Orsburn (Static Content)

Google ’s Gmail service is wildly popular and quite good.  And while this should not be considered a review of the service, as much as a commentary about one aspect of it, I will point out a couple of my observations. It’s fast.  At least the bulk of the time, in about the same time that a normal search with Google returns results, clicking a message opens not only the message but all related messages as well.  This includes messages that were sent in response to a previous message.  To be sure, Mozilla ’s Thunderbird and Apple ’s Mail have been using message threading for years, but I never used a mailer that “grafts” sent messages into the threads as well.  It’s a sort of neat feature.  I’m not sure if I prefer to have it, but some friends have told me they love it. There are no folders!  Google has taken the concept of a folder and converted it to one of labels.  You don’t move a message to a folder, you apply a label to it.  The be...

Oh, the pangs of providing very popular software and challenging its users to download it as many times as possible.  Such is the situation with Mozilla and the rollout of its Firefox 3.0. With the costs associated with bandwidth consumption being a consideration for sites that provide downloads, and especially so for those that provide popular content and software, it's amazing that such a challenge was even considered—let alone publicized.  Regardless, the point is moot since Mozilla seems unable to keep up with the demand spawned by the company's invitation anyway. While I acknowledge and credit the organization with being able to keep up with the traffic it has by 11:00 AM EDT, my repeated attempts to download the browser have all ended in futility.  On some discussions I've read here and there users are reporting both success and failure.  Mine has been a case of repeated failure, as the closest I've come so far has been to fully load the main page at www....