Dinner With E-mail Giants

I'm so excited right now that I'm hopping up and down to get half the functionality of my Grade Calculator program working! It'll be "released" by Christmas and will allow you to not only see your final average by entering in the grades and their weights, but will also also let you see what you need on like a final exam to make an A or B or what-not in the class. Anyway, if you want to share in my joy you can watch a funny Pac-man video. A Wall Street Journal writer sat down for dinner with the men responsible for Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail just for kicks to have a reasonable conversation. It's a good reminder of how much the latter two have evolved as a result of Gmail's inception last year. It got me thinking, what else could use a wake-up call? Up until that point, all the e-mail services were almost alike with mostly cosmetic improvements over time. We haven't seen anything too revolution in the OS world in a while, and I doubt Vista will do anything too extraordinary. What if another start-up came out of nowhere and rocked Microsoft and Apple? We're already seeing a revolution in web browsers thanks to Firefox, but I'd like to see 3rd party IM clients like Gaim or Trillian make a difference as well. Why should we have to have three different screen names to talk to our friends on almost identical programs? I wonder what 2006 has in store for us.

One thing is for sure though, we'll have a new contender to Wikipedia next year called Digital Universe that will only allow edits by people who are actually knowledgeable in those fields. PC World identified Wikipedia as a winner and a loser of the past year in their list of winners and losers in the tech world because of how questionable the edits on certain entries have become. That list is actually a good review of some of the major events from the past year. Another good list is this one featuring the best tech podcasts created this year, and it even spurred me to check out a couple of them. They're actually really good and almost a must-listen if you have an iPod so you can get your daily dose on the go. Lastly, if you've never known all the hotkeys in Windows XP then there's a great table of them over here for your future reference.

I'm on a timetable now so I'll make the rest of this post quick. Jessica Biel is going to be in a new movie called London, and supposedly she goes full-frontal in it, but let's not hope that that's the high point of the movie (thought it wouldn't be a bad high point). I don't remember if I posted about a rumor claiming Phillip Seymour Hoffman being in the running for the Penguin in the next Batman flick, but a close friend of his has confirmed that he has definitely been looking into it. I think he'd be great for the role. The latest entry in the Clerks 2 production diary features critiques from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and it's really just fun to hear them talk about it because they're so damn cool. Lastly, Michael J Fox appears to be interested in doing a fourth Back to the Future movie, but I wonder if they can really get a decent script together for it? He wants to be the professor, but I don't know if he'll really fit it.

Now for the Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. Where are your forefathers from? Ever been to those countries?
Does that mean my family's ancestors? That would be India, and I've only been there once but it was quite a while ago and I should really go again sometime.

2. Are you related to any famous people? Any kings or queens in your family tree?
Nope, my lineage is pretty normal!

3. Think about the first person in your family to come to this country from somewhere else. If you could ask that person anything, what would you ask them?
I already did a whole interview with my mom about this, but what I was most interested in is why she came. She went through great trouble to do it, and it was really just her ambition, which I can feel in my blood.

4. What's one thing you want to do before the year ends?
Plan out my Latin program! I need to get a schedule together on that development.