If you sign up, you can use your 10 dollar bonus at one of the hundreds of stores that now accept Google Checkout as a payment option. To name a few:

• Blue Nile
• Petco
• Toys R Us
• Zales
• Buy.com
• CompUSA
• Linens N Things
• FYE
• Starbucks
• JR.com
• Dicks Sporting Goods
• Dockers
• Ace Hardware
• Sports Authority

Enjoy your 10 dollar spending spree! Hurry though: The ten dollar bonus expires at the end of April!

The rules are simple! Google Search for two-word combinations that come up with a single result.

Examples:
Deoxyribose xenophobiac
existentialism antidisestablish
Oxalosuccinate sword
cataplexis wehrmacht
creamy smegmas

Go ahead, try it! But if you want even more of a challenge, try Googlewhackblatt where you try to find single words that appear only once in Google.

Examples:
superagory

The first site I tried when I turned on my T-Mobile data plan was www.google.com. Time out.

I tried about 10 times over the next few days and then finally called support, just thinking that my data service wasn’t activated yet.
Well, the Tmobile tech asked me to go to cnn.com, which I did, and it worked fine. I tried Google again, and when it timed out, the tech on the phone said that “connecting to Google over our network has been a known issue”.

Great. So, no google search, no Gmail, no google Maps.. nothing. Iwas hoping this issue would have resolved itself by now, but it hasn’t. Nearly 2 months later and I am still unable to connect to google.

I can’t connect to google even when I tether. It still just times out. The only way I’m able to access google is when the wi-fi is in use.

Please fix your problems, T-Mobile.

It seems that I’m not the only one having problems with gmail today. Just another sign that I shouldn’t be using Gmail for critical data storage or communication.

UPDATE:
Someone in the google groups reported getting this back from Google after reporting their account was locked out:

“Thank you for your report. We apologize for any confusion or
inconvenience. For your security, we may temporarily disable access to
your account if our system detects abnormal usage. Abnormal usage
includes, but is not limited to:

- Receiving, deleting, or popping out large amounts of mail (via POP)
in a
short period of time
- Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that
bounce
back)
- Using third party file-sharing or storing software, or software that
automatically logs in to your account and that is not supported by
Gmail
- Multiple instances of your Gmail account opened
- Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser
continually reloading while attempting to access your inbox, it is
likely
a browser issue.

UPDATE #2: Within 5 minutes of me submitting a ticket, the problem has been fixed and I can log in.

But how does Google Spreadsheet stack up against competition? Who is the competition? Well, Microsoft I guess. Nobody uses Lotus stuff anymore, do they?

I like Google Spreadsheets. It does what I need to do. It has most of the formatting that you would expect in Microsoft Excel. You can format the cells as money, dates, numbers… you can format the text in the cells anyway you want: bold, color, large font. The sorting and inserting of rows and columns is pretty intuitive.

You can also use math functions in cells! For example, for my checkbook ledger, I can have it sum up the columns from my checking and savings into a cell labeled as TOTAL. Just like you would in Excel!

Also, you won’t ever have to worry about losing data. Google Spreadsheets saves as you go!

My ONLY complaint was that I couldn’t find a way to drag out a pattern. For example, in Excel, if I wanted to continue a pattern of dates down a column, I would simply highlight the cells that defined the pattern, and drag down. I can’t find a way to do this with Google. This is, for a me, a pretty big dealbuster. I use that feature a lot.

But this makes up for it:
The coolest thing that Google Spreadsheets has to offer would be the collaboration features. With the click of a button, you can invite one or more people to view and edit your document in REAL TIME! You can actually see what changes they are making, as they make them. Very handy! While we are on the subject, if you don’t have an invitation to Google Spreadsheets yet, just find someone who does, and ask them to invite you to view a spreadsheet on their account. Doing this will grant you access! If you don’t have any friends with a Google Spreadsheets invitation yet, or don’t have any friends, post a comment here and I will do it for you.