It’s that time of year again to set our clocks. It’s not as big a deal as it used to be since more and more things in the household and business are computerized. Our half-dozen Windows boxes don’t skip a beat in this regard; they know to automatically adjust the clocks. The one Mac we own? Same thing. Pocket PC? No problem (pictured above). I don’t have any program running on our Linux servers to automatically handle this and my Seiko analog watch still needs to be adjusted.

The free email storage space war seems to be far from over, assuming this isn’t an April Fool’s joke, of course. Recently, Yahoo upped their limit to 1GB and they aren’t in beta. Gmail, picking an unusual day for the announcement is countering by increasing from 1GB to 2GB. Ironically enough I saw this story first in Yahoo’s business news section!

Once the upgrade takes effect Friday, Gmail users will be able to store up to 2 gigabytes of e-mail and attachments for each account. Even more capacity will be made available after that as it becomes feasible, the company said.

I just checked my Gmail account and it doesn’t show 2GB capacity yet, but Friday is long from over. I’m not seeing any official word on Gmail’s site of the increase either. Hmm, this could definitely be bogus … I’m suspicious.

Update 4/1/05 6:15am PST: This morning I checked and I’m no longer suspicious. The what’s new page at Gmail adds the following:

G is for growth - Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn’t mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we’re giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people’s lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

Also, on the Gmail homepage they are running a javascript counter that shows how the space is increasing in real time. And then they are showing their humorous side with the drawing with the ring on it … gotta love that!

Just a friendly reminder to folks out there not to take things too seriously today. You all know what the 1st of April means.

This could be especially important for bloggers who might rush to judgement on what is “news” and what is just a playful April fool’s day joke. For those with a good sense of humor, this could prove to be a really fun day. For those who take life too seriously sometimes, this could be hell on earth day.

Just remember, be on alert … today’s the one day of the year where we should absolutely, positively not be gullible.

I wonder what Google will do today? They have been known to do some curious things on past April Fool’s days.

Terri is finally at peace. ABC News: Terri Schiavo Dies at 41:

Terri Schiavo, the woman at the center of a nationwide debate over right-to-die decisions, died today at a Florida hospice following the March 18 removal of the feeding tube that kept her alive. She was 41 years old.

I am sure the next life will treat her better than the struggle that has been her last 15 years on this plane of existence. I’m just a stranger to her family, but my sympathies go out to them for their terrible grief of losing a child. I hope I’m not alive to see any of our children pass on, it’s just not supposed to be that way.

Please excuse the site loading problems late yesterday and overnight. We are running down the issues and resolving them. In particular there is one pesky Wordpress table join that seems to be causing problems when this site does any kind of traffic. I’m going to try and track down the most recent version of Wordpress from the nightly builds and see if that helps. Also, I wrote a bit of caching code so that the home page of the blog (the most expensive page, actually, as far as database querying goes) is no longer being dynamically generated.

We switched from Pivot to Wordpress a couple weeks ago because Pivot was having problems loading blank pages when people tried to click through from RSS readers and now we seem to have traded those problems with a database/dynamic site issue. Isn’t blogging is supposed to be fun? LOL

Regular programming should be returning as soon as we get over this bump in the road. Thank you for reading.

E.T. may no longer have to worry about someone else stealing his phone to phone home, because SimWatcher is to the rescue!

A Dutch company has introduced a small downloadable program for mobile phones, called SimWatcher, which sends out an SMS message when someone steals a mobile phone and replaces the SIM card. The software reveals the number of the person who stole the phone and will also display a message on the stolen phone, saying tha it belongs to someone else.

I look forward to the day when I don’t have to have a cell phone and can use VoIP whereever I roam. If only Verizon Wireless would hurry and get EDO up here in the Seattle area, then that would certainly expediate my cell phone departure, or at least the usage. Alas, we signed a two year contract with them in December when we got hooked up via OnStar (don’t pay for those outrageous minutes, get a Verizon account and hook them together), so I’m stuck unless I pay a penalty to get away from them. Can’t wait for (almost) anywhere wireless broadband to become a reality in this area, and then software like the SimWatcher won’t even be necessary.

The Average Joe is blaming HP’s lack of support for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition as the reason he won’t buy another HP Pocket PC. I doubt I’ll buy another HP Pocket PC either, but not because I’ve been unhappy with it, because my next portable device PDA product will be some sort of smartphone (with at least a 400mhz processor which HP told me they probably wouldn’t be doing for awhile).

Something that keeps me from having to carry around two separate devices. I took the iPod Photo back to the store because I didn’t want to carry another device.

Now, the recent PSP purchase throws these plans to the curb, but I’m not planning to use that as any sort of business device, that’s pure fun … although I would love to be able to surf the web on the PSP.

Yahoo! Groups new look is pretty dramatic. Somebody at Yahoo must really be firing up the coal in the engines because they are cranking out all kinds of new things and a 2005 design overhaul for Yahoo Groups, IMO has been sorely needed. The old design was hokey and not so easy on the eyes, but it was familiar. Predictably, someone has already started a group to complain about the new design entitled: “We hate the Yahoo Groups New Look.” Some of the changes include (italicized words are Yahoo’s description, the commentary is mine):

• Focus on content - they have one gigantic flash banner up top for the main message area of the groups, but still have that annoying full page ad requiring users to click “continue” to go onto the message when viewing through the browser.
• Vitality Alerts - I never really viewed the outside pages for stats, but the groups.yahoo.com page has become more useful with the additional information specific to the groups one is subscribed to.
• Group Photos - nice way for the group owner to add a small button and brand the group for a site
• Messages - preview of messages is definitely handy though I’ll admit it takes a bit to get used to
• Personalization - Choose group colors and Yahoo will change the font color to contrast the colors accordingly. That’s a neat idea.
• Tips & Suggestions - this is the equivalent of a tip of the day on startup with some programs and can be quite handy as well.

Something that hasn’t changed is the annoying, hypersensitive bounced email program. If even one email bounces you can expect their robot to be out looking to make sure your email is still active by sending re-validation requests. At least once every couple months I have to go run down Yahoo Groups email re-validation request because I’ve been blocked from being able to interact with a group I’m subscribed to, which these re-validation requests almost always seem to be routed to the spam bin. Perhaps it would be better to turn up this setting so it’s not so sensitive to mail problems. Or maybe this is just another example of how email today is broken.

Resizing the browser window also remains a problem that is carried over from the prior Groups version. Look at the picture below and you’ll see how the ad cuts off some of the text:

When I complained about this once before on a group I was told that I should be reading through my email client anyway and I wouldn’t have to worry about the ads. No thanks. How about just programming it so that if the window is resized the text will wrap around correctly? I mean, really, they do want people to be able to read the messages, don’t they?

You can send feedback to Yahoo about these changes. I’m still trying to get used to them and while I think the design is definitely more professional and progressive looking, I’m not sure where I stand on the changes from a more important usuability standpoint. Guess I’ll hold my opinion on that one until I’ve actually used it for a little while.

Just picked up on the fact that you can sync up your Skype contact list with Skype version 1.2 beta. This has been a sorely missing feature for those of us who don’t keep computers very long and didn’t go through the backup procedure and/or frequently switch between multiple machines. I didn’t try syncing up my contact list on the Mac version of Skype, but it worked from my Sony VAIO laptop to Motion M1400 Tablet to desktop machine. Here’s how it works:

- download Skype version 1.2 beta and after installing login with your existing info. It should sync up your current download list automatically.

Just doing a test of the ping. Doesn’t seem like the pinger is activated.