Chaos Laboratory

So Google’s at it again! Last night this all new link titled Gmail Labs materialised out of thin air in my Gmail interface. It turned up in one of my accounts only – which means Google’s rolling it out gradually – just as they’ve done with their earlier surprises. So expect it to turn up in your inbox sooner or later. Till then, keep a watch out for a bold, red link that says New! Gmail Labs right beside the Settings link.

And what’s cooking in the Gmail Labs?

From what I figured, the Gmail Labs will act as the stage for the introduction of a bunch of useful as well as fun plug-ins coded by Google’s staff and/or independent developers. These plug-ins will add extra functionality to various aspects of the Gmail interface. Provided along with each plug-in are feedback links. Those which receive the highest votes will probably be integrated into Gmail in future, while the poor performers will be taken off-air immediately.

Examples

Quick Links: This will provide a bookmarking container for your most frequently accessed links and fit in smugly in the leftmost column of the Gmail interface. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.

Superstars: Tired of the STAR icon that helps you mark important messages? Superstars will add in a bunch of multi-coloured icons (exclamation marks, check marks etc.) with which you can clearly demarcate mails of varying degree of importance.

Pictures in chat: This will help is displaying your and your friends’ Gmail profile pic. in the embedded GTalk window while you chat.

Others include Fixed-Width Font, Custom Keyboard Shortcuts, Mouse Gestures, Random Signatures etc. The whole list can be found in the Gmail Labs Settings page – which appears as a separate tab under the Settings link.

What if the plug-ins mess-up my Gmail interface?

Google’s kept an escape hatch ready for you in case any of these plug-ins behave abnormally. Simply follow this link to temporarily disable the Gmail Labs feature » http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0

I found the first two in the list particularly useful. How about you?

Jun 09th by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

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Woke up this morning to upload the theme and noticed a strange new icon in some of the tabs. Didn’t spare a second glance at them till much later.. when I decided to see what lay behind those strange new tabs. To my surprise, they were Google Search results …branded with a new logo. It’s quite a far departure from the earlier blockish icon they had – and it’s going to take some time to get into that familiarity mode with it. This definitely was one of the “lesser” surprise changes on part of Google.

The differences

As you’ll notice from the picture I’ve compiled, while the earlier one had distinctly defined edges with a solid white background, the new one has a hint of gradient in the background with no hard-edges. The icon is also transparent and looks pretty cool on a backdrop of any given colour (except a close shade of blue or course – where it’s rendered almost invisible). This shouldn’t be of any major concern to Google as the icon is supposed to appear only in the browsers address bar, which in 90% of cases sports a white background. Google’s new fancy seems to be rounded-corners and this icon is no exception. The upper-cased “G” has fallen out of favour for it’s lower-cased counterpart – “g”.

Shortly after this I was hunting for any other news articles when I came across one from Google Blogoscoped in my feed reader. They’re wondering if Google is undergoing a large-scale re-branding while sticking to their self-proclaimed core value of Thinking and Acting like an underdog.

May 31st by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

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Finally got around to doing something that has been pending for ages… i.e. give the site it’s own look & feel.

There are plenty of good WordPress themes around – but almost all are overused. I needed something fresh and unique (if possible). I had contacted a few designers but their starting prices ranged $300 to $400 – something that I would rather spend on getting better hosting (dedicated server maybe) or on advertising. In the end, what had to be done – had to be done. Got down on my hands and knees and started designing one on my own.

Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Fireworks helped me a long way in designing all the graphics for the theme. Thanks to Twitch for the logo (lab flasks) – that really brightened up the page.

Once the initial issues with the CSS were sorted out, it was time to port it to WordPress. That was the easier part though and you can see the result proudly on display here. Incidentally, I decided to name it “Chaotica”. Yeah, I know – it’s pretty cliche. But that’s the best I could come up keeping at par with my site name. Maybe you can suggest a better alternative for me!

There are plenty of “cool stuff” that I’m yet to implement – but whatever I’ve put up so far isn’t bad for a first-timer ! What do you say ?

May 31st by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

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A quick note to everyone… I’m coming up with a leaner and meaner theme for Chaos Laboratory. I’m almost done. Should be able to unleash it in a day …or two, at the most. Learnt a hell lot in the process – both CSS and WordPress Theme design wise – not to mention, bending some popular plug-ins to work the way I want.

My own plug-ins – namely, LiveSig and curreX are both in need of critical updates which I plan to do over the weekend. Till then

May 29th by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

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Just today morning, as I logged into my AdSense account a tiny message flashed below the block that displays your income overview reports.

Exhilarated at the prospect of something new, I clicked on the link and let out a gasp the moment the Referrals screen finished loading. Last I’d seen of the Referrals was those measly 4 or 5 products that were being offered (for which I wrote the Google AdSense Referral Rotator widget for WordPress sidebars). It’s entirely changed now with a massive list of available referrals that can be chosen either on a worldwide or per country basis.

This came as a very big surprise to me, since I’d been away from AdSense for a good while. The same day that I was getting married I somehow managed to get myself banned from AdSense. The reason was invalid clicks. Quite naturally I filed an appeal and reasoned with them that it couldn’t have been me who was producing those clicks. I added that I could furnish additional travel documents if required. That seemed to do the trick. My account got reinstated a couple of days back along with the whole prior balance. Sweet !

Anyway, back to the topic. Google Referrals now come with a horde of choices. They’re divided into categories like Google Products, Automotive, Business, Computer & Electronics etc. The coolest part is that you don’t have to hand-pick and generate the referral code for each individual product anymore. You’ve got this Ad Shopping Cart, where you can place your selected products (15 at the most) or add entire categories (10 at a time). In case you add the categories, the best performing ads are automatically displayed.

The code that is generated from your selections keeps rotating the referrals on its own – making my WordPress plug-in sort of redundant. But an overjoyed at the fact that this auto-rotating feature has been integrated into AdSense – it was long overdue. In effect, the random picks of best performing ads maximises the chances of clicks and referral sign-ups by tenfolds thus earning you a whole lot more revenue than earlier on. The referrals are now available in most of the standard Ad Unit formats of AdSense.

From what I figured the new Referrals 2.0 feature is being gradually rolled out to all AdSense publishers. Has it managed to find it’s way into your account yet? And in case you don’t own an AdSense account yet, you can always use the following link to sign-up for one. It’s fast and easy to use, it’s free and it earns you a whole bunch of $$.

Aug 27th by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

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