Archive for the 'News' Category

Will Gmail’s Priority Inbox Work?

| Posted Sep 5th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Google has a new Gmail feature to help those of us suffering from e-mail overload – Priority Inbox.

The idea is relatively simple. The Priority Inbox component watches your e-mail, what you read and reply to, what you delete and other signals and tries to ‘learn’ what you consider important. It then separates your Inbox into 3 sections: Important (at the top naturally), the Starred items, and Everything Else.

Requisite cute video:

So will it work? Read the rest of this entry »

Do We Treat Computers Like People? Research Says Yes

| Posted Sep 2nd, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

The Man Who Lied to his LaptopAs it turns out, we have much deeper ‘relationships’ with our computers and other gadgets (think cars) than we think we do. Stanford professor, Clifford Nass, has done the research and even written a book (The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships) on the subject.

We treat computers and other devices like people: we empathize with them, argue with them, and form bonds with them. We even lie to them to protect their feelings.

From an article he wrote in the WSJ:

After being tutored by a computer, half of the participants were asked about the computer’s performance by the computer itself and the other half were asked by an identical computer across the room. Remarkably, the participants gave significantly more positive responses to the computer that asked about itself than they did to the computer across the room. These weren’t overly sensitive people: They were graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering, all of whom insisted that they would never be polite to a computer.

Make Phone Calls from Gmail

| Posted Aug 30th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Guess where you can now make a phone call from? Gmail. Yes, Gmail. If you’ve been using video chat already, then you are already set up for making calls. If not, you’ll have to take a minute or two to install a plugin.

Gmail Phonecalls

Until the end of the year, calls to the US and Canada are free, and calls to other countries start at $0.02 per minute. Naturally, we have to mention Skype as they’re a direct competitor, and Google’s rates are surprisingly low and beat Skype’s.

The Icons of the Web sized by Traffic

| Posted Aug 26th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Security company Nmap, decided to toy with one of their scripts which pulls back favicons from websites and turn it into a map of all the icons it found in the top million. Surprisingly, only about 328k were found. What was more interesting was how they arrange it into a huge image with the size of each site’s icon drawn proportional to its traffic.

nmap's Favicons of the Web

via NYTimes

Google Ups the Search Ante With Live As-You-Type Search Results

| Posted Aug 23rd, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Google is testing out ‘live as-you-type search results’. At least that’s what I’m calling it. Google calls it ’streaming’. So far, this is not available to everyone, nor is it clear that it will be. Although with such a bells-and-whistles type feature, it’s hard not to see it becoming standard.

Take a look at the video captured by blogger Rob Ousbey. Better yet, check out the HD version.

via GoogleSystem blog

The Social Web gets its own set of movie trailers

| Posted Aug 13th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

We all really relate to movies, don’t we? We jump to see movie-versions of books and compelling news stories. Well how about a movie version of the origins of Facebook? Well, that’s actually coming to a movie theater near you this Fall. It’s called “The Social Network“. The trailer is after the jump.

But not to be left out, some other aspiring, comedic filmmakers have put out their own versions of ‘trailers’ for movies about YouTube and now Twitter!

Read the rest of this entry »

What went wrong at Yahoo?

| Posted Aug 12th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Paul Graham writes about what he felt went wrong at Yahoo. He has first-hand experience – his company, Viaweb, was bought by Yahoo and he worked there for a while.

Read the rest of this entry »

People Using Google Increasingly for Health Info

| Posted Aug 10th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Google’ing is definitely becoming a bigger part of everyone’s lives. Just take this story on the Google Blog about people using the search engine to find health information.

I particularly love the first one about the woman and her father who googled (is it a common verb now?) how to deliver a baby. And did!

Are Google and Verizon still getting together to speed Google’s traffic to Verizon customers?

| Posted Aug 9th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

After last week’s New York Times story about Google and Verizon getting into bed to (presumably) discuss flaunting the net neutrality convention, Google was quick to respond that they were doing no such thing. Verizon and Google then quickly followed that up with a press conference today to further repudiate the claim and have also published a joint policy proposal backing an ‘open Internet’. This proposal even includes enforceable prohibition of traffic favoritism.

Now, what they’re saying quietly is that wireless and wired will get separate treatment. In a related op-ed piece, Robert Cringely thinks that while Google and Verizon may be publicly backing net neutrality, they may still be getting together to help each other out, possibly with data centers in shipping containers plopped right down next to Verizon data centers and major Internet access points. Sounds crazy, but isn’t.

Who to believe? Time will tell. Us little end-consumer folks can only hope it works out well for us.

Google now offers simultaneous multiple account sign-in

| Posted Aug 8th, 2010 by Khalid Hosein [e-mail, website]

Another one of those ‘at last’ features: Google now has a multiple account sign-in feature, so you don’t need to use a different browser or logout-and-login in order to check a different Google account.

For now, this feature only works with a select few G-services, but they include Gmail, Calendar, Reader & Voice.

To use, just head over to your Google Account settings and edit the Multiple Sign-In option.

Google Multiple=

Be careful though with this feature – it’s not exactly trivial, so you’ll want to read the help on it. By the way, if you’d rather not use this, there’s a neat Greasemonkey Script called Google Account Multi-Login that works  similarly.