...And I start to complain that there's no rain

Google recently announced they are shutting down some of their service offerings. This move is at least partially driven by reducing costs and focusing engineering efforts on more popular services.

I found this all interesting for a few reasons. First, while at least one of those services, Google Notebook, was flagged as unpopular, I personally knew someone who used it quite a bit. Second, it brought to light something which was always dangling out there with these new "Cloud Computing" services.

It's all the rage right now to utilize these services, and move as much as possible to the "cloud" model. Applications as services, delivered through the web, is one of the current flavors of the month. In many ways it's very appealing, and I admit, I drink from the faucet freely. I have signed up for countless numbers of these sites and services, and many from Google in particular are now indispensable in my daily routine. They are easily accessible from any computer and possibly more important - consistent. They can be updated immediately and everyone simultaneously receives the new upgrade.

However, that last point is exactly the looming underbelly of all of this. When a vendor no longer finds it worthwhile or profitable to maintain a service, it disappears. It doesn't just go end of life, it doesn't just stop receiving technical support, it ceases to exist entirely. {Note - in this case it appears that the service won't disappear entirely immediately. There are plans to leave it simply unmaintained for a while. I'd guess eventually it will cease completely though.}

This is a substantial change from nearly any paradigm of the past. If you bought (or received for free) a service or product, you continued to have it. Unless it was a consumable, even if the company no longer made the product or stopped supporting it, you could continue using it as it was. Not so any longer.

Cloud computing on the web isn't the first to have this issue, other "connected" services had this type of potential gotcha as well. Certain Satellite dish receivers and other boxes that receive television guide data have bumped into this issue in the past also. It is just becoming much more prevalent and open to a larger potential user base now via the web.

With most of these services of course, this basically falls under the "get what you pay for" category. However, I would use this as a reason to be very wary of cloud computing services that want to start charging for service. It should also serve as a reminder to keep all data backed up in an offline format as well - unless of course you want to be the next JournalSpace.

As for Google Notebook, it appears some services are stepping up to try to switch existing users. Hopefully more will follow suit. Lifehacker has offered several suggestions for those feeling abandoned by this service being discontinued.

OCD

"3 posts in one day - he must be sick, or deranged."

I recently picked up a TON of great Aesop Rock singles and bootlegs, and many of them are incredible. However, since I don't happen to live near somewhere where you can easily find a lot of the stuff Def Jux put out on 12" easily, I tend to resort to a little bit of ARRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I pay for my regular music - I feel that bootlegs and such are the spoils for those able to find them on the Internet.

The only trouble with obtaining this music in this fashion, is that it messes with my OCD-like need to get my iTunes library to be pristine and complete. I usually turn to my good friend, wiki, but this stuff is a bit too obscure for even wiki to be of help.

I now have a new friend in this battle. google site:rateyourmusic.com ALBUM_NAME ARTIST

At least in the case of Aesop Rock, I found every one of his obscure singles and common boots out there. Fantastic.

Super-cool web goodness

I always like when I run across some new web technology (no, I won't call it web 2.0). I'm still amazed daily at some of the stuff people can pull off. It's especially great when it does something very useful, in a very intuitive and clean way, and then a bonus when it is applied as a fairly old technology.

Lifehacker pointed me today to a site that allows you to take fully-interactive snapshots of any website. By snapshot, I mean it is literally as if you snagged a piece of the site verbatim. The throwback part is that it possible to create it as an image map, not just an actual graphic. All hyperlinks and images, as well as layout, are completely retained.

Obviously, there are some copyright issues to consider here. This is substantially different than just linking to a page. However, if you own the content, this is awesome. Here's a snapshot from this blog to show as an example:

Musings on Almost Anything (Occasionally) via kwout

I was initially just going to add this to my Google Reader shared items, but decided it was just too good and needed to be posted. However, I thought I would throw in here how much I am digging Google's new feature that shows your friend's shared items right in reader. It lets me basically have a feed of things I probably wouldn't run across, and they are from people who have mostly similar interests to my own. A very nice addition.

The Future is Simple

(Click here to go straight to the webapp creation details)
(Click here to grab the template webapp file)

Web-based applications are all the rage currently (if you haven't heard, you're either under a rock or better at avoiding hype than I). Creating a functional application that makes use of HTML for a UI makes a lot of sense, and can greatly speed up development.

