Opie and Anthony today were playing the most interesting song by this guy Tay Zonday, who is slowly becoming a hit on YouTube. Tay has this amazing, deep voice (and he’s just 25), and he sings this original song called Chocolate Rain:
Amazing. It seems silly at first, then you see the talent he has and listen to the words, and, I don’t know, I just have to listen to it. The song is released under a Creative Commons license, and you can download the MP3 from this link.
Tay’s got 15 videos in total, some covers and some original. I especially liked his “Never Gonna Give You Up“:
I sent an important document to someone, and like I have been lately, I made sure to format it pretty nicely. As I thought you should, I included a lot of important information in the header, including my name, the subject being covered, and another thing or two. I emailed it to my colleague’s Gmail address, and assumed all was well.
Turns out my friend is a fan of Gmail’s preview feature, and he shouldn’t be. I sent the document in both Word 2003 and Word 2007 formats, figuring no one could have a problem with that, but he opened it in the previewer, which doesn’t display the document header. As a result, he lacked a lot of the context required for this document, and, being a very busy person, ignored it for a while.
I finally spoke to him and asked him what happened, and we found out that because he used the previewer, he didn’t know this was what it was. Gmail strips out some important formatting information in the document preview, including headers and footers, information that can be pretty important sometimes. Worse, Gmail doesn’t even preview Word 2007 documents, even though a beta of Word 2007 has been out for over a year, the retail product is half a year old, and Word 2007 uses a publicly available document format.
Yes, there are things I could have done (and in the future, I’m sending a PDF as well), but it’s annoying that Google would have a previewer that would leave out information. I understand that formatting gets stripped from a document preview, but headers? Didn’t anyone think that was important? And why haven’t the 2007 formats been supported yet? Google should be looking for way to make these little things work better for the user.
Another thing: Yesterday, a friend had trouble signing into her Gmail account, and because I gave her the Gmail invite three years ago and set up her account for her, for some ridiculous reason the request to reset the password was sent to me! I had to reset her password and fix her account for her, and she was pretty worried about someone else having access to her email, as she should have been.
I don’t know, these are minor things, but they aren’t pushing me closer to using Gmail. Outlook has been making me pretty happy lately, especially with rich document previews that use native applications within Outlook, previews that third-parties can make, not just the maker of the email program. Plus, as long as Gmail doesn’t have a preview pane, I can’t afford to spend twice as long checking my email. I’ve had a Gmail account for three years now, and I’ve fill 4% of it, mostly with crap.
I guess I just don’t need the hassle of using Gmail.
Gmail and Threadless have teamed up to hold a Gmail t-shirt contest, asking fans to submit the best Gmail-inspired shirt designs for a chance to win an iPhone, a bluetooth headset, a $400 JetBlue gift card, a $500 Threadless gift certificate, $2,000 in cash and a ton of Google memorabilia.
Sounds cool, but there’s a problem: Even though Google is participating in the competition, the contest policies don’t allow you to use the Gmail logo. Kind of silly, if you think about it. Your design needs to be “inspired” by Gmail, but it can’t have a Gmail logo, and seemingly can’t say “Gmail” either, or contain anything copyrighted. It seems like the problem comes from Threadless’ policies, which they won’t lift even if the copyright holder allows them to! That sure is going to make it hard to get all inspired, won’t it?
