Imagine this:

1. A friend sends 30 people an email saying "Hey, BBQ at my place this weekend?".
2. You open it up in gmail and click in the reply box.
3. The full reply window displays itself you and you write your response: "Can't go this weekend - we have a wedding to go to."
4. Hit send.

Until a couple of weeks ago, this email response would just go to your friend. If you wanted it to go to everyone, you would have to hit "Reply to all" and it would automatically CC everyone.

For some reason, gmail changed this, and it now defaults to "Reply to all". (This can be verified by playing with the "Older version" in gmail)

What's the problem? The problem is that when I accidentally discovered this, I let my friend know that Sara and I were engaged - something I hadn't let anyone else on the email list know. Is it a big deal? No. But it wasn't really how I was planning on letting them know.

I consider clicking the text entry box at the bottom of an email a shortcut, and arbitrarily changing shortcuts in programs to do almost-the-same-thing is very bad.

On the other hand - this is probably the way gmail should have been working from the beginning. The problem is that users get used to one behavior - and if that behavior changes, it should be made VERY clear.

It could have been a lot more embarrassing.

The standard "store locator" right now does exactly what it advertises: it finds stores. Probably near you. You get a big old list, and if you click one, you can view more information on it. It answers the question, "Where is the nearest X store?"

However, I think if someone really dug into what users really were looking for, I think the question would often be closer to: "Where is the nearest X store that I can get to right now?"

This is a subtle, but big difference.

Let's take the case of Bank of America. Banks are notorious for their strange hours; however each branch usually has one or two days a week that they are open late. Living near Boston, this means that at any given weekday evening at 4:55pm, there is probably one or two bank branches that I can get to before they close. (the ones that are open until 6pm...)

Right now, if I wanted to find that branch, I'd have to use the store locator and sift through every result until I found the one I was looking for. There are plenty that are open til 5pm, but those aren't very helpful to me. I gave them my address - they should be able to tell me the nearest branch that I can reasonably get to before it closes.

So, as of Tuesday night, June 3rd, I'm now engaged.

It was our three year anniversary, and we started out the evening by going out to Blue Ginger in Wellesley for a very nice dinner. My sister Rachel was just married the previous weekend (and I didn't want to step on her toes), and we were about to move into a house that we had just bought together. So it seemed like a pretty good time to do it, but I still wanted her to think it wasn't going to happen. (You have to surprise them, no?)

Anyway, we had a very nice "regular" anniversary. I waited until she fell asleep, and cleared all of the boxes out of the dining room, found a nice little lamp from the office and set it up on the dining room table, turned on some classical music, put the opened ring case under the light, and left a note that says "You Win".

I made sure every light in the apartment was off except for that little lamp, and climbed into bed. I know Sara pretty well, and knew that light would drive her CRAZY. Immediately she says, "You left the light on..."

"I'm sooo tired, it's fine, just leave it," I replied. I knew this would never fly with her.

She angrily got up (it's way more fun to piss them off right before you make them happy) and went to turn off the light and got the surprise of her life.

She said "yes" :)