An idea based upon this that has intrigued me recently is the idea of SSB (site-specific browsers), and specifically Mozilla's Prism application/framework. A site-specific browser has also been called a distraction-free browser. The idea is to take the presentation aspects of a web browser, but remove all other associated web-browser nuances/distractions (i.e. toolbars, navigation controls, etc.). Basically you end up with the equivalent of a single, desktop application that still uses a web browser underneath.

I finally found the answer for how I would try this out while trying to solve a separate problem. My son (currently 7 years old) has been using email off and on for about 3 years now. I started him out with Gmail, but initially had him use a POP3 client. However, after moving the rest of the family to solely use the web interface I wanted to remove the installed client. This left me with 2 options:

1. Teach him how to open a link to Gmail, logout the current user, and type his username and password.
2. Find a way to give him his own access to the web browser interface that didn't interfere with anyone else in the family.

The first option was not a possibility. This was both too much work, and potentially too disruptive to other Gmail users in the household. So, I had to determine the best option for #2. After briefly considering having him use IE (since none of us use it), I regained my senses and realized that Prism could be the perfect solution for him.

5 minutes of learning how to create a Prism configuration file, followed by about a minute with "view page source" to figure out how to directly log him into Gmail, and I was ready to go. Now, couple that with a slick Gmail icon from one of my favorite free icon sites, zip it all up into a "webapp" file, and I was done. I ran it once to install into Prism, and then used the "Install Shortcut" option in the bottom, right-hand corner of Prism to install it to the desktop for him. It turned out very slick overall. I might yet make use of some of the scripting and styling features of Prism to automatically resize the window to a given size (currently it remembers between sessions just fine though), and remove some of the unnecessary UI elements from Gmail for him. For now though, this solves the problem very nicely.

One final tip. I wanted to host the template webapp file for all of this someplace permanent so that I could link to it. It turns out that Google Groups fit the bill very nicely for me, up to a 100 MB limit. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't handle .webapp (or maybe it is the zip file format) very well so I can't directly link to the file. You'll have to right-click and save it.


Now, for the implementation details.

1. Create a file named webapp.ini, mine looks like this
   

   [Parameters]
   id=gmail@localhost
   uri=https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?
       service=mail&Email=YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN&
       Passwd=YOUR_GMAIL_PASSSWORD&continue=
       https://mail.google.com/mail?ui=html&zy=l
   status=no
   location=no
   sidebar=no
   navigation=no
   icon=gmail

2. Find an icon file (in this case it would need to be named gmail.ico, but you could modify the "icon=" line if named something different. The "icon=" line can be removed entirely to use the default Prism icon.
   
   
3. Zip up the .ico and .ini files with your zip program of choice (I use 7zip). Once you have created the archive, change it from a .zip extension to a .webapp extension to have it automatically load with prism upon double-click.
   
   
4. Double-click the webapp to load it in Prism.
   
   
5. <optional>Verify that everything is working correctly, and then drop-down the gear icon in the lower-right and select where to create a shortcut.

Finally, here is a template webapp file you can customize to do this yourself. All that needs to be changed is to open the webapp file up in your zip program (again, 7zip for me), and edit the webapp.ini file. The only things that will need to be changed are the YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN and YOUR_GMAIL_PASSWORD values (to your Gmail email prefix and password respectively).

One last note. I needed this to work on a Windows PC, so the instructions are very much tailored for that. There shouldn't be any reason this won't work on Linux or Mac though.

More Google Coolness - Blogger Style

Sometimes Google gets on a roll with getting new features out there.

First, this may have been there for a while, but I finally notice it tonight. You can now check a box after commenting to have all additional comments on a post emailed to you. About time, now maybe commenting discussion can being to improve on a wider scale with blogs. Blogger is at least trying now to go a little ways toward improving the poor blog commenting that some have discussed in the past.

Second, I continue to find good things at Blogger in draft. For those who haven't seen it, Blogger in draft is where Blogger first rolls out new things (primarily for blog site design for now) before giving it to the general public. To see this, just go to draft.blogger.com, rather than www.blogger.com. I noticed today that they now have available any of the literally hundreds of Google gadgets that are already available for places such as the Google personalized homepage. Now, I just have to find a way to wade through the cruft, and find the goodness.

