Tag Archives: GMail

Changes At Google

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Once upon a time everyone thought that Google was unstoppable. However, the worsening economy is taking its tole on search giant. The company has issued a number of official blog posts over the last week or so detailing the changes.

Google Video will no longer be accepting uploads shortly. No surprise there, actually, I’ve been wondering why this didn’t happen a long time ago. Google Video, IMO, should have been one thing… search for (and in) videos.

Google Notebook, a service that I actually love, will be stopping development. However the service will continue to work, for now. I guess with this service shutting down, I’ll have a reason to switch over to Evernote.

A number of services that Google picked up, but never really did anything with will also be getting the axe. Jaiku, Google’s service similar to Twitter and Plurk will be shutting down, and the code released as an open source Jaiku Engine under the Apache license.

Other fatalities include:
- Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service.
- Google Mashup Editor will quit working in about 6 months. Everything should be moved over to the App Engine.

That’s not all of the Google news. Google is also making changes to recruting and engineering. About 100 positions in the recruiting section are being eliminated, and 40 satellite engineering offices in 20 countries are being closed. No word on how many engineers that will impact.

As long as Google doesn’t mess with my Picasa, GMail, GDocs, GCal, or Grand Central I’ll be happy. Though I will miss Google Notebook.

Google Chrome Out Of Beta

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Google announced yesterday by way of the Official Google Blogthat the Google web browser, Chrome is now officially out of beta. Introduced only a few months ago, Google Chromehas had probably the shortest public beta period out of any Google product. Take Google’s GMail for example, it came online in March 2004 and is still in Beta.

Google Chrome is available for Windows XP & Windows Vista only (right now), which is a shame considering it is based on webkit, the same engine used by Apple’s Safari web browser. You’d think they’d be able to release a OS X version fairly easily. Hopefully that’s not to far off now that Google Chrome 1.0 is out.

Will this spice up the browser wars? How will Internet Explorer, Opera, and Firefox handle the Google browser? Things should get interesting as new versions of each are prepared.

Google GMail Now With Themes

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Over the past several months GMail users have seen new, experimental features rolled out to GMail via the GMail Labs. While some of these are nice, for the most part they are “meh” features, and with Google’srecord, they’ll probably stay beta for years to come. Heck, GMail is still labeled beta.

This week, GMail users were given a new, honest to goodness, true feature. Themes. Granted, it’s not really anything that will help you with your email, but it does give you something different to look at. The 32 available themes range from a basic color redesign to iGoogle-like location and time changing themes.

I’m currently using the planets theme, which happens to be the same theme I use on iGoogle. What are you using as your GMail and iGoogle themes?

First Google Android Phone…. Meh.

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The first ever Google Android phone was unveiled by T-Mobile yesterday, yet no one really seams to care. Come on, this is Google we’re talking about, and a majority of the news sites and blogs only had the slightest mention of it.

I would have expected a product with the Google name on it to have been much more covered by the media. I mean, it is Google after all. When Apple released it’s 2nd iPhone, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing multiple stories about the iPhone…. with the Google phone, unless you knew it was coming, you probably missed the big news all together.

It’s a shame really, as the Google powered phone offered by T-Mobile actually has some things that make it better than the iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ditching my iPhone for an Android phone, but let’s take a look at what’s going on here. Continue reading →

Comcast To Offer More Mail Space Than Google

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This morning when I checked my email there was a message from Comcast stating that my email would soon be upgraded. Great, after all the only emails I get to that particular account are from Comcast. Usually they are emails about new services (speed boost), changes in the EULA or TOS, or info on new movies that have been added to Comcast OnDemand. Usually nothing that I read.

But for some reason I did read the email from Comcast this morning. Maybe because I’m still half asleep.

Anyway, the email stated that soon my account would be updated to Comcast SmartZone. Basically it’s an improved UI that puts Comcast Digital Voice, email, and contacts all in one place. Good, that’s something they should have done a long time ago.

From the looks of it, Comcast will be integrating Plaxo for the improvements to the contacts section. Upsetting many people, Comcast acquired Plaxo back in July. Plaxo is an interesting service that started out as a fantastic contact management service, and then evolved (identity crisis?) into something that more closely resembled Facebook.

Probably the nicest thing about Comcast, and maybe the only “good” thing they’ve done recently is they will be upgrading all mail accounts to 10G. So yes, they will be offering more storage than Google. Of course, Yahoo! Mail has offered unlimited storage for a few years now. Isn’t about time that everyone removed the storage cap? Space is cheap these days.