Yesterday I saw the Official Gmail Blog post about a new “Mail Goggles” feature, designed to prevent Gmailers from sending that drunken “late night Friday email.” I chuckled, assuming that the jokesters at Google couldn’t wait until April 1 to launch another yuk-fest of a fake feature. I did notice a few news stories about the feature, but I didn’t think much of it.

And then just now on the KCRA morning news I saw Walt Gray report on it. Ha! I thought, just wait until I blog the heck out of this hilarious small town bumble from the gullible yoyos at the local news station. Before I did that, however, I searched again for news stories. Hmm, doesn’t seem like Information Week would fall that easily. Much less Wired. More importantly, the feature does appear in my Gmail settings. It was not a joke at all.

What? This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Sure, I suppose it qualifies as “useful,” but it’s just so damn silly–geared for the intoxicated, set to be enabled on weekends only. I’m definitely not saying that because I was duped. Duped into thinking it was a hoax. Oh Google, you have bested me this time.

A new Sac blog aggregator has hit the market: RiverWrap.com, “All the blogs fit to wrap”…

Our mission is to elevate the visibility of bloggers in our region by providing a portal where visitors can dive into the blogosphere by either searching for topics of interest or browsing our pre-set categories.

It is handy for discovering new blogs, but unfortunately you cannot subscribe in the handy RSS format. So it loses points on that against IpsoSacto, but it does have a much more limited scope (probably something that will change as it gets off the ground) which actually makes it easier. IpsoSacto can really overload your feed reader because you get blogs that are by Sacramento people that are not necessarily local-only. Also it doesn’t hurt their review that Ours Truly (can I say that?) is all over the Top Ten Blog Posts

Continue reading “Attention blog junkies” »

Via David Watts Barton’s awesome Sacto/music blog Blogging the Grid, and as blogged previously by RT Rider, it turns out Sacramento was added to Google Street View last week. Neato Speedo! Check it out here. Or follow the jump to see the most blighted block of the grid…

Continue reading “Sac’s up on Google Street View” »

All this talk of the liberry reminded me of a cool tool that I found on the Sac Public Library’s blog. It is a “Find it at the SPL” bookmarklet (those little “unsafe” bookmark links that run JavaScript in your browser, like “Translate this website into Shizzle-ese” or whathaveyou.) If you’re on a web page, any web page, that lists an ISBN number, this bookmarklet will search the SPL’s catalog for that book. It’s amazing to me that such a task could be so easy, for a site that is as impossible to use as the SPL’s.

Best results for the bookmarklet are found in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, version 6. YMMV.

Popular video rental company Netflix apparently is offering its subscribers unlimited access to movies and television shows to watch via the Web on their personal computers (NOTE: This feature is only available to folks using IE 6 or higher!).

The feature will be open to all subscribers already on one of their unlimited monthly video rental plans, with no extra charge.

I currently subscribe to the “2 at-a-time (Unlimited)” plan and am still limited to 14 hours of online viewing. But with instant access to A Fish Called Wanda, Real Genius, and Zoolander, who is complaining?

On a local note, it is always fun to check out what folks are viewing in Sacramento (via Netflix)…

Continue reading “Netflix has no limits (sort of)” »

From NASA for Kids’ careers page
on being a computer programmer

From the Computer Science Programming page on Sac City’s website

Sacramento is known as “Silicon Valley East” because of the large number of computer and high-tech companies that have moved to, or established a facility in, the greater Sacramento metropolitan area.

By whom? I don’t mean to disparage our tech sector, but has anybody actually heard that appellation used before? Also wouldn’t East be a bit too specific, considering we are just a few clicks East of San Jose? I think North would be better. Not sure what Redmond, Washington would think about that, though…

There is always something better out there. A buddy just sent me a link to A9’s new mapping service that has seemingly blanketed Sacto with cameras, or merely sent one lonely weirdo with a digital camera out in the streets to capture much of the city. Check it out.