Apple on fire - literally

 Oh, snap! Apple's R&D department went up in flames late last night, triggering a three alarm fire. Heads are gonna roll. Rumor has it that Macworld, which is normally held in January, will be pushed off until July 2011. Also, reports are coming in that Steve Ballmer, or someone who greatly resembled him, was seen fleeing from the scene, laughing manically.

Either that, or Apple got a taste of its own medicine with regard to its laptops.

In other Google news...

I got this sign-in screen when I tried to login to my Google account. Unfortunately, after sign-in it was the same ol' iGoogle. I wonder if this has anything to do with the problems going on with Gmail right now.

The world is coming to an end: Gmail is down - UPDATED x3

Heaven help us. Russia is bombing Georgia, the ice caps are melting, France is still a sovereign nation, and Gmail is down. It's not an isolated incident as people on Twitter are reporting the same problem:

Whatever could be the problem? I've never really had any issues with Gmail. Interestingly enough, I can use Gmail over IMAP on my iPhone. Weird.

One clue may be (yes, I'm really reaching here) is this new "Create an account" button I saw this morning:

Most of the time it's just a text link, although occasionally I've seen it as a blue Aqua-esque button. New UI?

What do you think? Is Google rolling out a new UI? Is it a technical glitch? Are they going to give us Push functionality? Has your account been affected? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: I saw a  Cult of Mac article in my feed reader saying MobileMe's mail is also down.

Oddly, when I clicked the link in my feed reader to go to the actual article, Cult of Mac gave me an error page. Hmmm...strange stuff is afoot. Perhaps my initial hunch that Apple just transitioned all their .Mac stuff to Google's services, masked in a pretty Apple design, is true. ;)

UPDATE 2: TechCrunch is reporting the same thing: Gmail is down systemwide. As a side note, I'd like to point out that I had the "story" up before Arrington did. ;)

UPDATE 3: As of about 4:35, my account is back. Same ol' look and at first glance no new features. Also, no word on the Official Gmail Blog about the outage.

Suck it, Frenchies

"'The Americans? We’re going to smash them. That’s what we came here for.'" Yeah, that's what the French said with regard to the 400 meter relay. Why the hate, Frenchies? You seem very determined to hate us while we're trying as hard as we can to forget you exist.

As it turns out, Frenchies lost. Or surrendered. It's so hard to tell. Anyhoo, check out the dramatic comeback video by clicking here. Note that you'll need Silverlight installed on your browser (stupid Microsoft, right Paul?) but it's well worth the watch.

How does Steve Jobs get his strength?

A hilarious description, courtesy of Engadget.

"Steve Jobs, presumably speaking from a hyperbaric chamber where he's being nourished with an infusion of liquified developers-souls before his next public appearance, had a few interesting tidbits about the AppStore for the Wall Street Journal this morning."

I noticed something weird about iGoogle

Most of us recognize this screen. Notice the pre-selected widgets faded in the background: YouTube, weather, clock, etc. Why anyone would add a clock widget on their homepage is beyond me as most computers nowadays are able to tell time. But I digress.

When I launched my browser this morning, instead of the standard widgets you see above it was populated with what looked like popular, locally relevant widgets. There was a KSL widget, an LDS.org widget among others. I didn't think much of it, figuring they were going to suggest widgets based on popular sites in my area and logged in.

I should have learned by now that when there's some kind of anomoly with anything Google I should get a screen shot because it's not there anymore. If anyone else notices the same thing, please grab a screen shot and e-mail it to me: theotherdrummer at gmail *dot* com.

I hate this thing

 

I know I'm probably going to offend some people when I say this, so I half-heartedly apologize in advance.

I think this widget could be about the tackiest thing I've ever seen.

Honestly, what makes you think anyone wants to see a baby floating around in your virtual uterus, squiggly umbilical cord and all? I'm happy that you're having a kid. Really. Congratulations. That's wonderful news. I don't want a sneak peek. Thanks though.

So I decided to prove the ridiculousness of the widget by cramming 10 little fetuses in my virtual uterus (I never thought I would write those words) and watching them grow. Like sea monkeys. In a few months we'll see how my digital offspring fare in their crammed space.

Also, I hate blogs that play music automatically when the page loads.