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Oh guess what? The folks at Gmail have actually done something useful rather than building some random (retarded) features such as the mail goggles. So, they’re rolling out themes on Gmail. Sweet, huh?

I’m pretty impressed actually. They’ve made 30 themes and some of them are just amazing. My fav one has to be the one called Ninja. Well you’ll get to see all of the themes as the slowly become available to us. When? They’re saying within a few days. I guess they’re just waiting till it gets all hyped up and everything. Good strategy.

Now I was also wondering if they did this to bitch slap Hotmail. I would say yes. Hotmail got a redesign and it was just fubar. And look at Gmail. Damn! This is something I like about Google. When they do something, they do it right (or at least take things seriously). Microsoft, dude what happened? You’re nothing but a failure right now.

I’ll probably start using Gmail more. But, their privacy policy freaks me out. I’ll have to do my research and see if they’ve made any changes to their policies. I hope they did.

Update (40 mins later): Holy shit! They just rolled out the themes to all of us. That was fast. Well go play them.

Update #2 (2 hours later): Okay not all of us can see the themes yet. So, don’t freak out if you can’t see the “Themes” tab under “Settings”.

Excited? Can’t wait to use them?

What do you think of the whole theme idea? Any fav themes? And do you think they rolled this out to show the finger to Hotmail? Oh and anyone switching over to Gmail? Or going to use Gmail bit more than usual because of the hot new looks?

Did anyone notice the Hotmail inbox redesign? I didn’t really see a buzz about this on the web. Gmail adds some stupid, ugly emotions and everyone starts talking about it. Some people probably even jacked off to it. Its just hilarious. Microsoft haters!

I’m not going to talk good about Hotmail anyway. First of all, I would like to say that Hotmail just totally fucked itself up with the new design. I wouldn’t call it ugly. I wouldn’t call it nice either. It just doesn’t look right. The old design was better in my opinion.

Well who cares about looks? Usability and functionality is more important, right? But guess what? I can’t fucking write emails on the “new” Hotmail. I just can’t type in the textbox. I’m using FF3 on Ubuntu. It works fine on IE6 though. Maybe its because of Ubuntu.

And why does it always ask me to upgrade my browser when I got to Hotmail? Did I mention that I’m using FF3? I think I did. And…most Hotmail users hate the new look.

Wow, I can’t believe this is happening. Microsoft can’t afford to screw up right now. They’re gonna lose a lot of their market share because this. I don’t even know what to say. I’m starting to get pissed at Microsoft. I don’t wanna use Gmail. Fuck!

Why do I get the feeling that this redesign thing was rushed out? Reminds me of Vista when it was first released for some reason. Microsoft, please take your time with IE8. Please.

Few questions for you

What do you think of Hotmail’s new look? Do you use Hotmail? Do you use Gmail (more)? Are you having the same problems as me on Hotmail? Do you think you’ll stop using Hotmail because of this? Anything else that you would like to add?

Google Knol. Remember that little fella? Well its an epic failure. To be honest, the concept sucks! Google does have some neat stuff, but how on earth did they think of Knol?

Anyone can write a knol and publish it, right? Now that’s good. People are sharing their knowledge. But, the problem is that its not very user-friendly. Its not the type of site you would go to if you needed some info.

I searched for “SEO” there and it came up with 976 knols. Fuck me! 976! Would you go through all of them and see which one has the best info? I wouldn’t. And it would be like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles if you wanted to get the best knol about SEO.

What’s the difference between a blog post and Knol? I don’t see a difference. Wikipedia on the other hand is a place where people come togather and share what they know. Its just one big page full of info. Everything is in there. You don’t need to dig through hundreds of page to find what you need. Its all infront of you.

And do you think people who write Knols are doing it because they wanna share their knowledge? No. Well maybe some. Most of us are doing it for backlinks and traffic. Its a bit spammy to be honest. But, that doesn’t mean you won’t find some quality content here and there.

I don’t think Knol will be popular. Right now, the average joe doesn’t even know about it. And most of the geeks forgot about it. Its pretty much dead from the beginning. Well who cares if its an epic failure? We can still use it for SEO “purposes”.

Yeah well I was just going through Gmail’s TOS and I found something fishy. Something not so friendly. Something that freaked me out.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

I’m not a lawyer, but what I understood after reading this a few times is that you basically give Google the permission to mess with your emails. They can do whatever they want. No privacy! I don’t know what else to say. I feel like Google’s little bitch.

I knew that Google had a lot of privacy issues, but woah… this is like taking it to the next level. I’m a bit shocked to be honest. I never thought they would have this in their TOS. Smart corporate bastards! Now we can’t take any legal actions. They’ll just say that we agreed to it.

This reminds me of the rumours about Google thinking of displaying people’s emails in their search results because they thought it could help other people (for some weird reason). I hope Google doesn’t do that. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it.

The thing that I pointed out in Gmail’s TOS was the same issue with Google Chrome’s TOS. There was a lot of complaining and warnings about it. People were fucking pissed. They wouldn’t even download Chrome because of that. Google came out and told us that it was a mistake. I’ll just quote what Gizmodo said, “Google knew it was in there and hoped it would slide.”

And you know what? The TOS for Gmail is actually the TOS for Google. They use the same thing for all their shit. So, doesn’t that mean we’re completely fucked? They just know way too much stuff about us and now they can do whatever they want with those info. Kinda creepy since Google isn’t as innocent as it pretends to be.

Well I don’t know what you guys are thinking, but I’ll stop using Gmail. Well actually I don’t really use Gmail anymore. I just use it to chat with a few people who doesn’t use Live Messenger (aka MSN). But, I would really appreciate if you shared how you feel about this and what you’ll be doing.

The question used to be, can Cuil beat Google? Now its more like can it actually compete with Google?

Everyone was so excited about Cuil. They got a massive traffic. But, they fucked it up! To be honest, they just went public too soon. It should be more like private beta (if not alpha) right now. Having a nice design, a good privacy policy and a huge index doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful.

Its funny how people change their mind on something. People were talking good about Cuil and the next day, they start hating on it. I tried to support Cuil. I thought they would improve over the next few weeks (or maybe months). But, I’m not too sure if that’s going to happen.

Their search results are getting worse everyday. Last time, I searched for “webrampage” on Cuil I got some pretty decent results. Now I don’t even get that. All the results are completely irrelevant and they even included spam sites. They even repeated the same site five different times. Just take a look and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

You go to a new restaurant and the food there is just horrible. Do you think you’ll ever go back there? What if your friends tell you that the food has improved? Right now, Cuil is like that restaurant. Its hard to fix something when you look like an epic failure.

I’m not sure if people will ever give Cuil another shot. Some people might. But, most of them probably couldn’t care less. Well Cuil needs to work their ass off before they can think of that day. I still can’t believe that they went live so early. Where they high or something? And I thought I made bad decisions.

Oh wait. I didn’t answer the question, “Can they compete with Google?”. Do I really need to? Can they even compete with Ask.com?

Well I’ve said enough about Cuil today. Now its your turn to share what you think. Do you think Cuil can compete with the big guys? Will you ever give it another shot? Or do you think Cuil is just an epic failure?

Photo credit: Jacob Wackerhausen