Let me clarify something before I get started: Labels are Gmail’s version of tags. Tags totally rock for organization and I love them dearly. They offer a lot of flexibility over hierarchical folders and are really powerful when you start applying several tags to a single item. Fortunately, many services are starting to move away from systems of organization based on hierarchical folders and towards systems based on tagging of data. Google apparently only received half the memo. It’ is so difficult in Gmail to apply more than one label that you find yourself stuck in some wierd “only-one-tag-at-a-time” universe. You are basically limited by the same restrictions as hierarchical folders, but there is a clever “Label” mask on this system to trick you into thinking you can tag like all the other cool kids. I say bollocks!

The best way to describe Gmail’s Label deficiences is through an example. I recently ordered a gift for my hot wife from Amazon. After placing the order, I received the standard order confirmation email with all the details of the purchase. Me being a tag freak, I wanted to tag the hell out of that email so that later on I could find it as needed. I decided to apply four labels (tags): Amazon, Receipt, Birthday, Nikki. So there you go: four tags. Seems simple, right?

Here is a break down of what it takes to apply these four labels to a single message in Gmail:

• Click #1 – Select the email
• Click #2 – Open the “More Actions” menu
• Click #3 – Grab the scroll bar
• Scroll #1 – Scroll to “Amazon” in the list of labels
• Click #4 – Apply the “Amazon” label to the email
• Click #5 – Open the “More Actions” menu, again
• Click #6 – Grab the scroll bar
• Scroll #2 – Scroll to “Receipt” in the list of labels
• Click #7 – Apply the “Receipt” label to the email
• Click #8 – Open the “More Actions” menu, again
• Click #9 – Grab the scroll bar
• Scroll #3 – Scroll to “Birthday” in the list of labels
• Click #10 – Apply the “Birthday” label to the email
• Click #11 – Open the “More Actions” menu, again
• Click #12 – Grab the scroll bar
• Scroll #4 – Scroll to “Nikki” in the list of labels
• Click #13 – Apply the “Nikki” label to the email

Grand Total: 13 clicks and 4 scrolls

Am I the only Gmail user that finds this ridic-a-donk-ulous? (Now, I know you can just use the scroll wheel instead of grabbing the scroll bar, however: 1) some people don’t have scroll wheels, and 2) dammit, I’m trying to make a point here). So, is there a better way? Absolutely.

A Better Way

Here is my solution for a better interface for Labels in Gmail:

First of all, rip the labels out of the “More Actions” menu, they just don’t belong there.

There is a mile of open space in the tool bar. Let’s go ahead and add a “Labels” button there. This button will give you access to an overlay with actions specific to labels:

There is a lot going on here, so let me explain: When an email is selected, all currently-applied labels will be highlighted. Clicking on additional labels will automatically apply them, and clicking on currently-applied labels will remove them. At the top of the list of labels is a text field that allows you to enter new labels. Simply type in all your new labels separated by spaces. Once you click “Apply” the new labels and other changes will be saved and applied to the selected email. Simple as pie.

Now let’s replay the above scenario with my version:

• Click #1 – Select the email
• Click #2 – Open the “Labels” menu
• Click #3 – Apply the “Amazon” label
• Click #4 – Apply the “Receipt” label
• Click #5 – Apply the “Birthday” label
• Click #6 – Apply the “Nikki” label
• Click #7 – Click “Apply”

Grand Total: 7 clicks and 0 scrolls

This new “Labels” overlay halves the number of clicks required and completely eliminates any scrolling. Much better. So, what are you thoughts? Could this be even more efficient (you could definitely eliminate one click by making the “Labels” menu open up when the mouse hovers over it)?

Google, are you listening?

I will be participating as a member of the CrossFit West Chester Team. If you are interested in donating to help me achieve my fundraising goal of $500, please visit my donations page.

Athletes for a Cure is proud to present the 2007 CrossFit Fight Gone Bad. In 2006, hundreds of athletes in 30 centers nationally raised nearly $110,000 to benefit the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) by competing individually and as part of teams on one day in “Fight Gone Bad,” one of the most demanding workout routines in the popular CrossFit exercise regimen.

Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer in America, affecting one in six men. Men are 35% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than women are to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

Ahletes for a Cure, a program of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, is a fundraising and awareness program to assist individual athletes in their quest to raise money for better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer. The Prostate Cancer Foundation is the world’s largest philanthropic source of support for prostate cancer research with a simple, yet urgent goal: to find better treatments and a cure for recurrent prostate cancer.

Feel free to contact me if you would like more information or are interested in participating!

The web offers countless opportunities for anyone who is willing to learn how to use it properly. Too often, however, many non-technical people are easily overwhelmed by the amount of information involved in this task. Solo Signal helps people overcome these issues by breaking down the web development process into easily consumed articles. I hope to provide business-minded individuals with the information, tools and understanding needed to successfully leverage the Web for their benefit.

Hop on over to Solo Signal and subscribe to the feed. I have all kinds of great topics planned and you won’t want to miss any. Also, make sure you leave some comments so that we can get some good conversations going!

After doing some digging around on the InterTubes I came across a solution that worked for me: If you are able to access the adminstration area of your wireless access point/router, try changing the “Wireless Channel” that it uses to something else. In my case I set it to channel 11 and everything started working correctly. I’ve also heard that channel 1 works, so you may want to try that.

