they have user reviews of different web hosting companies today.

Web hosting tutorials are also a big plus to read on when you are searching for web hosting companies. The more you know about the hosting package you are buying, the more you are getting for your hard-earned money. Not all providers offer same kind of services so it is better to compare first and be sure that you getting mor, not less. Some offer even free SEO packages for the same price and these are sure a big plus to your budding web site. Webhostingrating.com is one of the searchable web hosting directories that features reviews and information about web hosting companies. And if you are looking for discount coupons, you might find one too.

One last feature that makes a difference is to look for web hosting awards of a particular provider. A winning company invests well in customer service and infrastructure.

The Internet from 1969

Rai    Internet     1960's, 1969, Internet, old, vintage

Here is a very old video dating back from 1969 defining how the Internet can be of use to normal households. The weird thing is that most of the things in the video are now possible.

Browser Comparison

Rai    Internet     browser, compare, explorer, firefox, Internet, opera, safari, user

Image from phun.org