Gmail: The Bug That Turned Email into Spam is fixed!

Google has fixed a bug with Gmail. The bug caused some of its accounts to repeatedly send email messages over and over.

The bug affected less than 2.5 percent of the Gmail users. It involved odd behavior including the repeated messages. 

The bug was resolved Thursday night, according to Google's Google Apps dashboard.

"The problem with Google Mail should be resolved," Google's tech support staff wrote. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

MrEvan, a Google employee, also added his own apologies. "Thank you again for the patience you have shown, and sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you," he wrote. "I too have friends and professional contacts and absolutely understand the value of those relationships and how it could be very frustrating to have bothered some of those folks unintentionally. While I can't take the messages back with some sort of magical Undo Send, I totally sympathize with your situation. Please understand that the Gmail Team has worked tirelessly to investigate this issue and get it solved for you. Your reports were very helpful in our investigation."

At a press conference announcing the integration of Google Voice and Gmail this week, Google executives were asked about the number of Gmail users. Executives declined to provide an exact number, although comScore numbers cited by The Wall Street Journal put the number at over 160 million, putting the maximum number of users affected by the bug at about 4 million users.

Pentagon: Computers Attacked With Flash Drive!!

A foreign spy agency pulled off the most serious breach of Pentagon computer networks ever by inserting a flash drive into a US military laptop, a top defense official said Wednesday. The previously classified incident, which took place in 2008 in the Middle East, was disclosed in a magazine article by Deputy Defense Secretary William J Lynn and released by the Pentagon Wednesday. He said a "malicious code" on the flash drive spread undetected on both classified and unclassified Pentagon systems, "establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control." "It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary," Lynn wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs. "This ... was the most significant breach of US military computers ever and it served as an important wake-up call." The Pentagon operation to counter the attack, known as Operation Buckshot Yankee, marked a turning point in US cyberdefense strategy, Lynn said. 

In November 2008, the Defense Department banned the use of the small high-tech storage devices that are used to move data from one computer to another. The ban was partially lifted early this year with the approval of limited use of the devices. Lynn did not disclose what, if any, military secrets may have been stolen in the 2008 penetration of the system, what nation orchestrated the attack, nor whether there were any other repercussions. The article went on to warn that US adversaries can threaten American military might without building stealth fighters, aircraft carriers or other expensive weapons systems. "A dozen determined computer programmers can, if they find a vulnerability to exploit, threaten the United States' global logistics network, steal its operational plans, blind its intelligence capabilities, or hinder its ability to deliver weapons on target," Lynn wrote.

"Knowing this, many militaries are developing offensive capabilities in cyberspace, and more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to break into US networks," he said.

Defense officials have said repeatedly that the military system of some 15,000 computer networks and seven million computers suffers millions of probes a day with threats coming from a range of attackers from routine hackers to foreign governments looking to steal sensitive information or bring down critical, life-sustaining systems.

Google denies testing out unmanned spy drones

Google has denied reports that it is looking to use unmanned flying spy drones to augment its Street View and Maps features in the future.

Earlier news reports claimed that Google was working with one German manufacturer, Microdrones with the latter company claiming to have sold an unmanned flying drone to Google.

Microdrones has already supplied such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to British police and special forces.

Speculation as to why Google would want to purchase and use such a device began in earnest, particularly after Microdrones' CEO Sven Juerss told German business publication Wirtschafts Woche that:

"The drones are well suited to deliver up-to-date image material for Google Maps."

Google denies drone plans

When contacted about the news, a Google rep told TechRadar that the company was, "always looking at ways to improve our mapping services," though was quick to add that, "as part of this effort we explore many different technologies but we are not using or testing this one."

The Google rep also informed us that Google currently has no current 'business relationship' with Microdrones, suggesting that the current spate of news stories was based on little more than the fact that the company has bought a single flying drone from the Germany company.

Additionally, while Google claims that it has no current plans to roll out the use of such flying photographing drones to augment Street View or Google Maps, should the company want to pursue such a plan in the future it is also likely that Google would require authorisation from the UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to ensure the use of such unmanned drones was not a threat to public health.

A CAA spokesperson told PC Pro earlier this week that: "Any systems like this would need CAA approval, particularly if it was a new system that we hadn't seen before, [as] we didn't know how safe the device was.

