I recently connected with Eric Rice via Bill Flitter. I asked Bill if he knew how we could podcast a phonecall interview. He said he didn't know but his buddy Eric was a wiz and I should ask him. So that's what I did.

A bit of background info on Eric. He lives in the Bay area and co-chair's the East Bay IT Group's Blogging & RSS Forum. He's the Producer at SlackStreet, the founder of AudioBlog [podcasting service with a $4.95 monthly fee] and is big on sharing information. I like him cause he hates it when people are getting bs-ed and he's got a jaded view about egotistical technology monarchists.

Without further adue, here's the Q & A with Eric Rice on Podcasting 101. Enjoy!

Q: Can you compile a list of posts [may or may not be your own posts] that would help a would-be podcaster get started on the right foot? No fluff please :)
A: Doh! I can't answer this in the car.

Q: What hardware do I need in order to begin podcasting?
A: Actually, it can be as simple as a telephone. Or as complex as expensive studio gear. Realistically, the only thing you need is a USB microphone or USB mic/headset combo... once you start getting into things like calls over the internet, it gets trickier, and then you get into inexpensive mixing boards.

Q: How do I get a fancy playback skin like the ones on The Eric Rice Show so my listeners can control the playback?
A: Actually, that's part of the Audioblog service. There's three styles of players and plenty of colors for the foreground and background. Also, you can choose the number of buttons... play/playstop/playpausestop/playpausestopskip... etc.

Q: Are there any free podcast playback skins?
A: The players aren't skinnable in that regard. We do offer branding service for customers at a premium.

Q: What software would you recommend for editing a podcast? Please include examples for pc and mac :)
A: On the Mac, I use garageband and itunes. On the PC, (and it's mac too) is Audacity. Which is free. Good basic stuff. Of course I dig Soundtrack on the Mac and Adobe Audition (formerly cooleditpro) on Windows.

Q: Is there any advantage to creating / editing podcasts on a pc vs mac?
A: If you use a USB mic on a PC, you have to be careful of latency issues. The Mac is rock-solid for audio, however doing fancy looping to record things like Skype calls is icky. Windows has better solutions there (bigger market share, naturally)

Q: As you know I frequently conduct Q & A's on MarketingShift but I'd love to complement those text interviews with a podcast. How would I podcast an interview when it's conducted over the telephone? Is Skype the answer?
A: On Windows? Use VirtualAudioCables. You could also just setup a conference call and toggle in a third party service like Audioblog.com to record the whole thing.

Q: Where to the mp3's for a podcast reside?
A: With Audioblog we host them. And in turn, we provide detailed reporting for playback, not just for the player but for straight downloads too.

Q: What if I want to host my podcast mp3's on my own server? Is there any reason to do this or any reason not to?
A: Some people like having the DIY abilities... it's like running MT for your blog or hosting it with Typepad. Personal preference.

Q: How do I help people find podcasts from people or on subjects they're interested in? Are there any special directories or places to find podcasters?
A: Use a directory like PodcastAlley or podcast.net.... or for a raw dump, audio.weblogs.com

Q: I have an iPod photo and the Griffin iTalk mic/speaker combo. Is that a good setup for podcasting? Are there any disadvantages in using the iTalk mic?
A: It will do the job, sure, but the iPod has crappy recording capabilities without hacking it. I use an Archos AV 420... there's an onboard mic and it works like a champ. Full quality too. I use it to get promos from people in person.

Q: Are there any special things to be aware of when podcasting and driving other than the obvious [watch the road] cautions?
A: Road noise eq heavy bass. Other than that, just find a place for your recorder, and if you can, plug in a lapel mic. And just hit record and let it roll, and edit later.

Q: How does Chris Pirillo get those ads in the beginning and ending of his podcasts in there?
A: I don't know. Ask him?

Q: Are there affordable voiceover services to record my own ads? If so, who are they, where are they and how much do they cost?
A: Voice123 is an uberservice; my studio has talent as well, and lately Jeff Radio is making the rounds... he also works with some talented women too.

Misc Questions - Some Humorous, some inciteful.

Q: Who are your top 5 favorite podcasters?
A: This changes so much because I know many podcasters and various topics interest me. The ones I like lately are PodcastNYC and Jawbone? I think, they're in Cleveland. Reel Reviews is a top notch show.

