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Google: a smart and funny company. Here’s today’s log-in page for Gmail:

To anyone who’s wondering why this site has gone quiet recently (is anyone really out there?), I’m reassessing what to do with this little project. FYI. –Steve

This is my first blog entry produced using Jott. That is a service that allows you to speak into your phone, and have your words converted into text and then post it to another service. In this case, I have dictated this blog entry to Jottfrom my phone and I’m having Jott post to this blog. listen

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Here’s a nice feature implemented by the Examiner.com news websites: When a website refers an online user to an Examiner.com story, Examiner.com inserts a text line under its masthead crediting the referring site.

Here’s an example. Below is a link (from this blog, obviously) to an Examiner.com article:

Frontier posts revenue increase on routes against Southwest

Note that when you click through to that story you see a link that says “go back to www.steveouting.com”. It sticks throughout the site, not just on the page you arrive at.

Cool!

This is from a new study called Never Ending Friending, sponsored in part by MySpace. … It’s yet another example of how today’s young media consumers are more and more about interacting (two-way, new media) than being passive (one-way, old media). … As usual, consumers are leading the way — and most media and marketers are a step behind, just starting to figure that out.

Is anyone else experiencing this? After the usual holiday-week lull, my e-mail inbox is exploding — and I don’t mean just with spam. (I’ve got pretty good spam filtering.) It’s like everyone has returned to work with a vengeance and they are hammering my inbox with stuff that needs to be dealt with. Arrrgh!

I’ve been checking out MyChingo.com, which has a nifty concept even if not yet great execution. The site allows you to add a “voicemail” inbox to your website or blog. Your readers can leave you a voice message, which you can listen to privately or toggle to be public — so anyone can listen to your voicemail.

I can think of some interesting uses for this, and I’ve been toying with using it my company’s adventure-sports websites. Let’s hope the developers get a bit further along, though, and soon. The interface is bare bones; you can’t customize the voicemail box that goes on your site to my satisfaction; and a couple features in the admin interface (Notify and Chat Admin) are “Currently in development.”

Also, the $45 a year pricetag gets you a single voicemail box. How about an account that offers multiple boxes for a set fee, instead of $45 a pop? The service has promise, but at this point in it’s development I’m not sure if I’ll keep using it after the 3-day free trial.