If anyone is interested in free Gmail accounts let me know because I have a few to give away. I’m not the only one either, as you can see from all the gmail auctions on eBay.

The Gmail floodgates have opened.

I’ve been thinking about winking recently. It’s not something I think about very often, but it occurred to me that winking is a learned behavior that I have yet to take advantage of. I have the same problem with honking. If someone cuts me off, I swerve and/or brake to avoid them, but then a few minutes down the road think to myself, “Blast! I should have honked.” The same is true with winking (except for the swerving and braking part).

I have a dry sense of humor, and will often make jokes without cracking a smile. Sometimes people don’t get the joke, so I have to explain it and I’ll think, “I should have winked while I said the joke, thus tipping the person off that I was being humorous.” However, winking at the time I think to wink would be more likely to alarm the person rather than alert them of humor.

This thought process has led me to wonder where winking came from originally, but a few cursory Google searches didn’t turn anything up.

Maybe a funny person had an eye twitch and it just caught on from there.

A new form of advertising is being produced by an aptly named company: Eye Blaster. (flash required).

They offer several different types of advertisements ranging from full page ads to ones that float over the text you’re trying to view. Compare that to Google’s advertising solution which uses unobtrusive, context relevant text ads.

One of them is trying to improve the user’s experience, while the other is catering to the marketing corporation’s wishes and annoying the user in the process.

Which one would get your business?