techno.blog("Dion")

Wisconsin Public Radio has put together a great mini-series called Electrons to Enlightenment where they explore the relationship, or lack of, between science and religion:

• Science vs. Religion: Can Science ever be reconciled with Religion?
• The Cosmos: How did the Universe begin?
• The Brain and Belief: Can Science prove there is a biology of belief?
• Debating Darwin: Can you believe in God if you accept Evolution?
• Awe and Wonder: Where can you touch the fabric of mystery?

This is a great series, and is something we should be exploring all the time. It isn’t taboo. They got views from all sides, and some that seem to bridge them in interesting ways.

Kudos to WPR. Hopefully we will move closer together to explore these questions, instead of getting more polarized.

When I first heard that Gmail now lets you fetch mail via POP I wondered why it was important.

For a long time I got around this issue by forwarding email to a gmail account.

E.g. either:

• [email protected] forwards to [email protected] and I download mail from the gmail pop server, or just use gmail. This means that you get the spam filtering of gmail for free
• [email protected] forwards a copy to [email protected] and so you can use gmail for web access, and normal pop/imap on foo.com

This has worked fine until recently. When gmail put foo.com on the blacklist.

At this point all email being forwarded over was getting rejected. No more email.

The new mail fetcher feature means that this will never happen again. Ergh.

There are only a few shows I miss from England. Just like everywhere, most content on TV in the UK is crap just like it is here.

There are some gems though. One that has come up a lot in the last couple of weeks is a classic: Top Gear.

I am not even an autophile yet still find it a great show, and would think that the US public would really enjoy it too, since they seem to be easily as into cars.

If you were to look at this, which tab would you think is selected, and which one is available for you to click on to select?

We get 2 hours of Steve Jobs next week.

Everyone is talking iTV and iPhone, but I am more keen to get surprised by something wacky like the GPS rumour. Sure, these surprises may not be as practical, but they are fun.

I hope that Steve is back on form next week, and we are left saying “bravo”.

Oh, and a 50″ monitor would be nice too.

You are in the car. You get an email via Gmail for Mobile that has conference call dialin info for that important call that you don’t want to miss.

Do you:

• a) Start speaking the number outloud repeatedly to try to remember it. You may ask others in the car to help out if you have friends (hey Bob, remember 414)
• b) The phone number is underlined and you can simply click on it and gmail kicks out to the phone to make the call.

For the finishing touch, it would grok participation codes and “,,,,,,928496″. Else you end up having to remember that darn code too. The Zimbra-esque context specific features like this are real winners IMO.

I almost got an in-built GPS system in our cars, but couldn’t justify it since we know every road in Madison.

With a move to California, I thought it would be good to get a GPS for the car, mainly to empower my wife (I have an OK idea of the place since I have been there so often).

I have been really disappointed with the systems out there. I checked out the TomTom 9100, the Garmin line, etc and they all seemed so small, and the attachment systems were flimsy.

Now, I am not sure what to do. Maybe I just get my wife a nice new phone that has GPS built in (still small)?

If anyone has a good experience with portable GPS systems in their car definitely let me know!

I remember getting frustrated going to a search site that wouldn’t focus() on the only element on the page. Do not make me tab or mouse click in there!

For the first time I have seen the other side of the coin. I am used to using the space bar to jump down the page (both with mobile and computer). Since I have snazzed up google.com with a personalized home, I often go there to NOT just search for something, but to rather get a glimpse of my word.

When this happens, I hit space to go down and then wonder why nothing has happened for a micro-second, until I realise that the search element is auto focused and I am typing in space characters.

Hmm, so sometimes I want it focused (when I go to google.com for a search, which is rarer since these days you normally search from the browser chrome itself), and other times I don’t. To make things work, I wish that the app would capture the keypress, and if it is anything other than A-z0-9″‘ don’t type it in (so space would still scroll down. Of course, this is just for the first keypress.