Dopp Juice Archive

Take a look at Lifehacker’s post today on the Top Ten Google Products You Forgot About. The Monster is alive and well. And here’s one I hadn’t heard about (which is blowing my mind particularly fiercely at this moment):

Googe Page Creator!

That’s right. Google created a full-featured WYSIWYG editor that allows you to build entire websites just by filling in the blanks. It’s free, the hosting is included (your URL is http://your_google_id.googlepages.com), and unlike most webpage builders, it appears to have some pretty decent quality and reliability behind it.

I have two (contradictory) gut-reaction responses:

• “WTF?!”
• “It’s about damned time!”

Check it out and tell me what you think.  I’m crossing my fingers, hoping this will solve the age-old “I have no money and I need a pretty website right now — what do I do?” quandry and make the world a better place.

You may have noticed that my last post was about having a full plate. You may have also noticed that my last post was nearly three weeks ago. These are not coincidental. They are quite related.

But while I have a few free moments on “Indigenous People’s Day” (or “Columbus Day,” if you live in a less rebelliously liberal part of the United States), I’d like to give a quick summary of my recent technodrama and its unexpected happy endings.

First, Gmail. I posted awhile ago about getting locked out of my gmail account. Fortunately, I received some very valuable feedback from a reader who has now become a very valuable friend to me (yay for broken tools creating new connections!) and was creatively persistent with Google. Forty-two days after the incident, I finally received an apology from them, along with instructions on how to now access to my account. My Gmail account is alive again! The irony is that I had forty days and forty nights to completely detach from it and pronounce it dead. It feels sort of like a zombie now. (A zombie that wants to eat my brains.)

Second, the Treo. Have I told you about the physical health of my beloved Palm-driven cell phone? Let me put it this way: every single person on my web development team has been threatening for more than six months now to steal it from me and destroy it so I will be forced to get a new one.

More specifically, the antennae is held on by a paperclip. That paperclip is held on by green electrical tape. The earpiece has broken off. The holder for the stylus is so loosened that I’ve now lost three of them and have given up on carrying one. The front face plate has separated from the back of the machine and is being held on by a single loose screw (and the paperclipped antennae, when it happens to be attached). The RAM is so overloaded that it takes 5-10 seconds to load the dialing screen when I’m ready to make a phone call.

BUT IT WORKS FINE! I DON’T SEE WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT!

The laughable part is that I’m paying for full insurance on the machine (which is all of $6 a month), and I could have claimed it for repairs or replacement a long time ago, given its condition… even without my coworkers first stealing it from me and throwing it into the bay.

The camel’s back broke yesterday, though, when I dropped the machine on the pavement and cracked the front face plate. Now it took four fingers clutching the machine from three different sides to hold its pieces together well enough to get a signal. It still worked — no, really, IT STILL WORKED! — but okay, yeah, it was probably time to take advantage of the insurance.

This morning, I did a final hot-sync with my computer to back up the data… which turned out to be quite an undertaking because the hot-sync port is mostly broken, too. The task required propping the machine halfway up on the edge of a notebook and weighting down the cradle port with a pair of heavy metal scissors, stepping back, and holding my breath for ten minutes, praying that the precarious sculpture wouldn’t move before the sync was complete. It took a few tries to get it right.

Then I walked into the Sprint Repair Center at 4th and Folsom, slapped my busted Treo down on the counter, and announced, “My Treo is exploding in on itself and eating its own brain. I have insurance. What are my options?” The man ran some diagnostics (which amounted to dismantling the tape and paper clip and watching it fall apart in his hands like some kind of gag gift), and returned with a concerned look on his face.

“We can’t repair this for you,” he said apologetically.

“Oh,” I said with disappointment. “But I have insurance…”

He interrupted me. “We’ll have to replace it for you.”

“I am TOTALLY OKAY with you replacing it for me,” I reassured him. “COMPLETELY FINE WITH IT. But, um, how long will it take? Do I need to go without a phone for a few days?”

He pulled out a new Treo and handed it to me. It was already connected to my phone number. “Here you go,” he said.

“That’s it? I don’t need to sign anything? Or pay a deductible?”

“Nope. That’s it. If you’d like, you can wait ten minutes and I’ll transfer your contacts.”

“No, that’s fine, I have it synced on my computer,” I said.

And I ran home gleefully, laughing and skipping in puddles and dreaming about all the beautiful ways this new phone will fall apart on me over the next year.

Ah, beginnings!

When the Internet became widespread, everything changed. Suddenly you could answer any trivia question in less than thirty seconds. You could send a letter and receive a response to it in the same day. You could market yourself to an international audience for free. You could carry on real-time text-based conversations with anyone anywhere in the world without long-distance fees. You got carpal tunnel syndrome. You became impatient. You forgot to go outside.

When cell phones became widespread, everything changed. Suddenly “being on call” for work or family no longer meant being tethered to a landline. You could get quick roadside assistance when you got a flat tire, anywhere. You could leave personal voicemails without fear of the wrong person hearing them. You could have a conversation with anyone anywhere in the country without long-distance fees. You hated rural areas because you couldn’t get a signal. Your lover became obsessive about checking in. You became obnoxious in public.

Now, cell phones with Internet are becoming widespread, and everything is changing. Suddenly you can check your email while you are crossing the street. You can blog (and post pictures of) what you’re doing while you’re doing it, and get immediate feedback on it from friends across the planet. You no longer need to ask for directions. You can answer any trivia question in less than thirty seconds while out for dinner with friends. You can have a voice conversation with anyone anywhere in the world without long-distance fees. You get into more car accidents. You perceive a half-hour delay in communication as a sign that your friend is tired of you. You stop paying attention to what’s actually happening right next to you altogether. You justify this by saying that you can’t be expected to do everything at once.