Last week, on Tuesday, I was as giddy as a fat kid on Thanksgiving, patiently, yet eagerly awaiting the arrival of a mystery IM client from Google. Wednesday morning, I was presented with Google Talk. What is it? Well, it seems to be a jabber client with a slick UI and PC-to-PC talk capability. But thats it. I was hoping for a lot more. I will cut this down to the basic good and bad: The Good: -Super Simple User Interface That looks and functions great -Great quality sound for calls with little to no setup -Uses an IM standard (Jabber), so you can access it with other clients (gaim, trillian, ichat, etc) The Bad: -It's not a multi-protocol client -Doesn't do anything I couldn't already do before. (aim, msn, yahoo all have "talk" functionality) -Didn't revolutionize IM. (After GMail, I have come to expect so much out of Google, but I'm probably setting my standards too high) So thats it. I hope and pray that there is a lot in store for Google Talk that we will see in the future, but for right now. I'll keep it installed and running for novelty's sake. The second part of my post was going to be about Google branding. I am getting a little annoyed that no two Google products look alike. Between Gmail, Picasa, Google Talk, Google Personalized Home Page, Google Earth, Blogger, Google Maps, and the desktop aspects of Google Desktop, you would think at least 2 of them might look similar, but they don't. the close [X] buttons, the expanded/collapsed nodes, the options buttons, the headers, the logos, nothing looks similar. You would hope such a big company would at least strive for some sort of uniformness in their product portfolio. I also understand that most of these products were purchased by Google after they were developed by another company, but come on, at least have some consistency.
The Chili's saga came to an uncertain close today, after I handed State Farm's check over to Mahnke Auto Body for $322 to fix my front bumper. A lady's BMW rolled back into mine ten months ago, denting in both my bumpers, and only now am I done with the insurance company. They aren't going to pay to have the back bumper replaced because they said the rust on it (while merely a cosmetic flaw in my opinion) means that it "needed to be replaced anyway," so they won't pay me a dime. I even told them to replace it with a rusted bumper, I wouldn't mind, they said no dice. I asked around to shops to see if they would disagree with State Farm, but they more or less said if they go against what State Farm is saying, they will be blacklisted from said insurance company who will stop sending customers their way. Well, I'm just going to fix the rear bumper myself, then sell the car and buy something new. Perhaps an 05 Tacoma, most likely, a couple year old Chevy Colorado. I'm not sure. I do have more to post, and as promised, this one was posted today (technically), and I will have one for tomorrow too. A small 2 part on google talk and google design. "Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?"
This week, the Simpsons Season 6 came out on DVD. Unfortunately, the packaging for season 6 looks nothing like the packaging for seasons 1-5. Here is what Season 6 looks like and here is what the rest of them look like. I don't like the packaging, especially because it's completely inconsistent with seasons 1-5. It won't look like much of a collection of they keep changing packaging styles every 5 seasons. Now, this got me thinking. They are going on Season 17 of this show and it's not getting better. At a sale price of $35/season, this means that if I were to buy/receive every season, It would end up costing me over $600 with tax to own all of The Simpsons, more if you count seasons to come. That just seems like a lot of money for DVD's that I will not watch often enough to justify that 600 bucks. It's sad that the change in packaging got me thinking and subsequently lost fox and the simpsons $400 from me alone. I mean, without the packaging change, I think I'd still be buying those DVDs. Very Special Note: /mark has heard a rumor that there are many fans upset by the packaging change and have included a slip of paper in the DVD set saying that if you're "an anal-retentive nerd who like their DVD box sets to line up perfectly on the shelf," you can get different packaging mailed out to you. Note: they don't say at what price. Note: they don't say if they will be doing this for seasons 7 and up. Note: the number on the slip of paper is wrong. Use 888, not 800. [confidential source] "Match in the gas tank, boom boom!"
My mom sent me an instant message today. mom: What is a good radio station to listen to? KOSI 101 is driving me crazy. God bless her. She is finally seeing what I have been trying to tell her for years. Love ya ma.
Finally del.icio.us released a javascript output for users to use on their website. This means that I don't have to use Linkroll anymore. Now, if I want something to show up in 5ivethings, all I have to do is add it to my del.icio.us bookmarks like regular, but add the "5ivethings" tag. I would like to say I am going to miss linkroll, but I'm not. Not really at all. It was a del.icio.us clone at best. Anyhow, I know this isn't a big deal for you, loyal /mark reader, but it just makes things that much simpler for the ol' markster. (IE users, sorry about the "Â" thing, I'm trying to get rid of it.) "I'm not killing people... my future's in television."
 
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