I happen to use the outstanding DD-WRT Control Panel for the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. When I load up the admin area, I simply go to the “Wireless” tab to change the wireless channel that is used. Here is a screenshot:

I don’ t know exactly why this works, but it does, and now I can enjoy a nice night of ExciteBike. Enjoy!

I find this video insightful because it acknowledges the advancements made in information architecture driven by the web standards/development community. The better understanding of information and how it relates contextually to ourselves and our environment is reshaping the way we interact on the web, and even in the offline world.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

The BetterThumbs Wordpress Plugin creates true thumbnails for full-size images that are resized in the post editor, instead of just letting the browser scale down the original full-size image. This translates into faster load times and lower bandwidth usage.

I built this plugin out of frustration with the way Wordpress handles images that have been resized in the post editor. To be honest, I believe this functionality should be built into Wordpress — it just makes more sense to create true thumbnails based on the dimensions the author wants.

So enjoy and leave your feedback!

Two of the best tools available are user-submitted product reviews and user ratings. By leveraging user reviews and ratings, you can be sure that you are making an informed decision and will not regret your purchase.

Detailed below is the system I use when searching for the best products or services, and I recommend this to anyone looking to be a thorough and exhaustive consumer:

1. Start with the highest rated products

Always start your search with the highest rated products. This may seem obvious, but by limiting your search to products with high ratings (e.g. greater than 4 out of 5 stars), you dramatically cut down the amount of bad products you must wade through to find the good stuff. The majority of online shopping sites will allow you to sort products based on their overall rating — this is an invaluable tool in your search for the best product.

2. Rank by the highest number of reviews

I consider the number of reviews for a product a weighting mechanism for the rating. If you are familiar with statistics, you know that the larger your sample size is the more accurate your results will be. For example, a 5 star rating from 135 reviewers is of much more value than a 5 star ranking from 1 reviewer. The more people a product is exposed to, the more accurate the rating becomes.

Relying on other people’s experiences is related to the marketing phenomenon called social proof, which states that in the absence of knowledge people will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or more informed. In our case, we have no direct experience with the product we are researching, so we need to rely on the knowledge of the people who have already experienced the product.

High numbers of reviewers also increases your chances of identifying common defects that several people discover, which I will discuss later.

3. Look for lots of good reviews, but only read the bad

Glowing reviews or reviews by fanboys are nice, but they shouldn’t affect your decision much. If someone gives a product a high rating, they obviously like the product; why they like the product is just extra information at this point. “OMG this is the best evar! You should buy it!” – thanks, but that doesn’t help much.

In addition, though I hate to think this happens often, some product manufacturers will “plant” good reviews. So if a review is overly detailed and sounds like a marketing brochure for the product, you are better off ignoring it. The real value comes from the people who leave bad reviews. These people feel burned and want to make their issues known so that others don’t suffer the same misfortunes. Find the bad reviews and look for specific problems or issues that the reviewer had with the product — are these just personal preference issues, or are they speaking about a specific product defect that you should be concerned about?

4. Try to identify common patterns in bad reviews

Often you will be able to find common patterns in bad reviews that point to a specific issue with the product you are considering. If you find that several reviewers are complaining about the same issue it should set off a red flag in your head. For example, if multiple people are reporting that a specific part of a product breaks after so much use, there is obviously a design flaw and you will probably want to avoid this product.

I want to illustrate this step with a real world example. I was recently in the market for a new USB flash drive. I went to NewEgg (my trusted source for computer stuff) and followed the first three steps. That brought me to the CORSAIR Voyager 4GB Flash Drive. This had a 4/5 rating with 159 reviews — not bad so far. However, as I started reading through some of the reviews (specifically, the bad ones), I noticed that several people were having problems with the bulky rubber casing. This was causing connection issues because they couldn’t get the drive fully inserted into their USB port. I have a tight USB area to work with on my computer, so I cut this drive from my list of considerations.

5. Keep an eye out for other product recommendations within reviews

Often times, people will mention other products that they liked in comparison to the product they are reviewing. This is helpful because it taps you into the research work that other people have already done — and can save you a lot of time. This will also make you aware of other good products that may not have been a part of your original set.

I hope you are able to apply this system (or some variation of it) to your own shopping practices. It has worked very well for me and I rarely regret any purchase I make after following these steps.

Enjoy!

If the weather were a human body, Cincinnati would represent the anus.

The WHATWG is a working group for developing new technologies designed to allow authors to write and deploy web applications more easily by extending the existing technologies. In contrast with the vendor-neutral World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the WHATWG is vendor-driven, with the greatest contributors being Mozilla Foundation, Opera Software and Apple Computer.

The WHATWG is currently working on 3 specifications:

• Web Applications 1.0
  Extensions to HTML and the DOM to make it more suitable for application development, also sometimes called “HTML5″.
• Web Forms 2.0
  This specification defines Web Forms 2.0, an extension to the forms features found in HTML 4.01’s forms chapter.
• Web Controls 1.0
  Some DOM and CSS extensions to create new form controls and widgets.

Over at 456 Berea Street, Roger Johansson has some comments on some of the new elements and attributes that will be appearing in HTML 5, as provided by Simon Pieters. Some of the new elements that I found interesting include:

• figure – The figure element represents a paragraph consisting of embedded content and a caption.
• progress – The progress element represents the completion progress of a task.
• section – The section element represents a generic document or application section. A section, in this context, is a thematic grouping of content, typically with a header, possibly with a footer.