Day in, day out…

Looks like the Google Street-View guy is spreading some cheer on Google’s 10^th birthday!

Google Street-View guy spotted with party hat and balloons!

Happy 10^th, Google!

It bugged that over the past few days, I was seeing different Google News at work and a different looking one at home. An entry on the Google News blog explained why:

Google News Blog: Testing… testing… is this on?:

… They’ll only be visible to a small number of random Google News readers. (In case you’re wondering, experiments are selected randomly, so we can’t give you any advice for how to get in!)…

Although, what is selected randomly? Username? IP address?

Is it just me? Or others are getting too many Oops! messages from Google websites lately?

I got this one from the Gmail…

Gmail Oops! message after archiving a message

And this one from Google Calendar…

Google Calendar Oops! message after creating a new event

… more than a few times today. Almost a 5-10 times everyday in the last few days, combined on all Google sites I use.

Looks like I am growing out of the initial disappointment with Gmail IMAP. Although the mapping of labels to folders is still uncomfortable, thanks to some useful tips floating around on the web, I have been able to configure my clients much better now.

I did not have a lot of trouble with Thunderbird to begin with. I use the nightly build on Linux, it works fine with Gmail IMAP. After mapping Trash, Drafts, Sent and Spam folders to those on [Gmail], things work great. The only flaw I see is that even after mapping Thunderbird’s Trash folder to [Gmail]/Trash, Thunderbird’s Trash folder stays put. This causes the unwelcome [Imap]/Trash label on the web interface.

Two Trash folders on
Thunderbird on Ubuntu Gutsy

On the Mac, I had expressed my doubts on how Mail.app would handle multiple IMAP accounts. This was because when I configured one Gmail IMAP account, Gmail folders were created at the top level. I was worried that more than one accounts would step on each other’s folders. Thankfully, Mail.app handles multiple accounts just fine. Mapping Mail.app’s Trash, Drafts, Sent and Spam folders to Gmail’s is easy. Select [Gmail]/Trash, for example, and use Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Trash from the menu-bar. Repeat that for other special folders.

So, there are some rough edges as far as the clients’ implementation of IMAP goes, Gmail labels are rendered pretty much useless - but all the clients are in sync! Not bad at all…

I noticed today that Google has started rolling out support for IMAP on Gmail accounts. This is something I was waiting for since a long time. Gmail’s POP access is too inadequate when it came to accessing Gmail from multiple desktop email clients.

I was lucky enough to have one of my accounts enabled for IMAP. First thing I did was start playing around with it.

My first impression - I hope I grow out if it - is that Google’s mapping of Gmail features to IMAP features is very disappointing. It’s workable, but may be I was expecting something smarter from folks at Google. After using Gmail IMAP for a few hours, I’ve started to think that the POP option suits me better for access with desktop email clients (whooda thunk!). Web Gmail is still my favorite flavor - but it does not make messages available for off-line use (Say what? Gears?).

So what is it that I don’t like about the new IMAP access?

• I like the concepts of labels or tags when it comes to organizing files, email messages, things - as against folders. Tags are much easier to search, manage. If a message belongs in two different categories, you can add two (or more) tags. You don’t have to waste time deciding which folder to file it in. Labels and Folders are two completely orthogonal concepts - they can coexist, but they cannot be mapped. I was hoping that Google kept them that way. As it turns out, Google has tried to map Labels to folders. As one would expect, this causes multiple copies of messages on the desktop.
• It may be just my lack of knowledge about IMAP, but I had thought that information about labels, stars etc. would be carried in custom message headers, so that desktop applications can use the labels as they are on Gmail web. There would just be one big All Mail folder
• From what I have read though, there are a lot of Gmail users who hate (or don’t understand) labels and dearly miss the concept of folders. Rejoice suckers!
• I configured Thunderbird 3.0 (pre-release) and Apple Mail to use IMAP access to Gmail. Things look pretty OK on Thunderbird. Notice this, all Gmail folders are created under an account tree (account name obscured).
  

  Gmail IMAP folders on
  Thunderbird on Ubuntu Gutsy

  On Apple Mail though, Gmail folders are created at the top level.

