Themes Screenshot from GmailBlog

Gmail engineers just released themes for Gmail. To access these themes:

1. Log in to your Gmail account.
2. If there isn’t already a notice box in your inbox, click on “Settings”, which is located at top right of your screen.
3. Last tab is “Themes” tab, click on them to  change them.

Themes are only avaliable for Newer version of Gmail. If you can’t see Gmail Themes tab, that means that you are using the old version of gmail, which can be changed by clicking on “Newer Version” right next to settings link.

Right now, there are 31 themes available to choose from.  They are pretty nice actually. Some of them really worth a try.  Also, gmail now has a different default skin as well.

Do you think Google Chrome is faster than current Firefox 3?

Firefox Minefield runs a separate system so you won’t have to do anything to your current Firefox installation.  Don’t expect too much in terms of stability, because it’s in its alpha stages… One of the things that people talked about chrome was that how fast it can execute JavaScript.

Google Chrome got popular due to its fast javascript engine. This future Firefox is even faster.  Soon, firefox is going to adapt this new JavaScript engine.

As it says on minefield project page:

Warning: This is NOT A FINAL OR PRE-RELEASE VERSION. This program is provided without any guarantees of stability, so please use it at your own risk. It is recommended that you back up your profile regularly, as there may be bugs that corrupt your data. If that sounds scary, you’d probably be better off with the latest version of Firefox that you can download here.

Minefield is same as Firefox except that it has a new javascript engine and it doesn’t support any of the add-ons that you use in Firefox. Minefield is testing purpose only.  It’s really worth it to install it and check the new javascript engine.

For further info on this project:

• Minefield Project Page
• New Firefox Javascript engine is faster than Chrome’s V8 (Visit here to see actual tests)
• Minefield post at Linuxhaxor

And yet another ban from Turkish government,  they just banned their internet users from accesing one of the most popular blogging sites, blogger.com.  As you might know,  they already banned wordpress.com, youtube, google groups.

“As of today access to the popular blogging website Blogger.com has been blocked in Turkey with a blocking order of the Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace (dated 20.10.2008 and order no. 2008/2761). The reason for issuing the order ban is unknown but a considerable number of Turkish users are affected including myself who contribute to a popular an anti censorship blogging site at http://sansuresansur.blogspot.com/
I will provide further information as soon as further information is available. As of 01 October, 2008, 1115 websites are blocked in Turkey under the provisions of Law No. 5651. It is however believed that the blocking order issued by the Diyarbakir court is outside the scope of Law No. 5651. The blocking orders issued under Law No. 5651 are executed by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) and they provide an “execution notice” when that is the case. However, there is no information whatsoever provided on the http://www.blogger.com pages when accessed from Turkey.
A detailed assessment of the Turkish approaches to Internet content regulation will be provided in an 80 page long report entitled Restricted Access: A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey written by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz and Dr. Kerem Altiparmak. This bi-lingual (English/Turkish) report will be published during November 2008 and will be made available as a PDF file through cyberlaw.org.uk and cyber-rights.org.tr pages.
[Blog entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz]“

Blogger has a decent amount of users in Turkey. How can a government ban a website this big without any information?  Most people in Turkey access these banned websites by using a proxy server or changing their DNS settings.  It has no point whatsoever.  I’d not be surprised if they ban google since it’s a tool to find all these sites.

Photo by Roo Reynolds

Hopefully every week I’ll be able to  post a part of this new series I started. This is a weekly series meaning that every week there is going to be a new addition to the series.

This week’s subject is “Really Simple Syndication (RSS)”

It would not be incorrect if we were to say that blogs have been promoting  usage of RSS. Almost every single blog provides their visitors with RSS.  Watch to  see what RSS is all about.

If you want to see an example of an RSS file, click on “Subscribe via RSS” on right sidebar. It will take you to Tenth Blog’s feed page where you can subscribe to our feed.

Recently, Facebook released a new look for facebook. If you have a facebook account, just log in and you will see a bar on the top showing information about this new look also a link to switch from old facebook to new facebook.

New facebook Screenshot

Will facebook lose its identity?

I don’t know if they are going to change it for everyone or they are going to let people choose which version they want to use. Hopefully, they will let people choose. I really don’t like the new one. I think they should remove that bar on the top, the new look doesn’t look right with that bar on the top. I don’t think they are going to get good feedback on this.

Facebook is on its way in becaming one of those social network sites like myspace, hi5. I think facebook has a unique design and should not have a major change at once. They are going to have to redesign some of their applications which I think it’s going to make the site bit more similar to other social network sites.

Anyways, a new version of facebook is avaliable for facebook users.