Sharing gmail accounts with other gmail users

December 1, 2006


Here's a feature request for Google's Gmail system. In the same way that one can designate sharing of calendars, allow sharing of Gmail accounts. Several organizations I work with have Gmail accounts for various purposes. Today there are two options to share these accounts. The organizational account can be setup to forward to a number of users, but this leaves my inbox a jumble of personal and organizational emails and leads to the second option. That is to log out of Gmail and log back in as the organizational user. Something I do several times a day but it's tedious on several levels, including that the other Gmail services I use are tied to my personal account.

It would be great to have the same sort of sharing options as the Google Calendar service (pictured above). You could then designate others who could read your email, or those who could read and respond on your behalf. This feature would catapult Gmail further ahead in the web-based desktop arena.

Universal looking for share of iPod sales

November 29, 2006

According to this article Universal music may be looking for royalties on each iPod sale. Let's rewind a bit and see how funny this request really is. Two weeks ago Universal said that iPod owners were thieves. This came at the time when they were announcing their support of the Zune which seems to be under performing the weakest of expectations.

Going back further one sees that Universal, and their traditional music label comrades, didn't have much use for the iPod. When it came to be five years ago they seemed to think it was just another crappy MP3 player and who would care. Since then Apple Computer has managed to set the music distribution business on it's ear. Not only is it not a crappy player but with increasing ease we, the consumers, don't need the labels, or want the labels, to filter music for us. Instead we can go directly to the source and get music. Best of all our dollars go to supporting the artists not the same executives who think we're all a bunch of thieves.

Updating old content

November 26, 2006

Readers subscribed to the RSS version of this site have seen several articles from before 1998 appear in the feed this morning. While doing a routine (if not frequent enough) check using Google's Webmaster tools, I discovered that there was some old content that had never been migrated into the content management system. A few minutes later and they were all imported. If you want a trip down memory lane check out the notes section from the old site. It was fun to see some of this old content and remember just how far we've come.

It does bring up a feature request for Drupal, however. It would be nice to have a way to add blog posts and selectively not have them appear in the RSS feed. This way when older updates are made they don't plaster readers' feed readers with tips on how to work with ten year old software.

Cowboy Christmas returns to Las Vegas

November 25, 2006

In five days the big show opens once more in Las Vegas. On November 30, 2006 we will once again play host to the National Finals Rodeo and Cowboy Christmas. With the success of Cowboy Christmas have come some new shows at the same time. Two years ago the Cowboy Marketplace at the Mandalay Bay was very disappointing. The annual Country Christmas Western Gift Expo at the Sands Convention Center is one of the best in town and definitely deserves a visit. Both Cowboy Christmas and Country Christmas are open during the day from November 30-December 9.

A commenter had suggested that Cowboy Marketplace improved last year. The neighbors who visited didn't see the improvement but it might be worth checking out if you've got extra time to kill. The website (warning annoying noisy video content plays automatically) suggests they might soon have a list of exhibitors but the site's links don't work so it's tough to tell if the "western lifestyle" exhibitors are the as seen on western TV variety or high quality products. Cowboy Marketplace is scheduled to run daily December 1-December 9.

Rethinking Web Forms

November 24, 2006

SEOMoz points to an interesting study on form design. The study suggests that the convention of labels on the left with the entry box on the right is not as effective as a non-bolded label on the line above the input field. Many Drupal themes already do this pretty well but it is good to keep in mind. Many hours have gone into trying to get it "right" when we were chasing the wrong answer.

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