Category: Internet

Gmail is an online email service run by Google. While it’s still (seemingly perpetually) in Beta release, those who use it know that it is head and shoulders above other email interfaces.

Unfortunately, Google has just schmutzed up Gmail by integrating a bunch of chat features into it. The intro to these new features by the Gmail team was positively giddy. Apparently the folks who work on Gmail behind the scenes are really, really into chatting, and these new features may be really cool and exciting for folks who are that into chatting.

But not all of us are.

I’ve used chat clients in the past, but these days I just don’t have the time available for it, my writing schedule is so full.

I suspect that the majority of Gmail users, even those who do some chatting online, found the new features confusing and annoying. Particularly annoying were pop-up boxes that appeared whenever you moused over a person’s name in your inbox. Simply trying to open an email to read it caused a chat-contact box to appear over the sender’s name, which was a huge distraction.

The badness of that Bad Idea seems to have sunk in on Google, and from what I can tell, that feature has  now been shut off.

But there’s also the Quick Contacts box in the left margin that populates itself automatically with the names of all kinds of people who have emailed you (even if you don’t know them) and that has no explanation of what the green, orange, and grey dots are that appear next to some (and not other) folks names (though they seem to have to do with who is online).

This Quick Contacts box has a default position (which is changeable in Settings) that puts it above the special email filters (called Labels) that the user has set up. For me this meant I had to scroll down through the incredibly long Quick Contacts link in order to see if my friends had sent me any email, which would appear under the Friends Label I created.

So I think that Gmail has committed a serious error here, and I went to their suggestions page and suggested that they give users a way to completely shut off the new chat features.

I’m curious to know what other Gmail users’ experiences have been with
all this, and would be interested to hear their impressions–positive
or negative. Also,

IF YOU’RE A GMAIL USER, SUBMIT YOUR OWN SUGGESTION.

Continue reading “And Now A Word For Gmail Users”

You’ve heard of podcasting. Well, now there’s Godcasting — more specifically, The GodCast Network, a global Christian podcasting network.

"This is a podcast site, home of free MP3 audio shows that you can listen to now on your computer by clicking on the MP3 icons below. Or, using podcasting client software such as Apple’s iTunes, you can subscribe to our shows and have them downloaded automatically to your computer and optionally to your portable MP3 player whenever new shows become available."

VISIT THE SITE.

(Nod to the reader who sent the link.)

Oh, and JA.org’s sci-fi fans will want to be sure to check out Klingon Word, a show that promises to have listeners "thinking about the Scriptures through the lens of the Klingon Language Version of the World English Bible."

SEARCH THE KLINGON SCRIPTURES.

(And, no, I’m not making that up. It’s amazing what people put on the Internet and that Google finds.)

"vaD joH’a’ vaj loved the qo’, vetlh ghaH nobta’ Daj wa’ je neH puqloD, vetlh ‘Iv HartaH Daq ghaH should ghobe’ chIlqu’, ‘ach ghaj eternal yIn."

Translation: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

A reader writes:

I find your website a joy in the
midst of boring stupidity.  However, I have a complaint:  As a lover of
sci-fi, you haven’t posted anything in-depth about sci-fi lately.  As a
fellow "nerd" (I imply no disrespect), I enjoy the compatibility you
bring towards both Catholicism and Science Fiction.  The only problem
(which is two-fold) is that you have neither posted anything lately on
Science Fiction nor about Battlestar Galactica.  Why is this?

It’s
because I blog at night after work and frequently grab whatever is
handy to blog about. Lately, I’ve been trying to deal with some of the
questions (particularly pastoral ones) that have come in. Without many
sci-fi questions, the topic mix altered for a bit, which is normal. The
topic mix tends to go through cycles.

I did run a reply to a query on what happend to Jonah Quinn on
Stargate, though, and I’ve been planning to comment on something from
last week’s Battlestar Galactica, so that post will go up next.

If folks want more sci-fi on JimmyAkin.Org, they’re welcome to send in sci-fi related questions–particularly if they involve the theological and moral dimensions of science fiction. The same thing goes for fantasy, horror, weird fiction, and whatever else.

By now the voting on the 2006 Catholic Blog Awards is over (or is scheduled to be over). I don’t yet know whether I won anything, because I am writing this in advance and am going to be out of town on the day that the voting closes.

I want to thank all who supported the blog in the various categories it was nominated for. I really appreciate your support. This blog is a labor of love for me, and to have people express the value they see in it by voting for it is an incentive to keep going.

