Google Integration

No, google doesn't (as far as I know) have a replacement for 'The Integrator'. Really, this is a followup to my last post about suggestions for them. What I've always felt about the various google services is their disconnection from each other. For no particularly good reason I do think it's getting better, but there's still a ways to go.

The main thing I'd like is a blending of reader and gmail, and this seems like a natural matching. I don't consider myself any sort of email power-user, I just need basic reading/writing capability (which reader has anyway...), so perhaps others really want the two services separate. I did find a greasemonkey script that claimed to put a 'Feeds' thing in gmail, but it didn't work (I think it was designed for the 'Older Version' of gmail, so I suppose I could just use that... but I'm a complainer). And I found that google can (does?) create an atom feed for your inbox. Of course, you need to log in, so the feed reader you want to use has to support the appropriate authentication. I'm still fairly suprised, though, that google reader doesn't handle the feed. I understand that making reader have all purpose authentication is a whole new feature (which I guess will happen someday anyway). But if I'm already logged into my google reader... it's the same login for my email... so what the crap? I'm sure I don't know enough about how all this is set up, so I'm sure it's reasonable that reader doesn't (can't?) get my email feed, but still.

Additionally, I found out something suprising (another suprising thing, that is) about the keyboard shortcuts experimental feature, and its relation to your web history that google keeps for you (if you let it). If you use keyboard shortcuts to open a link, google doesn't seem to notice you clicked on the link - in the sense that it doesn't show up in your web history. I should probably let them know, instead of blabbering about it to you. (Update: I just did)

In other (pointless) news, I updated my webpage yesterday. Now instead of being valid HTML 4.01 Transitional it validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict. It wasn't a big modification, but I still feel like it's a step up. I mean... transitional sounds temporary, and conforming to a strict standard sounds hardcore. So look at me go. I also updated the dr. mario pictures bit. Before I had the dynamic picture set up using multiple images that I pretended to pre-cache by putting them in a div with style display:none. But I read about css sprites, and how putting lots of images into a single image is good because it cuts down on the number of requests to the server. Then you mess about with positioning and clipping to make it look like you use lots of small images. Supposedly (brief trials with firebug seemed to confirm it) you get faster load times with this method. I'm still pretty sure the css and javascript could be improved. Maybe next week.

Oh, and speaking of reader, I thought maybe I'd make a go at using the shared items thing. So I'm currently sharing a couple items. If you're curious, check me out. And did reader update their favicon recently, or is my memory just being shoddy?