November, 2008

Finding a new hobby has never been easier. With a slew of information available on the internet with everything from Wikipedia articles, to YouTube videos, to Google News Alerts, you can always stay on top of things.

When I started watching Formula 1 mid way through the 2008 season, I would have never imagined that it would be as addicting as it is. With the help of a few technologies, I was able to educate myself about the sport and continue learning.

After 4 years of the plain old blue and white, the natively supported themes section of Gmail is a huge welcome. It's about time guys and great job with the themes.

It also looks like they tried to please everyone. For the hackers among us, we have the Terminal Theme and for the kids, there is the Candy Theme. All the themes are very well thought out, creative  and again, a sight for sore eyes. I was starting to think  that they had given up on aesthetics and were aiming purely for functionality...not that it's a bad thing, but you shouldn't overlook the visual aspect of a great application either.

I'm loving these themes, and I'm sure it's a matter of time before we are able to create our own themes, with custom pictures and colours.

Also, with the introduction of Video and Audio chat, Gmail is leaving the other mail 'websites' in the dust. When you bundle all these into a package that is also tightly knit with Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Reader, it's a great recipe for success.

Keep up the good work Google...

I love Google products, and some of the recent integration they have been doing with Gmail and Google Calendar. But this time it has crossed the line.

Since my last post about giving up Google Chrome, I must have used it once or twice, but when I had heard that there was and update, I was curious to see if it would run any better on my aging system.

I went hunting for a way to update it, but to my surprise, it was already updated!!!