I also want to thank CyberCatholics for hosting the awards. I know that they did a LOT of behind the scenes work to get the awards done, and they did it amid very difficult conditions, including major Internet connectivity, bandwidth problems, and data loss in one category. So a big thank you to them as well.

That being said, I think that there were some problems with the way the awards were conducted this year, and these should be addressed in the future.

In particular, there was the vote once per day thing.

The Catholic Blog Awards page explaind that this was "to keep voting fair." How this could serve to keep voting fair is something that I did not understand. So I asked, and I was told that the reason that this was implemented was to allow people who share a single IP address to both vote (e.g., a husband and wife who have a single computer with a cable modem, or the people in an office or school who share the same IP).

Unfortunately, this was not explained on the voting page. It also doesn’t really put married couples, schools, and offices on the same footing as single people, since in the course of the week of voting a single person would have seven theoretical votes to cast, while a married couple, school, or office would have seven votes to split between them.

Since the voting page simply explained thing in terms of one vote per day, the potential positive effect of this was blunted in that it encouraged single people to exercise their extra votes just as much as those sharing an IP.

It also put the nominated bloggers in a really delicate position.

As soon as I learned about this aspect of the voting, I hated it. I realized that some bloggers would take the "Vote early and often" line, which would (a) come across as unseemly to the readers and (b) would give those bloggers an advantage over those who wanted to stick to the "one person, one vote" principle and this (c) could lead to bad blood between the two groups of bloggers, which is the antithesis of what should happen in the Catholic blogging community.

Since I was one of the "one person, one vote" bloggers, I sat back for several days and didn’t mention the possibility of multiple votes.

Until I started losing in the one category I was most interested in (Best Apologetics) because my principal competition in that category started using the "Vote early, vote often" line.

Now, I know some folks have taken the attitude that this is all in fun and these awards don’t mean anything, and that’s a very easy position to take if you aren’t one of the nominees. But if you’ve invested a lot of personal time and effort in building something that people see enough value in to nominate then it does mean something to you. Receiving recognition for all your hard work is important.

That’s not vanity. That’s an expression of an aspect of basic human nature. People need recognition for their efforts. That’s true in marriages and in friendships and in job situations and in blogging. Recognition is incentive to keep going.

This year one of the ways the Catholic blogging community could give recognition to bloggers who have worked hard was through these awards, and there was one category in particular that I have a special interest in because of my profession.

So when I saw the "vote early, vote often" meme looking like it would unbalance the results in that category, I reluctantly decided to point out this aspect of the rules. That way the blogs were put back on an equal footing.

Which is required if the results are to mean anything at all.

Unfortunately, the multiple votes thing of itself diminishes the meaningfulness of the results. It doesn’t deprive them of all meaning because if a blog’s readers are enthusiastic enough to cast multiple votes then that says something about the blog.

But it doesn’t say as much as if the awards had been conducted under the "one person, one vote" principle.

It was thus with great reluctance that I eventually said to myself, "Well, this is the way the rules are this year. I didn’t choose that. I would have opposed it if I had been asked about it. But that’s the way it is, and if these results are to mean anything then the rules need to be pointed out."

I also left my comboxes open in the two posts where I pointed it out, and I took my lumps, as people accused me to my face (virtually speaking) of "vanity" and "egregious self-promotion," and said deliberately cruel things like I "do not deserve" particular awards or that my pointing out the multiple-vote rule and saying mild things like "Please support JimmyAkin.Org" caused them to vote against me.

I noticed other bloggers turning off the comboxes in posts where they pointed to the multiple-vote aspect of the rules, and I can understand why. The kind of reaction I got when I left them on underscores the problem with the multiple-vote rule.

In all this I was trying to do the best I could in a bad situation. I didn’t want to criticize the rule while the voting was still underway since that would serve no purpose (the rule couldn’t be changed once it was announced), but I wanted to thank those who voted for the blog, and I felt y’all deserved a public explanation of where I stand on the multiple-vote rule.

I appreciate the Catholic Blog Awards, but the multiple-vote rule needs to be altered in some way to avoid the problems that were encountered with it this year.

At the same time, I want to reiterate my thanks to those who put on and ran the awards this year. I know that they had a tremendously difficult job, and I want to give them full credit for the efforts they put in.

If not CLICK HERE, and please support JimmyAkin.Org.

You can vote once per day.

(NOTE: This is a stay-at-the-top post until voting ends. Scroll down for new posts.)