"The prime consideration would be over safety and if it is a system that we have already approved that would be taken into account."

"A lot would depend on the purpose. For example, a celebrity wedding might attract special attention, and the area that it planned to fly in might make a difference, but if the UAV was safe then we would consider allowing use."

You can see more about German drones manufacturer Microdrones over on its website.

Top 10 Mistakes You MUST Avoid in Blogging!

What are the top Mistakes to avoid while setting up your blog? Internet gurus can debate all day about what makes a blog so successful. Indeed, many strategies are subjective. There are, however, certain mistakes that we all agree MUST BE AVOIDED!

Instead of banging on all the time about the keys to success! I’m going to tell you how NOT to fail!

Here are the top 10 mistakes that you must avoid at all costs:

1. Having a slow-loading website

A web page shouldn’t take anymore than a few seconds to load. If people have to wait for our content to load, they will get aggravated. You definitely don’t want anyone’s first impression of your site to be agitation. Avoid this by ensuring all your images are below 100KB. (Ideally all images totalled should be under 100kb).

Sign up to Amazon S3 and get your videos hosted under cloudfront, after you’ve converted them from large file sizes down to the smallest you can manage without affecting the quality. DO NOT have a website full of flash! It’s not flashy if all your audience sees is a buffering circle – 3 seconds and they’re gone……

2. Having a sloppy, haphazard website

Everything should be organized neatly. Your layout should have easy navigation. All of your pages should be interlinked. If somebody wants to find something on your site, they should be able to do so.

Consider creating a sitemap, not only will it help your ranking in the search engines, it will guide people around your website. Ensure you have a search function and make sure there are clear calls to action, where you want people to go, how they contact you, how they get more information etc.

Sometimes when it comes to design – less is more!

3. Don’t forget to submit your site to search engines

This one seems like a no-brainer, yet a surprisingly large number of webmasters neglect doing this. Take the time to manually submit your website to Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, Lycos, etc. (I didn’t do this for months – simply because I didn’t know I had to!)

Get your site out there! It’s no good happily filling it with content if no-one’s going to read it!

4. Failing to update your site or blog every single day

At the very least, you should update three or four times a week. The more original content your website has, the better its chances of ranking high in search engines. Plus, consistent updates show dedication, which will give visitors a reason to return in the future.

Look, people want some real bang for their buck these days. The key word here is VALUE! You need to constantly be giving new, up to date, fresh content to your readers. Remember the web is incredibly competitive these days and if you’ve been really canny they’ve subscribed to your RSS and have a reader of up to date content hitting their screens daily.

Now if Mr Jones is posting new interesting stuff daily and you only come up with something new once a month, it won’t be long before your feed is canned, at the very least completely ignored! This takes work!

5. Not giving Social Networking a try

For so long I tried to ignore Facebook. I didn’t understand it and I thought it was a waste of time! Did you know that facebook has over 500 million customers and over 50% of them are active on a daily basis – that’s 250,000,000 people you could be getting your message in front of! That’s phenomenal! You Tube has 2 BILLION views a day – 24 hrs worth of video is uploaded every minute.

I mean you’d be crazy not to include these in your marketing strategies! Be as creative as possible when making videos, images, content, software, etc. Create great relationships with people and have friends and fans link your content through their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and other social bookmarking sites.

Put your videos up on YouTube and have friends give them two thumbs up! Also create a facebook fan page, it’s essential 

6. Spamming

There is no need to spam your site all over the internet. If it’s good, and you promote it properly, people will visit. Traffic will come inevitably if you know what you’re doing. Spamming your site and adding your URL in linkfarms could cause your site to be reported to your ISP and banned by all search engines!

If you think that popping onto high ranking blogs and adding a vague comment about nothing and including your link is good marketing, think again. The internet as I said in point 4, is all about value and content. You need to build trust and relationships to be truly successful.

7. Not building a list

Ok, so I’m back again to value and content, building relationships. Are you getting a common theme here? Your list is your business. It’s as simple as that. Without customers there is no business, so you MUST collect email addresses and build a list!

Having a list of customers is the key to success on the internet! You will be able to send out regular updates, newsletters, links to your blog, new videos you do, new information and….once they trust you and know that your main intention is to provide value and things that will help them, you can start to send promotional emails with your products or products you believe in, or create a membership site or run events, there are so many ways you can then go on to make money. But the key is the quality of your relationships with a customer database, in other words your list.

