Posts Tagged ‘Google’
If you've taken the leap and hosted your domain email with Google Apps, no doubt you've noticed that you miss out on services that regular Gmail accounts get: like Google Reader, Voice, Wave, Analytics, and right now, Buzz.
After complaining about the disparities on a recent episode of This Week in Google, a helpful Googler unofficially got in touch to clarify and confirm the problem. Let's call her/him "Helpful McGoogler." Here's what HM said.
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Google says it's taking "a new approach to China" and will stop censoring search results there, even if it means they have to shut down Google.cn and their China offices. The announcement is a huge deal, and it set off some fantastic insta-commentary from tech writers on Twitter. My favorite, shown above, is courtesy of Joel Johnson. More inside.
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Update Your Google Account Password Recovery Options · Now that you're auditing your online account security, log into your Google account(s) and visit the Account Recovery Options page. Here you can update your secret question and answer, your secondary email address, and even associate your mobile phone number with your account so you can get a password recovery code via text message. (Just a tip: don't set your Google Voice number as the phone number or automatically forward mail from your secondary email accounts to your Gmail account--if you do, in the event that you lose your password, the recovery process won't work.) · December 19th, 2009, 3 comments
Year-End To-do: Audit Your Email Account Security · Two stories of online account break-ins this week: First, Twitter.com got redirected to an Iranian hacker page because attackers were able to get into the email account registered with their site DNS service. Second, savvy blogger Amit Agarwal's Gmail and Google Apps accounts were taken over because the attacker got access to Amit's secondary email address and sent a password change request there to get into the accounts. Do yourself a favor: Before 2010 is upon us, do a quick audit of all your most important accounts. Make sure your passwords are strong and remember: Never use inactive webmail as your secondary email account. · December 19th, 2009
This past year was a watershed moment for the real-time web, cloud computing, and mobile application development, thanks in large part to Google. This morning over at Lifehacker, I rounded up the biggest Google product releases and updates of 2009.
I may co-host a weekly podcast dedicated to Google news, but seeing the amount of mind-bending stuff Google released this year in one place still blew my mind.
While Google's three biggest launches of the year--Wave, Chromium OS, and Droid/Android 2.0--are still very much developer/early-adopter-only, their impact will resonate through the next ten years on the web (even if they don't stick around in their current forms). For more on Google app updates, acquisitions, legal battles, and a complete timeline of what came out when this year, check it out: This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition.
Just found out about a neat Google Easter Egg for the New Year: on the Google homepage, click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button with nothing in the search box, to see a live countdown of seconds left in 2009. They should have linked the seconds number to a "seconds in days" calculator search to let people know what it is. Time marches on. Thanks, Nom de Guerre!
Bruce Schneier’s Answer to Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Privacy · "...if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable." This is what you say in response to "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." (via) · December 9th, 2009, 6 comments
Chrome Beta for Mac/Linux Released · Today Google finally releases a beta of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux. I've been using a Chromium build on my Mac for awhile now, and while it's faster than Firefox on the Mac, it's not nearly as fast and stable as the Windows version of Chrome. Also, without Google Gears for Mac OS X 10.6, Chrome and Google webapps are even less useful on the Mac. While I was on the road with my MacBook over the last few weeks, I found myself missing my desktop PC back at home only because of the more-stable Chrome and Gears availability. Will Gears for 10.6 will ever come out, since they're phasing it out in favor of HTML5? With features that depend on Gears like offline Gmail coming out of Labs, you'd think so. · December 8th, 2009
Right now, Android is the phone OS you want only if your whole life is already tied up in your Google account. All of Android's can't-get-this-anywhere-else applications are made by Google. Android's Gmail client, Google Voice, Google Goggles, Google Maps, and even Google Sky and Google Listen are Android applications that either have no exact parallel on other platforms like the iPhone, or do things that their counterparts on other platforms can't match. Let's break this down.
