One of the big things I’ve been complaining Gmail lacks landed with a boom last week: drag and drop categories.  Thanks Google, it was a long time coming but it was an obviously correct thing to do.

But there are others:

1)  Give us the option to turn off threaded views.  Don’t take threaded views away, lots of people like threaded views, but lots don’t .  Surely this would be a trivial modification that would make many users happy.

2)  A preview pane.  Everybody else does it.  Its one of the hallmarks of modern mail interfaces.  At least give us the option.

3) A general refresh of the interface.  While the first two are trivial, this last is a little more substantial, but just as necessary.  The Outlook Web interface and Windows Live Mail interface look much sleeker and more modern while Gmail just looks dowdy.

4)  Give us better ways to make Gmail interact with our desktops.  None of the plugins for Firefox is worth a plugged nickel.  They either fail at supporting Google apps accounts or they don’t support multiple accounts.

Here’s a potential strategy that takes all of that makes all of that easy for Google.  Very easy.  Just modify the Outllook  Sync program Google just released so that it supports free accounts, supports multiple accounts, and syncs tasks as well as mail, contacts and calendars.  That would take care of everything.

Test post from iPhone.

The new iPhones, 3GS,  have arrived sans Steve Jobs and the bring with them underwhelming capabilities.  Video Capture, MMS, Cut and Paste, and voice dialing should have been there since 1.0, but they finally made it in 3.0.  Other stuff like a compass (who cares) and push notification (still not background applications) are welcome along with better battery life and a few othrer goodies.

But here is the really bad news.  If you are an existing AT&T customer, whether an iPhone user or using another phone, your new iPhone 3GS 16g will cost you $599 not the announced $199.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s your link to the appropriate Apple web site.  Just scroll down until you see this:

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

How’s that working for you?  How’s that for hosing your loyal installed base?  Apple and AT&T were evil enough by themselves, but this is beyond the pale.

Do I still really like my iPhone and think its the best smart phone I’ve ever owned?  Yep.  Will I be upgrading to 3GS any time soon?  Nope.  Is it possible that in the interim I will find the Pre or Android appealing?  Could be.

In the event you haven’t discovered this new entrant into the world of search engines from Wolfram Research,  the eponymous company of Stephan Wolfram, makers of Mathematica, a widely used mathematical software tool. 

According to the folks at Wolfram Research,  the goal of  Wolfram|Alpha is nothing less than “…to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.”  In short to know everything about everything everyway there is to know it and to make the information available to you.

As a result of that goal, Wolfram|Alpha search results are very different than Google’s.  In the graphic below a search on Baylor University in Google and Wolfram|Alpha are presented side by side using the Wolfram Alpha Google addin for Firefox.

As you can see, Google returns links to pages about Baylor, starting with the official web site, Wikipedia articles and articles from publications.  Wolfram|Alpha on the other hand, returns Baylor’s location, age, student population, population of home town, etc.  Very interesting.

I find both types of queries so useful that I intend to run the Wolfram Alpha Google addin, unless and until somebody decides it violates their IP.  Bah.

When in doubt about forwarding an email, or story, or Facebook Test please review this flow chart.

Here is an interesting ad just released by Microsoft pushing the Zune subscription service over iTunes.

The ad is trying to sell Zune subscription service on the basis that paying $15 per month for the subscription is cheaper than filling up a 120GB iPod at a buck a song.  But that’s not the point that’s interesting.

Do you know people who have full, or nearly full, 120 or 90GB iPods?  Sure you do.  Do you think they paid $30,000 or $22,500 to fill them up?  Then where did the music come from?

Per the ad, music costs about $250 per Gig or that songs at a dollar a piece are about 4MB each.  So a 16GB iPhone  or iPhone nano costs $4,000 to fill.  Do you know anybody with a full iPod nano?  Do you think they spent $4,000 on the music? Do you know anybody who has spent $4,000 on digital music?

Lets take another case where an iPod owner might fill her iPod with music ripped from CD’s she owns.  If the average CD costs $12.99 and has 10 tracks and it takes (per the math above) 30,000 tracks to fill a 120GB iPod then it would take 3,000 CD’s at a total cost of $38,970 to fill the iPod.  Do you know anybody who owns 3,000 CD’s?

Just a thought.

Running Windows 7 Build 7067 x86 on a Dell Latitude D820 with an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 1200 video card.  If I let the system sleep or hibernate when connected to the docking station and then wake or resume not connected, GUI is not in Aero mode upon wake/resume.  This behavior is the same if I let the system sleep or hibernate when disconnected from the docking station and then wake/resume when connected.  Behavior is also consistent whether using the MS NVIDIA Driver that comes with Win 7 or the Dell Vista video driver.  Logging out and logging back in returns the GUI to Aero mode.

As a few of you know, last Saturday March 29, was earth hour.  The call went out for us to turn off our lights for one hour, 8:30 to 9:30 in our time zone for, well, I’m not really sure what.  Were we saving an hour’s worth of energy, were we supposed to protest the use of fossil fuels?  Was the darkness supposed to symbolize our solidarity with the environment?  Who the heck knows?  And mostly nobody cared.

At first I thought I’d just ignore Earth Hour, but the more I thought about it the more I decided to celebrate.  Earth is ours.  It was given to us by a loving God to be our home, for our use and enjoyment.  What better way to say thanks than to turn on all the lights?  So that’s what I did.  Hope you had a well lighted celebration of Earth Hour too. 

Now running Build 7068.  I’m hoping this cures the problem build 7057 had switching between video modes and turning off Aero. 

The spouse needed a new laptop so she got an HP Pavillion dv3-1075us.  With 4 gig of ram, Radeon HD 3200, Slot Loading 8x DVD R/RW Double Layer, a 320 GB HD and an AMD Turion X2 RM-72 Dual-Core Processor its a great little 13.3 inch laptop.  The screen is gorgeous (1280X800) and was a great deal.  My only gripe so far is, like most value systems today, it does not come with install media and you only get to make one media set.  I can’t believe they are saving enough money to warrant shipping systems this way.

Our desktop also gave up the ghost so we got an Acer Aspire AX1700-U3700A.  Very nice very cheap.  Intel dual core E2200 processor, 4 GB ram, 640 GB He, 16X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner, NVIDIA G100 graphics card with 512MB memory, small form factor.  As above, lack of media is a pain in the neck.  I’ve made my backup disks and am considering flattening the system and installing Ubuntu.