8. Choosing the wrong products to promote

This is very simple – DO NOT SELL RUBBISH PRODUCTS! Just because commission rates are high, or the graphics are fancy, if you start farming out complete tosh to your trusted list, you will soon lose all credibility and no-one will buy from you anymore.

Be selective and become known to only ever recommend products that you have used and proven their worth.

9. Not targeting your ads to the right demographics

I think maybe the title of this one should read, not knowing anything about your customers, because it’s not just about targetting your ads, it’s about targetting all of your marketing efforts, free or paid. Clearly not everybody is going to need what you’re promoting.

So make sure you’ve drilled down exactly who your customers are, sex, age, location, interests, desires, buying patterns, keywords etc. Then you can focus on ensuring you get your message directly under the right noses.

10. Failing to interact and network with others

This is HUGE! No man is an island. The power of collaboration is without doubt one of the most effective marketing strategies you can have. So, you must ACTIVELY promote your company. You need to post on forums, join social media communities, comment on blogs, send out press releases, and so forth.

Get to know consumers and other entrepreneurs. Treat consumers as individuals rather than just potential customers. Join in conversations and share tips with others. Join hands and do some marketing projects with other entrepreneurs in the same niche – 2 heads are always better than 1!

Avoid making these ten mistakes and I’m sure you will ultimately succeed at creating a fantastic blogs online!

Android Game Isn't Actually a Game

Another malicious application has been found from the Android Market. A game called Tap Snake isn't just a game, it turns out to be a client for a commercial spying application called GPS SPY.

The Tap Snake game looks like an average "Snake" clone. However, there are two hidden features. First, the game won't exit. Once installed, it runs in the background forever, and restarts automatically when you boot the phone. And secondly, every 15 minutes the game secretly reports the GPS location of the phone to a server.

GPS SPY is a simple mobile spying tool and only costs $4.99. When bought, the application advises you to download and install the "Tap Snake game" to the phone you want to spy on. During installation, the game is registered with a keycode to enable spying. This means that the spy has to have physical access to the phone he wants to spy on.

In many ways, GPS SPY / Tap Snake can be seen as a little brother of mobile spying tools like FlexiSPY. GPS SPY is developed by a Russian developer based in Texas, Mr. Max Lifshin ("Maxicom").

We expect Google to remove Tap Snake from Android Market soon.

As we noted above, we fully expect that Google will pull Tap Snake from the Android Market. But it's also possible that they'll once again flip Android's kill switch and it will be interesting to see if Tap Snake meets Google's kill criteria. 

Fake 'Dislike' button spreads across Facebook

Social networking website Facebook, which offers its subscribers a "like" button for anyone's updates, is now faced with a fake "dislike" button, which is spreading like a virus across the site.

The fake dislike button is followed with a link that takes people to a fake application. Instead of installing a dislike button, the application uses the person's network to continue spreading the fake program.

Graham Cluley of the British security firm Sophos wrote in a blog that the fake dislike buttons "are going viral" on Facebook.

"Watch out for posts that look like this: I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts!" CNN quoted Cluley as writing in the blog.

"If you do give the application permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts," he wrote.

A message on technology blog Mashable said: "As usual, we advise you not to click on suspicious links on Facebook, especially if they promise something that sounds impossible or unlikely. Do not give away your personal information, unless you're absolutely sure why and who you're giving it to."

Cluley said the fake dislike button is part of a recent trend of Facebook scams. "It's the latest survey scam spreading virally across Facebook, using the tried-and-tested formula used in the past by other viral scams."

Such schemes are designed to steal information from internet users. That information then can be sold to other parties. The scams are also used to affect an internet user's social network contacts.

The experts give the following advice to avoid the fake button: "If you accidentally installed the fake application, click on the 'account' button at the top right of the Facebook home screen. Navigate to the option that says 'application settings' and disable the fake 'dislike' application."

"If the application is posted to your Facebook wall, go to your profile page and delete those posts to stop the scam from spreading further."

Facebook has said it is trying to block the "dislike" button.

"We're working hard to block and remove malicious applications that claim to provide dislike functionality and inadvertently update people's statuses," a Facebook spokesman said.

