Gmail

Despite requesting to be a beta tester for Google’s Gmail webmail service (eventually POP and IMAP as well), I’m yet to get the early nod from the powers that be (though apparently other “active” Blogger users have). Lucky for me, Jeremy Zawodny had some extra invites to spare and he sent me one a couple of days ago (I guess I could have always turned to eBay).

Everyone knows the big deal behind Gmail is the 1GB (yes, 1000MB) of storage space that comes with each account and the ability to archive/search through ALL of your messages. Given that I already do these things, and have for years, I’m obviously not going to begin using Gmail as my e-mail ‘client.’ In fact, I doubt I’ll ever use it to send/receive personal e-mail. The reason I wanted to get an account was simply to play with it; to find out what all the hype was about (and to reserve the jblanton username — you just never know).

If I’m being perfectly honest, I’m afraid I don’t see the big deal. I can’t find anything particularly “innovative” going on here, save the fact that some things people have been doing for years in native e-mail clients are now being offered through a non-local webmail interface. *shrug* I guess the regular user out there who uses Hotmail/Yahoo/MSN/etc as their primary e-mail tool might like the fact that they don’t have to delete their e-mail, but hell, they can’t care too much because they’ve been deleting their e-mail for years. Either way, more space was the logical progression of such accounts. Granted, the jump from 3-10MB to 1GB is impressive, but all other similar outfits will follow suit in due time.

The fact that Gmail has “virtual folders” is also creating quite the buzz. While neat and practical, it certainly isn’t cutting-edge technology — correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I was doing this in Evolution years ago.

Notwithstanding all of these not-so-innovative innovations, if I were one of those people who used any of the aforementioned free webmail services, I would definitely jump on Gmail as soon as it’s made available to the public. Let’s be clear: Gmail is the free e-mail service to beat. The only caveat is that you will be signing away your privacy (your e-mail “conversations” are used to deliver context-sensitive ads), but this is really no different from privacy issues that already afflict other services (or will in the very near future).

As others have done, I’m posting my new address here to generate some spam so that I can take a look at how Gmail attacks it (this was actually the only reason for this post, but it appears that I’ve managed to ramble on as usual).

Selling out

I’m debating becoming a part of Google’s AdSense program. I’ve thought about this for a long time and have repeatedly opted against it, but I’m now starting to have second thoughts given that a lot of “non-commercial” sites are making decent change from it (if anything, it would be nice to cover hosting costs). So, if you start to see the text ads in the next few days, don’t be alarmed. If I do decide to do this the ads will only appear on the archived pages (beneath the posts) and never on the main page(s).

iLap

I recently purchased an iLap for my PowerBook. It provides excellent heat distribution, raises the screen and tilts the keyboard when it is on my desk, and when it is in my lap it raises the PowerBook to a much more comfortable position and keeps the heat away from my future children.

The Good

The most important thing is that it really relieves some of the strain I constantly feel down the back of my left shoulder and neck after prolonged periods of notebook use at a desk. I think it looks really good on my desk and now I can slide the notebook around the desk rather easily (I have a glass top).

It is incredibly comfortable for lap use as well — you feel absolutely no heat from the PowerBook and it raises the notebook to a level that is much more conducive to extended sittings. The machine stays much cooler; it’s almost cold in places where it was rather warm before.

I was a little concerned about the angle of the slope being large enough to prevent a CD/DVD from being loaded into the PowerBook (it slot-loads from the front), but this was not a problem at all.

The Bad

Aesthetically, there is one thing that irks me: the padding found on the front of it has this ugly (in my humble opinion) “shell” pattern that I really can’t stand. I knew this before I bought it so I can’t complain too much, but if I had my say this pad would be as plain as possible. Moreover, it’s made out of velvet; I would have preferred anything else.

Functionally, I don’t have too much to complain about, but there is one thing that kind of bothers me: there is no way to lock the back hinge in place. This is fine when you have it on your lap because it allows the iLap to move along with the position of your legs, but when you slide the unit around on a desk the hinge moves a little and I find myself checking to make sure that it’s straight. I would have liked some sort of locking mechanism on the hinge.

The Unexpected

There were a few things that surprised me about the setup. The first is that the front pad attaches to the unit by velcro. It obviously had to attach someway, but velcro never crossed my mind. The downside to this is that attaching/detaching the front pad is a pain, especially if you are frequently moving between a desk and a chair/couch. The upside to the velcro is that it makes it easier to slide the whole thing when it is on a desk (instead of having the aluminum touch the desk).

Another thing that I didn’t anticipate was how the screen’s angle would be constrained by the angle of the iLap. Those of you that have a new aluminum PowerBook know that the screen does not tilt too far past 90°, at least compared to the titanium PowerBook, or most notebooks for that matter. The angle of the iLap works to cancel out the angle of the screen so as to further suppress its maximum obtuse angle. In practice this really isn’t a big deal, especially if you sit properly, and I really don’t see how they could have designed around it, but I’m sure this will be an issue for some people.

