Modesto, California - home to the annual Ninja Parade, was once again treated to an amazing display of Ninja skill this year.

Thank you, Onion News Network, and to Alex for passing this along. :)

November will be a busy month of conference travel for me. On November 7th I'll fly briefly to Las Vegas for a quick panel gig at the DevConnections conference (I'll be there Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday), followed by a more extensive trip on Saturday the 10th to Barcelona, Spain. I'll be there for the entire IT Forum week of Microsoft's TechEd Europe conference. I've never been to Spain before, so I'm looking forward to the trip.

If you'll be at either of the shows, let me know and hopefully we can meet up and say hi. I'll be there in part to help run some floor events and to record more interesting interviews for our RunAs Radio shows.

I'm also going to stop off in the SF bay area on my way back from Spain to spend Thanksgiving with my dad and family there. By the time I get home it will have been two weeks on the road.

There's been a slight lack of specific information about the actual Gmail IMAP rollout timeframes (the phrase being thrown around - "a few days" - is sufficiently vague, yet it tends to make one think of the number "three"), as well as a lack of information about Google Apps email service and IMAP on that system (as opposed to the generic Gmail platform). Some people already have IMAP enabled. I don't yet. I'm a little bummed, but I know how these massive rollouts for a system this size can be. They don't just happen automagically. So I exercise patience and use this time to drive myself nuts, heh.

Anyhow, I went looking for some specifics over at the Google Help site today, and found some new content in the Apps for Administrators specific help, as well as a linked description of how long it may be before I see it show up in my Apps email accounts:

We're working hard to roll out IMAP access to all our users, but it'll take about a week.

To use IMAP, you must have your interface language set to 'English (US)'. You'll know that IMAP is available in your account when the Forwarding and POP tab in your settings becomes Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

Until then, thanks for your patience!

There's a variety of other IMAP Setup related topics there as well. And you'll want to check out these third-party resources for some details in configuring things like iPhone and Thunderbird (or any client, really) so it works just the way you want it to:

• Lifehacker: Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client
• How-to from 5thirtyone: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail

So, within less than a week it sounds like, and I have the info I need to optimize my clients when it does happen. Nice - that helps. :)

I got up this morning to the first frost of the season. It's cooled off quite a bit here the past week or so. I snapped a couple pictures. I like shadow-light images with a little contrast punch. You still cannot record images digitally quite the same nice way you can with film. But you can fake it if you try, and it costs a hell of a lot less per shot, that's for sure. Makes it way too easy to be lazy and trust in your luckiness though. I miss film. Heh.

Also, I have added a "Photography" category to the site, with its own RSS feed as well, since that's been a bit of a missing piece here.

Looks like you can now (finally) link multiple Windows Live IDs together. You may also know them as your passport login addresses (Microsoft did a name change a while back).

If you have a Windows Live ID that you use for work and one that you use at home, you can link them so that you only have to sign in to Windows Live once to manage all of your accounts. When you link more than one Windows Live ID, you can sign in to a Windows Live site or service with one account and still have access to information related to the linked accounts.

Go to http://account.live.com and log in with your Live ID that you use primarily. You'll see a screen like the one below (click to enlarge the image):

Once you click the link to link your LiveIDs, you'll be asked to provide the necessary information, and one more click 'til you're all set:

Once linked, you can choose which LiveID you want to use on site with a switcher-link, like this one:

Nice stuff. Now I can switch between my LiveIDs without going through the pain on signing in and out all the time.

For as long as Gmail has been around, The People have asked for IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) access to their accounts. Today, that time has come.

Google has announced they are rolling out IMAP across all Gmail accounts over the next few days. What does that mean? It's well-explained on the Gmail blog, right here. A little bird let me know this morning in IM. I really need to stop sleeping in so I can be the first to know every now and then, heh.

Ars technica has a good post explaining IMAP to the layperson and outlining the Gmail situation.

Now comes my big question: Is IMAP functionality also being rolled out to users of Google Apps mail (which is basically Gmail and other Google apps that you can use with @yourdomain.com)? I hope so, since that's they way I use their stuff. In the past Google's typical approach has been to enable new stuff on Gmail before rolling it out to Apps users. I've seen some people this morning claiming it's showing up here and there in apps accounts, but the people saying it are not actually mail for apps users, so grain-of-salt in my book. If you have a Google Mail for Apps setup, is IMAP an option for you yet?

If IMAP in Apps accounts happens (I am sure it will), my iPhone will get changed from POP to IMAP immediately (finally no more tedious deleting and marking as read), and Outlook 2007 or Thunderbird might just get resurrected. Fingers crossed!

Links:

• Google announcement by David Murray at Google
• YouTube video showing how to enable it (simple) as well as set it up on your iPhone: