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The Gmail Sidebar.

If you are familiar with Gmail you know that every time you read a message the right sidebar gets populated with different info, typically ads. You may even be aware that Google will scrape the contents of the e-mail to display only contextually relevant ads.

However, they are not just relevant, in fact, I would call them intelligent. When I got the idea for this post I was in Gmail responding to a dynamIt CMS customer who wanted to know if they could have thumbnails in dynamIt and “have them enlarge after the mouse hovers.” I went to explain in a quick response that this would require some more advanced scripting that dynamIt is unable to do automatically (yeah, it’ll take just a wee bit of JavaScript attached to a specific HTML tag) when something in the sidebar caught my eye.

There were the following three links: JavaScript Effects, Enlarge Thumbnail Image, and Ajax Image Effect. This e-mail made no reference to JavaScript or AJAX, yet Google was able to know what it was getting at. To me this is amazing. If I were not a web developer by trade, Google would have artificially comprehended the e-mail at a deeper level than its human counterpart.

Awesome.

Did you know: there are two other things seen in the Gmail sidebar. First, if there is any street addresses in the e-mail message, they will be pulled over to the side bar with a convenient link in to Google Maps. Second, if your e-mail mentions a shipment with a package tracking number, Google magically figures our which carrier is delivering the package and posts a side bar link to track said package. Awesome.

Just pushed the latest CMS build LIVE. Check it out.

Two big improvements to note:

1. We are now implementing the latest version of the FCK Editor, version 2.6.3. Hopefully, it will be a bit less finicky than the previous version we were running.

2. We now use HTML Tidy to keep the editor code clean and well-formed.

dynamIt users, login and have a look for yourself.

And, you know the drill, e-mail us quickly if you should happen across a bug.

Boulder is truly an amazing city. The people here swear by it. I’ve been here for a few months so far and I know that I’m not leaving anytime soon. There are three major things that contribute to my assurance: the people, accessibility to the outdoors, and the business culture.

From what I’ve noticed so far, the people in Boulder are awesome. Since I’ve been here I’ve found a group of people to play sand volleyball with twice a week, was welcomed in to an entrepreneur community that meets semimonthly, and have started hanging around with a fun startup-centric group that meets every so often to have drinks. Also, the community formed at the New Tech Meetups is awesome for meeting new people, finding jobs, or talking up your company. Overall, there is a huge sense of community here. Small communities with focused purposes extend in to other communities and eventually, everyone is a part of the largest community that is Boulder.

For those that don’t know, Boulder is bordered to the West by the Rocky Mountains. Nestled in to the foothills itself, Boulder lends itself to amazing activities and views. From almost anywhere in the city, the iconic Flatirons of Boulder are always in view and the trails that lead to their peaks are always open. The Chautauqua and Sanitas trials are reachable from most places in Boulder by a ten or so minute bike ride. The system of parks within the city is great as well. Its hard to go very far without running in to a well maintained and usable park. Other activities such as climbing, mountain and trail biking, backpacking, and water sports are all popular as well. The other outdoor activity that is popular here in Boulder that was rather new to me is community gardening. I hope to get my own plot next season.

Finally, the business culture in Boulder is overwhelmingly positive. It has a very strong focus on entrepreneurship and thus venture capital. This mix of interested and ambitious individuals with seasoned veterans from many industries, especially high technology and the internet, combines for awesome potential. It is hard to meet a person in Boulder that hasn’t or isn’t trying or succeeding at starting their own business. For example, a person that I randomly started conversing with at the BolderBoulder 10k had a work from home career and was also overnighting the creation of a business service to translate blueprints for multilingual construction crews.

All this being said, I feel like I have succeeded in finding a place that fits me right for my post-graduate life. I am inspired by the atmosphere here in Boulder and excited to make my own move in to the world of entrepreneurship, comfortable that this is the place to be.

P.S. :: If you want to get in touch with cool Boulder folk, check out Boulder+Me, a new project by Andrew Hyde to promote Boulder.

-Ryan Cook

A botanist by degree, developer by trade, and entrepreneur by aspiration, Ryan recently graduated from Miami University in Ohio and moved to Boulder to pursue his goals of using his multidisciplinary skills and interests to start businesses. You can get in touch with Ryan at ryan at wheretocaptain dot com or through his website :: where.to.captain?