Google have announced that there is now a chance to completely customise your webmail inbox.

In the past this has only been possible by using greasemonkey or other javascript themes that only work on Firefox.

To customize your Gmail inbox, go to the Themes tab under Settings. There will be extra themes added over the next couple of days.

As for which theme to choose, I like the “Minimalist” and “notebook” Gmail theme. But the theme that all the ‘geeks’ will blog about is “Terminal”.

Screenshot of Notebook Theme:

Usability is at a crossroads – are we looking at “Back to Basics” or “Brave New World? I attended the latest event from Chinwag, and here are the notes.

On the panel were a Brighton trio – who were presenting their ideas and beliefs on usability and accessibilty as part of the tools for effective web marketing. Bryan Rieger, Andy Budd and Niqui Merrett.

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Two articles published this month – online, and in print.

Firstly I’ve had another article published over at FreelanceUK.com.

I haven’t written about SEO for a long time, and I just wanted to recap on what is happening out there with Web 2.0 and SEO. Perhaps demonstrating by following a few ethical methods for SEO, you can create meaningful content for the search engines as well as more importantly, your sites readers.

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Well, the creme de la creme Web Design and Development Conference in Austin, Texas certainly lived up to its formidable reputation.

And it’s hard to put into one blog post an event that encompasses so many aspects of the web, real time social networking, some marketing, and a lot of partying with new friends.

One interesting statistic was that it was thought 20% of America’s iPhone users were at SxSw. There were a lot of iPhones, and Apple products everywhere you looked. It felt like being part of a community just by having similar gadgets with these folks.

I really loved the openness of the event, it’s true – you can sit next to a Vice president of Yahoo! on one side and an A list web celebrity on the other.

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A great resource of web 2.0 trends, emerging technologies, web code, web services and what you should be checking out are on podcasts.

Great if your job involves travelling, have a short break, on have a long flight on the way back from a conference!
It’s a great way to keep in touch with whats happening on and around the web. And a different way of learning compared to getting the lowdown from friends and followers on Twitter.

For those on a limited budget for training or self learning this is an excellent way of listening to leading industry experts share their knowledge and information for free!
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Without a doubt, the best CSS / XHTML training you can give yourself is pick up any of these books to learn about front end web development.

Most of the books involve learning and adapting web pages using CSS based layouts. Some are new, some are classics. I have learnt valuable tips on working practices for CSS management, color palette selection, and also layouts using CSS3.

Books like ‘Don’t make me think, and ‘Bulletproof..’ make you question ‘Why should I do it this way..?’. Then they cover alternatives you may not have considered. Some of these books are in their Second edition, a testament to how well they are written and deservedly gaining a place on any discerning geeks bookshelf.

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It’s very cool to see things as they happen. Google has at Googleplex a big display that shows live queries from all the world, but they didn’t make it available online for privacy reasons. But there’s an alternative: Dogpile, a small metasearch engine, shows unedited real-time Web searches.

To see all the recent Flickr photos that also have geographical information, there’s Flickrvision. All the photos are placed on a Google map and they change very quickly. It’s an addictive way to learn about diversity, people and to destroy the artificial borders between countries.If you have a site and want a real-time view of your visitors, Clicky has a “spy” feature “that shows you actions on your web site as they are happening, delayed no more than five seconds” (here’s a demo). You’ll spend hours finding who visits your site and why.

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