Gmail Heaven (A Cool Extension for All Gmail Users)

I'm in love with Gmail all over again. Not because of an enhancement that Google has made, but because of the extension that makes Gmail just plain perfect. The extension is Boomerang and it does four things:

1. It temporary removes an email from your inbox and you can reschedule that email to return to your inbox at a later time or another day. If you subscribe to the zero inbox philosophy, or just want to cut down the number of messages in your inbox from 700 to a more manageable number

2. Boomerang lets you send an email at a later date. If you feel inspired to write an email, but don't want to send it quite yet, Boomerang adds that ability. Like Microsoft Outlook -- except using Gmail.

3. Boomerang will remind you about an email you sent if you don't receive a reply. You don't need to try to remember to follow up because Boomerang will do the remembering for you.

4. Boomerang automatically offers to remind you about a date-sensitive email. If you receive an email that says, "Meet me for coffee on Friday at 2pm," Boomerang's artificial intelligence will offer to remind you about that meeting several hours beforehand.

RCN Internet Down in Parts of NW DC

RCN Internet is down in parts of Northwest Washington, DC. This outage is probably due to the high winds in the DC area.

What Only Costs $4? Everything.

What can you get for $4? If you thought, "not much," you'd be wrong. On Fourer, everything is $4.

On Fourer, you'll find a variety of services such as "I will make cartoons," "I will turn your business name or logo into a 3D logo for 3D glasses," "I will translate your English words into Spanish," "I will get you 500 Twitter followers," "I will fix your PC," and "I will build you a website."  All for $4.

If you have a service-oriented skill, you can offer that on Fourer, too. You can offer your gig for as long as you want. Interesting concept: Anything for $4.

Mac Users Meeting at CP Library Saturday: Learn about Dropbox and RSS News Feeds

At the next meeting of the National Capital Area Mac Users Group there will  a demonstration of the cloud utility Dropbox. The meeting and demo will take place at the Cleveland Park Library Saturday January 8, 2011, from 10 am to 12 pm. The library is at Connecticut Avenue and Macomb Street, NW.

I've praised Dropbox in previous articles: It's a great way to share files, back up stuff, and move photos and videos from your smartphone to your computer (and vice versa.) Dropbox is also free; if you want to get Dropbox and play around with it in advance of Saturday's meeting, click here. 

At Saturday's meeting there will be a review of how to use RSS Internet Newsfeeds that create easy access to personalized digests of online topics. A great time saver if you're trying to follow a subject or subjects. You'll have plenty of time to ask questions during the question and answer session. 

The meeting is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Mac User's Group's website.

Facebook Welcomes You to NAMBLA

Even if you're not on Facebook (and who isn't on Facebook?), you've probably heard about Facebook's new groups feature. The interesting feature about this feature is that anyone can add you to a group without your permission. There is no approval requirement.

So what can happen? You could be added to any group, as happened to Jason Calacanis, who became part of the NAMBLA* group on Facebook without his approval.  Here is the text of the email that Calacanis sent to Facebook when he found out about that

Someone...added me to the "NAMBLA" group on Facebook. I know I'm not a member of NAMBLA.

I've now been assigned to a group that advocates... well.... ummm.... you can look it up--it's very bad. Also troubling:

1. I was never asked to join the NAMBLA group 2. I was never informed that I was "force-joined" to the NABLA group.

Facebook's CEO responded to this issue by saying that it's easy for people to leave groups.  It appears that the actual Facebook is even more interesting to watch than the movie about Facebook.

Thanks to The Consumerist for spotting this.

*NAMBLA is North American Man/Boy Love Association

Nothing Lasts Forever on the Internet

Google is forever.

We hope. A few years ago, everyone probably thought that Microsoft Office was everlasting, but as more people move into the cloud, MS Office's days may be numbered.  And remember when AOL was supreme? Remember something called Compuserve before that? Or the days when everyone had fun with free music from Napster?

I'm not writing about Facebook, though that, too, may one day seem like a quaint and distant memory. I want to  talk about the possibility that the popular URL shortening service Bit.ly might bite the dust. URL shortening services are essential; without them we'd be floundering around with gigantic URLs that are as impossible to remember as they are to type. No examples of long URLs are needed -- we all know and fear them.

RCN Internet Down in DC Area (Now Back On)

Update, 12:25pm: RCN Internet has been restored in the DC area.  The outage only lasted about an hour and a half, though it may have felt like a lot longer.

Update, 12:10pm: While RCN technical support initially said that its Internet service was out for the entire District of Columbia, some RCN users are reporting that they can connect. The outage continues for those affected in the DC area. RCN also reports that its television channels, 531 and 583, are also having problems.

At of about 11am Monday, RCN reports that its cable modem Internet service is down in the District of Columbia.  RCN is aware of the outage.