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!

Ubiquity and Wisestamp – Firefox Essentials

Feb 10

metalman777software, tech, www firefox, gmail, tech, ubiquity, web, wisestamp No Comments

No, I’m not talking in another language.  Ubiquity and Wisestamp are two plugins for Mozilla Firefox that I have been playing with this week.

If you have ever used Quicksilver or Butler or Launchbar for the Mac, then you will be familiar with Ubiquity right away.  For those of you who are even further confused, just watch the video below:

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/1561578]

Ubiquity really does make your web browsing so much easier, especially if you use a laptop with no mouse.  I’ve been using it for a couple of days now and it is so easy to find something from the internet and send it to a friend via email or twitter.

Download it, play with it, and comment back and let me know how you like it.

Wisestamp is a very cool plugin that allows you to insert html signatures into your gmail, aol mail, hotmail, or yahoo mail account.

My custom signature is above, but you can customize it however you want!  If a custom, linkable signature for your email is something you want, then Wisestamp is something you must try.  Again, free software doesn’t cost you anything to try!

Online Video Comparison Matrix

Jun 12

metalman777tech, videos, www online video, video, web No Comments

Ok, I found this very cool page comparing all the different online video sites.

I’ve been using Youtube for a couple of years, but now the file size and film length limitations are making me look elsewhere.

In my googling, I ran across this very comprehensive matrix comparing almost all of the video websites.

I’m checking out blip.tv right now. I had no idea there were so many options!

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!