Q: Do you think that not having a mullet like Adam Curry is hurting your public persona? Is that why they interviewed him for Wired and not you?
A: I'm not sure. My hair is pretty damn near perfect. And we're both Mac users. Maybe I'll just create my own MTV and take it from there.

Q: What does the phrase 'power to the people' mean to you?
A: Help people make media and go back to their roots of being the watchdogs. Since television emerged, we became consumers. We don't make media anymore. Time for democratization.

Q: Firefox or IE [Safari is not an option]?
A: I use both, although Safari gets a little more love. Firefox is awesome but I need it to be more Safari like in looks and in speed.

Q: Do you ever wear sneakers that aren't black? If so, what brand and color are they?
A: A pair of Oakley sandals and birks, and some Skecher skate shoes.

I had the opportunity to speak with Alex van Eesteren and David Bodnick of IxQuick.com, a meta search engine that's been around for a few years but released some new features out of beta today. The conversation was pretty interesting and made me realize meta search can have value if done properly, however, doing it properly can require nearly the same amount of resources as building a crawl based search engine itself.

A brief bit of background on these two.
Alex van Eesteren is based in Europe and was initially hooked up with David Bodnick via the VC firm that invested in IxQuick. Alex's background is that of sales and marketing and he's always had an entrepreneurial focus. Alex is the VP of Marketing for IxQuick.

David Bodnick is the creator and technologist at IxQuick and is a graduate of Brown University. He spent a bit of time working on Wall Street but the focus of his studies at Brown were on Organizational Management with a bit of CS thrown in during his graduate work there.

I'll provide more commentary on my discussion with the folks from IxQuick later, for now here's the IxQuick interview.

Q: What does Ixquick stand for?
A: Ixquick is a made-up name, but the 'quick' alludes to the speed of the metasearch.

Q: Are you screen scraping the engines or do you have a licensing agreement in place? Which engines do you have a license with?
A:We have license agreements with a number of large search engines, and cooperation with others.

Q: Do you have your own ad contracts in place or do you use advertisers on each of the search engines you get results from?
A: We display Sponsored Results from Overture at the top of the page.

Q: You use Yahoo! and AltaVista/AlltheWeb, which use the same database for their results. Is there a reason for this?
A:These engines use different ranking algorithms, and most of the time they select different results as the Top Ten most relevant.

Q: What does the server infrastructure look like?
A: 32 Multi CPU Unix Servers in 2 data centers in both the US and Europe.

Q: Where do the servers live?
A: US and Europe

Q: How many people are on the team?
A: Three principals and nine developers.

Q: How are you accessing the data from each site?
A: Ixquick efficiently retrieves results from many sites simultaneously. An elaborate Quality of Service algorithm balances relevance and speed to produce the best batch of results quickly.

Q: What do the stars mean?
A: Ixquick awards a star for every search engine that ranks a result as one of the 10 best results for a given search. For example, a five star (*****) result at Ixquick means that five search engines found the result Top 10 relevant. The Star System delivers more accurate and comprehensive results through the "Consensus" reached by the search engines it searches.

Q: Do you only look at the top 10 results for each engine?
A: Yes

Q: Does only looking at the top 10 results put you at a disadvantage?
A: No; the star system improves relevancy by removing irrelevant results that individual search engines are susceptible to. Ixquick's top results are consensus picks: irrelevant results may fool one engine or even two engines, but are unlikely to fool lots of engines. A five star result means that five search engines felt that result was one of the best, each reaching this conclusion using a different relevancy algorithm. Generally, that result will be very relevant.

Ixquick's results are also more comprehensive: if a hard-to-find result is only available to one of the twelve engines, Ixquick can find it. The pool of documents that Ixquick searches is a superset of the pool of documents that those search engines can access.

Q: Is the analogy of "vertical connect the dots" a good analogy?
A: Yes, in the sense that identifying a result that was a top choice of many engines is a winning approach for finding consistently great results.

Q: Do you have any plans to partner with Become?
A: Not presently.

Q: Who are your main competitors and how do you differ from them?
A: Infospace has the lion's share of the metasearch market, but we believe that Ixquick's relaunch once again establishes us as the leader in metasearch when it comes to delivering the quality that users appreciate.

