I have been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets since it was available to Gmail users. I actually wanted to try Writely, but signups had already been shut down by the time I got to it due to the Google takeover. I waited a while and when Writely had been Googlized I jumped at the chance to play with it. When Google Spreadsheets became available I made sure I took the time out to play with that as well. I think the idea of having a portable office suite has always been appealing to me for several reasons:

• I’ve had a few catastrophic data losses over time.
• I like to be able to access some documents no matter where I am.
• Constantly synchronizing documents between my laptop, desktop, and my file server is tedious.
• The ability to work on group projects without emailing files back and forth saves time and reduces the risk of virus transmission.

Since the beginning Google Docs was always slow to me. I thought it was just normal because the applications were somewhat complex and script heavy. I also had quite a difficult time downloading my files and deleting files from the site. It took so many clicks to move files around that it’s always been a point of mild frustration for me. I never thought anything of it until I tried ThinkFree Office. After only an hour or so of playing around with their applications, I cleaned out my Google Docs archive and moved everything to their site.

There are a lot of things I like about ThinkFree, but these are the most important to me:

• The site responds quickly and the applications are snappy.
• The aesthetics of the site are very good and the layout is well thought out.
• There is a PowerPoint compatible web application along with a Word Processor and a Spreadsheet application.
• It takes very few clicks to upload or download single or multiple files.
• There are AFFORDABLE desktop applications which you can purchase that coincide with the web applications for working offline.

So far I am very impressed with the suite. I am going to try to spend more time editing documents within ThinkFree Office on the web so that I can see how it reacts to heavy use and more complex functions than I have used before. I hope that the applications continue to be this usable as the suite grows and I hope that the desktop based versions of the applications stay affordable as well. I would also like to see a Mac version of the desktop suite. Once that is available I would have to say that ThinkFree Office would be a very hard competitor to beat in this particular software market.

It seems like every blog author is talking about their experiences with Gmail. Right now I’m using gExodus 0.2 to archive a couple of years worth of mail and it is a most efficient program which I highly recommend. A lot of people are paranoid about their mail being scanned for targeted advertisements, others are freaking out because they think that their mail can never be deleted. Personally, I’m not all that paranoid. If you don’t think that your broadband provider has trails of everything you do and could dig up an e-mail you sent through their server in a heartbeat, you need to think about that too. Aside from one gigabyte of storage, Gmail is fast, the search features are excellent, and it’s bound to get even better once it’s released. Personally, I am happy to have somewhere to put my mail where I don’t have to worry about backing it up and burning it onto CD all the time. I wish this was around when I was an undergrad. It beats the hell out of Penn State’s Webmail.

Thanks to Chris Holland I have a Gmail account. He was nice enough to extend an invite to me and I thank him for that.

My first impression of Gmail is that the interface is so clean. The only image is the Gmail logo. It’s spartan, but that allows it to run fast. A webmail interface built mostly on CSS without the clutter of images and ads that’s UNHEARD OF! Yeah Gmail is currently running at lightning speeds. Let’s hope its infrastructure will be able to handle the influx of the rest of the world when it goes public. The other cool thing is the keyboard shortcuts. Ironically, I just started playing Legend of the Green Dragon (web based MUD) and that also uses keyboard shortcuts which I have become very fond of. At any rate, Gmail is definitely worth checking out. Yahoo and Hotmail will not be able to compete with 1GB of space. If they try to, their already slow interfaces full of ads will only get bogged to hell. Let’s hope Gmail takes out its competition swiftly.

So there’s all this madness about getting Gmail accounts right now because they are invite only. My boyfriend went begging for an invite last night and and got one. I woke up this morning to email from him - my first email from anyone on Gmail ironically. I’m jealous of course because by the time I get one, my email alias will be like 40 characters long (mostly numbers) reminiscent of my most recent Yahoo! endeavor. I’m sure I’ll eventually get a Gmail account and it will be wonderful, like I’ve died and gone to webmail heaven, but I can wait. There’s no point in prostrating myself in front of a bunch of geeks that will most likely berate me before they send me an invite. I’ll just be patient and wait.

I signed up for a Spymac account to see what all the buzz was about. They beat Google to the punch with the 1gb of storage, but they could’ve at least rolled it out slowly or made sure that their network could handle the load. First of all e-mail is busted (can’t send, have’t tried receiving), and I can’t publish my iCal. Yeah I know it’s because of all of the new accounts but still. I like the layout and the services (WebDAV, etc), and it’s very generous that they give you a blog and something like 350mb of additional storage, but it’s all moot if you can’t use it. I’ll stick with it for a couple of months and see if it eventually begins to work.

