Technocrank

Dear MySpace Stranger,

If you try to add me as a friend and I send you a polite email requesting further information, please at least have the courtesy of responding.  If you do not, I regret I will have to decline adding you.

Sincerely,
Not Actually Your Friend

I’ve been noticing in the past few days that there’s been backscatter-like spam showing up in the sent boxes of some of my Google Apps account. This hasn’t happened on any Gmail-proper accounts but that could just be because the Apps accounts are more “publicly advertised”.  Anyone else noticed this?

I know how old this makes me sound but kids, I just gotta say this: I hate Facebook Mail. Facebook is great for lots of stuff but the fact is it’s a web-based messaging system, a crappy & broken one at that, that duplicates an existing system without actually making it better.  And it actually creates a redundancy – at least one.

The fact that it forwards new Inbox items to my contact email account drives me insane. So why don’t I just turn it off?  Or why not only use FB Mail?  Well, I have about a thousand other email accounts for other purposes and identities.  I don’t just do one thing.  So it’s great to be able to do it all in one place, using either Outlook (*shudder*), Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or even Gmail using POP fetching.

I guess this is where Facebook departs from its original intent as a gathering spot for university & college students who actually really only need(ed) the site for one purpose and one purpose only – gathering friends for a party and then posting the aftermath pics.  Also, for stalking high school crushes.

However, now that old people have been using Facebook for several years now it’s maybe time for them to revisit how its users use its mailing system.  What would be wicked is if the Facebook API allowed a developer to create an IMAP or POP bridge.  I’m not alone in wanting this.  A quick Google and I found this and this.  At least with a bridging application Facebook could still keep the content flowing through their system (and yes, using whatever data they can glean from it for their evil marketing plots) while making it actually usable.

What would be wickeder is if they just set up their own IMAP/POP servers and allowed you to have direct access to them.  In fact, it would take a huge load off their web servers by reducing the number of page-fetch calls and instead running far more efficient and less processor-intensive mail servers.  After all, most mail is text-based anyway and fairly slim.  And, of course, they could still have the web interface there fetching mail off the mail servers to not break functionality.

Is it just me or are the text renderings in reCaptcha getting harder and harder to make out? Some of them are absolutely inscrutable. Take this for example:

I mean, seriously, I can make out “explored” but what the heck is the first word supposed to be?

Firefox 3.1b2
Google Gears 0.5.4.2

You know what would be really faboo? If the devs for Google Gears figured out it was worthwhile looking at the non-compatibility issue with Firefox 3.1 and Google Gears. I know, I know, it’s free software and there are a million other things to get to. And they’ve said (unofficially) that by the time Firefox 3.1 gets out of beta they’ll be ready. The only reason I’m asking is this:

There are now a preponderance of sites out there now that are JavaScript heavy. All Google products, Facebook, MySpace, and yeah, WordPress – especially the admin backend which is now AJAX supercharged. So when you’re dealing with these sites a lot it really makes a big difference having a browser that can crank through the JS routines and render the damn page already. This is why I’m working with the beta version of Firefox 3.1 (actually, now the OSX optimized version, Shiretoko – there are Windows versions out there too) which has the Tracemonkey JavaScript engine enabled. It’s quite fast; incidentally I’m also testing WebKit, the Safari engine development version which is right up there too.

Anyway, FF 3.1 makes a big difference in shaving off my waiting time, especially here in WordPress-land. And incidentally, the kind folks at WordPress have incorporated Google Gears functionality to offload the download…load. Works great on WebKit/Safari, but since the Gears guys haven’t worked out the FF 3.1 compatibility yet, we’re still waiting.

Not a big rush, really…but it’s Valentine’s Day. Blow me a kiss, boys.