Google

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...

One of the biggest stories circulating the blogospehre today is the 'mistake' that Google made, was to prematurely announce it's release of a browser - known as Google Chrome, which will compete against Firefox, IE and Safari.

Don't we love it when Google takes over a product, or competes against an 'inferior' product and makes it better? Yes - Of course we do. We applaud, embrace and adopt the new technology.

But this is not the same way I reacted when I heard the news that Google is starting to take on Wikipedia. I was sort of saddened, and confused. I didn't really know what this meant. Wikipedia is an effort to create an online encyclopaedia - knowledge sharing - a way to get useful, pertinent information quickly. Isn't that exactly Google philosophy as well? Then why in the world does Google want to compete with it? Are they feeling insecure that a lot of searches reveal a relevant link to a Wikipedia article – within the top 10 results?

In my opinion

I never really liked my math and statistics classes in University; they were always way to abstract. But when it comes to finding and analyzing trends at work or play, I always have fun with it.

For the past 4 years, every December, I have eagerly waited for Google to release their Zeitgeist numbers. Throughout the year, I follow the major stories, but comparing them against one another, and seeing how they rank up against other events is very interesting.

Wouldn't that be just amazing? The Monday morning headlines read - Google buys airwaves over the United States and Canada.

Just yesterday the Canadian Congress announced that they will be auctioning the radio airwaves to open up competition to new wireless content providers. 

And today, Google has announced that they will be bidding for the 700mhz spectrum in the US. It would be awesome if they were to look north of the border and buy some airwaves here as well. Think of the possibilities. WOW!

The 'blogosphere' has been buzzing all day with this news:

Searching around for ways to improve my page ranking with Google and other search engines, I ran across this article written by Mike Gifford at OpenConcept Consulting.

It's a great read, and give tons of useful information.