On a separate note, as those who added it to their RSS will already have seen, I finally kicked off my financial advice site tonight. There is a link under my other sites in the sidebar, but the site is http://financiallysimple.blogspot.com if you are so inclined.

What's old IMAP is new IMAP again

Leave it to Google to make ancient software cool again. I switched from POP3 to IMAP back in 1997 while I was still going to school and working at U of I. I used it all the way up until I switched everything over to Gmail web-goodness. Most of that time, it seemed that almost nobody else cared or used IMAP, they were almost all using POP.

Now, suddenly, after Gmail introduces this feature it suddenly comes off as the newest and coolest thing around. Amazing. In my mind (and apparently a sentiment shared by others) it is long overdue. I actually wanted to switch the domain for one of my email addresses to Google Hosted a while back, and the lack of IMAP for use on my friend's cell phone was the reason we couldn't.

So, I now am so stuck on the gmail web experience that I really have no use for this feature, but since it was on one of my accounts, I decided to give it a whirl.

Overall, it looks like they have done a very good job with it. I think it appears to function well and I think all of the logistical questions that I have are now answered. Here are my thoughts.

The Good

1. Labels show up as separate IMAP folders. Better still (and to answer one of my main questions), if you tag something with multiple labels it shows up in multiple folders under IMAP. Very nice.
2. Inbox and folders are shown at the top level, and then hidden under a [Gmail] folder is essentially the folder list from the left-hand side of the web interface. Thus "all mail" and friends are available, but nicely hidden.
3. Refer to #1. Now, try to go the other way. Dragging a message into a folder will automatically add that label to the message in gmail, copying to multiple will add all of them. Very slick.
   

The Bad

1. Remember Gmail's fantastic idea that you never delete anything, you just archive it? Fantastic idea, I've raved like a lunatic about the value of data for a while now, and I use this as a shining example of how to do it right. Until you have to fetch all of those headers over IMAP... Outlook (my unfortunate choice of IMAP client) froze completely for about 10 minutes trying to pull this off. Most of that is Outlooks fault though. As long as you never fetch the headers for the "all mail" folder, this shouldn't be too terrible (maybe).
2. This actually isn't anything against Google, it is against Microsoft. It turns out there wasn't as much bad as I expected, so this is filler. I setup the account in Outlook to use IMAP, and I happen to have a gmail address that is "something.somethingelse@gmail.com". Outlook politely warned me that my email address looked invalid, but then happily continued and worked perfectly. Morons. Reminds me of when BestBuy.com couldn't handle the hyphen in one of my email addresses. Read the email RFC's guys, this isn't hard.

So, good job Google. Your implementation of 1990's technology seems superb.

Map 2 Text

So, apparently the hot new thing to do right now is send maps to your cell phone via text message.
Josh is in the middle of pulling off a nice hack to do this with weather map information. In his case, you send a text to an address, and get back a map.

Now, I see today that Google is letting you call their 1-800-GOOG411 number, say "map it", and then they'll text you a map.

Now, how about marrying it all together. Have Google wire it up so you can email like in Josh's solution, and then have Google add weather maps as a service. Best of all worlds.

Somewhere, the Bluetooth DJ is doing a happy dance...

Yeah, I would be referring to Ryan in the title. If you have read his blog at all, you'll know that he often has pined for a much simpler way of finding/communicating with people. A single contact point that can find a person no matter what.

Well Google, that no evil doing behemoth, is positioning themselves one step closer to that. There are rumors that they plan to buy GrandCentral, a service where you can call a single number and it attempts to reach the person at all of their contact numbers.

Looks promising.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Well, real life has kept me quite busy (a good thing, as I have pretty much been living outdoors playing with the kids), so some of my online projects have gone a bit neglected. This blog would be one of those things.

Something came up today though that is extremely cool, and worth discussing. Google in August of last year bought a company named Neven Vision, who specialized in Biometrics. Why, you ask? Well, specifically the part of biometrics that they were interested in initially was facial recognition. Now you see where I'm going with this, who thinks that both Google image search and Picasa could benefit from being able to find photos with faces of people in them? I certainly see a large value in that.

Today (it may be gone by the time you read this), they are testing some of this functionality on their image search page. Add the following modifier "imgtype=face" to the end of an image search, and you can see what I mean. Example: change http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Search+Images to http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Search+Images&imgtype=face
and you will be greeted with the face of that billionaire who lives on that infinite loop thingy.