Catholic Answers now has a podcast feed up. Before we roll it out, though, we need to make sure that we’ve got the bugs worked out of it.

Could some of y’all check it out and let me know in the combox whether you encounter any problems?

Thanks much!

HERE’S THE LINK.

It has come to my attention that, although JimmyAkin.Org had a very substantial lead in the Best Apologetics Blog category, this lead is now gone and another blog is not ahead.

Although I was nominated for a bunch of categories, this is the one I care about most, as it is what I do professionally.

I would therefore invite folks to go vote–whether your have voted before or not.

The way the rules of this work, one can vote once per day, so people are not limited to voting a single time.

I haven’t mentioned that point up to now, though I have seen other blogmasters do so–inlcuding the blogmaster who is currently ahead in the apologetics category, who just yesterday  urged his readers to "vote early and often," quoting Al Capone.

I’ve tried to avoid that kind of thing, but with the category of Best Apologetics in question, I thought that I’d better mention this aspect of the rules, and I’d ask you to vote for JA.O, even if you have already done so. I’d love votes in any category for which the blogis nominated, but I’m particularly interested in the Best Apologetics category.

Incidentally, you do not need to be Catholic to vote in these awards.

Thanks for your consideration.

GO HERE TO VOTE.

The voting phase of the 2006 Catholic Blog Awards is now underway!

I hope that when you vote y’all will remember your humble JimmyAkin.Org (a.k.a. Defensor Fidei in the voting), which–much to my surprise–was nominated for a startling number of categories this year:

• Best Apologetics Blog
• Most Theological Blog
• Most Informative Blog
• Most Insightful Blog
• Most Intellectual Blog
• Most Creative Blog
• Most Bizarre Blog
• Most Bizarre Blog Post, and
• Best Blog By A Man (I pointed out the group blog nature of JA.O, but
  those in charge thought it was sufficiently identified with me that
  they preferred to put it in this category)

Despite being nominated for Most Intellectual Blog, I want to stump for this award to go to someone else.

Ed Peters’ blog In the Light of the Law is devoted exclusively to high-end canon law issues. My blog also tackles high-end issues, but it also includes a lot of other stuff (e.g., humor material), meaning that its overall intellectual density per square inch of blogspace is lower, so I’m recommending votes for Ed’s blog in this category.

I’m also recommending SouthernAppeal in the categories it is running for, though The Anchoress may give it a run for its money in the political category this year.

Have fun voting!

VOTE HERE!

Just a reminder that there’s still a little time to make nominations for the 2006 Catholic Blog Awards.

Here on JA.O, we’ve had quite a number of really unusual posts for a Catholic blog. Michelle, Tim J, and myself have handled quite a number of odd subjects–now in the archives–and folks might want to consider whether any of these are suitable for the Most Bizarre Blog Entry posts. If you think any are,

YOU CAN NOMINATE THEM HERE.

A reader writes:

i have 3 antique typewrites that i would like to know the value of them.

• webster shows no date in good condition
• royal deluxe no date in good condition
• olivetti underwood do date in good condition

they still all are in their cases

I’m afraid that appraising typewriters isn’t one of my specialities, but I’ll be of what help I can.

Since the monetary value of an item is based on the perceived utility it has in the eyes of its potential market, what you really need to do is determine what someone would pay for this, and there’s a quick way to do that: Put them on eBay and see what they sell for.

Of course, if they sell then you’ve got to give them to the person who bought them (or eBay will have your house burned down).

If you don’t want to sell them just yet but just want to get an idea then the thing to do is look at the prices of similar items that have recently been sold on eBay (not ones that people are still bidding on, since many people do what I do and wait until the last second to place a bid so as to minimize the chance of being outbid by someone else).

eBay really is the place to go for getting an idea of the market value of things like this. I heard an interview with an appraiser a while back talking about the fact that eBay has become the standard for accurate values these days, whereas before there were inefficient, market-constraining books that didn’t give you that good of an idea.

You could also try to find an antiques appraiser in your area (who will better be able to tell you if you’ve got a rare model on your hands–and thus whether you should set a special minimum price when you sell them on eBay) or go on the Antiques Roadshow if you can find where it’s being taped.

THERE’S ALSO AN ONLINE ANTIQUES APPRAISAL SERVICE HERE.

If you use it, be sure to include as much information about the typewriters as possible–including their model numbers.

Oh, and you could probably find some of those old appraiser’s books. Maybe you could get them on eBay!