Gmail Browser title bar tweak

A great new Gmail Labs feature, that I enabled this morning was Title Tweaks

Changes order of elements in the browser title bar from "Gmail - Inbox (20) - yourname@gmail.com" to "Inbox (20) - yourname@gmail.com - Gmail". This way you are able (most of the time) to see if a new mail has arrived even if Gmail window is minimized.

To turn on this feature, go to settings and then click on the labs tab, or if you already have a labs feature enabled, click the green beaker on the top right of your screen.

Wordpress 2.7 Members Only plugin update

A fix for users who have changed their home page has been added to the plugin, I have incremented the version to 0.6.7.2

This change fixes the following issue pointed out by Mingo:

When you select to have people go to the "Front Page" when they log in directly from the Login page, they are directed to http://blogurl/wordpress

People (like me) who have moved their front page outside of the /wordpress/ dir receive a 404 error.

You may download the updated version here.

Multiple Inboxes - Move to and Label not working

Trying to actually work with the multiple inboxes features, it doesn't appear like you can perform any of the actions in the main menu to any of the emails from the main dashboard.

For instance, I have wanted to add a label or Move to a label on one or more emails and it doesn't work. Please make this work google!

Gmail perfection using superstars and multiple inboxes

So it hit me the other day that I needed more than just staring an email in GMail so that I could follow up because there was no difference when I starred an email that needed to be addressed sooner rather than later and I found two Google Labs projects that have made my life so much easier.

Superstars -

Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature:

(1) Go to the "General" Settings page to choose which superstars you wish to use.

(2) Use either the keyboard shortcut ('s') or click to rotate through your selected superstars.

(3) Use the search operator "has:" to find all messages with your superstar (e.g. "has:red-bang", "has:blue-star"). Learn the name of a superstar by hovering over its image in the "General" Settings page.

Multiple Inboxes -

Add extra lists of emails in your inbox to see even more important email at once. The new lists of threads can be labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.

I have configured superstars with the yellow-star and the red-bang for now. In my Multiple inboxes configuration I have the following

has:red-bang

has:yellow-star AND label:Work-Related

has:yellow-star AND !label:Work-Related

So frigging cool.

Google Chrome - Test Drive

Last night I finally got some time to take Google Chrome for a spin. Earlier in the day I came across a URL address that was supposed to be the download location (http://gears.google.com/chrome) but navigating to that location and trying to download the application, I encountered javascript errors galore and was not able to download anything. I then found the link (http://www.google.com/chrome) and I was able to download without any problems.

The installation was not painful, all you had to do was agree to the TOS agreement, and determine if you want to participate in the usage statistics and crash reporting (this option can also be turned on/off after you install). Per google enabling this option will send crash reports to them when Chrome crashes as well as usage statistics. "When you choose to accept a suggested query or URL in the address bar, the text you typed and the corresponding suggestion is sent to Google. Google Chrome doesn't send other personal information, such as name, email address, or Google Account information."

Once the application was installed I was prompted to import IE bookmarks and settings. I guess that it only asked for IE since on my laptop that is my default browser (I do have firefox installed). I will have to test this on my desktop as firefox is my default browser there.

Once the installation was through, I double-clicked the icon on my desktop and Chrome launched instantly, quicker than any other application I have ever seen. 

To see what kind of footprint Chrome had, I launched both IE and Chrome and lunched 5 tabs to websites I frequent. Under the wrench icon at the right -> Developer -> Task Manager you can see all of the tabs running as well as the memory CPU and Network that each is using. Down at the bottom of that window there is a "Stats for nerds" link that brought me to the window you see at the left (the about:memory page) Interesting enough they included IE as a process they are monitoring and put it up against Chrome. I guess the developers wanted to ensure that whatever they built knocked IE by alot. In most cases Google Chrome utilizes 2x resources but looking at its shared memory footprint - its 5x less than IE!.

Adrian from Hardware 2.0 Blog shows the benchmarks he ran against the other browsers. Spoiler: Google Chrome blows them all out of the water.

