Periodicdesign

I’ve seen many strange things in this town, but what I saw this morning topped them all. My morning commute is filled with laughter and cheery goodness by listening to Elliott in the Morning, and by the time I reach the 270 spur I’m in tears with what antics Elliott is talking about or making someone do. Of course, I happen to glance over when passing the Democracy Boulevard exit, and I see this black C4 Chevy Corvette. The car wasn’t the odd thing, but the guy driving was what I thought was odd. He was brushing his teeth!

Now I’ve seen people reading the paper while driving, looking at maps while driving, even women putting on make-up, but brushing your teeth? Come on! My real concern is not the fact he was brushing his teeth, but where do you spit when you’re done? I know I wouldn’t be brushing my teeth in my $45,000 USD car if I had one.

I open my Gmail this morning to find a new and nifty little feature that has been added - XML Feeds. The name of this new service is “Web Clips.” My first intention is to call my buddy and ask if he has the same thing in his Gmail (since it’s still in beta, not everyone gets cool new things at the same time). He told me he didn’t. I then proceeded to Google and did a quick search only to find I wasn’t the first to see this new feature. Usually when new features for anything come out on the web, most bloggers have hundreds of posts within hours which can be seen in search engines all over the web. This was not true for this release. My only conclusion is that people either haven’t noticed it yet, or not that many people have it displayed.

I find that this new feature is a welcome addition and one that I have been using frequently through out the day to stay on top of news stories or just peruse a recipe that sounds tantalizing. This new addition is quite ingenious and easy to use. By simply clicking on the “Settings” in the top right corner, the user is directed to a page that allows one to add predetermined feeds from various news organizations such as CNN, CBS and the BBC, just to name a few. You also have the option of adding other feeds from various organizations under tabs of “Business,” “Lifestyle,” “Fun,” “Tech,” “Sports” and the best one of all, “Custom Clips.” This last tab allows you to get any feed you want as long as a site has RSS.

Once again, Google never ceases to amaze me with their tools and ideas.

Well, as all can see, I’ve upgraded my CMS to version 1.5 of WordPress. I actually like the interface on the administrator side and the more flexibility that comes with this iteration. Now I just need to add more plug-ins.