Ixquick offers greater relevancy and fewer sponsored results. We have an international focus and cater to power searchers.

Our international focus helps our users find anyone or anything, anywhere in the world, through our
- International Phone Directory - a one-stop, 35 country phonebook
- International Lowest Price - comparison shop around the world
- International Web metasearch - Ixquick searches in any of 17
languages, now including the Web's only Chinese, Japanese and Korean metasearch. Each language Ixquick metasearches includes local engines.

Ixquick offers power searchers several unique capabilities:
- Universal syntax - to search with any power search method, including Boolean logic, phrases, wildcards, and field searches, by translating it into the syntax that each of the search engines it searches needs
- Remove repetitive results - follow-up searches that only show new results
- Result honing - next to results a checkmark and X appear. If a result is especially good, click the checkbox to find results that are similar, and if the result is not what you are looking for, click the X to remove results that are like it.

Q: Where do you see metasearch engines in the new vertical focus search?
A: Metasearch offers the ability to integrate new and promising search technologies as they emerge. This is as true of vertical search offerings as it is for more general search offerings.

Q: Is there anyone else doing an intl phone dir?
A: No. Ixquick's International Phone Directory is the only site that lets you find people and businesses worldwide. In addition, its Reverse Directory feature can use a phone number to find the person or business you are seeking and the directory information for that listing.

Q: Where are the phone numbers coming from?
A: Over 200 data sources have been integrated to provide this feature.

Q: Why did you decide to build an intl phone directory?
A: Phone directory searching is an important part of searching for most of our users. The International Phone Directory is a great embodiment of this feature according to our international focus.

Q: Will you make the int'l phone search accessible via a mobile browser?
A: Yes, especially for larger mobile screens.

Q: Will you ever generate RSS into your search results?
A: We can't guarantee that this will happen.

Q: Where does this shopping data come from?
A: The sources vary depending on the country. PriceGrabber and Kelkoo are the main sources.

Q: Why did you go with PriceGrabber instead of the other shopping engines?
A: We selected our partners by determining which would uncover the lowest prices for our users. We also felt that a true price comparison needed to consider the shipping and tax costs.

Q: Do you provide any addl data PriceGrabber doesn't for U.S. results?
A: We order product results from least expensive to most expensive, inclusive of tax and shipping, after listing a couple Featured Merchants. PriceGrabber requires an extra step in order to do that.

Q: Pictures coming from?
A: A number of picture sources are combined.

Q: Are there any unique features from your image search versus Google, Yahoo, A9?
A: You'll find very similar images here, but since a number of picture sources are aggregated, it's easier to find relevant images. The presentation makes it easier to skim results.

Q: Do you apply the star ranking system to your image search?
A: There are several elements to the picture search algorithm, but there's only so much that can be done.

Q: Where do you see Ixquick 3 years from now?
A: Our goal is to continue to develop the best Web search resource for users, by delivering the most useful, comprehensive, and enjoyable metasearch experience possible. In doing so, we hope to increase Ixquick's usage both in the United States and internationally.

Q: Do you see an increasing need for metasearch engines?
A: The relevancy and comprehensiveness that metasearch can offer, and the ability to combine great technologies and search approaches as they evolve, have always been compelling. As SEO professionals have increasingly affected website rankings on individual search engines, the ability to counteract this through a consensus-based Star System does become more valuable.

Q: Do you see an increased importance on the ranking algo within a meta search engine?
A: Result relevancy is the most important factor for any search or metasearch engine.

Q: Who is your target searcher? Do they fit a certain demographic profile?
A: Analysts, librarians and other information professionals appreciate the Power Search capabilities and comprehensive results that Ixquick offers. Professionals whose businesses cross borders gravitate to Ixquick's international strengths.

Q: Have you ever been in a legal dispute with any of the major search engines?
A: No.

This post is a correction to the original post. In the original post I left out the "T" in Brilliant. Sorry for the dupe post, here's the real deal.

I received the following PR request from a company called LaunchSquad last week. I thought I'd post the request here since it's pretty well put together and only went out to 4 bloggers. I like how the PR firm put together a thorough and well thought out email. Additionally, it only went to 4 bloggers which helps to ensure they're being selective in who they're getting to bite on their request.

