Gmail Labs Finally Available for Google Apps!

Wow, the Gmail Labs feature I blogged about a week or two ago has finally been enabled for my Google Apps account! So, now I have a little less of a complaint with Google. However, it would be nice if they could roll out updates immediately to Google Apps and avoid these sort of delays!!!

Gmail Labs - Not for apps users!

Late last week, Google added a new feature called "Gmail Labs" to Gmail. It consists of a tab in the "Settings," which allows you to add some new mini-features to Gmail. The features were all created by Google developers in their free time, and Google promises more to come. Some are neat and useful, others (like the snake game) are just ridiculous. I'm glad Google is rolling out these features to its users instead of just keeping them in-house.

However, once again, Google has yet to role out Gmail Labs to Google Apps users, in an apparent repeat of the long wait last fall for Gmail 2.0 to roll out. Around the end of last year (2 months after the initial roll out), Google announced a new option for Google Apps. administrators to "Enable new features" as soon as they roll out. I was hoping this would keep the apps code base in line with the regular code-base when new features were to be rolled out in the future, thus delivering new features immediately to Google Apps users and not making them feel like second class citizens. This doesn't seem to be the case. I understand that Google intends Google Apps to be an "enterprise" system, and as such needs to be completely stable, but at least provide an option for those of us that want new features and want them immediately! 

Firefox 3 Bookmarks are Awful!

Like many power-users, I typically use multiple browsers on my Macs - specifically: Safari, FireFox, and Camino. During my recent experimentation with FireFox 3, I fell in love with the new staring and tagging features which are part of the software's bookmarks overhaul, and decided I may try using it as my primary browser (bumping Safari). Furthermore, I've been using the Foxmark extension to synchronize my Firefox bookmarks from Windows with those on my Mac, and it works great! Here's my problem: Cross-browser Synchronization. 

I currently use Bookit to synchronize my Safari & Camino bookmarks. While I don't use Camino as much as I used to, I still use it as my "primary" bookmarks, only to keep the separators which Safari doesn't support. Now, I'd like to add Firefox to my Bookit routine, but Bookit doesn't yet support Firefox 3. So, I tried Bookdog. While I don't like its interface very much, Bookdog supports Firefox 3 seems to work well for synchronization, but unlike Bookit, Bookdog will only will synchronize 2 browsers at one time. Bookdog also exposed a very serious problem I have with Firefox 3: No root bookmark folders.

Apparently, the new bookmark system in FireFox 3 no longer allows keeping bookmarks in folders. It seems FireFox has depreciated the traditional bookmark folder hierarchy structure in favor of tagging and keywords. I'm all for tagging, but as an enhancement or alternative to the traditional way and not a complete replacement. Folders can be created, but they have to be put under either "Unsorted Bookmarks," "Bookmark Menu," or "Toolbar Menu." This means I can't migrate my existing bookmarks directly from Safari, Camino, or FireFox 2 to Firefox 3 because I have thousands of bookmarks saved in dozens of bookmark folder at the root level of my Safari/Camino/Firefox 2 bookmark list. While I can add these bookmark folders to "Unsorted Bookmarks" or "Bookmarks Menu" in Firefox 3, they would end up syncing this way back to Safari/Camino throwing off these browsers bookmark lists.

I remember years and years ago when all bookmarks had to be kept under the "Bookmark Menu" folder. Then, browsers got smart, and allowed you to create folders to suit your organization style. Now, it seems, in an effort to move bookmarks forward, FireFox has actually gone backwards, returning us to those ugly bookmark organization days of yore. This is quite unfortunate because it greatly complicates my cross-platform bookmark sync plan, and means I won't be able to sync my Firefox and Safari bookmarks at all (which really means I'll probably stick with Safari and won't be using FireFox 3 much on my Mac, even though I do like many of its other features).

Windows Live Writer Test Post

This is a test post to my Blogger-hosted blog from Windows Live Writer running on Windows XP in a VirtualBox virtual machine on Ubuntu 8.0.4.

 

Now, if only I can figure out how I can get drafts working with Blogger and how much system resources these Windows Live apps (like Mail and Photo Gallery) take, I'll be set!