Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Many of us, Gmail users, have been waiting a really long time for this, but now the wait is over.  Gmail blog announced task manager / todo list in Gmail via Labs extension.

We put your tasks in the same kind of window as chats, so they’re visible while you’re scanning your inbox, reading mail, or searching (and in Settings, too!). Just pop your list out into a new window to use Tasks outside of Gmail.

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you’re signed in). Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

Excellent news for this morning.

Google updated the design and interface of the RSS feed aggregator – Google Reader.  Here is a really small screenshot of how it used to look (stolen shamelessly from Google Reader front page – it seems like they forgot to update it):

And here is a really small screenshot of how it looks now (I made this one, you can make your own):

In my opinion, the old interface was much better. Colors and borders helped to visually separate the sidebar from the main content area, as well as news items from each other.  The new design is much “separated”.  Also, there are a few minor quirks and bugs here and there, which will hopefully get fixed in the next few days.  However, one thing is great about this new release – speed.  The new Google Reader is much faster than the old one.  Extra responsiveness can’t hurt, especialy thos of us who go through hundreds and thousands of posts in a fast paced manner.

A couple of weeks ago, Vladimir mentioned in his blog that he managed to pay road tax online. I have to agree, this is a technological breakthrough in functionality offered by Cyprus government’s websites.

While paying the tax is now possible, the website is still very confusing. It provided practically no information or instructions on what to do. Now the site looks a bit different though. Notice that ‘Here’ icon that blinks as fast as your computer can render it?

So many people wanted to do it online, and so many failed. Some of them even posted comments on Vladimir’s blog, providing their information (ID numbers and car registration numbers) in hopes that it would somehow work.

Technology gone wrong…

P.S.: As sad as it is, it’s also very funny. Hilarious even.

Let me do a little side note, before I start – Mom, you should really read this post! :)

Now, just a couple of days ago I wrote that I decided to try Skype. I downloaded it and installed on my computer. There were few nice things about it that I noticed immediately, but there are so many more that need a second look!

Here we go…

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