Note the similarity:
  
So, John, which one is which?

I’ve griped about how slow Firefox can get, especially when loaded down with my standard trio of GMail, GCal and RTM, plus a few other tabs. I was struggling with this again the other day and happened to come across this post referring to the Mozilla Prism project, which allows you to run individual web apps (like GMail, GCal and RTM) in a separate instance of Firefox, without all the browser “chrome” of menus and toolbars. Giving the app its own window restores these web apps (that have taken the place of traditional desktop apps) to primacy in the desktop UI navigation – you can use windows Alt-Tab application switching instead of mucking around with Firefox tabs. And as a massive side benefit, each Prism webapp is a separate instance of Firefox, which means that GMail runs 5x faster itself, and doesn’t slow down all my other browser sessions. There are a couple of issues (the GMail compose field stops working once in a while, the right-mouse menus are missing, links don’t open in ‘main’ browser session), but I love the idea, and it’s working well for me.

Followup after today’s MacWorld keynote: Interestingly (to some, I suppose), this desktop/web app issue is one of my little gripes with my new iPhone: I don’t really feel like I’m using all of what I paid for, since I’m using gMail, gCal and RTM instead of the built-in Mail, Calendar and Tasks (wait a second, is there no built-in tasks application?!?), and those don’t appear on the iPhone desktop, nor are they integrated with each other or the iPhone OS. Today’s iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update does for the iPhone more or less exactly what Prism does for Windows, letting you create desktop icons for bookmarked web apps. I still wish I could sync the calendar with gCal and the notes with something (anything!).

I made my first trip up to Tahoe in a few years this past Sunday/Monday, and aside from the snow (2′+ fresh), the weather (beautiful), the mountain (Alpine rules, as always), and the company (good friends and more on the hill), I was really happy with how the Element handled the snow. Granted, the conditions were fairly favorable, with snow on the roads but no ice, and temps in the 20’s that make for good snow tractions, but the AWD worked really well and we had no trouble getting around in the snowy twists and turns of Tahoe Donner. The Element also did much better than I expected up and down the I-80 grade, and overall mileage wasn’t any worse than it is around the Bay Area. Overall, a good snow car – although it ain’t no Scout, it worked well.

easy email handing: Postpone, Ignore, Delete!