I touched base with the PR firm later that evening [after receiveing the email] and then I spoke with their client's CEO Phillip Lan about their company [BrilliantShopper.com]. I found they have an interesting approach to shopping search and are focusing almost exclusively on the user interface to separate and aggregate certain types of related shopping data. There are some backend technologies, including a proprietary algorithm, that will aid in filtering the types of results served but they're going with a traditional search engines' database to start the filtering process.

Side Note: I think we're going to see a trend in the resurgence of Meta Search engines in general based on the need of users to aggregate data in a timely manner in a single interface. Also, we'll see an increased need for filtering and ranking algorithms on the Meta Search Engines side in order to provide the highest quality results across a network of search engines.

I'll probably post more on them later before they launch their new site. In the meantime, here's a good example of how to pitch a blogger as well as the bio of Brilliant Shopper’s CEO.

"Jason,

I obviously don’t need to pitch you on the idea that vertical search is about to "take over," as Danny Sullivan said at the Search Engine Strategies show. A lot of bloggers are buzzing about the concept and the new technology, and apparently the VCs are too. However, not many of them are talking about the user experience. If vertical search is meant to help consumers navigate the web similar to the way that channels help them navigate TV programing, then the design of the userexperience must be both compelling and friendly.

A soon-to-be launched site called Brilliant Shopper has been developed by former Ask Jeeves folks. Chief executive Phillip Lan and his team have been working to leverage web search technology to create "niche search engines" that could help online shoppers overcome frustrations with the general and often irrelevant results they were receiving.

Phillip is bringing Brilliant Shopper to market with a solid team and adifferentiated approach to shopping search that is focused on user experience, as opposed to only wiz bang technology, in much the same way that Jeeves approached the general search market. Brilliant Shopper combines a proprietary shopping -- focused search engine with features such as coupon search, product reviews search and customizable search results pages -- and will deliver a unique set of tools designed to facilitate online shopping.

I’d like to set up a teleconference for you and Phillip so that he can further brief you on Brilliant Shopper’s technology and design, and his strategy for the company. Please contact me to set something up or to discuss any questions you might have.

Best
Eric for Brilliant Shopper"

Phillip Lan, President and CEO
Phillip is a high-tech veteran experienced in spotting new trends and moving organizations to capitalize on them. Seeing the need for specialized search engines early on, Phillip provided the vision for Brilliant Shopper’s vertical search technologies. Previously, Phillip oversaw Ask Jeeves’ syndication team, where he drove the effort to introduce paid links into their network. He was also responsible for optimizing Overture (Yahoo) and Google’s paid search products on the flagship Ask.com website. Prior to Ask Jeeves, Phillip successfully managed multi-billion dollar product lines for the IBM Corporation, earning three professional awards within his first two years at the company. Earlier in his career, Phillip's efforts helped Unigen Corporation earn distinction as one of Silicon Valley’s Fastest Growing Private Companies. Phillip holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Davis as well as an MBA with concentration in Computer Information Systems.

Or should I say "Best Ask Jeeves Askquisition Headlines". Here are some of the headlines that stood out to me and I felt to be actually clever. After the fifth headline the cleverness began to wear off and became boring but they're all interesting none the less. My personal favorite... Diller Asks Jeeves, Flickr Says Yahoo! via [Kelsey Group] Runners Up Ask Jeeves Sold to IAC -- Now Just Ask Barry Diller about Search via [Corante] Ask Jeeves if it's been bought via [TheRegister] Ask Jeeves' value? Answer: $1.9 billion via [Seattle Times] Jeeves goes for $1.85 billion asking price via [YzuKuzy's AI] Yahoo Flickrs, Diller Asks Jeeves via [unnamed] Barry Diller's Internet heist via [Corante] Ask Jeeves Headlines That Never Were Here are a few that never bubbled to the surface [cause they don't exist] but should've. Contributed by yours truly. Ask Jeeves About Personal Financial Freedom via [Suzie Orman] Ax Jeeves Fo Sum Bling - You No He's Got It via [Ax Jeeves] Money, Money, Money, Moneeeeeeey via [Theme song for The Apprentice] Dillers Da Shiznit With Tha Jiznit via [Snoop Dogg] Ask Jeeves Needs Kabbalah To Remain Balanced via [Madonna]

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Last week, Become.com sent out a press release that talked about it's patent pending ranking algorithm dubbed AIR. AIR stands for Affinity Index Ranking and based on claims from Become is the next generation search engine ranking algorithm.

