Many people know I have significant ties with Google; I use AdWords personally and for my clients, I use AdSense on my own Web sites (including this one), and I have many friends who are Googlers. I am hardly an impartial observer.

I also know that this dang Google IPO has been covered ad naseum. So while I feel compelled to say something here, I'll keep it blissfully short:

Google is an honorable company, with good people (execs and all) that I believe really do want to make the world a better place. I hope they continue to succeed in every way.

As many folks know, I'm a Lindy Hop (swing dancing) addict, as evidenced by my creation of the Lindy Hop Whiteboard Supreme, and my dance entries in this blog.

Every once in a while, especially on 'off' nights, I ask myself why I continue to dance for hours every week, and what Lindy Hop really means to me.

After attending a Best of Brazil evening here in San Francisco featuring the Brazillian art of Capoeira, I'm in a bit of a quandry. I don't want to sound like a marketing brochure, but I can't help but describe what I saw with a series of glowing adjectives: beautiful, flowing, passionate, strong, sensual, mesmerizing. I now have even more admiration for this talented capoeirista and photoblogger.

UPDATE: I've now posted lots and lots of photos from this Capoeira evening

I've been a geek for as long as I can remember. But I still am amazed and amused to learn just how the Internet shrinks the world... especially nowadays with blogging. I've been hit on by seemingly random women from various locales that I can barely pronounce, gotten warm kudos from Sweden, been rediscovered by an old high school friend in a sleepy town in S. California, and even gotten job interviews from this humble blog.

Blah blah blah... but what still really gets me excited is seeing my stuff translated into other languages!

HARK! A powerful new technology! Let's [try it / ignore it / ban it]!

History repeats itself. When new technology is developed, there are the early adopters who coo excitedly, those living under a rock who grunt "huh?" and varying degrees of those who issue warnings, which -- at least as of late -- seem to fit into one of several convenient categories:
1) Fighting against terrorism
2) Safeguarding values (e.g., "Protecting the children!")
3) Protecting privacy

To simultaneously save me from getting writer's cramp and enable you to finish reading this essay in under two hours, I'm just going to tackle the issue of privacy for now.

When you think of a cappella, do you think of just cheesy barbershop? Think again. Give a listen to Una Aura Amorosa, sung by the Swingle Singers. If you don't agree that there is beauty here, you need your head examined .

The Swingle Singers actually have quite a varied (and often amusing) repetoire. The song referenced above is from their 2CD combo: Bach Hits Back ~ A cappella Amadeus.

[Kindly link to this blog entry rather than the sound file directly; due to copyright and other issues, I may decide to change or remove the song at any time]

[In case you didn't already notice, I wrote a pretty detailed review of Gmail earlier, in which I also noted that I'm unfortunately unable to procure accounts for folks. Sorry! For those who already have accounts, I hope the tips below are useful and/or fun - Adam]

So, you're one of the Gmail testers and you want more bang for the buck, eh? Try these tips on for size:

SENDING & SHORTCUTS
- Send mail to fellow Gmail'er by just entering their username in the TO, CC, or BCC spot. No need to include @gmail.com

- Did you reserve and now wish you had left out the darn period? It's not too late! For whatever reason, Gmail treats that e-mail address the same as one without a period (and visa versa), so works just as well as . As you may have guessed, Gmail is flexible with regards to capitalizations, too!

- Using the handy-dandy spell-checker and want to quickly Resume Checking without using the mouse? Just hit 'R', an undocumented shortcut key in this context.

There are many times in which I've felt that people -- myself included -- would benefit from logging off and getting a life. This sort of cynicism (or optimism, depending on one's take) is heightened when I read about people falling in love with someone else that they've "met" only online. Hey, I'll admit... been there, done that. And never again.

So, too, do I often ask myself why I continue to feel so passionate about online communities and online networking. With all the flaming and faking and fluffery and general bullshit, isn't it all just a waste of time?

Then every once in a while, I'm reminded why Online matters.

Link to larger photo (340K)

"Take time to smell the flowers" is one of those phrases that perhaps make us roll our eyes. But, as with stereotypes, there are often nuggets of wisdom buried within the clich�s.

When recently visiting my parents in Southern California and exploring their newly remodeled backyard, I enjoyed lollying around with my tiny camera, exploring little nooks of leaves and flowers and rocks. Not just looking, but also smelling and touching, examining contours and textures.

"Right under our noses." "In our own backyards." So many of the sayings we blow off are perhaps the very ones we should be paying attention to now and again.

I've had the pleasure of extensively beta testing Gmail for a few days, and I'm happy to offer my thoughts about the service here. First, though, I'd like to get a few disclaimers out of the way:

1. I don't work for Google. I'm not a Google employee and I do not speak for Google or the Gmail team, yadda yadda...
2. I can't get you a Gmail account. I can't even get accounts for my bestest friends. If you'd like to try out Gmail, I encourage you to sign the notification list here.
3. Gmail is in BETA (not yet a finalized product). Beta beta beta beta! Things will be fixed, improved, changed, etc. Therefore, I will try to resist the impule to nitpick about specific features that don't work perfectly because -- let's face it -- this is a BETA version, and what I'd write today would likely be fixed before long.

With that said... let's get on with the show

OVERALL / THE BOTTOM LINE

For those too lazy or busy to read through my long note, here's the quick summary for you:

Gmail is generally a delight to use. While it is not yet fit to be a substitute for client-based e-mail systems (Eudora, Outlook, etc.), nor does it yet have all the features of competing Webmail services, Gmail is blindingly fast, its ads are unobtrusive (often even informative and useful), and its label paradigm is promising. And of course, as one would expect, the search features are unparalled. If you're not keen on seeing text ads or you prefer a more drag-and-drop GUI environment AND you don't mind paying $30/year for a fabulous competing Webmail service, I urge you to check out OddPost. Yes, the time has clearly come to ditch Hotmail and Yahoo!.