Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

If you are using gMail and ever wondered what your usage is really like, check out gMail Meter. What does this do? Well, it may help you change your email habits by showing your patterns. The link from LifeHacker is here You create a new spreadsheet in Google Docs, name it Gmail Meter and then run a script from the Script Gallery. Then let the script run. It can take a while to run but you can just let it go, it will send you an email when it's done with all of the stats. What kind of stats? Here's just a smattering of the stats: Very cool!

Doug wrote recently on using Google Translate to localize applications, giving step by step instructions on how to get translations automated from their online API. Rick Strahl had also  post ed about this earlier in November with ways to do this without needing the API. So we know it's possible - the question is : should you use it? Automated translations have come a long way from years ago when you had to use either specialized CDs or babel fish . Still, the big challenge with localizing internally is ensuring your translations are accurate for its audience. Like Doug, I live in Canada where most government software must support our two official languages: English and French. Sounds easy, right? After all, both languages have been around for centuries - translation must be pretty straight forward. Not so much. Many moons ago, I worked for a company was delivering the same basic software to two separate government departments. The software needed translations for severa

Everyone's got their tin-foil hat on today, it seems. Scoble posted this morning on twitter - http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/statuses/814823578 That if Microsoft buys Facebook and Yahoo search - the end of the web is coming. There will be a lot shaking out from that but I wanted to reply specifically to this post on Herd Watching - Special Microsoft / Facebook Edition - The End of the Web? where the statement is made "first off, Microsoft is just evil". Really? I started to comment directly there but then figured it would be best as a separate post. First off, MS buying Facebook/Yahoo search doesn't mean the end of the web. To me, Facebook and other "closed" platforms (as they are referred to) remind me a lot of CompuServer, AOL and even MSN in their infancy. The goal was to keep everyone inside their environment. As the web grew, that changed. This is NOT about being locked into a platform and if it is, it's not going to be good for those involved. But