I had a problem I wanted to solve. The problem was this: I love Gmail. This in itself isn’t a problem, but I have a domain that I use mostly for email. I like my email address for that particular domain. So the problem was using this domain with Gmail.

Okay, I’ve already looked into the easy route, which is setting Gmail to open up a POP account on another server and bringing that email into Gmail. The way this is implemented isn’t so bad, but it’s not great either. You can select to send email from your other address, but the way Gmail sends the From: field is a little strange. It says something like:

From: thisguy @ gmail.com on behalf of someaddress @ danielstout.com

Messy, and the point of doing this in the first place is so that people don’t have to know your Gmail address. With two addresses in there it just looks confusing.

So the desired solution is this: the simplicity and speed of Gmail, with the transparency of an email address of my choosing.

I did a little digging around Gmail and came across an excellent solution called Google Apps. Google Apps is basically services for your domain. It can handle email, calendar, chat, and a variety of other features. All you need to use Google Apps is a registered domain and a domain register that allows you to do custom DNS.

There are several levels of services available, including a totally free service that allows you to have up to 100 email users with 2 GB of email space each. Some of the paid options include up to 10 GB of email space.

So I signed up for Google Apps. Part of the process is “claiming” your domain. That is, you add a CNAME record to your domain, which proves to Google that the domain is yours. That step can take a few minutes. Once that is done, then you configure your domain for Google-hosted email. This involves deleting out any MX records for your domain, and adding several MX records in order. It’s not complicated, and one doesn’t really need to know what CNAME and MX records are in order to add/change them. Google has instructions for a variety of domain registrars, but you may want to contact your registrar if you have questions. Once the domain was set to transfer email to Google’s servers, it took about 40 minutes for the Google folks to “throw the switch” on their end in order to receive email for this domain.

After this the email starts to arrive in your new inbox. And guess what? The email interface is the same as Gmail. It’s basically Gmail for your domain. Very slick. You can even put your own branding on the site, instead of Google’s logo.

I don’t think I’ll use the other features of Google Apps — I don’t need an online calendar and such, but it’s nice to know that they’re there. If you want you can have the web space of your domain have a custom Google-hosted start page. And again, you can customize this page extensively.

While this service works for individuals or families, it is probably more useful for organizations – they have programs for schools and education and small companies. The interesting thing to me is that I’ve seen similar functionality in the past at Yahoo, but Yahoo charges you a hefty monthly fee for the privilege. Google’s is entirely free, or at least low-cost if you choose the small business services.

So with Google Apps, you get the great Gmail interface that’s available anywhere there’s an internet connection, and you get to seamlessly use your personal domain for that email. And once you’ve set up one domain, you can add additional ones, if you’re so inclined.

While I didn’t know if there was a solution to the email dilemma I had, I am pleased to find that Google already thought of a solution, and it’s a very easy-to-use, full-featured one at that.

Tune to KWLC on Saturdays from 2:00pm–3:30pm (CST) to hear Freeform Faust.

I was looking over the detritus of dead blogs last night. A couple of years ago — at the beginning of 2005 — there was an influx of people blogging. A lot of people I know, or once knew, started blogging. It was a way to catch up with old friends and find new ones. Most of those lasted a year, maybe two. The blogging fad having run its course, these people who thought that they would join the crowd have fallen off. I wrote last fall that the blogging revolution is over. And certainly that is the case. In the interest of updated my RSS subscriptions, I decided to visit these dead blogs. I was surprised to see that most of them were still up. And when was the last post? Maybe nine or ten months ago. But there these dead blogs sit. On a few there was a gap of months, and then a post. But then a gap of many more months.

There are probably too many dead blogs to make a record of them, but at least among people I know it seems the tendency is to leave the blog up, even long after it has served it’s purpose. Some people went so far as to register their domain, setup Wordpress or whatever, and then only post a couple of times before finding that maybe blogging wasn’t for them.

I suppose it’s like any other fad, but curiously in this fad your own words may be recorded for posterity.

It’s nearly the end of the quarter, which means Dave Sifry’s State of the Blogosphere update can’t be far away. The numbers will show a clear decline. The blogosphere is clearly not growing in the same manner it was. People are finding other diversions though — whether it’s posting photos or using Twitter or social networks.

2005 was the golden era of blogging.

I’m sitting here on a Friday night, packing a suitcase for a few days of much needed R&R. I’m listening to This Never Ending Now by the reunited Chameleons. It was released a few years ago, and it’s basically The Chameleons Un-plugged. The song Intrigue in Tangiers — even in this acoustic rendition — reminds me of nights on Malta spent looking up at the stars. Heady days.

So, my friends, I suggest a course of action — two things to do this weekend:

1. listen to some music that reminds you of something intensely emotional (hopefully positive)
2. warmer weather is coming … where do you want to go? think about this. write down one place you’d like to go that is not in your country of origin.

And then think about these questions:

• What does music feel like?
• What moves you the most (i.e. music, art, movies, etc.)?
• Is there a difference how different mediums affect you emotionally? In what way?
• What value is there in other cultures? And more specifically, what do the experiences of other people do to enrich our own lives?

Okay, I’m off. See you sometime next week.

Sub Pop Records would probably like to forget grunge music at this point, but the Seattle-based independent record label is best known for releasing Nirvana’s first album, among other early-’90s grunge classics. Grunge aside, Sub Pop may be writing a check for $5,750 to the college of your choice. They had an idea for a “Loser Scholarship” — that is, a scholarship for someone interested in music or the creative arts (rather than, say, football).

