From the extension description:

Graph Your Inbox is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to graph Gmail activity over time. You can use it to visualize your communication with friends, your Facebook activity, when you purchased items on Amazon or how often you use certain words or phrases. We provide the same search functionality used by Gmail, but instead of a list of messages we show you graphs of email trends over time.

Our inboxes contain a tremendous amount of information. Nearly every substantive action we take online generates email, from buying goods to booking flights to social network activity. Despite this large amount of data, extracting and graphing this information can be extremely difficult. Graph Your Inbox is an attempt to solve this problem. It was created by Bill Zeller, a PhD Candidate at Princeton University.

Download the extension here.

Update: By the way, Denya’s guesstimate was almost correct. She averages 387 emails/year related to the wine competition.

My latest 10,000 Words post outlines the latest news design trends in the Google Chrome app store, many of which I believe could be pointing at a future of news design.

Notably, I point to:

• Grid layouts
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Full screen glory
• Multi-column text display
• Multi-paneled layouts
• Big, beautiful video and imagery
• In-browser notifications
• Offline reading
• Customizability

And, of course, the shortcomings:

• Lack of permalinks. If you want to link to a story within an app, the resulting URL leads to the standard website URL.
• No rich media. Aside fro the apps that are based entirely on video or audio, I have yet to see any apps that integrate video and audio within stories.
• Based on episodic storytelling. These apps work great for a news format based on tons of articles being reproduced every day. But what about stories that are told in format of data or long-living stories that could be built in wiki format? Sticking with episodic story display discourages newsrooms from thinking of new ways to tell stories.
• Where are the comments? Although this is a point of debate in the news industry, the inability for commenting and direct user interaction within the sites is worrisome.

Read the full post, complete with screenshots, at 10,000 Words.

You know those late nights of surfing the interwebs that land you at a random page with a random link and the next thing you know you’re filling up a form or signing up for an account? I did that last week and it actually paid off.

I absent-mindedly applied to join the Pilot Program for the Chrome OS Notebook, not thinking that I would actually get one. But when I opened the door this morning to find a UPS box with my name on it, I was giddy with joy.

This device is perfect for me. I live in the cloud. I have used Google Docs since I was a senior in high school. I usually have 20 tabs open at a time.

My MBP side-by-side with Chrome Notebook.

Here’s a video of me going through the “getting started” pages. More details to come later:

But Gmail themes just aren’t hitting the spot.

We live in an increasingly visual-based society. That’s why the concept of themes make sense for an e-mail account. Our e-mail is personal and we like to have our personality reflected through something we own.

But we also like consistency. This is where the importance of branding comes in. Gmail is a brand. We see the Gmail logo and we trust it. It’s associated with security, speed, reliability.

Throw in a Gmail theme that totally ditches the Gmail brand we know and trust, and it just doesn’t feel safe and comfortable anymore

If Gmail can find a way to make fun, clean themes that still connect with all the familiarities that I have grown comfortable with as a user, then they will have succeeded.

Granted, there are a few Gmail themes that do retain the Gmail logo. Still, with all their money and resources, could Google really not find better designers?

Themes that work for people are simple and bold, with a little flair of personality. Maybe Gmail should take a lesson from Twitter designers. Simple, clean, fun and I still get the Twitter logo I know and trust:

Things to schedule:

• Budget meetings
• Deadlines
• Must-cover events
• Special editions

Why it’s useful:

• Can be shared with everyone on staff
• Collaborative – everyone can contribute
• Embeddable

Google Documents

What to use it for?

• Stories: If the newsroom server goes down, it’s good to have all your stories saved somewhere remotely (or, if a natural disaster forces you out of the newsroom, your resources are still available)
• Organization: You can easily filter stories by section, and they’re color coordinated
• Collaboration: Editors and reporters can see who’s working on which document. You can also see “history of revisions” to see who changed what
• Contact lists: Use Google Spreadsheet documents to keep a cumulative list of all your key contacts.
• Data collection: Keep information for in-depth research (council member salaries, history timelines, etc.) in spreadsheets that can be accessed anywhere

Google News Archives

What is it?

• Online database of news archives dating back 200 years (obviously, though, the collection of articles isn’t complete yet)
• Small cost: Some publications require a small fee of $2.95 to access an archived article. They do, however provide a pretty thorough preview.

Why use it?

• While microfiche is free and basically the same thing, when working on a tight deadline for a story, sometimes the few extra dollars is worth the time it will save you to dig through library archives
• Quick, efficient way to do research on a topic in a hurry

Google Alerts

As Ronald Wong reminded me in his comment (how could I forget?) Google Alerts are one of the best tools for editors and reporters (especially beat writers). Google alerts show you news as it breaks and give you the potential for great story ideas.

What is it?