Well, we all know how press releases are geared more for investors than techies and how some substance can get lost in the fluff. So I decided to ask Become's Founder and CTO, Yeogirl Yun a few questions to clear things up. The questions are fairly technical in nature but also give a good glimpse into the culture at become from a top down point of view. If you ever wondered what a rockstar of the internet looks like, then look no further. Yeogirl's definitely got the rockstar looks and the coding experience to back it up. Anyway, enjoy the interview.

Q & A With Become CTO Yeogirl Yun

Q: Based on the press release on AIR Become said "AIR identifies exceptional web pages by understanding the level of interconnection between valuable sites from within specific fields of interest. AIR evaluates a web page based on what other "knowledgeable" sites in that specific field say about the page, and also evaluates the page based on what the page says about other "knowledgeable" sites in the specific field." This sounds a lot like the hilltop ranking algorithm whereby known sites are at the top of the hill and they control the ranking landscape by their relationships with other sites lower on the hill. How is AIR different than the hilltop algorithm?

A: AIR is significantly more advanced than that hilltop algorithm. The hilltop algorithm (as described at www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/) considers only links from a limited number of "expert" sources when identifying target web pages. According to the hilltop paper, "the targets are then ranked according to the number and relevance of non-affiliated experts that point to them. When such a pool of experts is not available, Hilltop provides no results. Thus, Hilltop is tuned for result accuracy and not query coverage."

AIR, on the other hand, evaluates connectivity between all pages in a given topic. Rather than focusing on "top of the hill" sites, AIR understands the overall network of sites within a topical area. Both inlinks and outlinks are evaluated to understand the level of interconnection among the sites. Advanced mathematics and concepts from Applied Physics and Engineering Dynamics are used to calculate specific scores.



Q: AIR technology stands for Affinity Index Ranking and based on the Become.com press release is "ideally suited to specific topical areas such as shopping research". That being said, can AIR only be applied to the shopping vertical or do you see the technology within AIR being applied to several verticals?

A: Although we are focused on the shopping market, AIR is extremely well suited other vertical markets.



Q: I'm curious about this statement "AIR represents a fundamentally new approach to ranking web pages that integrates advanced concepts from Applied Physics and Engineering Dynamics", exactly what concepts from Applied Physics are you referencing in AIR? My brother-in-law's Doctorate is in Physics and is a Professor at Yale, so if I were to ask him how a search engine could benefit from this particular concept in Physics and apply them to their ranking algorithm, what would he say?

A: Great question. At this time, we would like to maintain confidentiality to prevent your brother-in-law from developing a competing engine :) In the future, we plan to publish this information and fully disclose our patent application.



Q: AIR still uses the concept of linking as a pivotal role in evaluating the relationship between sites of importance with regards to ranking them. Do you see any way, in the forseeable future, for a search engine ranking algorithm to completely avoid using linking as one of it's core components?

A: We believe that an understanding of connectivity on the web is an important factor in ranking web pages. We believe, however, that Become's methods of evaluating connectivity are significantly more sophisticated and accurate than the methods used by major search engines today.



Q: When I came to your headquarters for the prelaunch of Become.com I was amazed at the fact you built the entire code base for Become's search engine from scratch in only 9.5 months. I don't honestly know of a single other person on this planet that could accomplish such a feat, it's amazing. How did you do it and what were the critical pieces of your past search related experience [from Wisenut and MySimon] played the most pivotal role?

A: Thank you. We have been extremely pleased with our progress. An important lesson from Wisenut was that search engine development is an extremely difficult challenge. I quickly realized that use of conventional methods and technology would have always kept us several years behind Yahoo and Google. I knew that Become could only succeed by using a completely new approach based on cutting-edge technology and it has been very successful so far. The most important factor in building this new technology has been the hiring of an exceptional team. Every employee at Become has a very strong background and is extremely dedicated to our success. We have also placed high importance on creating a great working environment that encourages people to push the envelope of technical innovation.