Android's Gmail client is one of the two primary reasons why I went Android. If you live in Gmail in the browser, you'll swear by the fact that the Android Gmail client supports threaded conversations, labels, muting conversations, marking as spam--all the advanced Gmail goodness you get in the native webapp. The second primary app I use Android for is Google Voice. Being able to text via Google Voice for free as if it were the phone's native SMS application and get voicemail transcription in-app is awesome.* Beyond the Gmail/Google Voice two-punch, Google Maps gets updates on Android faster than on the iPhone or anywhere else, like turn-by-turn directions and What's Nearby. Finally, the brand new Google Goggles app looks like a search application I will use as often as search-by-voice.
The question is: where are the standout, can't-get-this-anywhere-else THIRD-PARTY Android apps?
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Google: “Faces are objects that can be recognized” · Now that you can point your cameraphone at an object and get Google search results back about that image, what about photographing a stranger and getting Google results back for his or her name? With facial recognition in Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, that doesn't seem far-fetched. Today Google confirmed that the search engine could recognize faces based on photos, but they decided not to enable that functionality until they "work through issues of user privacy." (These quotes may not be exact; pulled from Danny Sullivan's liveblog of Google’s Web Search “Evolution” Event today.) · December 7th, 2009
Today Google releases a new search-by-picture Android application called Google Goggles. You point your cameraphone at a product, landmark, logo, book or DVD, business card, or storefront, take a photo, and Goggles returns search results related to that photo. While I love the idea of the app, in practice Goggles is pretty slow to analyze a photo and return results, at least on my G1--and the results are hit-or-miss. I snapped photos of an Xbox 360 controller, a copy of Moby Dick, a bottle of Mucinex and a box of Sudafed (hey, I'm sick today). Goggles turned up information about Moby Dick and Sudafed instantly, but choked on the Xbox controller and the Mucinex. Download Goggles for free by searching for it in the Android Market, or check out the explainer video about Goggles here.
Yesterday on This Week in Google while I was complaining that Google's acquisition of EtherPad should have been handled much more gracefully--by, you know, notifying EtherPad users before they shut down the service--EtherPad was doing an about-face. The collaborative text editor service will now stay online and open for new pads "at least" until the creators open-source the code, to ensure "no or minimal service disruption in the future." This is exactly what they should have done in the first place.
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Testing Chromium OS · Finally got to try out the developer version of Google Chrome OS (Chromium OS) on my Asus Eee PC today. Booting from a USB drive is a much faster experience than running it in a virtual machine, but you've got to have the right hardware to do that. Over at Lifehacker yesterday, I ran down the two main ways to try out Chromium OS and what you need to have and know before you start. Here's The Human's Guide to Running Google Chrome OS. · December 4th, 2009, 3 comments
Configure Google Apps For Your Domain · There's always lots of interest in posts about Google Apps, a lesser-known way to put Google services behind your domain name. This morning at Lifehacker I ran down some of the most important Google Apps settings, and how to do things like map multiple domains to one account, create users and groups, and configure your catch-all domain email address. Here's more on how to Trick Out Google Apps for Your Domain. · October 28th, 2009, 2 comments
Google's inviting 100,000 people to the Google Wave beta today, which means Twitter is already awash in people asking about and begging for entry (hello, trending topic). For what it's worth, my sources tell me invites won't go out until later in the day U.S. time--remember the Wave team is in Australia. Update: There's no source link, but the Twitter trend explainer in Brizzly says re: Google Wave:
Google has announced that it will be sending out more than 100,000 invites to Google Wave. Each of those 100,000 invites will come with 8 invites to invite other people. The release time for these invitations (originally 16:00 GMT) has been moved back to "late in the day US time on Sept 30".
In the meantime, you can sate your Wave curiosity without an invite. Check out my in-depth high-res screenshot tour of Wave over at Lifehacker this morning. Like I said in the post, Wave is only as useful as the people who are in it, so if you get an invitation and the privilege of giving out invitations, do use them very wisely. For background, see also my previous Wave posts: The Google Wave Highlight reel, and Google Wave Q&A.
Google Wave First Look [Lifehacker]
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