Today, the New York Times posted an opinion piece from Caroline Kennedy about why she is supporting Barack Obama for President. She likens Obama’s ability to inspire hope and action to the way her father, John F. Kennedy, inspired the nation almost fifty years ago.

I’ve said this before, but I feel the same way. I feel like Obama can really change the way the country feels about itself. Just having a small glimmer of hope is all it takes for people to do great things. That is what our country needs right now – someone to bring us out of our Dubya-inspired funk and inspire us to do great, world-changing things again.

Having spent time out of the country during Dubya’s rule, I can tell you first hand that many people in several different countries think that our country is a joke and a general menace to the world as a whole. Unfortunately, this also means that its citizens (you know, people like you and me) are jokes as well. That doesn’t sit well with me especially when I need to get clients from all over the world to trust in my ability to help their businesses succeed.

Barack Obama is exactly the person we need to lead our nation to greatness in everything we do. He will heal our relationships with other countries around the world and remind them of why they once thought of the United States as the most admired country on the planet. He will inspire all of us to do great things because he knows we can do it. We will once again change the world for the better.

Super Tuesday is coming in just over a week. Get out there and vote.

Via Obama HQ.

Dave Winer wrote a great post today about why he supports Barack Obama. I have been an Obama supporter from Day 1, and I try to convince anyone I meet to vote for him because I feel he brings a sense of hope and pride to our government that we have not had in a very long time. Like Dave, I am incredibly tired of hearing from Bill and Hillary Clinton. I almost feel the same sense of distrust towards them as I do towards Dubya. If the Clintons do manage to steal the nomination from Obama, I may have to abstain from voting in November. There’s no way I could bring myself to vote for one of the boobs running on the Republican side, but at this point, I could not support Bill and Hillary for a third term.

Something that has got me really excited is that I’m going to be getting my hands on a MacBook Air. I’m hoping it’s sooner rather than later – it’s been on order since the day it was announced. I’ll be posting some unboxing pictures and my first impressions of the MacBook Air. Stay Tuned!

Editor’s Note: Greg Probst is the author of Blue Sleeves Blog and is a regular contributor to Probstisms.

This week, I will be attending my first Business Objects Partner Summit. Actually, this will be the first software conference that I have ever attended besides the Microsoft Office launch events I go to with each new release and my own company’s user conferences.

I am looking forward to seeing what Business Objects has in store for us, but I think I am most excited about spending time with the other members of my team that I haven’t seen since last July. Don’t get me wrong, I love working from home with all of the time I get to spend with my family, but there is definitely something to be said about team camaraderie. We have an outstanding group of people and it is always a fun and interesting time when we’re all in the same place at the same time.

If time permits (and confidentiality agreements allow), I will try to blog about anything cool that happens at the conference. I don’t expect that I’ll be doing any live blogging, but I’ll definitely write about anything that seems interesting.

Google GmailFor those of you who are not familiar with Gmail, you soon will be. Gmail is Google’s free email service, and it is one of many excellent services that Google provides. Most of the people I know already use Gmail as their main email service, and I suspect that many more will soon join the ranks of devoted Gmail users.

Google has always offered a tremendous amount of free storage space with each Gmail account, and with competition from Yahoo and Microsoft, they continue to add space to each account for free. Right now, I have 6,290 MB of space. That’s over 6 GB of storage space for free!

The catalyst for this post is my wife’s less than a year old Dell laptop. Sadly, the hard drive in that machine is beginning to show the telltale signs of failure. You know the ones – the terrible scratching sounds, the no drive detected errors, etc. Needless to say, we have been scrambling to find good ways to make sure her important business files are safe and sound. The first thing we did was save the files off to a USB flash drive. This is a good short term solution, but flash drives are easily lost. We have also started to use Google Docs more so local storage is becoming less of an issue.

Then something came to me. Why not use the 6+ GB of storage I have with Gmail to store my important files on Google’s servers? Using Labels in Gmail makes organizing all of your files insanely easy, and of course, Gmail comes with the power of Google’s search if you ever need to find a specific file. Follow these easy steps to save your important files in your Gmail account.

1. From your Gmail Inbox, click the More Actions drop down box and select New Label.
2. Enter a name for your new label like “Documents” or “Files.” This will help you find your files later.
1. Compose a new message and enter your Gmail address in the To field.
2. For the message Subject, use the name of the file you are sending to Gmail.
3. In the message Body, enter keywords or phrases that will help you find the file in the future.
4. Attach the file to the message.
5. Send the message.
6. The new message will appear in your Inbox.
7. Select the message by clicking the checkbox next to the message.
8. Click the More Actions drop down box and select the Label you chose for your documents.
9. Click the Archive button to remove the message from your Inbox.

Your file is now saved on Google’s servers. In order to access your files in the future, simply select the Label you chose for your documents. Labels are usually displayed under the Chat window on the left side of the page. Clicking on a Label will show all of the messages with that label so you will be able to see all of the messages you have saved with your important files. You can also use the search feature in Gmail to find a specific file. This is why using descriptive file names and adding good keywords is very important.

I hope this helps you get more out of your Gmail account and avoid the problems of a hard drive failure.

Happy New Year everybody! I hope the holidays were very good to all of you. My family and I had a wonderful time visiting family and friends in Chicago and Wisconsin, and now we’re back at home getting back to normal to start the new year.

I’m a little late out of the blocks with posting on Probstisms this year, but my plan is to post as often as I find interesting things to write about, and the first few days of 2008 have provided quite a few exciting things.

Stay tuned for what I hope will be an interesting year for Probstisms!