Newspaper Page Text
2B Midweek Edition-April 3-4, 2024
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia I gainesvilletimes.com
LIFE
‘Putnam County Spelling Bee’ comes to Gainesville
From Staff Reports
A Brenau University grad and alumna of
Gainesville Theatre Alliance will return home
this month to direct “The 25th Annual Putnam
County Spelling Bee,” a Tony-winning musi
cal comedy about middle-school adolescence.
The show runs from Friday, April 12, to
Saturday, April 20, at the University of North
Georgia-Gainesville's Ed Cabell Theatre.
Kari Twyman, a 2018 graduate of Brenau
who studied musical theater, will serve as
both director and choreographer. Twyman
is a working actor and choreographer in the
Atlanta area, and she said she's excited to
bring her unique perspective to the production.
“In a heightened time of consuming media
that is heavily influencing the clothes we buy,
the phrases we use, or even how big or small
our bodies should be, “The 25th Annual Put
nam County Spelling Bee” leads the audience
back to the basis of being an individually
unique kid,” Twyman said.
Also working on the production are musi
cal director Dale Grogan, a veteran of sev
eral past Alliance productions; and lighting
designer Christian DeAngelis, an assistant
professor at The University of Georgia.
Winner of the Tony and the Drama Desk
Awards for Best Book, “The 25th Annual
Putnam County Spelling Bee” is set against
the backdrop of a middle-school spelling bee.
As the contestants navigate the challenges
of spelling seemingly impossible words,
the audience is treated to an exploration of
puberty, identity and the desire to fit in.
The 25th Annual Putnam County
Spelling Bee
When: April 12-14 (sold out), April 16-
20 at 7:30 p.m., matinee performance
April 20 at 2:30 p.m
Where: Ed Cabell Theatre, 2900
Landrum Education Dr., Oakwood
Tickets: $18-30
More info: GainesvilleTheatreAlliance.
org
Tickets for the production range from
$18 to $30 and are available for purchase at
GainesvilleTheatreAlliance.org or by calling
the GTA Box Office at 678-717-3624.
Gainesville Theatre Alliance is a collabo
ration between theater departments at the
Photo courtesy of Gainesville Theatre Alliance
Brenau University student Ally Medley
plays Logainne Schwartzandgubenniere
in The 25th Annual Putnam County
Spelling Bee.
University of North Georgia and Brenau
University.
How Google revolutionized email and left customers fooled
Paul Sakuma Associated Press
Google co-founders Larry Page, right, and Sergey Brin, left, Sept. 2, 2008 at Google headquarters in
Mountain View, Calif.
BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Google
co-founders Larry Page and Sergey
Brin loved pulling pranks, so much
so they began rolling outlandish
ideas every April Fools' Day not
long after starting their company
more than a quarter century ago.
One year, Google posted a job
opening for a Copernicus research
center on the moon. Another year,
the company said it planned to roll
out a “scratch and sniff’ feature on
its search engine.
The jokes were so consistently
over-the-top that people learned to
laugh them off as another example
of Google mischief. And that's why
Page and Brin decided to unveil
something no one would believe
was possible 20 years ago on April
Fools' Day.
It was Gmail, a free service
boasting 1 gigabyte of storage per
account, an amount that sounds
almost pedestrian in an age of one-
terabyte iPhones. But it sounded
like a preposterous amount of email
capacity back then, enough to store
about 13,500 emails before running
out of space compared to just 30
to 60 emails in the then-leading
webmail services run by Yahoo and
Microsoft. That translated into 250
to 500 times more email storage
space.
Besides the quantum leap in
storage, Gmail also came equipped
with Google's search technology
so users could quickly retrieve a
tidbit from an old email, photo or
other personal information stored
on the service. It also automatically
threaded together a string of
communications about the same
topic so everything flowed together
as if it was a single conversation.
“The original pitch we put
together was all about the three
‘S’s” — storage, search and speed,”
said former Google executive
Marissa Mayer, who helped design
Gmail and other company products
before later becoming Yahoo's
CEO.
It was such a mind-bending
concept that shortly after The
Associated Press published a story
about Gmail late on the afternoon
of April Fools' 2004, readers began
calling and emailing to inform the
news agency it had been duped by
Google's pranksters.
“That was part of the charm,
making a product that people won't
believe is real. It kind of changed
people's perceptions about the
kinds of applications that were
possible within a web browser,”
former Google engineer Paul
Buchheit recalled during a recent
AP interview about his efforts to
build Gmail.
It took three years to do as part
of a project called “Caribou” — a
reference to a running gag in the
Dilbert comic strip. “There was
something sort of absurd about the
name Caribou, it just made make
me laugh,” said Buchheit, the 23rd
employee hired at a company that
now employs more than 180,000
people.
The AP knew Google wasn't
joking about Gmail because an AP
reporter had been abruptly asked
to come down from San Francisco
to the company's Mountain View,
California, headquarters to see
something that would make the trip
worthwhile.
Page, then just 31 years old,
proceeded to show off Gmail’s
sleekly designed inbox and
demonstrated how quickly it
operated within Microsoft's now-
retired Explorer web browser. And
he pointed out there was no delete
button featured in the main control
window because it wouldn't be
necessary, given Gmail had so
much storage and could be so easily
searched. “I think people are really
going to like this,” Page predicted.