(via Philipp)
City, Newspaper name, Daily circulation, Sunday circulation
Atlanta, GA Atlanta Journal Constitution 357,399 523,687
Baltimore, MD The Baltimore Sun 245,445 424,272
Boston, MA-Manchester, NH Boston Globe 397,288 604,068
Boston, MA-Manchester, NH Boston Herald 245,345 151,640
Chicago, IL Chicago Sun-Times 382,796 333,490
Chicago, IL Chicago Tribune 576,132 937,907
Detroit, MI Detroit Free Press 530,110 657,927
Houston, TX Houston Chronicle 508,097 692,586
Los Angeles, CA LA Daily News 157,019 187,740
Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles Times 775,760 1,172,005
Los Angeles, CA The Orange County Register 303,878 354,632
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, FL Miami Herald 306,689 418,081 16
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Minneapolis Star Tribune 361,200 596,333
New York, NY New York Daily News 693,381 780,196
New York, NY New York Newsday 431,975 496,392
New York, NY New York Post 704,011 427,264
New York, NY New York Sun 98,755 0
New York, NY The New York Times 1,126,190 1,682,644
Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News,VA The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) 2,305,500 1,962,590
Orlando-Daytona Beach, FL Orlando Sentinel 250,243 366,354
Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia Daily News 132,345 0
Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia Inquirer 366,929 747,511
Phoenix, AZ Arizona Republic 429,199 542,228
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA San Francisco Chronicle 446,745 483,384
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA San Jose Mercury News 262,853 294,573
Seattle-Tacoma, WA Seattle Post-Intelligencer 126,225 423,275
Seattle-Tacoma, WA The Seattle Times 212,691 423,275
St. Louis, MO St. Louis Post-Dispatch 277,529 421,022
Washington, DC (Hagerstown, MD) The Washington Post 738,933 1,016,163
Washington, DC (Hagerstown, MD) The Washington Times 99,126 41,140
How are the two connected? They’re not. Two different guys named Jerry Yang, both born the same year (1968), one in Taiwan, one in Laos, one a psychologist and social worker, one a CEO and the 432nd richest person on the planet. Of course, there’s no one who will argue this point: Poker player Jerry Yang had the better day yesterday.
Yang won his first tournament, and is the sixth straight rookie to win the main event. Is that a problem for poker, that anyone can win, or does it add to the appeal? Or is it just that poker is growing so fast that it’s almost natural that the winner would be someone new?
Either way, time for Yang to put down the cards and set Yahoo on the right path.
The New York Times has an article about how Google’s New York offices are in the same building as DoubleClick’s, resulting in a lot of DoubleClick employees who are very well aware that they could have coworkers on another floor. More importantly, those coworkers have free food, and they aren’t going to wait for Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick to be approved to enjoy it.
At least three times so far, Google security has escorted DoubleClick employees up the back stairs, this despite Google normally having a policy against “pre-merger snacking”. The DoubleClickers load up on a week’s worth of desserts and enjoy the view, and wait for their next visit to do it all over again. They’re even re-arranging their schedules, moving pizza day away from Google day, so they don’t have any distractions.
Mobile Jones is yet another Google AdSense publisher who had a check from Google bounce. It happens; Google must have to close accounts all the time for one reason or another, I just hope they cover the bounced-check fee if it happens. The hilarious thing is their attempt to get through to Google customer service. Yeah, it doesn’t exist.
Voicemail Lady: For customer service/technical help press 5.
Me: I’m so there!
Voicemail Lady: (gives options 1 & 2) Press 3 for all other questions.
Me: Done.
Voicemail Lady: As Google does not currently authorize customer support, please see our website.
So, onto the third puzzle in the Bourne challenge. On logging in, I found out that one of my surveillance cameras caught Bourne, which is great news. Hopefully, I’ll have as much luck in future days.
This time, you need to contact Godot again using the same username and passphrase as before (bishopberkeley50, Estragon est mort) and give his final message as your submitted answer. You’ll need to use Google Translate to answer Godot’s questions.
Copy Godot’s statements into the search box in the top right-hand corner of the page and click “Translate”. Godot will ask you for a name, the name of the woman who is logistics coordinator of Treadstone. She has a Dater Notes profile and a dead stare, so she’ll be easy to spot. Say her name back to Godot and he’ll tell you where she is, and that Bourne is likely to be near her. Copy his final message to the Message Transmitter, and you’re done!
You now get the opportunity to place three cameras around Paris. I chose Pont Neuf, Gare d’Austerlitz, and Eiffel Tower. Good luck, everyone!
Head to Day One for links and information on every day of the competition.