So Chrome is amazing and all, but it lacks some of the same features that firefox does and IE doesn't. Microsoft Sharepoint sites which I run in house for collaboration still require you to enter your network username and password. IE under the covers knows how to handle AD authentication.

I really would like to see Google use the WebKit engine in the next version of their Blackberry Gmail app.

What do you think about the new browser? Let me know.

Goals for this Blog

I have been saying to myself for a while now that I should start something online wether it be a blog or some other kind of site where I could post things that I had researched for work or home projects or just some place to voice off on things. I finally had a few minutes to spare the other day and started this blog. The only real reason I chose blogger rather than one of those other blogging sites was so that I didn't have to have another login (I can use my google account).

I have been at it for about a week so far and have managed to get something up almost every week day. I am new to this , but I hope my writing will get better as time goes on. I got in this morning and read something that may keep me going... Quantity Always Trumps Quality I guess only time will tell.

Why the title "Cranium Tales"? I had seen an MRI of a brain the night before on TV, it was the Discovery Channel or TLC (I really can't remember now) and thought it was cool, maybe thats why, I honestly don't know, it just happened.

Play.it Private Beta

CBS Radio replaced XM Radio in the AOL Radio module in my buddylist about a month ago. The interface really didnt change, but I noticed that there was a lot less repeats than on the XM stations which was refreshing. At that time I signed up to learn more about the CBS radio play.it service that was going to be seperate from AOL to see what they were going to offer. I got an invite today.
I like the drag / drop and target interface to create a station / mix. But, There needs to be a way to limit an artists catalog. Possibly a search with the artists name resulting in a list of their albums. This way you could choose which albums to include. Searching album by album is way too time consuming and my memory is really bad.

I find the rating system too basic and I haven't found information about how ratings effect stations. So I emailed support and got this answer:

The ratings system is used on the back-end, with low-rated songs playing less often across all stations. Right now, there is no indication on the front end of what a song’s rating is. “The Brain” (the technology responsible for determining song play) looks at song ratings from all users to determine whether or not a song should be played.

I honestly don't care if someone else doesn't like a song, but if I like it I want it to play on my station. I want it to work similar with a recommendation engine to suggest songs I may like based on my ratings.

The player is very basic and simple to use.

I don't have an iPhone, but AOL Radio (powered by CBS play.it) will be offering a free application for the iPhone so you can play your radio stations where ever you are.

There were a few hicups along the way from page timeouts for intially getting onto the site to sign up for the Beta testing as well as the first time I tried to submit my profile. The time was showing PST (I'm in EST).

Register.com SafeRenew

I am a register.com customer, I have 10+ domains registered with them for many years and I have had no complaints about their service. I have all of my domains enrolled in their "SafeRenew" an automatic renewal service which saves you from having to remember to renew the domain and it automatically renews your ownership.

Register.com has always sent emails to me 3+ months before I need to renew my domain names. More recently in the past year they have started to call me and ask me to renew my domain names. When I asked them if I was getting a better deal by renewing now with them on the phone rather than having their SafeRenew service renew my registration, the answer was no.

This confuses me why are people calling when I have all my domains enrolled in the SafeRenew service? I can see why customers might be called if they didn't enroll one or more of their domains in the service, but I feel like the person who calls is wasting not only my time, but their's as well. The only thing I can think of is that for every person they get to renew, they get commission on that renewal. What a waste of profit for register.com.

The database that Register.com gives to it's represntatives who call customers to have them renew their domains should not include those who have all their domains enrolled in their free and efficient SafeRenew service. It will not only save Register.com money but it will their customers time.

Hot Blond Search Results

I absolutely hate "hot blond" search results, a google search result that looks so awseome but when you click on the link, there is no relevant content. In addition,99.999% of these hot blond websites have advertizements all over the place. These types of sites waste probably a few hours of my time a week.

Google should allow you to have a list of FQDN's that will not populate your search results.