  

  Gmail IMAP folders on Apple Mail

  If one wants to configure multiple Gmail accounts, I can see it work in Thunderbird with the [Gmail] folders under each account tree. On Apple Mail will the [Gmail] for different accounts stomp on each other? I am not even going to try that before I hear from someone else who has done that without problems.

• This label-folder mapping also causes funky things to happen to Web Gmail when you move messages on the desktop client. Not something I found very impressive.

So there… Like I said, I hope this changes, but for now, I am not a big fan of Gmail IMAP.

I use Google Reader a lot. On one of my computers, I use a theme that works really good.

Sometime between last night and this morning, the theme suddenly broke. When I reloaded the page, the entire look of Reader had changed. I removed the theme to checkout the new design. It was pretty neat actually. There was a hide arrow for the left side bar. A Google Groups -like My Subscriptions drop-down.

But now I see, the Reader look is restored! It’s back to normal! Was I dreaming? Or somehow the new design got live by mistake… we’ll see.

By the way, its a great time to have a lot of spare cash … why? why??

Although I’d much rather wait for a 30/60GB iPod Touch …

Update(9/6/2007): Looks like the new Reader look is live now!

Google, which started as just a search engine, has so many tools and services now. Lot of them are useful in everyday life.

Tool Integration related

It is nice to see how these tools/services work with each other so well:

• Google Talk in Gmail
• Online status, Google talk in Orkut
• Gmail contacts, Google Talk in Docs and Spreadsheets
• Gmail and Calendar
• Maps and Picasa Web Albums

… to mention a few. But there are still quite a few that would be nice to have. Following is a kind of a wish list of some ways Google tools could work together and enhance the user experience - from my perspective:

Google maps still seems like a standalone tool. On its own, it is probably the best online maps website. Some of the new features are really useful. My Maps, re-routing directions, the newly added third party content etc. But Google Maps doesn’t seem to integrate well with rest of the Google tools.

• It would be nice to be able to pick locations in My Maps as venues in Calendar, for instance
• How about a My Maps collection of all the Gmail contacts
• My Maps collection for geo-tagged albums in Picasa Web Albums

Google Calendar is well integrated with Gmail. But it would be nice to have a Google Docs and Spreadsheets document/spreadsheet attached to an appointment. For instance, if the appointment is a party, a spreadsheet of party supplies to be bought, party activities planned, etc.

Other

IMAP access to Gmail must be on the top of many Gmail users’ wish lists. I am hoping that the Gmail team is secretly working on this! If and when IMAP is supported, I’d like to see tags in the header of messages - that can be added and read by the desktop mail application. The current POP access available with Gmail is only good if Gmail is accessed from just one desktop. And the tags, the feature of Gmail that I love the most, is totally useless with POP access.

Google Calendar plugin for iCal is something that I had expected to be out after Mac Team was formed at Google. But hasn’t happened so far. There are other solutions that provide the functionality, but something coming from Google would be nice to have (like the Picasa Web Albums plugin for iPhoto.)

I am sure there is going to be a sequel to this post some time soon, with more wishes. When that happens, I’ll love to see some of the above wishes already granted!

To me, this was a long time coming. Google Desktop Search for Linux is finally here. I did not waste time trying it out. So far it looks pretty impressive…

It does not have the sidebar and gadgets like the windows version, but the desktop search seems good so far.

If you have a WordPress blog and use Google Analytics to track its usage, you should consider using one of the following plugins:

• WordPress Reports from Tan Tan Noodles
• Google Analytics from Semiologic

Both considerably simplify Google Analytics usage with WordPress. You don’t have to open any WordPress file and physically enter the Analytics code. This is especially important if you change your WordPress theme every once a while - or may be upgrade to a later version of a theme.

I personally prefer the one from Semiologic because it ignores your hits if you are logged in as a author, editor or the admin. Without this feature, I was getting too many false hits on '/?p=XX&preview=true' every time I wrote a new post using Save and Continue Editing feature of WordPress.

I’ve been using the Google Personalized Homepage for quite a while now. I always wondered what the ig in http://www.google.com/ig stood for.

This clears things a bit…