It’s a great idea, and it’s available to any high school senior … provided that you live in Washington or Oregon. Read all about it here.

The application process is a breeze — write a one page essay and submit links or copies of your work. Applications are taken by email only. Apply by May 1, so get going, kids!

Taylor Lane of the UK put together a promotional calendar for their design work. It won a techniques award in the publications category from Epica (“Europe’s Premier Creative Awards”). Interesting work and entirely typographic. And also not safe for work. Beautifully done, these pieces are the typographic equivalent of the pin-up calendar. Each month’s beauty is set from a different typeface. Presented here is Miss Bodoni. Follow the link for hi-res versions of the rest. Here’s what it says on the calendar:

Miss Bodoni
Beautiful Bodoni, brimming with style and sophistication. This Italian stunner has voluptuous curves and always looks better well leaded. She moved in aristocratic circles in her formative years (the Duke of Palma was especially impressed with her cupped top serifs) and then enjoyed a glittering career, particularly in the world of fashion. She’s often seen in Paris and Milan and her face regularly appears in leading style magazines.

Apparently, Taylor Lane’s business went up 25% from new and existing clients after the calendar came out. It’s very well executed and is a nice piece overall.

I thought for a bit about whether this work reflects typography’s natural origins. That is, whether the forms of the characters were on a human scale in their shapes. There may be some truth in that, but I think overall it works because the English alphabet is composed of simple, curvy lines, which apparently work moderately well for illustration purposes. Of course some of the letters were somewhat modified—elongated or otherwise enhanced—for the purposes of that project. But overall it simply confirms that type is expressly beautiful and beautifully expressive even if language isn’t your purpose in using the type.

The pin-up calendar format unfortunately cheapens the illustrations though and makes them more about the male gaze then as freestanding design pieces in and of themselves. I suppose the concept was easy, and it “works” for cohesion. I can’t imagine someone hanging such a calendar in a workplace, at least not in the U.S., but perhaps would be more appropriate in someone’s personal studio. It would be fun to see the accompanying Adobe Illustrator files (or whatever tool they used) to see the markup on the type. But that’s purely a geek’s desire. [via mathowie]

If you’re up on matters of typography, then you’ve surely read or at least seen Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style. It is the book on typography. It is not surprising then that some enterprising webists are using the book as direct inspiration for a website entitled The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web. It contains a burgeoning list of rules and ideas for setting type in the web world. For example:

2.3.1 Set opening paragraphs flush left

“The function of a paragraph indent is to mark a pause, setting the paragraph apart from what precedes it. If a paragraph is preceded by a title or subhead, the indent is superfluous and can therefore be omitted.”

Paragraphs, and other block level elements, are indented using the text-indent property. To ensure a paragraph is set flush left, the text-indent should be set to zero:

p { text-indent: 0; }

This rule is rarely necessary, however, because CSS specifies that the default initial value for text-indent should be 0.

Also of interest on this site is a presentation slideshow recently given at SXSWi 2007, entitled Web Typography Sucks. I recommend downloading the PDF with notes as it contains the actual text of the presentation. At any rate, a useful primer in web typography with some handy references.

For additional information, check out the article The Trouble With EM ‘n EN (and Other Shady Characters) by Peter K Sheerin, over at A List Apart.

Tune to KWLC on Saturdays from 2:00pm–4:00pm (CST) to hear Freeform Faust.

The local university, home of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, has a new website highlighting happenings in the world of writing both here and elsewhere. It’s called The Writing University, and they’ve done a fairly nice job with it. There are links to upcoming readings and events in town, links to various items in the voluminous archives, and what appears to be essentially a blog of writing activity. There’s even an RSS feed to keep you up to date.

Deanna Truman-Cook of the Iowa City Press-Citizen wrote about the website here.

Glyn Moody has A Modest Proposal for Michael Dell. Dell recently launched a site called IdeaStorm that’s based on the idea of user interaction. Like Digg, people can submit ideas to the site, and then people place votes on the ideas they like. A quick perusal of the Dell IdeaStorm site shows some discord in the Dell community. The majority of ideas voted onto the front page relate to pre-installed Linux and/or open source software in general. The top three ideas range in votes from 100,000 to 50,000 and deal strictly with Linux and OpenOffice. Dell’s site hit a nerve — they’ve opened the floodgates for interaction with their users.

Is Dell listening? Apparently not, given their response, which you can read on Moody’s post. Moody’s take on Dell is that the company is stuck doing things they way they do them. In order to open up more to Linux (they already sell Red Hat servers), they would need a culture change. Rather than effect a change on the entire organization, create a separate open source unit within the company. Give it autonomy to develop toward and cater to the open source movement. The classic example of this is IBM when it first created the PC. IBM made an autonomous unit in the company that had a different culture than the rest of Big Blue. It worked and the original PC overtook the world.

It’s clear that customers want easy access to Linux, and don’t want the default Windows installs that come with loads of third-party garbageware. Robust open source tools are out there. Even if you want Windows, how about OpenOffice? How about Firefox as the default browser? How about…? Give your users what they want, Dell. They deserve it.

Laurie McGuinness has some amusing takes on the Mac / PC divide. They’re spoofs of the Apple commercials you may have seen on TV with PC played by a middle aged man and Mac by a young guy. In these commercials, PC may actually have the upper-hand.

Special hint to the wise: you know these are tongue-in-cheek because the clips are in Apple QuickTime format.