sugarenia.com

You know you’re anxious for Christmas to come when:

1. You already started to spend money in gifts. To yourself, of course.
2. You’ve already installed the Tinseltown Firefox theme.
3. You forget to check your daily blogroll.
4. You search for eggnog recipes because hey, you’ve never tasted that damn thing.
5. Your Dashboard is graced with the Christmas Lights and Christmas Countdown widgets.
6. You have so much work to do that you know Christmas will come and you will never know.
7. You wait anxiously for December 11th, when your family is traditionally gathered to decorate the Christmas tree.

Forgive my lack of posts lately. Work & real life took my best. Get in the Christmas mood, everyone!

christmas, christmas lights, eggnog, tinseltown christmas tree, christmas lights

I recently posted an article (a heavily opinionated one) about how Greece falls 10 years behind in terms of Internet usage, comprehension and real-life application.

I always wanted to turn to a subject which I think is terribly important and totally related to the issue above: the quality of company sites. And when I say “company sites”, I mean anything from a bank to a phone provider site. Sites that wouldn’t consist a slice of your everyday browsing, but would be indispensable in terms of important information (say, parcel tracking, or paperwork details).

For the next couple of days I’ll follow some simple usability test cases on some of these sites and see how it goes, then blog the results. I’m not going to offer solutions, mind you: I’m not going to spend any more time on this, because hey, I’m not getting paid to do so. Others do.

So it’s simple, dry ranting for some future posts. If you think you can’t handle it, please feel free to ignore any posts labeled “Why Greek sites suck” from now on.

Why am I doing it?
Because I always had the secret dream of making all greek Web usable and pretty. Now I see why there’s no point.

Are you offended by the term “suck”?
Fine by me. I’m not going to change it.

Do all Greek sites suck?
No.

Let the games begin…

greece, greek web, greek sites, greek internet

Since it’s a busy weekend’s Sunday, I’m not really in the mood for anything important.

So, without further ado:

How do you call your computers?

Desktops or laptops, PCs or Macs or anything.

My oldie but goodie desktop PC is called Persephone, because I was always fascinated by this particular legend of greek mythology.

My brand new black Macbook is called Nemesis. Because I finally got my revenge for all the PC problems I had for years.

How do you call yours? Do tell.

P.S. I’m aware that referring to a piece of machinery using names is not the most sane of habits. But anyway.

I’m not the one to share my job experience in this blog, but I thought you’d like to know about this.

Since Monday, I’m a member of the Phaistos Networks web team (think Pathfinder.gr), working side by side with some very talented people.

I’m really excited about this and I’d just like to share.

Apart from the mobile Gmail that was announced some days ago, the Google folks decided it was time for another Gmail update, full of minor fixes that just make your life easier.

So what’s new with Gmail?

They added a Reply button at the top of the message you’re currently viewing, at last. No more scrolling down for those pesky reply links. They also did a minor change to the aforementioned links, making them prettier by adding icons to make them stand out. Apart from the Reply functionality, you can find some more stuff in a drop-down list right next to it. Cool.

Ever tried to type a lengthy, substantial reply to an e-mail, only to find out that someone else has already said what you were thinking of while you were typing away? No more. The status of the new e-mails counter is now updated constantly to keep you informed about any new messages in the same conversation you’re viewing or replying. Just hit the “Update Conversation” link to ..well.. update the conversation.

The “Forward all” functionality was added, for those that wish to forward a full conversation to another person. I imagine that’d be harsh if it included some of he conversations in my inbox, I have some that span over 50-100 e-mails. Oh well.

I was hoping they’d include the next addition someday. Now you can also send offline chat messages to a Gmail buddy and she will be able to see them once they go online. Nice addition, indeed.

So. Google continues to make small steps in order to achieve their grand plan: taking over my e-mail life. I tell you people, if someday (God forbid) Google decided to add a, let’s say, monthly fee to Gmail services, I’d be doomed.

But you never read that.

google, gmail, update, mobile gmail