Web Spotlights week 39 – if Twitter goes down..

Hi there, week 39 web spotlights are here: unthread Gmail, Xmarks tossed, WordPress Theme Frameworks and WP-Polls, Evernote Site Memory to clip web content and if Twitter goes down..

1. Gmail

I needed some time back in 2004 to get used to the conversation view that bundles together emails with the same subject. I learned about the “Delete this message” under the “Reply” button after I wiped out an entire conversation. I also use mail clients and the classic mail view is appealing. Now you can unthread gmail and see your mail as with any mail client.

2. Xmarks

Originally known as Foxmarks, Xmarks browser sync will stop its service Jan 2011. Browsers are integrating syncing of bookmarks and personally I use delicious to save bookmarks to the cloud. For people that love Xmarks, check this post for alternative services.

3. WordPress

First of all an interesting comparison of theme frameworks. Few weeks ago, I rolled my site’s bamboo theme with the Thematic Theme Framework. In some weeks I will post a quick howto guide.
Further you’ll have noticed some polls on my site. In the sidebar for example, you can vote which topics you’d like to read about in upcoming blog posts and at the end of each post, I’m asking for some feedback. The WP-Polls plugin makes all this incredibly easy. Make sure your WP user has “create” permissions on the database, because this plugin, as many others, will store data in new tables it creates. After you have defined your poll under “Manage Polls”, you can easily add it to the page with “poll id=..“. The user’s experience is enhanced by the use of Ajax: when you click on “view results” it refreshes just the poll’s section with a nice graph of the Poll’s results.

4. If Twitter goes down ..

I stumbled upon this interesting article. If Facebook goes down, it’s hard to miss it in your twitter stream, but what if twitter goes down? The world falls mute! So who of the two makes the news? – clearly Twitter! Above link is worth reading and the latest outages makes you think: aren’t we too much dependent upon social media?

5. Evernote

The Evernote Site Memory button allows you to clip a blog post to your Evernote notebooks. It is yet another way to sync content to the cloud, but ‘clipping’ the whole post in its original format (styles, pictures, etc.) is a nice feature, hence you’ll see a clip (+ Evernote’s elephant icon) button at the top of my posts. If you use Evernote, please give it a try and tell me if you like it.