Thanks to my friend David for pointing out this video to me. I can always use a good laugh. Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple square off in the clean-white virtual world of the iconic Mac ads:

Just in time to help you with your holiday shopping, Google on Monday said that it had added a lightweight to-do list called Tasks to Gmail.

Google engineers Jonathan Terleski, Michael Lancaster, and Brett Lider have published a blog post with the details:

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you’re signed in). Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

Adding a new task is just a matter of clicking inside an empty part of one’s list, typing, and hitting return. E-mail messages can also be converted to Tasks using the menu More Actions/Add To Tasks.

Google has been throwing new features at Gmail with abandon recently. In June, it opened Gmail Labs. In October, it launched seven features for Gmail: Gmail Gadgets, emoticons for messages, Gmail for mobile version 2.0, Canned Responses, contact manager improvements, advanced IMAP controls, and Mail Goggles. Last month, Gmail got Themes, Video and Voice Chat, and stickers.

Frankly, I wish they’d slow down a little. Every time I open Gmail, there’s something new to learn about.

Google has long been known to spare no expense when it comes to perks for employees. Looks like the slowdown in ad revenue is having an impact on Google, and the company is looking for ways to trim costs. In addition to staff reductions, Google is also cutting back on Googlers’ 20% time on pet projects and has reduced the availability of its free cafeterias.

The Wall Street Journal posted an extended story today on what Google is doing to curtail costs in light of the current economic climate. The laundry list is very long. It includes:

• Running ads in services it previously provided ad-free.
• Shifting engineers from pet projects to those that are more likely to succeed.
• Cutting back the number of hours its cafeterias are open.
• No more afternoon tea for Google’s NYC office.
• Killing off services that aren’t succeeding.
• Office closures.
• Merging overlapping services into one unit.
• Slowing down the rate of hiring new staff.
• Reducing current staff levels by up to 10,000 people.
• Delaying the production of new data facilities.

What I think is most significant is the way Google is going to manage its engineers. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told The Journal that it is shifting its engineering and sales resources to areas and projects that show promise, and reducing the number of engineers working on projects with less promise.

This represents a pretty big change in Google’s thinking. It has always offered Google employees the opportunity to work on projects and services that they wanted to for 20 percent of their time. Google didn’t say that it was taking away that 20 percent, but it is going to manage it differently.

SearchMash has already been killed off by Google, and Lively will be shut down at the end of this month. Other services on the brink of elimination include Google Notebook (which I use and happen to like) and Google Audio Indexing. If there are any other services that Google might pull the plug on, they haven’t yet been named.

In all, Google is taking the economy seriously and making the appropriate shifts in its business practices to meet these uncertain times.

Homer, Marge, and the kids visit the Mapple Store at the mall and admire the MyPods and MyPhones. The segment includes a parody-in-a-parody of the famous 1984 Apple “Big Brother” commercial, featuring Comic Book Guy instead of an athletic woman with Eurythmics hair.

For those who haven’t seen it, here is Apple’s 1984 “Big Brother” Macintosh Commercial:

Enjoy while you can as I’m sure YouTube will pull down the parody video any day now.

If you’re a user of the Google Desktop product on the Windows platform, Google has good news for you. It’s finally added a Gmail gadget for the Desktop sidebar. Now you can see incoming e-mail without opening up Gmail in your browser.

I find Google Desktop to be very useful in Windows. The fact that a Gmail gadget hasn’t been available before now has been rather baffling. Thank goodness Google finally listened to the pleas of the masses and added one.

Google says:

“You’ll see that it covers the basics such as reading, searching, and sending messages. You can star messages, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and we didn’t forget about contact auto-complete. It doesn’t take up much space in your sidebar or desktop, and you can also resize it to show as few or as many messages as you’d like.”

Right now the Gmail gadget currently works with the latest release of Google Desktop for Windows. Support for Macs and Linux isn’t available yet. I haven’t have a chance to download it yet, but Google is excited that people check it out and provide some feedback.

This is so awesome! An a capella Star Wars tribute to John Williams:

As an added bonus, for only 99 cents ($0.99 USD) you can download the MP3.

So who is John Williams some people might be thinking…

John Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor and pianist. In a career that spans six decades, Williams has composed many of the most famous film scores in history, including all but one of Steven Spielberg’s feature films, Star Wars, Superman, Jaws, E.T., Born on the Fourth of July, Harry Potter, and more.

Below are the full lyrics to this a Capella master piece: Read the rest of this entry…