I’m still waiting for Gmail over https to support Gmail Talk.  I mentioned this a couple days ago, back when it was called Gmail Chat.  I can appreciate that it might be difficult or even impossible to get all the quirky backend/constant connection/whatever working over a secure connection, but then why is it when I view Gmail over the https connection, the Gmail logo still says Gmail Talk?

In WordPress, one of the improvements in 2.x over 1.x is that when you create a link in a post, you get a new option in the dialog box: You can choose whether the link opens in the same window or in a new window.  That’s great.  I like the option so much that I choose new window for every single link.  The bad part is, I have to choose new window — every time.  It’d be great if I could make it the default option.

This just in:  I give Google a week before they unveil some kind of Picasa 3.0-based Flickr alternative.

Why is Firefox so FLICKING slow when it saves files?  I save torrent files, which are like 3K, and Firefox locks up for 20 seconds?  WTF?  WTF?

Looking at the GMail’s javascript source gives a pretty good hint that Google is developing a service that will let you use GMail as a server rather than just a client, similar to what Yahoo provides. This article walks us through what he has found and imagines how a service like this would work.

read more | digg story

Digg is a site I’ve known about for a while but only started using within the last week or two. It was founded by Kevin Rose, who was on TechTV for a while.

I can’t help but think of him first as a TechTV personality, who I generally always thought of as idiots who managed to get on TV. Sure, some of them come from non-technical backgrounds, but they really pulled a lot of young, smart talent. Then they put them on shows like Judgement Day.

I guess I had heard about Digg before but never really had any interest in it. Then Morash told me to listen to a podcast, This Week in Tech, which I had also heard of and also had little interest for. It turned out to be very good (I’ve liked John C. Dvorak since he was on c|net Central), and then Kevin Rose was in an episode, and I really enjoyed his comments. He co-hosts a podcast called Diggnation, in which he discusses the week’s most popular stories from digg.com.

I like Diggnation better than TWiT. It’s shorter, which is better for the short attention span, but it’s also younger, which is nice. I like Dvorak and most of the guests on TWiT, but Leo LaPorte still gets on my nerves from time to time.

So check out Digg and Diggnation.

[UPDATE] Oh yes — Digg also has a feature/tool that allows you to post a story on Digg to your blog. It supports several blog tools/sites including WordPress. I haven’t tried it out yet because I’m a little scared. But look out for that.

So Mozilla released Firefox 1.5.0.1. Supposedly it fixes memory leaks.

Which memory leaks does it fix?

I learned a few weeks ago — while listening to Security Now!, I believe — that you can get Gmail over a secure connection simply by replacing “http” in your browser’s location bar with “https.” I did it, it works, I changed my bookmarks.

As I write this post, Gmail’s new Quick Contacts UI enhancement does not show up over the secure connection. The Quick Contacts features a Chat button for all users, and it’s grayed out for everybody on my list (but that might just be because no one else has hooked it up on their systems).

Because the chat buttons were all grayed out, I thought that maybe you need Google Talk installed to use Gmail Chat. I installed it, but Gmail Chat didn’t light up or anything.
I’m curious about a few things:

1. Is Google Talk required to use Gmail Chat?
2. Is the new Quick Contacts feature permanently absent over the secure connection? Or will it be there, too, within a few hours/days?
3. Why roll out the Quick Contacts if there’s still backend stuff pending?

Flickr has a great user interface. It takes some getting used to, but once you find out that you can edit anything by clicking on it — no matter what screen you’re on — the utility increases greatly.

I’m uploading new sets now. This process will probably go on sporadically for a few months until I’m done with all the pictures I took since college — or until I get bored with Flickr.

[EDIT:] Oh yeah — I hit my 20MB monthly upload limit, so I won’t be uploading even a third set until February at the earliest. It’s 25 bucks for a pro account, which gives you 2GB of monthly uploads. There’s no way I’m going to upload that much. But how much will I post? Without knowing, it’s hard to know if the Pro account is worth it.

Also, I’ve been uploading images at their full resolution. I may try resizing them to web-friendly, which I believe is 500 pixels on the wider edge.

On the last day of 2005, WordPress 2.0 dropped. I believe I actually installed it a couple days before that. I was at home, in Chipmonk, and I had some free time on my hands. It was risky, considering that I was working with a dial-up connection and I often experience zero-notification incomplete FTP uploads, but I was in little A-Town, and I was antsy.

First of all, the dashboard UI is very blue. I like it. It’s flavor where before there was none. I’m a little surprised that there is no option to at least make everything red or green or purple.

The post editor is done up in AJAX now. Before it was pretty simplistic — it offered tools for creating links and basic formatting. The old version also showed you the raw HTML. Now it’s more along the lines of the finished product. Additionally — and this is pretty awesome — the post preview now actually renders the post with your current theme. So you really see exactly what the post will look like. Thumbs up.

Unfortunately, this new editor interface doesn’t work with Google Toolbar’s Spellchecker. I might do a post to show what I mean.

The file upload interface is now a part of the post editor. This works for me.

There are also changes to the user priveleges system, which bores me.

The last thing that really catches my eye is an improved — or at least more visible — import system. I think this might interest someone like Lewis, who has years of content stacked up. The only thing is, WP2’s Import tool supports a pretty narrow range of formats. Still, one of these is RSS, and I think Lewis has the hook up for that. In a worst case scenario, one could write a script to parse the old stuff and make it suitable for import. Hell, that even sounds fun. I would have liked to do it for the posts I had from before I moved to WordPress. Too bad I already imported all of them manually.

So overall I call WP2 an improvement. I think I feel good knowing that at least some work is being done on the product.