GMail

Despite the streamlined interface, I keep finding new options within GMail, options that are as brilliantly implemented as they are, well, brilliant.

Today's mention goes to the Spell Checker. It highlights words it believes are problematic and then, when you click on them, it shortlists some alternatives via a drop down list. In place editing is cool too; as you can edit the words without effecting the neighbours.

Maybe some of the 1Gb space could be converted to a custom dictionary file? You could create your own custom dictionary xml file which the spell checker could also look up against... perhaps people could even create files for various disciplines/professions?

Microsoft Word has this and a lot of people use it.

I'll volunteer to write the profanisaurus.xml :-)

(See Amazon for more info).

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas Everybody!

Maybe it's a bit early for this, but...

...the best of 2004 lists have already started:

http://www.fimoculous.com/year-review-2004.cfm

Google Suggest

This has been doing the "blog rounds" today, and I thought I'd be exciting and different by mentioning it too.

Google have implemented a sort of "autocomplete" feature. Check it out at http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1.

Trite comments aside, I like this functionality. The calls are implemented in javascript (http://www.google.com/ac.js) and basically appear to revolve around using a hidden frame to encapsulate calls back to the server as you type.

Have you ever...

...wanted to post the password and username for your blog to see what happens...?

AccuRadio

I've begun to listen to Internet Radio alot more recently. At the moment, my favourite is AccuRadio.

It's got some great features, especially artist blacklisting and I'm pretty much sold on the subchannel idea.

Kubla Khan

I've been reading "Songs of Earth and Power", the collected omnibus of "The Infinity Concerto" and "The Serpent Mage," by Greg Bear.

The first book especially makes reference to one of my favourite poems, Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.



But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanged

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!



  The shadow of the dome of pleasure

  Floated midway on the waves;

  Where was heard the mingled measure

  From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!



  A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw:

  It was an Abyssinian maid,

  And on her dulcimer she played,

  Singing of Mount Abora.

  Could I revive within me

  Her symphony and song,

  To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise. 

I am impressed...

Blogger offers by far the most polished interface I've seen yet. The default templates have made it very easy to create a blog that really looks the part - need to live up to the presentational "wonderfulness" now though...

Like the RichTextBox like control to post. Also, unlike tblog, the Edit HTML mode actually works perfectly.

I think I'm going to like it here...

I guess I should import old posts from the other place...

Blogger... Looks good over here.

Based on some comments on Sam Meldrum's blog (here), I've decided to check out blogger.

Looks good so far.