Very good stuff. Now, back to my hiatus status for at least a week.

Why Google, Why?

Others have talked about how they really like the personalized Google homepage, and even the new themes. I personally no longer use a homepage, I never really close my browser so it wouldn't make much sense. I tend to just bounce between a few Google applications for the most part.

However, even those I know who do like the homepage would have to question Google's latest move I'm guessing. Since its start, the personalized page was at http://www.google.com/ig (OMG, how did I just link to your personalized homepage? --fun with n00bs). Apparently, that "ig" now stands for "iGoogle", complete with an ass-tastic logo and all.

Google, you should know better. Why did you stoop to this lowness?

Must Know for Gmail Users

I've wanted to post about this little tip that I find incredibly useful for some time, but hesitated until I had a good reference link. Well, no better than Google themselves to talk about it, I suppose.

The Feature: Gmail has a way that you can "mute" a conversation. All additional replies to that thread will skip your inbox entirely. Fantastic for off-topic mailing list posts. The weird part is how hush-hush Google has made this. There is no mention anywhere that I could find, other than this help page, that even mentions this. It is a keyboard shortcut, "m", but it isn't documented with the other keystrokes.

Perhaps they are just trying to not clutter the UI with a feature many will not use. Perhaps it was created in the apartment of one of their employees again. Who knows?

Google and Free Phone, How Can I Lose?

I had a nice post brewing about how happy I was with some of the new features in Gmail, but this one couldn't wait.

Courtesy of Lifehacker, Google now gives you the ability in Google Maps to click on a phone number, and have Google automatically hook you up to them for free. Through your phone, regardless of local or long-distance. How sweet is that?

Basically, when you click to call they ask for your phone number, call you, and then connect you to the business in three-way call fashion. No mucking.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how to hack all of my friends in as a "business" so that I can call them all for free (plotting and laughing maniacally...).

"Are you a business?"

Cleaning Out My Closet

Actually, my inbox.

Google as part of their new support for sending voicemails to people via Google Talk, created a very slick inline MP3 player that they use in Gmail. This led some enterprising individuals to find how to link that from any other site, and then of course the creation of a Greasemonkey script to do it automatically. Adam at Lifehacker actually created this script.

Now, something you wouldn't have heard 5 years ago. There is a freeware app that is available on Mac, but not Windows that I really want. Google has had the Gmail notifier for quite some time, but now on Mac only, they have the Google Notifier. This handles calendar as well as email notifications. The page links off to the Gmail notifier for Windows, but there is no Google Notifier available for that platform. Damn! Oh well, I need multiple Gmail profile support, so I will probably stick with Gmail Manager and Google Calendar Notifier extensions for Firefox.

Sweet Interoperable Goodness

I've expounded before about my interest in Google Calendar, and how useful I find it (probably to a level that borders on fanboy). So, when I went to setup the next installment of the CRAPT (our occasional rotating poker game), I knew I wanted to involve calendar.

I started with an old invite in my Gmail account, so that I could just copy and paste for the new event. Then, I clicked the "Add Event Info" link in Gmail. However, it didn't allow me to enter everything I needed, so I clicked the additional options button and ended up on a calendar event form instead. I found all of this a bit confusing, and it took me a couple of times before I had it right. Next time, I will cut out the middle man, and just start in Google Calendar.

Once it was all done though, I was pretty happy with the result. I had the list of all invitees in the event for all to see, and I could now sit back and receive accepted or declined invitations, and see updated status on my calendar.

However, I was truly amazed at how well this all worked with Microsoft Outlook. I have quit using Outlook except at work, however my wife still uses it. I had sent her an invitation partly to get her on the list, and partly to see how an invite looked in something other than Gmail. Here is how the invitation looked to her in Outlook:

Note a couple of things of interest. First, you'll see that upon accepting the invitation it correctly got added to her calendar. Simple sure, but I was still amazed. Of course, once it was in the calendar, it could be treated like any other Outlook calendar event, forwarded on (as in the screenshot) and so forth.

The thing that really blew my mind though was that she didn't even have to click the yes/no/maybe hyperlinks at the bottom. The actual Outlook Accept/Decline buttons correctly added it to the calendar, updated the Google Calendar and notified me by email.

