So, I (along with the rest of the Blogosphere) have been checking out Sphere since it launched yesterday. Sphere is the latest in a growing range of blog search engines. (I’m also waiting for Gnoos to launch – we’re just days away apparently from having an Australian blog search engine.)

My initial thoughts? I don’t like it. (But only because I’m miffed that my blog doesn’t show up in their search results at the moment.)

Seriously, I’m always interested to see a product that Adaptive Path have launched. Say what you like, but these guys are thoughtful designers. And this time around they’ve exposed the thought process they’ve gone through, which makes it all the more interesting.

So, from a design/user experience perspective, here’s what I’m thinking:

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The more I use Google Calendar, the more I love it.

Yesteday I realised that I could pretty much use it to replace Microsoft Project (if only I could create dependencies between items and spit out a gant chart…. perhaps I’ll just have to train clients to not like gant charts quite so much. What’s with that, hey?)

Google Calendar is SOOOO much better at managing multiple projects + life that MS Project will ever be. (Ever experienced a Project Central implementation? You’ll know what I’m talking about).

When I take on a new project, I create a new Google Calendar and name it after the project. I can then assign tasks to that calendar that appear, beautifully colour coded, in amongst all my other projects and personal activities on one calendar. At a glance I can see when I’m going to be super busy and when I’ll be able to go have lunch out of the office.

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• Micro Persuasion: Will Social Media Shatter the Glass Ceiling?
  there are more women running Fortune 500 companies this year than there were last year. Currently, 10 Fortune 500 companies are run by women (up from 9 last year), and a total of 20 Fortune 1000 companies have women in the top job (up from 19).
  (tags: women socialmedia)
• My Name is Kate: Is Social Media making a difference for women?
  That’s 2%. 2%. And I don’t think this is a “quality” issue.
  (tags: women socialmedia)
• Podcast: ixda NYC – AdamGreenfield talks about Ubiquitous Computing [MP3]
  (tags: podcast UbiquitousComputing)

It seems that Google Analytics has launched some new features including – hoorah! – the ability for people NOT in the US to see their stats in local time. Very nice, thanks for that Google. BUT! every since then I’m finding my poor old blog is taking AAAAGGGGEEESSSS to load, while it waits, and waits and waits for Google Analytics. Not sure about you, but that’s probably the number one reason for getting rid of stats code. In fact, that’s almost enough to make me stop dreaming of Measure Map.

Come on Google. Pull your finger out already. Let my blog load quickly again!

(Waves to the lucky people who read via RSS!)