"There is no official dislike button. Also, don't click on strange links, even if they are from friends, and notify the person and report the link if you see something suspicious," the statement said.

Oracle Vs Google: and The Winner is Microsoft!!!

Oracle's suit against Google has one clear winner: Microsoft. With Google's Android tied up in litigation, and Oracle becoming the latest villain in the open source community, Microsoft has a chance to make inroads in the mobile market and elsewhere.

Oracle is suing Google, claiming that Android infringes on Oracle copyrights and patents that are related to Java. Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement:

"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement."

Google begs to differ. Android doesn't use Java in Android, but instead a Java compatible technology called Dalvik. Google claims the Oracle suit is "baseless," and will fight it.

No matter what happens with the suit, though, it hurts Google, and helps Microsoft at a time when Microsoft is particularly vulnerable in mobile. Android use has skyrocketed, jumping to 17.2% market share today compared to 1.8% a year ago. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile has become practically a footnote in mobile, dropping to 5% of the market.

Android's success has been fueled by the large number of phone makers building smartphones based on it. Those phone makers, though, may be scared away by this suit. IDC analyst Al Hilwa told Computerworld:

"This is a typical intellectual property value defense lawsuit, but it can have serious consequences on the Android market and its adoption by OEMs."

Those OEMs could easily turn to Windows Phone 7 when it ships this holiday season, helping Microsoft increase its market share.

Microsoft can also be helped because Oracle will now become public enemy number one in the open source community, rather than Microsoft. This suit could mean very big trouble for the open source community, because they could be in Oracle's cross-hairs next. And unlike Google, most of the open source community doesn't have deep pockets to pay for lawyers to defend them. He writes:

"If I were Google or any other company that has shipped Java spins-offs, I'd be worried. I have a sinking feeling that patent cases, such as this one, are going to be far more troublesome for Linux and open source than any of the bogus SCO copyright claims were...This does not bode well for free and open-source software."

Via its acquisition of Sun, Oracle owns quite a bit of open source software, including MySQL and OpenOffice. Those both compete against Microsoft software. It may be that Oracle's Google suit will chase people away from using the company's open source software, and if so, it could mean an increase in market share for Microsoft.

What I personally thing is that Friday the 13th didn't turn out to be a good one for Google, but it may well be good luck for Microsoft.

Facebook reaches saturation point in Britain!

Social networking website Facebook is nearing its saturation point in Britain and its growth in the country has gone down over the past six months.

Britain, however, has the second-largest membership of Facebook in the world, at 25 million. The list is led by the US, while Indonesia and Turkey follow Britain.

Despite Facebook getting its 500 millionth user in July, the average amount of time spent on the social networking website by a Briton has decreased from 30 minutes in December 2009, to 27.36 minutes in July 2010, a study by web-analytics firm Hitwise said.

Facebook is, however, still the second most visited site in Britain, after Google, and it accounts for one in every six webpages accessed in the country.

Robin Goad, Hitwise's research director, says the figures show that Facebook is nearing its saturation point.

"Facebook's market share of page views has trebled over the last five years, but growth (in Britain) has slowed significantly over the last six months. Last month, there was a slight decline in share, but this may well be down to seasonality - the August to September back-to-school/college/university period is significant for Facebook," he said.

Google looks out to include Paypal payments for Android Apps

If you want to pick up a new app on an Android-based smartphone, you have one option with which to pay for your new purchase: Google Checkout. At least, for now—sources indicate that Google is chatting with eBay's PayPal business to bring the latter as a secondary option for smartphone-based payments.

While that doesn't necessarily help the speed of the transaction—Google Checkout is, after all, is still a fairly convenient method for purchasing applications—it does help Google attract users who, for whatever reason, have simply opted not to use Google's single payment service for their purchases.

Integrating Paypal would open up Android phones to the service's 87 million active accounts, which would surely go a long way toward increasing the propensity of a user to pick up a new application on a whim—especially if the Paypal service is integrated into the mobile operating system in a similar style to how purchases work on Apple's App Store.

"As an Android user, I'd certainly be more inclined to buy apps from the Android Market if PayPal was a payment option," writes Intomobile's Marc Flores. "Make it a one-click feature and perhaps I'll even go nuts loading my EVO 4G with new applications."