• Google e-mails you links to anything on the Web that pops up with your keyword in it
• E-mails can be sent weekly, daily or as-it-happens
• Examples of a few of my Google alerts:
  - Cal Poly (unfortunately I get Pomona results galore)
  - Mustang Daily
  - Lauren Rabaino (not vain! You should know what’s being said about you on the web)
  - Warren Baker (Our university president)
  - Joss Whedon (that’s just for fun)
• Other ideas to consider:
  - Name of your sports conference (if you’re a sports editor/sports beat reporter)
  - Specific clubs/groups on campus
  - Faculty associations (for the CSU it’s the California Faculty Assoc.)

Anything I missed? Let me know and I’ll add it to the list…

CNN.com

CNN was the only major news site to not feature something grandiose about 9/11 on the front page. To get to the coverage, you have to navigate to the U.S. section (and half an hour later, it’s not even the lead U.S. story anymore).

But, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a prime example of how CNN is constantly updating their site and changing their front page story. It was also bold of CNN to put the patriotic day on the back burner to cover issues that are happening now (like, say, a little hurricane called Ike?).

BBC News

BBC News had coverage that seemed to closely mirror CNN. Their video felt more feature-like and less broadcasty than CNN’s. The slideshow was a little plain, but necessary. One thing I liked was how they tied in current events to 9/11 by getting views from people in the Middle East about security and militancy in their countries.

WashingtonPost.com

The Washington Post had the most going on in terms of 9/11 coverage. Three articles (each with a different focus), video, an interactive flash tour of the memorial, an “audio tour” (something new to me), a forum for community discussion, two photo galleries and a three videos. For information about the 9/11 anniversary, the Washington Post was definitely the place to be. They even had live travel updates with traffic information for people wanting to get to the memorial. One video also gives great insight into the planning process for the designers who built the memorial. The Washington Post definitely gets an A+.

The New York Times

When I visited the New York Times around 10 a.m. PST, there was a rotating slideshow of photos from the 9/11 tribute and an interactive feature on the center of the home page. The NYT was the only site of the five I looked at that featured interactive content embedded within the front page (as opposed to links to multimedia).

Los Angeles Times

The LA Times didn’t have the greatest 9/11 coverage, but that’s probably because they’re located at the wrong end of the country. The video was just a clip from KTLA, but they did have a bland little “interactive feature” (really it was just four photos of ground zero).  They did do a good job of bringing it home to California with a local story about how SoCal firefighters were honoring the event.

Google being unpatriotic?

And this is just for fun, but I noticed Google didn’t have a special 9/11 logo. Interesting that they would make a custom logo for the first hot air balloon flight or the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick, but not to honor an American patriotic holiday.

For those Mac users who can’t download it yet, here’s a quick review of features.

The good things:

• Tabs on top. While Firefox and IE (ewww) have tabs below the address/favorites toolbar, Chrome does the opposite. The tabs are located at the very top of the page, so that each tab has the feel of being its own little window.
• Full-screen feel. Tabs on top and lack of a file menu give Chrome the feel of a full-screen all the time. It’s a really effective use of screen space.
• Speed dial. For those of you who have never used Opera browser, Speed dial is a set of “most visited” sites that appears when you open a new tab. Speed dial goes beyond a basic list and shows the actual screenshots of your top pages. While convenient, for our multi-tasking generation, it can also be very distracting.
• Resizable text boxes. This wasn’t a feature I saw a lot of publicizing about. But, when I started using Chrome, I realized that my text boxes on Gmail’s chat feature and on Facebook comments had a draggable corner for resizing. As trivial as it seems, I always want.  I hate having to scroll to read what I’m writing.
• Clean design. The sleek, classy look of Chrome means a lot in a browser. I often find in Firefox that the top navigation feels cluttered and messy, so I’m constantly renaming bookmarks to shorter words to make it feel more clean. Not the case with Chrome. Google knows simplicity like no other.
• Dragging out tabs. Sometimes you just have one tab that deserves its own window. In Firefox, you have to copy that URL, open a new window, then paste it again. In chrome you just drag it out. Why didn’t we think of this before?

Negatives

• Ads misplaced. When using Myspace, I found that ads from the right side of the page (presumably placed in iframes) were somehow bumped to the middle of the page, covering content. I’m sure it’s a little bug they’ll work out.
• Can’t type keywords into address bar. For example, on Firefox, if I were to type “Mustang Daily” into the address bar (no http:// or www or .com), I would automatically be directed to the top search result for Mustang Daily. Although you’d assume Google would follow suit (much like the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google homepage), it does not work so flawlessly. Instead, it takes you to a Google search results page of listings.
• Security issues. In Firefox, to retrieve saved passwords, there is an option for a required “Master password.” This means, if someone steals your laptop and tries to view all your passwords, they can’t access that information without having an additional password. Google hasn’t stepped up its security game yet. If you save your passwords and someone steals your laptop, you’re SOL without a master key.
• The logo. Although this has nothing to do with how the browser functions, having to look at that logo drives me crazy sometimes. The older generation probably doesn’t get it, but for generation y, notice how it resembles a multi-colored pokeball from Pokemon. Yuck.