Q: You told me about the process you used to screen applicants for positions at Become.com and I found it quite interesting. Would you be willing to share some of that process with my readers? I think it is important because not only have you done incredible things as an individual developer and CTO but you and the Become.com Executive Team have accomplished the almost impossible task of putting together a crack team of employees in a very short period of time. That kind of leadership is hard to find and I think it represents the core of Become.com, not only as a search engine but also as a team.

A: We believe that hiring the best people is a key to our success. We used several methods to identify top talent. Every engineer is invited to take a highly challenging programming test prior to being invited to interview. Only those who excel on the test (which often takes over 40 hours to complete) are invited to interview. Other employees are also tested in their specific job area prior to receiving employment offers. We find that the people drawn to accept these challenges and succeed on the tests are generally a great fit for our team.

We have also worked to create a strong culture of teamwork and contribution. We believe this culture has been a strong reason that great people have joined Become.



Q: Along the same lines of acquiring amazing talent, how on earth did you manage to attract the talent of Jon Glick away from Yahoo? And how did you manage to get another industry veteran, Chris Kermoian, as well?

A: We are extremely fortunate to have a strong management team in place. Chris Kermoian joined Become in May 2004 as our fifth full-time employee. As VP of Product Management, he has been an exceptional leader for all of our Product efforts and defined our systems and processes from inception. Jon Glick is an incredible industry expert who formerly worked for Chris at AltaVista. We are gratified that Jon recognized the potential and vision of our company, and Jon has made an immediate impact as the leader of our upcoming comparison shopping service.

This post has been edited and replaced by a post with the proper spelling. Sorry for the confusion, Blogger doesn't handle the deletion of files too well.

I opened my inbox this morning to see an email that's obviously spam. The subject line was "Apply for the Job" and the sender's name was "Job Manager". Since I'm not applying for any jobs and I know nobody that goes by the name of "Job Manager" and I'm not a member of any email distribution groups named "Job Manager" I knew it had to be spam. So like everyone else, I clicked on the email to view it in the preview pane. Here's what the email said...

My First Spam Email From A Google GMail Account

You are tired of searching a job? You want to have financial stability and you want to be sure about your future and a future of your family? That job will suite all your needs. In order to apply for that job you need to have to be older then 22. Honest and responsible. Also you need to have a basic computer and financial and accounting knowledge. If you are interested please email your resume to freakingspammer@Imatotalspammer.ru and I will email you with the job details. It is possible to use as a part-time job. Basic salary is 2500$ a month. After 3 months of successful work you can earn up to 5000$ a month.

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Now I'm sure the last line is just a unique string of text so GMail doesn't automatically flag this email as spam before it even leaves it's smtp servers. But the first paragraph is where they're setting up the crap they're trying to push. I removed the email address they put in the email cause I don't want to give them any free publicity but if any of you want it just post a comment here and I'll email it do you.

This email was received from sample.job@gmail.com. Linking to the email wouldn't harm them any since they're not going to be checking the email since it's just a shell account they're using to send email, not receive it. But I'm wondering how many emails were sent through this account. You'd think that if it was a high quantity then gmail's spam sending traps would be tripped but who knows.

GMail Spam Header Information

Return-path:
Received: from postoffice.cniweb.net (postoffice.blockedoutserver.net [208.218.214.5])
by postman.blockedoutserver.net (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.4.0.2001.07.26.11.50.p9)
with ESMTP id <0IDO00DP4JB9CP@postman.blockedoutserver.net> for
myemail?globalpromoter.com@sims-ms-daemon
(ORCPT rfc822;myemail@globalpromoter.com); Sun, 20 Mar 2005 21:09:09 -0500 (EST)
Received: from built-like-a-brick-shithouse.com ([61.254.53.254])
by postoffice.blockedoutserver.net (8.13.3/8.13.3) with SMTP id j2L1pNhw017683 for
; Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:51:30 -0500 (EST)
Received: from gmail.com (gsmtp171.google.com [64.233.171.27])
by built-like-a-brick-shithouse.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7435D5E1A8 for
; Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:07:03 -0800
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:07:03 -0800
From: Job Manager
Subject: Apply for the job
To: Jason
Message-id: <101101c52dcb$a539c8e3$65736a55@gmail.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000
Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 1
X-MSMail-priority: High

From that header information it appears the email did in fact come from Google's GMail servers but I'm not an email expert so I'll leave that up to you guys to explain. As always, comments are welcome.