Neither Paypal nor Google are discussing the alleged talks, which may or may not lead to a finalized deal between the two companies, reports Bloomberg.

According to the research firm Gartner, Google's Android operating system is now the most popular piece of smartphone software in the United States. Sales of Android-based devices rank third of any smartphone in the world in 2010 thus far, nestled behind RIM and Symbian's respective sales of 11.2 million and 22.3 million units. Apple's iPhone sales rank fourth at 8.7 million, or a market share of 14.2 percent to Android's 17.2 percent.

It's quite a turnaround from this same time period one year ago, when Apple commanded 13 percent of the market to Android's 1.8, and Symbian carried the majority market share at 51 percent. Microsoft's Windows mobile phones continue to lag with only 3 million units sold in 2010, a market share of a paltry 5 percent (itself, a decrease from 2009's 9.3 percent)

I think that if such a move is true from Google's side, it could make the Android a popular one!

Android: Is Google Voice Actions before the time???

Google Voice actions is a “cool” new feature for Android (Froyo 2.2). With this new feature you are able to tell your phone what to do, with just your voice. How about some of these examples:

1) “send text to bob hey are you coming for lunch or what?”
2) “note to self don’t forget our anniversary”
3) “listen to bob marley”
4) “call the hot tub factory”

Pretty cool stuff — everything just works the way you would expect. Kind of. The feature is awesome, but after all is said and done, I think there may still be a few issues that need to be worked out before people can effectively make use of this.

The biggest problem with things like this is that people don’t know how to talk to computers yet. What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at a similar problem, searching the web, you will notice that talking to a search engine and your buddy across the cubicle wall is completely different.

In real life, the more detailed your question is, the better your answer is. But when talking to a computer, the more detailed your question is, the worse you answer is — people have learned how to use keywords to get the best results.

The same is true with voice actions — when talking to a human, the more detailed your “command” is, the better your results. If you make any kind of detailed call to action for a computer, you will get worse than bad results. The problem is that people don’t know how to effectively use keywords in every day speech.

When a user attempts to use a keyword, they end up having to think — people get frustrated when they have to think when they speak. Speaking is supposed to be effortless — and if the recipient of a message doesn’t understand, it’s job is to clarify. Currently, there is no “clarify” option when talking to your phone, and therefore, it’s really tough to formulate an accurate command on the fly, until you have practiced a lot.

So, if practice makes it workable, then why is that an issue? People lose interest when it’s easy to fail — and right now, it’s really easy to fail. This feature isn’t much different from other stuff already on the market, but hopefully in later versions, I will be able to say stuff like:

1) “uh, can you get collin on the line?”
2) “send a text to uhh… tony that says i’m… umm… out of the office and…. …. … not to bother trying to call me until tomorrow”
3) “what’s that band playing at GM Place… err, I mean the cube tonight?”

People don’t formulate perfect sentences when they speak naturally — but computers currently expect it. I’ll be interested to see what this type of technology works like in 5 years — but as of right now, I dont’ care for it. I used it once, and it failed — I’m done.

Oracle sues Google over Android!

Oracle Corp sued Google Inc, alleging patent and copyright infringement in the development of the popular Android smartphone software.

The suit, filed on Thursday in California federal court, claims that Google "knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property" in developing Android, Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement. "This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies."

Oracle acquired Java through its $ 5.6 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier this year. Analysts said the suit against Google could signal that Oracle intends to be more aggressive in seeking licensees for Java, a technology that is used in many types of Internet-based products.

Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison has said he views the Java software as a key asset, pointing to its use in a variety of electronic devices, from PCs to DVD players.

"Sun's corporate philosophy was obviously very different from Oracle's in terms of enforcing the Java patents," said Edward Reines, an IP litigator at Weil Gotshall who is involved in separate patent litigation against Oracle.

A Google spokesman said he could not comment on the lawsuit as the company had not had a chance to review it yet.

Analysts say Google's Android operating system uses portions of Java technology.

About 200,000 smartphones and other devices based on the Android operating system are sold each day, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said at an August 4 conference.

The case is Oracle of America Inc v Google Inc, in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Orkut changes it's appearance!

