Google released an interesting new web site dedicated to promote their environment friendly technologies: The Story of Send. According to the site, magic happens through sophisticated and ultra secure data centers, with the help of overweight engineers :)
Site tells the whole story around sending and receiving emails with Google’s mailing service, Gmail. There a lot of videos and pictures embedded throughout the neatly designed web site. Especially how they shred the hard drives that have fulfilled their mission in the data center is quite interesting, don’t miss it.
What really attracted my attention while watching the videos, almost all of the staff shown on them are obese, or overweight at best. Google pays well, apparently :)
Obesity is a serious health issue and I believe companies like Google should care about the overall health of their staff, as much as they do for the environment. I suggest Google management team to Google for “obesity“, as a start :)
According to the Next Web, Google is about to launch a third-party commenting system that is very similar what’s been offered by Facebook.
Obviously, this is not a surprise. But, it is also probably the most important update for the company since their “Social Search” implementation.
With on-by-default social search, Google literally forced site owners to create Google+ profiles for their businesses and for themselves. And, since Google highly values “+1″ interactions on both its search engine and third-party sites, this new feature gets late adapting webmasters attention to optimize for Google+ and adopt +1s, too.
Because Google is still dwarfing all the competition, I believe the soon to be released third-party commenting system of the company will also be welcomed with mass adoption rates. Comments will be indexed by Google, most probably with their +1 values, and this will bring the SEO power on the most powerful search engine of all times.
Unless Google somehow manages to ridicule itself, no one will miss this.
Looks like Google has won their data liberation slapfight with Facebook at last. When I was checking my Facebook settings to see if there is something related to new messaging system, I found something more interesting: there is now an option to download your user data from Facebook, which includes all your data (updates, photos, posts etc.) as well as your friend list!
Facebook still says that “Your download is currently being generated. You will receive an email when it’s ready”, I will inform you once i got their zip.
Update: Downloaded the zip file generated by Facebook. Unzipping it produced a directory tree containing HTML files and hotlinked stuff in separate directories. When you browse your friend list using the sidebar navigation at “index.html”, you only see your friends names, without any other information about them, no emails! Also, no email’s in the “friends.html” page code either.
After two weeks waiting, I’ve received my Google Wave invitation today. Wave had generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks and, what I understand from what I read/listen/watch about it, almost everybody have the same impression; Google Wave will blow! Well, either in a good or a bad way :)
Anyway, my account came with 20 invitations. Please leave a comment to this post if you are looking for an invitation. You don’t need to publish your email address at your comments body, I’ll send the invitation to the email address you filled in the comments form. Invitations will be send first come, first serve basis.
And, please don’t forget to come back and tell your first impressions about the Google Wave, I’d love to hear what yo think.
UPDATE: All gone, no invitations left, sorry. Please don’t post anymore requests!
Also, note that Google Wave’s invitation system is more like “nominating you for an invite” than “directly issuing you an invitation”. Since I “nominated” you for an invitation, it’ll take some time before you actually receive an invitation.
Here is what’s been told on my invitation Wave;
Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times.
Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.
I’ll let you know if I receive more invitations. You can subscribe to my feed, or follow me on Twitter (@alikuru) for updates.
Opera is definitely the best browser for Windows Mobile and, because it comes preinstalled on most PDAs, it’s quite popular. According to Gizmodo, soon to be released 9.7 version of Opera Mobile will have long awaited Flash. It will also support Google Gears, which allow Windows Mobile users to enjoy offline versions of Google applications like Gmail and Google Calendar.
Opera Mobile will have an option for connecting Opera Turbo, the content compression service used in Opera Mini, which does a lot to reduce downloading times for a small sacrifice in image quality.
I’m happy to hear that it will support Flash and Gears, but I don’t think I will ever interest in Opera Turbo. It’s sounding like having a constant “men in the middle” :)
Enjoy the video demonstration of Opera Turbo below.
I have all of the main browsers installed on my computer(s), including Google’s Chrome (dev channel, v2.0.169.0). Nowadays, I’m trying to create a new theme for this blog, and I was using Chrome only to see how my design is performing on it.
Although I hated the installer and its registering of Google Update both as a service and as a timed job, I liked the Chrome’s look since its first release. I’m a long time Firefox user and I usually spend 5 to 7 hours in front of it every day. Yesterday, I’ve decided to give it a chance and switched to Chrome and ditched the loving Firefox for a day. I did my usual browsing including some standard emailing, roaming, searching, reading my RSS subscriptions, banking and I remotely accessed to my lab PC via LogMeIn. Also, I’ve browsed our internal FTP server for updates.
Apparently, Google Calendar has an offline mode just like Gmail. Although I didn’t like the way Gmail handles your offline data, since it dumps every mail and attachments’ to your hard disk in an un-encrypted fashion, I like the idea of always accessible Google Calendar.
As always, you’ll need Google Gears to be installed in the first place.
Google released an application called My Tracks for its mobile platform, Android. It simply record tracks of your outdoor activities via built-in GPS functionality. The application is also allowing you to share your activities with the rest of the world via Google Maps, and build a history via Google Docs. Best part is; according to FAQ, you don’t need a data or cell connection while recording your track;
A cell signal or data connection is not required to record GPS tracks. However, if there is no data connection, you will not be able to see satellite imagery or a map. Instead, you will see a grey screen or partial map. Tracks, represented as simple lines, can still be recorded even if there is no data connection.
I hope this application will be available to other platforms soon. The only similar thing I’ve been able to found for Windows Mobile platform was MyMotion, which is able to use downloaded maps (from Google Maps) offline. Never tried it after I’ve read that it is problematic in HTC Touch Diamond though.
I love Gmail, it simply gets more useful every day.
If you have Labs enabled in your Gmail account, you can now display your location information at your signature. You’ll probably find this useful if you are a frequent traveler.
First, you have to enable the “Location in Signature” feature in Labs, and then you have to enable signatures under settings and check the box in front of the “Append your location to the signature” option. After these steps, Gmail will use your public IP to locate where you are.
It says on the Gmail blog that using Google Gears with location module brings more accurate results with Wi-Fi triangulation.
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After two weeks waiting, I’ve received my 
I have all of the main browsers installed on my computer(s), including Google’s 