All in all, score one finally for interoperability. I expected this out of something like iCal, which uses the iCalendar format natively, but not out of Outlook. Very promising.

Q: The opposite of Microsoft Derivation?

For nerds at least, the answer would be Google Integration (okay, it's a stretch, and barely qualifies as funny, too bad, I liked it).

Google today rolled out yet another pretty slick feature by allowing pictures to be added to contacts in gmail. That alone sounds kind of cool (not on my account yet, can't say for sure). Something new they have added that I haven't seen done before is the ability to suggest a new photo for people in your contacts to use. Just imagine the great conversations that could spawn: "Hey, Suzie, you should use this upskirt shot I have of you from last night at the bar".

Anyway, all of this leads me to a topic I meant to discuss some time ago. These features and apps that Google are writing are often nice (yesterday's announcements: trends, co-op, and desktop4 do not fall into this category). However, most of their new releases are simple incremental things, or stuff I find less than useful.

Instead of looking for new things, I would really like to see them do nothing but focus on integrating and tying together their existing services. I should have a single Google account, with varied levels of services and privileges. Why the hell should Blogger have its own login, or a separate publishing space even for that matter? Same goes for AdSense. The idea of a gmail account needs to go away, replaced by a generic Google account. That way, when something sweet like Calendar comes out, I don't have to tell people they need a Gmail account and have them stare at me like something out of V. Instead, I tell them they need a Google account. They nod their head and go, "Yeah, I like that search engine. I think I will."

There are some really killer integrations that a few of us have thought up. Imagine if Talk and Calendar were fully connected. When you were in talk and someone had a status of busy, you could hover over and see exactly what they were doing from their calendar, or at the very least how long they would be doing it (ceiling cat, you know what I'm talkin' about). Things discussed in chats, such as events, could be turned into appointments and added to Calendar just like that.

How about this, integrate Blogger, make it look like Google instead of ass, and instead of making templates something no mere mortal should try to create, use that simplified new Google Pages template creator to make the site.

Here's my favorite that I just came up with. All replies to my blog posts should be dropped right into my gmail account as well, as an unread, labeled thread. Then, when I reply to them, my comments can go directly back to the blog. Drooool.

Basically, I think Google has compiled enough good apps for now, but they could really make them unbeatable and draw in many more if they just spent the time to create some synergy out of what they have (yes, I used a marketing buzzword just now, but I used it correctly, so meh).

Google - So Hot Right Now?

I absolutely love Google Calendar. I can't state that enough. They truly scored as cool of an app as Gmail. I will follow-up later tonight with a Google Integration post.

However, just as I think they are completely back in the cool department, they release Google Sketch. Go to http://sketchup.google.com [Link Fixed] if you don't believe me.

I downloaded it, but I haven't run it yet. Looks like any other of the free 3D software I have tried. It might be just fine.

However, why is Google releasing 3D software? Yes, I know Google Earth is basically 3D software, but that still fit in as a service, plus they got it by buying some other company. Where did this come from, and where does the breadth of Google begin and end?

30 Boxes, we hardly knew ye

RIP 30boxes. I was really digging using this, and I have gotten a lot of good use out of having an online calendar; however, things have changed.

No, I'm not ditching the online calendar, it has just been done much, much better. Google calendar is now officially in beta (which is the same as saying release for the rest of the world). I've been a bit down on Google lately, because I even though I can't live without gmail anymore, their more recent releases have not impressed me a bit. Calendar is every bit as good as gmail though.

Everything I liked about 30boxes is still there. The interface is as good as I think it could be, everything is easy to find and navigate. I love that you can select either the quick event add, or a more detailed one. Coolest of all, they implemented the feature that we said they absolutely needed. Gmail will now prompt you if a message appears to have an event in it, and you can add it to your calendar. Integration at its finest.

Calendar sharing and delegating is retained, and RSS feeds are available, something I found very useful with 30boxes. Popup reminders are included, which 30boxes did not offer.

The last thing to find out is what type of iCalendar support is included. Overall though, I see Google having the killer calendar/email integration for me.


Some quick updates:
It looks like for now iCal importing is limited to a standard browse and upload form. This could be done a little smoother. Not sure if there is anyway currently to use a website's iCalendar file without first saving it offline.

Not really a calendar issue, but there needs to be a Calendar link from Gmail. I smell a Greasemonkey script in the making...