Since past couple of weeks Orkut is undergoing minor changes whcih people didn't much notice. But, finally they made it visible to all the users. The Orkut face has changed! They have introduced new appearance to Orkut. They changed the layout to an extend and added an easy access for your favorite application. 

Now you can choose to send a private scrap to a friend. On the new orkut, before posting a scrap, just change its visibility to "private", and that scrap will remain visible only to you and the person receiving the scrap, so it stays completely secret. 

Orkut has made it absolutely clear who else can see the content you’re looking at on orkut. Every scrap (as well as photos, videos, etc) will now have a privacy label, so you can easily tell who else can see it. These are exactly the same as the privacy levels that we already had on photos: private, friends and public. 

Orkut has become a secure place than before. Here you can have a private conversation with your friend via scrap and noone is gonna peep into that. 

I am relaxed now as I don't worry about my private scraps being expossed to whole the world!

Gmail makes changes to it account!

Google has made some updates to the Gmail experience with a heavy focus on contacts. The company says that out of all of the feedback it gets about Gmail, most of it is about improving the contacts experience. 


New contacts features include:


Keyboard shortcuts (go to Contacts and hit "?" for the full list)
Sort by last name (look under "More actions")
Custom labels for phone numbers and other fields
The ability to undo changes you've just made
Automatic saving
Structured name fields, so you can adjust titles, suffixes, and other name components
A bigger, more prominent notes field
In addition to these, Google has slightly altered the look of Gmail. Mail, Contacts, and Tasks links have been moved to the top left. Compose Mail is now a button rather than a link. A smaller header area puts the first message in your inbox higher on the screen. Finally, the select all, none, read, unread, and starred links that used to be above messages are now in a drop-down menu, next to the archive button. 


The features has been rolled out in everyone's account. The company also says that Google Apps users will have to wait because they're working on making domain-specific features work well with the new interface. The company seems to be paying more attention to the security piece as well. The users are asked to verify their alternate email account and the phone number to overcome several attempts to hack the Google account across the globe.


I am excited to see the new changes. It looks like my favorite Gmail would become my favorite email account for ever! :)

Facebook Bug: Decreases the Fan Counts!

Over the past few days many Facebook Page administrators have noticed their fan counts decreasing. If you’ve seen this happen, you are not alone. Facebook does not response on the issue, which means there is probably a bug which needs to be fixed. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any clarifications from Facebook, but don’t worry as many other people have noticed similar issues.

We watched our Facebook Page increasing in popularity earlier this week, however starting three days ago, the number of fans we have has decreased by over 400. Initially I thought that there had been a temporary surge in fans which was followed by a random mass “unfanning”, something that has never happen before. Even the top Facebook Pages, like Michael Jackson, have seen their fans decreasing.

So what on earth is going on? We have no idea to be honest but rather than not posting about the issue, we’ve decided to make it known that this issue appears to be happening to the vast majority of Facebook Pages. Don’t worry though, your fans should all be intact. We’ll definitely be sure to update this Page once we receive any information from Facebook, who has so far been quiet about the problem.

Facebook addresses this issue with the following statement: “There was a bug that caused an accounting error for the number of people who like a Page. We are working hard to fix this bug and restore the counts as quickly as possible. No fans or data was lost, and news feed distribution has not been affected.”

Google Docs Incorporates New File Conversion Feature

Google has announced a new file conversion feature in Google Docs that lets you convert files that are already uploaded to your document list into a Google Docs format, as opposed to only being able to do so upon upload.


For example, you can convert PDFs to text using Google's Optical Character Recogniton technology. Files that can be converted include:


For spreadsheets: .xls, .xlsx, .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tsb
For documents: .doc, .docx, .html, plain text (.txt), .rtf
For presentations: .ppt, .pps
For OCR: .jpg, .gif, .png, .pdf
To use the feature, simply right click on the file and click "make a Google Docs copy". 

Google Wave: A sad end!

Google’s Wave was never very popular among its users – we have friends that have used it only a couple of times since they got the invitation. There was a time that the invitations of the Google Wave service were sold on eBay.


For those who have been left puzzled by above discussion of the Wave, Google Wave is an online software application formerly developed by Google. It was described as “a new web application for real-time communication and collaboration”


It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking, automated translation among 40 languages, and numerous other extensions (Google invested quite a lot on this one!). Initially released only to developers, a preview release of Google Wave was extended to 100,000 users in September 2009, each allowed to invite additional users. Google accepted most requests submitted starting the 29th of November 2009. On May 19, 2010, Google Wave was released to the general public to engage and enjoy.


