In the UK they are both; the back of the 'near' traffic lights for you act as the 'far' traffic lights for the opposite drivers, and vice-versa. This allows you both to see the lights at the junction, and to see them easier on approach, even if the junction is at the top of a hill/etc.
> The street signs are in weird spots, or are non existent.
(Disclaimer: I haven't been to Ireland, but I do live closeby in the UK).
I find this interesting, because I found exactly the same thing true when I first went to San Francisco! It took me months to understand where to look for street signs (and I'm still fairly sure many junctions are missing them). I'm not sure if there's some pattern, but they often seemed arbitrarily placed... looking back, I also wonder if they're positioned more for drivers, whereas street signs here could be seen as more for pedestrians (whether this is true, or which is correct, is a topic for discussion).
In any case, I feel the author could expand their article by trying to think like a foreigner driving in their own country, and how that may also seem wrong! I personally think that this is perhaps a case of 'everyone has the wrong design', held together only by learnt habits.
I think he more means like the "Background Send" lab in Gmail, which gives you progress ("Sending in background..." -> "Sent.") while still allowing you to continue to browse the UI.
The default "Sending..." notation blocks you on the same page, doesn't it?
One of the Gmail labs allows you to do this (assuming I understand what you mean) - it's called "Background Send".
So instead of blocking and showing the "Sending..." message, it redirects you to the main inbox and shows a "Sending in background..." message, until the message has been sent. Of course, Gmail is so fast for me that usually I'm barely back at the inbox before the message is finished! :)
This 'job shopping cart' thing is interesting to me, as is your desire to 'let Google match the skills up with a set of jobs', because basically I had the complete opposite experience when (successfully) applying for an internship with Google (Europe Middle East Asia (EMEA), btw, not American).
I was essentially unable to reply for anything other than "Software Engineer Intern". They took my resume, and a cover letter (which I am fairly sure was never read.) I then had two telephone interviews, after which I received an email asking me to choose two interests from a list of about two dozen (which was not an easy task!). From there, I was placed in a "pool" of possible candidates, and I believe that teams from within Google would browse through the pool and find a candidate they liked. Myself, I was in the pool for two and a half months, and had pretty much given up on getting anything when I suddenly heard back that I had a place.
So, it might be different for "real" jobs with them, but in the case of my internship they did exactly a skill-set matching (in a way), and there was no "job cart".