New Design, Ranking, Gmail Hosted, OS 2006 Finale and YouOS

Hope you like the new look Duey Finsters. Like Google style hoo-pah, we are still in “Beta” mode (or is it “Alpha”? Depends on who you ask!). I would be extremely grateful for people to report issues, with the folloxing browsers IE 5.5, 6 & 7, Opera 9, Firefox 1.5.X , Mozilla 1.X , Safari on all platforms Windows, Linux and Mac (BSD if you want!). Great news also in ranking, the site has gone from 8.5 millionth, to just under 4 million (#3,945,836 to be exact) in three and a half months! I am working on releasing the design to OSWD and in Wordpress theme format, for others to extend and enjoy (If you feel like helping out, contact me).

The latest Nokia 2006 tablet edition has just been released , I have yet to Flash my device, but I hope its good. The Beta lived up to its name, it was buggy. It has only been just over a month since that release, so I hope they fixed vast majority of the bugs, but to me it seems its rushed. This would go against Nokia’s ethos of quality software (you only have to look at Symbian, rock solid).

Speaking of Beta’s, I got Gmail hosted recently. It is not much different than normal Gmail, in fact it lags behind in the feature list of actual Gmail. For one it does not use pictures of contacts and is not linked to a Google account. I suspect that is intentional, to woo customers knowing that they won’t be fiddling with Googles latest toy. I had Spreadsheets on my Gmail account, but on hosted I could not use it, as I did not have a “Gmail” account. Same thing when I tryed Picasa Photo Albums.

I recently came across a fascinating website, one called YouOS ( www.youos.com). It is a virtual desktop which is 100% online. Although, it is the first of its kind, so don’t expect everything. Its features are impressive for the limitations of a website and it takes on a familiar look, that in the form of the GNOME Desktop. Check it out if you have time!