There was huge internal excitement about the possibilities that the platform had to offer (well has to be only for them), but because of the lack of response from the users the company has decided to stop the service. Although Google would continue to support the product until at least the end of this year, and would enable the technology that underpinned Wave to be used in other Google projects, and by third-party developers but beyond that there is hardly anything that the company has to say about the future of the platform. Google has said that it would develop a tool to help existing Wave users to “liberate” any content they had archived in Wave so it could be saved elsewhere. Although many in the technology industry had long believed Google Wave was underperforming, the news that Google was ending support for one of its most innovative new products came as a surprise to most.


Exactly what made the Google Wave a pain in the neck rather than a comforting tool for its users? Why did such a huge Google venture not earn rewards? Well we’ll have to say it was the lack of means of monitoring waves. This was Google Wave’s biggest weakness.  I don’t get an email, Gtalk alert, or any other notification in the communication systems I already use today when there is new activity in a wave.  I’d love an RSS feed of the waves I want to keep an eye on. Unfortunately, this was never an option.If the Wave could have allowed it's users to send mails to other email addresses, it could have been a success and a tough competition in the current email market.


Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, played down the significance of the Wave announcement. “Our policy is, we try things,We celebrate our failures. This is a company where it is absolutely OK to try something that is very hard, have it not be successful, take the learning and apply it to something new.”


Well, Mr. Eric Schmidt had one thing deeply mistaken and that was the pain that he puts his users in while creating all that mess. Why create something that won’t work when you have so many people dependent on you for their work, huh?


But I personally believe that Google Wave can come up again. The idea behind the Wave is amazing. It's definetly a future technology that you all gonna see! :)

Five Reasons Why Android Will Beat iPhone and BlackBerry

While many iPhone users are reporting high satisfaction, it doesn't matter for the long term. The Android platform will crush all other smartphones in both its sheer number of users and vendors.

Neither Apple nor RIM will give up without a fight, but the writing is on the wall for business owners who don't want to be saddled with the 2013 version of the Sony Betamax. RIM is already facing big challenges from the countries like India and S Arabia.

1. Android Rules the Market by Numbers

Sure, Google CEO Eric Schmidt self-servingly told Reuters that 200,000 Android handsets were selling every day--but third-party surveys also routinely show that the platform's momentum is steadily increasing. Thirty-three percent of smartphones sold from April to June were Android handsets, and the system is outstripping RIM (at 28 percent) and iPhone (22 percent), according to the NPD Group. In other words, the American people are voting with their wallets and choosing Android handsets.

2. More Selection and Promotions

The top five Android phones--Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC EVO 4G, HTC Hero, and HTC Droid Eris--have numerous carriers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, according to NPD. Because of the competition among carriers, promotions like Verizon's buy-one, get-one-free, and cut-rate prices will continue to play a significant role in the Android market. For a company having to buy a dozen or more smartphones, this means some serious savings.

3. More Room for Variety and Ideas

While iPhone applications are well-touted, many of Android's apps come straight from Google's gifted engineers, such as Google Goggles, which has image recognition software that can retrieve walking tours or menus. But its apps aren't limited to engineers. Google also developed the open-source App Inventor that allows anyone to create an application for Android. Scary? Perhaps, but the system is definitely open to new ideas--perhaps even one your business can create.

4. Android Is the Innovator

Since Android was developed by Google, many believe that it has a little more tech credibility than other operating systems, but that shouldn't be the only reason to buy an Android smartphone. The idea should be that Android is still relatively new and has some maturing and growing to do before it reaches its apex. Android is still not like the iPhone's walled garden, but it's becoming more functional and user-friendly.

5. Android 2.2 Froyo: A Gift to Your IT Department

No more worries about syncing with Microsoft Exchange, because it's all been ironed out with Android 2.2. The system's new security features, such as remote wipe for administrators, lock-screen timeouts, and minimum password settings, will put critics of previous Android handsets at ease.

While not everyone will love the Android platform, it will soon become the country's mobile OS of choice. You can either choose to embrace it or be prepared to defend why you're holding onto its less popular rival.