Gmail "Motion" Beta

link

Yep, they've come up with a movement and gesture based solution to enhance our email experience. Check out the "Send" gesture, as well as the return and return all gestures.

Uh, huh.

On the other hand, I do consider myself punked after this morning. As in early this morning, somewhere around 12:30AM. Woot (if you don't know about them, read at Wikipedia) put up their new item, something they do every midnight Central Time. They have a tradition of putting up Bags of Crap on April Fool's Day. Bags of Crap are generally offered in the closing stages of a Woot-Off (again, go to the Wiki article). They are basically mystery offerings - three dollars for three items with five bucks shipping and handling fees. So, for eight bucks, who knows what you'll get, but they have a history of having way more value than that. Some people actually get computers, tvs or other high value items. Most of the time, it's just an odd techie item - like a bluetooth earpiece, cable or other such detritus.

So, I had forgotten all about that, and just happened to wake up at that time. I figured I'd check in to see what was for sale, when WOW!!!! I beheld the famed and hard to get BOC! And there was over a half bar left on quantity! Be still my beating heart!

Until I found out I had to play a stupid game (called, appropriately enough: Crapshoot) to "win" the chance at a bit of cabbage. When I started, one had to attain Level Four to open up the purchase button. After about forty five minutes, it had gone to Level Five. I know later on in the day, I saw a tweet that it was up to Level Ten.

I got to Level Three several times before it finally soaked in that the game wasn't fair. It is very simple - just avoid obstacles with the scroll up and down buttons - a side scrolling game, in other words. There were fixed obstacles and rolling obstacles - and when the rolling obstacles "intersected" with the fixed ones, you were out and out screwed. Then you got to start all over again at Level One. There was no way to go "between" the obstacles. Nuttin you could do, but start over and hope for the best.

Welp, at that time in the morning, I'm kinda predisposed to be cranky. Playing a rigged game pissed me off. I finally decided I wasn't gonna be a rat in their maze just to get a power squid, a pen and a USB bluetooth adapter. Not that those items would be what I won, but that is generally the sort of thing gets from the FedEx bunch.

The demand for Bits Of Cabbage is so high, Woot's servers usually crash when the highly desirable item shows up. Geeks stay online, missing sleep refreshing their screens during Woot-Offs for the couple days it takes to finish one. I don't think they had as much trouble with their servers today, plus they knew they had a nation of geeks frantically playing their stupid game.

They had me, too, for a little while.