life, and a little more

Three New Gmail Themes

Sep 04

metalman777software, tech email, gmail, google, tech, themes, web No Comments

I’ve been using Gmail for very long time now.   It was to my great delight when the Gmail team introduced Themes for my favorite web based email client.

Today I noticed three more new themes in my settings area.

Orca’s Island is the first new theme.  It is a little drab and boring.  I doubt if I’ll use it.

High Score is very colorful retro theme that harkens back to the day of Super Mario Bros.

The last new theme is entitled Turf.  And yes, it is grass!

I just keep learning!

Jan 08

metalman777tech, www blogs, google, google reader, greader, rss No Comments

I’ve been using Google Reader for a while now.  I even wrote a blog entry about it a while ago. So I was surprised that I found a feature that has been there all along and I just never noticed!

I can make a web page displaying all the blogs I subscribe to.  Pure and simple!  I updated the *BBB page of my blog to show this coolness.

Read below:

I love to write blog entries. I love to read great blogs even more (Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice). Below are some blogs that I scan most everyday. This page will be a work in progress, so check back in to see the changes. [UPDATE as of Jan 8, 2009! I just realized that I can make all the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader public! Got to the bottom of this page to see them!!]

Here is a complete list of all the blogs I read daily in Google Reader, grouped by topic:

• Apple Stuff
• Battle Star Galactica
• Christianity
• Entertainment
• Essential Blogs To Read
• Lost
• Movie News and Reviews
• Music
• Photography
• Photoshop
• Techie Stuff
• The Office

Google Reader's Unintended Consequence

Apr 03

metalman777Life, tech, www google, rss, tech, web No Comments

I’ve been a voracious reader since the time I could hold a book. I love books – how the feel and how they look, and if I had a sense of smell, I’m sure I’d love that about them too.

Ask my kids. We’ve told them since they were little. They are not allowed to not like reading. Reading is the stuff of life!

So you can imagine my horror as I find myself not reading so many books as of late! I’m reading the same amount, but it just isn’t in book form. I blame Google. It’s all their fault.

They invented Google Reader, a place where I can collect all the news and info I want into one single place to read. I’ve never been a news junkie, but it turns out I just never had the technology to cater to my needs!

Google Reader is an RSS collector. I can find a blog or news feed that I really like and import that content into Google Reader. Now instead of having to check that blog or news feed every day, Google Reader automatically updates that blog or news feed for me. Everything is in one place!

Above you see the blue graphic of all the different categories of news and info that I personally subscribe too. (No cracks on the Battlestar Galactica Cindy!! I’m in touch with my inner nerd and I’m proud of it! Dwight Schrute was right in loving this show!!) Within each of those folders are sub folders of the individual feeds.

Being the Apple fan boy that I am, we’ll start with that folder. I subscribe to eight different blogs that all deal with Apple. You can see that some of those feeds are in bold and have a parenthesized number after it. Those are feeds that have items I have not read yet. The other entries that are not in bold have all been read. The number in parenthesis is how many new articles there are. These feeds update as soon as the author writes a new article, so I can have real time news at my fingertips. Below you will see another graphic of the actual news part of Google reader. This is the pane that actually displays the content of each feed.

Inside the apple-stuff folder are listed all my feeds. I can easily scroll through them using the “j” key on my keyboard. It makes reading a lot of news manageable!