Brain Dump

Lots of small random thoughts, so I'm going to throw out a bunch of posts.

I show up today at work, and Google Talk is staring at me, with lots of doodads, and a message saying that there are new features available. I really like having pictures back, that is something I missed from MSN Messenger. I also like that you can now theme your chat windows, the original now really looks like crap.

2 things I find interesting. It seems as if pictures may be stored on Google's site, as I can see pictures for people who are offline (or at least unavailable, maybe that is the key). Also, partychat has a default picture, but it is slightly different than the default pictures for people using alternate IM clients (and currently down, big surprise there). Google, give us group chats, please.

Google Bomb

A while back a site I read announced that Google was going to be trying out a web-based HTML editor, named Google Page Creator. The site was pages.google.com. At the time it was so backlogged that registration was closed, and you had to sign up to be notified when you could use it.

I signed up, thinking "Google makes really slick web pages. If they have an editor that makes it easy to create nice pages like that, I'm all for it." Well, I got my account today, and I found myself more than a little underwhelmed by it all. The whole thing reminds me of back in the day using templates on sites like geocities and tripod (use the wayback machine youngsters in the crowd). I found it very limiting, and I couldn't even bring myself to add any kind of useful content. I'm just not sure what this product is trying to do now, it's definitely not something for me.

Google, quit wasting time on crap like this, and get our web-based iCalendar program, tied in with Gmail, completed.

Here is a link to my very, very basic page, if you want to see what type of code their generator produces.

Google Chat Redux

Well, I blogged really quick about the new chat feature in Gmail the other day. Now, one of my accounts has the full functionality. Here are my thoughts on it thus far.

First, here is the screenshot I received that let me know my account was finally ready (sorry it is so small, click on it for a more readable version):


I said "sweet", let me try it out. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything upon logging in to my account. This is because I had Google Talk already signed in with that account. Keep this in mind, as it will come into play later. I signed out of Talk, and boom, I am presented with AJAX chat goodness and quick contacts.

(At this point I wanted to include some screenshots, but Google is having some issues with chat. It has temporarily disappeared from my account. Waiting for it to reappear...). Okay, I got tired of waiting, UneasySilence has some screenshots you can view instead.

Overall, the interface is very slick. The pop-out or pop-in arrows down in the lower right corner of the chat window are very nice. You can choose to keep the slick chat hovering over your lower right-hand corner of Gmail, or pop the chat out into its own window. You can also minimize the chat to a small bar in your Gmail. At this time, you cannot move the window when it is "popped-in".

Quick contacts work fairly slick as well. You can specify for any given contact by hovering over them if they should appear in the quick contact list or not. The quick contact list looks very much like Google Talk. Your status is indicated in the same manner, and you can still specify your status/tagline.

Overall, my very short experience chatting with it was positive. It worked as I would expect. We ran a few tests to try out some more interesting scenarios. First, we wondered how notification would work. If you browser is open to Gmail, even with the chat window closed, it will pop back open as soon as someone send an IM. If the browser is minimized, or you are in another tab, the title bar or tab text will change, but the focus will not. This lack of notification seems like enough of a reason to need to keep Google Talk around for the time being.

One thing I wasn't completely sure I liked is a new hover feature. Now, anytime you hover over a message in Gmail, you are presented with some quick contact options for that sender. Google designed it well enough not to interfere with your action on that message, but it does clutter the UI a bit.

The second thing I didn't really like, was when I restarted Google Talk, I started receiving chats in both my browser and Talk. I didn't get a chance to fully test this though before Google experience the issues I mentioned above and I lost my quick chat capability. I'll retest when it returns. I would really hope that having Google Talk active, would remove the chat capability from that Gmail account, as I originally found when trying to initially use it. We shall see. It's highly possible that I am bringing some of these inconsistencies on myself too, since I use multiple Gmail accounts, and have the Firefox Gmail manager extension.

Overall, this seems as usual to be a well-designed and implemented feature from Google that simply improves my experience using their services.

Update: It appears it may be Gmail manager that is doing me in on the chat service. Whenever it is active and logged into both of my accounts, I lose the quick contacts feature. I don't think I can function without the Gmail manager anymore, so I guess I will have to either wait or do without the chat feature from within my browser. At least logging chats still works.