« May 2004 | Main | July 2004 »

June 23, 2004

Automatic Gmail Invite Giver Awayer

If you still haven’t gotten a Gmail invite and want one, go to the Automatic Gmail Invite Giver Awayer and refresh the page until you get one.

If you have some invites that you don’t need, send them to the Automatic Gmail Invite Giver Awayer.

I’ve received about 11 invites in the past day or two, so I think Google is getting close to going public with it. They’re obviously starting to stress-test the servers and get everything ready.

G-Mailto If you use Windows, make it so Gmail is your default mail client instead of Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever. This way you can click on Mailto: links and they’ll open in Gmail.

GCount Displays the number of new Gmail messages in your menu bar for Mac OSX users.

Getmail Forwards your Hotmail emails to Gmail.

Pop goes the Gmail Check your Gmail with Outlook and other email apps.

June 19, 2004

Gmail

I got a coveted Gmail account a week or so ago and have since sent all of my old email to the account, and forwarded all of my old addresses to my Gmail address and have been using it as my primary email account.

As you may have read elsewhere, it really is by far the best web-based email anywhere, in my opinion. The interface is great, with a lot of Javascript so that you can load small pieces of the page rather than reloading the whole site every time you send or delete an email, etc. The only problem with this is that it doesn’t work with Safari yet, causing it to crash frequently when you try to use it with Gmail. So I have been using Mozilla Firefox instead, and am pretty happy with that as well. I used the Safari Bookmark Extractor to import all my old Safari bookmarks over. And now with the Firefox Bookmark Synchronizer I can synchronize my bookmarks between multiple computers, and even operating systems, which is one of the reasons I stayed with Safari until now.

The search function in Gmail is one of my favorites, as it lets you very quickly search your mail for just about anything. For instance I needed a phone number for “Jeff” that my dad had emailed to me, so I just entered Jeff in the search field and hit enter, and it immediately pulled up that email. Compare that to searching in Outlook and most other email clients, which take minutes to find something, and even then you’re normally only searching in the subject, not the entire message.

The spam filtering has also worked quite well for me so far. In about a week’s time it has blocked 50 spams, and only missed 3. There were about 3 false-positives. But after I corrected the errors, it hasn’t missed any since.

One thing that could definitely be improved is the address book, as it only lets you have a first and last name, and then an email address. It also adds every person you email to the address book, whether you want to or not. This can be frustrating if you need to look up an address and can’t find the one you want because there are so many listed there that you didn’t even enter.

There are lots of other features that have been listed elsewhere, but suffice it to say it really is as good as everyone says, and you should definitely try to get an invite, or just sign-up when it goes public. (which I’m guessing will be soon, because I just got 5 more invites today, it seems like they are starting to give them away pretty freely)

June 01, 2004

Bowman - Shoot like a ninja

Now that you’ve learned how to fold your clothes like a ninja, you can start practicing your ninja shooting skills!!

Bowman is yet another fun little Flash game that pits you against an archer in a battle to the death. You control the angle and speed of your arrows, trying to hit the archer on the other side of the screen. It’s a blind shot, so you’ll have to remember the numbers that show what speed and angle your last show was, so you can hit him again the next time. Of course when you add the wind, that isn’t as easy to do so it makes the game much more challenging. You can also choose to place a wall between you and your enemy, so that you have to volley arrows over the wall to hit each other. This in combination with the wind makes the game especially difficult.

Then if you really want a challenge, turn off the index (the numbers that show your angle and speed). Those three things together make the game nearly impossible because you can’t gauge the success of your last shot in order to plan the next one.

Another trick is to block your enemies arrows by firing one while his is still in the air. Of course you still have to aim it to intercept the enemies arrow, plus you lose a turn so your enemy immediately gets to shoot again. But if you know you are about to be hit, it can be a good way to protect yourself.