Mental Note: This is NOT the way to roll out new services.

So I’ve been using Firefox for a while now (almost 2 months), and I’m impressed. This is coming from someone who used Safari almost exclusively since it was available and barked at anyone who tried to tell her anything bad about it. Firefox, at this point in its development, is a more sensible browser than Safari. Note that I didn’t say it was a better browser. Firefox is a great browser for people who like to tinker. If you’re not scared to get your hands a little dirty, install some extensions, play with themes, and do a little reading to see what works and what doesn’t, Firefox is the way to go. Some people are content to use whatever browser they download or whatever comes with their system as is. If you’re one of those people, you can stop reading now. Cool things about Firefox: * You can install extensions by clicking on web links for them * There are a lot of themes (but make sure they work on Firefox 0.8 for your OS before you install them * There are TONS of sensible extensions that make your browsing very slick * It’s available for Linux, Windows, and OS X; one browser to bind them * It’s quick like a bunny - no joke * You can add multiple search engines to the search box: Google, Froogle, Amazon, Wikipedia, and IMDB are just a few of my engines * The whole browser is themed in CSS: if you can’t find a theme you like, make your own Currently I am running the Apollo theme done by Aaron Spuler which some people are delighted about. I am also running the Tabbed Browser Extension which allows me to open links from other programs and new page links in tabs in my existing browser window. Today I also picked up Adblock which strips out 95% of the ads on the internet with a little help from the filters on Aaron’s site. With those two extensions, I have a really comfortable surfing experience. I am going to look into other extensions and if I see anything else worthy of mention, it’ll get posted here. Got any extensions you want me to try out? Drop a link in the comments and I’ll check it out.

Have you ever been to a site and seen links to every webring on earth? A certain site I bumped into today reminded me how much I hate webring abuse. Why is it not enough to just join two or three webrings that your blog or site relates to? Why do bloggers have to have 10 or 20 of these cut and pasted linklet monstrosities on their pages? I understand the urge to try to drive traffic to your site. I run textads for that. I’m sure there are also other outlets for bringing in traffic like finding yourself on the top of a Google search for a moderately popular topic - which might I add is not hard to do, i’ve done it twice. At any rate, let’s not abuse the webring code, people.

Blogrolling’s taken a proverbial dump again. I just killed the call for the script on my page so it wouldn’t hork the sidebar loading. Someone’s gotta come up with something better than Blogrolling. Seriously. Right now I feel worse for the people who paid for the service. Furthermore, it’s damned near impossible to have a ul or ol with blogrolling unless you pay for it so you can add certain things before and after the links. Whatever. I’m so over it and again I find myself looking for a better solution and I’m not finding one. Calling all geeks: come up with something better than Blogrolling that doesn’t use JavaScript, is easy to manipulate, has more options, and is preferrably free.

You might’ve been.. yet things look different. That’s because I added more stuff of course. I also fixed some busted stuff and reclaimed some unused space in my main pages. I’ve also tried to keep my navigation more consistent (and how do I hope it worked). I said I wasn’t gonna do it and I did it. I put the buttons back on the page (actually I made new ones that matched the current theme). I took them off originally because I thought they’d be a navigation horror, boggle screenreaders, and piss people off. Well it turns out I found out exactly why I put them on the page in the first place. When they’re aligned like I have them, they save a lot of space. Trying to write out explanations to all those links or just having a ridiculously long scrolling list of links didn’t work either (and most of that stuff shouldn’t be in a blogroll). At any rate, they work. I’m still looking for a couple of good ones.

If you didn’t know it by now, the cowards at Microsoft have decided to drop development of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for the Mac platform. I am grateful that I no longer have to worry how badly IE is going to mess up my next design project, but I’m also pissed off that the giant spineless wonder decided to run at the first sight of competition. Yeah I said it.. Safari scared MS and they packed up their bag of tricks and headed for higher ground. BAH! I was looking forward to a longer battle between IE and Safari for the Mac desktop, but I guess that’ll never happen. I just want to know how many of you people actually still use IE. Isin’t the consensus that it’s not standards compliant, therefore it’s almost impossible to code for both IE and another browser without one of them barfing on your design. Furthermore, there is no tabbed browsing. How do you friggin browse the web without tabs? I, personally, would shoot myself if I was forced to go back to a PC, much less have to use IE as my browser. *GAH* Tell me what browsers you have gotten to love.