Finally, the screen tends to “bounce” quite a bit when you are typing fast. This is no doubt due to the fact that the back hinge is wrapped in a cushion which tends to react to the weight and movement of your fingers as you type. I suspect that this “bounce” will dissipate over time as the cushion becomes compressed from use.

And so it began

Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay,
Were laid spread out before me as her body once did.
All five horizons revolved around her soul,
As the earth to the sun.
Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn.
And all I taught her was everything…
I know she gave me all that she wore…

And now my bitter hands shake beneath the clouds,
Of what was everything.
All the pictures have all been washed in black…
…tattooed everything.

I take a walk outside,
I’m surrounded by some kids at play.
I can feel their laughter,
so why do I sear?
And twisted thoughts that spin around my head…
I’m spinnin’…I’m spinnin’…
How quick the sun can drop away.

And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass,
Of what was everything.
All the pictures have all been washed in black…
…tattooed everything.
All the love gone bad turned my world to black…
…tattooed all I see… all that I am… all I’ll be.

I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life,
I know you’ll be a star…
…in somebody else’s sky,
But why, why, why can’t it be, can’t it be mine?

From Pearl Jam’s Black

In 1993 I bought my very first album, Pearl Jam’s Ten. I was 13 years old. I tagged along with my father to a Peaches music store in Orlando where he let me get Ten and Nirvana’s In Utero. So began what can only be described as an obsession with all things music. How fitting that my first album ever remains one of the most powerful, potent, and personally relevant records in my entire 4000+ album collection. While every song on Ten is a classic, Black has always been my favorite.

MoCoLoco

Though I can’t yet afford most of what is shown in the Modern Contemporary Design web mag, you better believe that this is the kind of furniture I’ll be buying when I can. Great little site.

Feeding the masses

In response to a few requests, I’ve put up an OPML file that contains the RSS feeds of all the sites I currently read. I point to it on the links page and I’ll try to keep it up-to-date. It should be importable into all news aggregators that support OPML. If there is a website you think I would like and is not in my list, please let me know.

Alkaline Trio

A couple nights ago I got to meet and watch Alkaline Trio, whose latest album, Good Mourning, I’ve probably listened to more than any other the past few months (the hookup was through the same friend who got me a backstage pass for the last concert). NOFX and Authority Zero played as well. In addition to standing backstage during the sets (see pic  :P), I also got to hang out quite a bit on the NOFX bus. I could go on and on, but not without sounding like an ass, so I digress. Suffice it to say that it was an incredible experience. (Picture was taken with mobile phone because both of us forgot our regular cameras!)

Managing mobile phone purchases

To maintain my gadget problem I’ve had to come up with various ways of getting the “latest and greatest” without having to spend too much money. The first method that I mention below has worked well for the past few years, but there is another way (which dawned on me a few days ago), that, when the conditions are just right, can make even more economic sense.

The Old Way

I buy the newest/best thing available, keep it in mint condition (the product of my anal-retentiveness and the knowledge that I will be trying to sell it rather soon), buy the next best thing available, sell the previous gadget on eBay (though I now try Craigslist first), and then begin the process anew. Most of the time I don’t lose too much money, and sometimes I actually turn a profit, all while keeping up with the latest devices.

The New [better] Way

The newest way I’ve come up with for minimizing the cost that accompanies new gadgets is Amazon. You see, Amazon is giving away phones (with service plans). For example, my current phone (still one of the best phones available in the US, which I explain here) is available on Amazon for -$50 — they pay you $50 to take the phone if you sign up for a service plan with T-Mobile (some phones actually offer $100 back; this might be the route I take this time around given that all I want is a new/better plan — I can just swap the SIM card out of the new phone and put it into my current phone and then sell/trash the new phone). Now, I understand that all providers hit you with a heavy fee when you break the contract. Believe me. The thing is, you now have $50 (or $100) that you can put toward breaking the plan you had with your previous provider. There is a good chance that this amount will be less than $150 with the $50 (or more) payout. Couple that with the fact that you can now keep your number (instructions if getting phone through Amazon) when you move between carriers and you’ve got a fairly cheap way of getting new [smart]phones and/or service plans.

Possible Problems With The New Way

The biggest problem that you run into with this method is that you are limited not only by the providers that Amazon works with, but also by the phones that they are willing to submit to this program (read: discount). Cingular and Verizon do not participate at all (they’re the two biggest providers in the country), but more to the point, the providers that are involved do not give all of their phones over to the program, and let’s face it, a lot of times the providers themselves (I’m speaking directly to GSM providers here) don’t offer the best phones anyway and so you are left to order them from overseas or through eBay. So, your choices with this method are severely limited, but, if it does turn out that a phone you actually want is available, it offers a relatively cheap way get it.

