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Quoth the stuntpilot: “Everybody says you cannot do it, until NASA calls.”

For future reference, scorching your alliances and coalitions with other nuclear nations in the process of chasing after the chimeric threat of nuclear terrorism might be a lousy gamble in the long run.

I am, officially, the last person to get a Gmail account. Whuffies to Adam, who helped me out in this regard.

Things that are immediately striking to me about the user experience:

1. Round-trips to the server are substantially reduced. Eliminated, frankly, for common navigation options. This is a huge win, as server latency is about 50% of the problem with web app interaction (the weak HTML control set accounts for the other half). Update, 10:47: When it has to hit the server, Gmail tries Real Hard to hide it; they make good use of one of my favorite webapp tricks: the image-url-with-side-effects. (“Star” a message and see what happens.)
2. Progressive disclosure all over the place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a UI that was so chock-full of drawers and pockets, and I think this underscores Gmail’s focus on streamlined, relevant information (rather than the info-overload which seems to be the stated goal of apps like Outlook).

More thoughts (to add to the steaming heap of Gmail opinion already out there) as I spend more time with the app.

Update, 10:48: One of the aspects that’s really tickling my spider-sense is that Gmail combines the access-anywhere of webmail (and, frankly, of mutt-over-ssh, my current email solution) with just a little bit of the flash and feel of a desktop app. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed using email as much as back when I used Eudora in the mid-nineties, but since I need to get at my email from many different places that’s not as much of an option for me. Gmail sprinkles a bit of Eudora into the webmail mix, and you can taste it.

Idea: use basketballs as fishing lures!

Let the Darin g Fireball narration of Konfabulator vs. Dashboard. The shared concept, of course, dates back to the classic Mac OS “desk accessories” and even terminate-and-stay-resident apps for DOS. What’s news to me is the substantially different under-the-hood implementation of K vs. D, and that really makes all the difference. It still sucks to be Arlo Rose, but then again, how long should any of us expect to have exclusive rights to a good idea?

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. (Clearly leaving my favorite title for the seventh and final book, When Harry Met Voldy.)

Oh, the humanity: there’s actually a very thoughtful and thorough review of Spider-Man 2 up at the ‘dot this evening. (Some spoilers, but nothing really revelatory, mostly consisting of some signposts to give you a little advance warning for when the Very Best Parts of the film are coming.)