joedonahue.org

It appears that Google’s new Gmail 2.0 has been released, but in select theaters only. The new Contact Manager can be accessed however, as a standalone app here.
In just the few minutes that I’ve been poking around, I have very mixed feelings. The Gmail Contact Manager is definitely a great place for some updates because it is one of the most integrated services across Google. I manage a half-dozen Google Groups, and often email things to people right from Google Reader, and the contacts stored in Gmail are very well integrated into these services. I have written before on the necessity for quality integration between services, and contacts is one area where Google does an awesome job.

However, it seems that the updated interface for the Contact Manager is a step in the wrong direction. The rest of the world (Hotmail and Yahoo) work hard to make their web interfaces look just like a pane-based desktop email interface, but Google dared to be different with Gmail and has won a major victory with it, proving that web application interfaces do not need to mimic desktop application interfaces: There is potential for so much more, and Google achieves it again and again. Why, then, do they release the new Contact Manager with an desktop-y pane-based interface?
I think it is a good update, but I feel like Google has failed me.

Exploring the settings in Google Docs is something I do frequently, hoping to unearth some new nugget of joy. It appears as though this has happened today, as I found that I could enter my blog settings and associate it with Google Docs. I am guessing this means that I can post a document to my blog.
That would be pretty awesome.

Update:
Mostly successful.
It did not save the title, which I had to enter manually. That is not going to work out.
Will re-publishing this post after a change is made work? Will it overwrite the title?

Update 2:
The update was successful, but it did overwrite the title I had assigned to this post in WordPress. There is an explicit setting to “Include the document title when posting (If supported).” Why would anyone not want a title assigned? Even so, I know this can be done because Flickr can do it just fine.

I still love Google Docs. It will be even more Glorious when a Web Desktop can unify the diverse services into a single interface.

Sometimes life chugs away from day to day and it doesn’t seem very interesting or meaningful at the time, but later reflection proves this untrue.

Friday of last week brought with it the second installment of Mutemath in Lawrence, KS this year. The 6th in the last two years, according to their front man Paul Meany. Andy and Angela and I went, stopping by Dunkin’ Donuts both before and after the concert. It was an awesome show, and we were a little closer than the concert this past Spring. This show seemed slightly less fascinating to me, as I am now actually familiar with their music, but that also allowed me to appreciate the live performance and the deviation from the recorded version all the more. I also found myself paying more attention to the bass guitarist than the drummer, and I fear for what the implications of this might mean.

Amelia’s Doctor recommended that we start her on rice cereal, and so we have begun this new stage of development in her life. The messiness is now ten-fold what it used to be, but she does a good job of retaining a portion of what we feed her. She doesn’t outright reject the spoon, which is good news, but she is also more than slightly disinterested in it and doesn’t take very much before demanding the bottle. I gave her an A for doing a such a good job with this new and unknown thing, but she was awarded a B- from Julie for not taking very much. I think that was a little harsh.

Lastly, Julie had her gall bladder removed on Monday. This was the completion of a month-long ordeal that began with the trip to the E.R. on the day modules ended. She seems to be ok but is still in a lot of pain. Here’s to a quick recovery.