Another possible problem is the fact that the phones will be locked and will carry the carrier’s logo. It’s been my experience that those looking for phones on eBay/Craigslist generally want them to be unlocked and free of any logo (for obvious reasons on both counts). I’m one of those people. So, you are limited on the other end when you try to sell this phone and must restrict yourself to only those people who want a particular phone from a particular provider, substantially narrowing your market. You could obviously have your phone unlocked and might even be able to get the logo removed, but both of those remedies require time and money, two things I’m trying to avoid. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it, there is really only one way to get around this: the first method I outlined above. But then we’re right back to the money dilemma, because unlocked, logoless phones carry a hefty premium, especially when we are talking about the newest models which are garnering the most attention on eBay/Craigslist.

At any particular time, it all boils down to what’s available through Amazon, what you are trying to sell, and how much you are willing to spend to move up to the ‘next level.’ If all of these factors militate in your favor (as they currently do for me), you can probably walk away with a great deal.

It used to be the case that you could get out of service plans rather easily with enough huffing and puffing on the phone, but those days are pretty much gone. I know. I remember thinking how ridiculous service plans were when they first started surfacing. I think Sprint is the only provider left who actually let’s you pay month-to-month, though it’s an extra $10/month for the “privilege!” How great would it be if we could just hop around from network to network without contracts?

Free Culture

Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the single most important and influential cyberlaw figure of this decade, gave a lecture today at my law school. Though I’ve followed his work closely for the past couple of years, this was the first time I was able to see him speak. The presentation focused mainly on his new book, Free Culture, which was released a couple of weeks ago (you can find the book in audio format here). The presentation was engaging, entertaining, and informative, as most of his works are. Hopefully this will be the first of many Lessig lectures that I will be able to attend.

On a completely unrelated note, the night is young, there is no school tomorrow, and I’m headed out to have some fun.

Linear news

Over the course of the past week I’ve been monitoring the number of headlines that come through my news aggregator each day, if only to satisfy my own curiosity. While I ‘felt’ (over time) the linear trend that you see below, I didn’t think that it would be so indubitable. It would obviously be much more accurate if I did this over the course of a month or year, but I really didn’t feel like monitoring it for that long. The results (* == 25 headlines):

Monday

747 headlines ******************************

Tuesday

598 headlines ************************

Wednesday

512 headlines ********************

Thursday

457 headlines ******************

Friday

369 headlines **************

Saturday

185 headlines *******

Sunday

135 headlines *****

WEEKLY TOTAL: 3003
AVERAGE: 429

Unsurprisingly, the biggest fluctuations appear near the weekends: Friday/Saturday (-184) and Sunday/Monday (+612). The weekends are generally fairly slow, especially for blogs.

It should be noted that I’m currently subscribed to 111 feeds (76 personal blogs and 35 news sources). I’m curious (scared) to find out what these numbers will look like 10 years down the road.

Using Westlaw with OmniWeb 5

I realize that given the stringent circumstances required to reproduce this problem (a law student using Westlaw through OmniWeb 5 on Mac OS X), there is a very good chance that the following will help no one, but I’m sick of doing research at the moment and felt like sharing. As I mentioned in a previous entry, OmniWeb 5 is the best browser I’ve ever used on any platform. Ever. As such, I’d obviously like to use it for researching my current law school project through Westlaw and LexisNexis (i.e., not be forced to use another browser just for these tasks).

The Problem

While Lexis gave me no real trouble (at least nothing more than I complained about previously), Westlaw was a different matter entirely — it wouldn’t even let me log in. It would take me to the obligatory requirements page and tell me that both JavaScript and cookies were disabled. They weren’t, and in fact, each and every time I visited the page, Westlaw created six new cookies. Go figure.

The Solution

Armed with the knowledge that JavaScript and cookies were not the problem, I was left with only one other possibility: the USER-AGENT string must be giving them something they don’t like (so they lie and tell me, the user, that I’m doing something wrong — that I have features disabled. Way to go Westlaw). Anyways, like a lot of modern browsers, I have the option of changing the USER-AGENT string, but unlike any other browser that I know of, OmniWeb lets me do this on a site-by-site basis through what it calls “Site Preferences” — site-specific options are set and stored so that when you go back to that site again, your preferences are known and applied.

To get Westlaw working, you need to remove all of the Westlaw cookies and then set your USER-AGENT (through Site Preferences) to either “Netscape 6.2 (Mac OS X)” or “Netscape 7.0 (Mac OS X)” — these are the only strings offered by OmniWeb that seem to give Westlaw what it wants. On a somewhat related note, the “Safari 1.0 (v85)” string does not work, though Safari itself works fine (but is not ’supported’).