Some Gmail users are finding a new link in their Gmail interface, for a new beta Gmail service, in which Gmail sorts your email for you, prioritizing it based on which email it thinks you will consider important and "everything else". The service, called Gmail Priority Inbox, determines which email messages you are likely to find most important, as determined by your previous handling of such messages (based on things like who the email is from, whether you usually open email that's from them, and if you typically reply to it after opening it), and puts them into an "Important inbox". Here is more information, as well as the information to undo Priority Inbox (i.e. remove Priority Inbox or deactivate Priority Inbox) if you decide that you don't like it.
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Articles on GoogleSome Gmail users are finding a new link in their Gmail interface, for a new beta Gmail service, in which Gmail sorts your email for you, prioritizing it based on which email it thinks you will consider important and "everything else". The service, called Gmail Priority Inbox, determines which email messages you are likely to find most important, as determined by your previous handling of such messages (based on things like who the email is from, whether you usually open email that's from them, and if you typically reply to it after opening it), and puts them into an "Important inbox". Here is more information, as well as the information to undo Priority Inbox (i.e. remove Priority Inbox or deactivate Priority Inbox) if you decide that you don't like it. We have Google mail, , Google chat, Google phone, and even Google TV - and now...Google films? Yes, it's true - in a direct head-to-head, Google is taking on giants Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes, with its new Google video rental service. Technically, it's actually YouTube movie rentals (also known as YouTube Pay Content), as the new Google 'pay per view' video rental service through which you stream the movies 'on demand' is through their YouTube property. In fact, it's already up and running. If you use Gmail, you may have noticed something new in the past day or so. When you logged into Gmail yesterday or today, you may have seen a little notice that said "Make Phone Calls from Gmail". This is a new feature that Google has added to their 'Google Voice' service: making telephone calls, over the Internet, directly from Gmail. Tech news and forums this week have been overrun by chatter about the legislative proposal for net neutrality that Verizon and Google jointly released on Monday. The proposal, which both Google and Verizon posted to their blogs at 1:38 p.m. EST and 1:47 p.m. EST, respectively, was, they say, intended to spark discussion, and spark discussion it did. If your head is spinning with this week's discussions of network neutrality, wireline, wireless, a private Internet, and "differentiated online services", read on. In case you aren't familiar with the sarcastic service, "Let Me Google That For You", let us tell you about it. Let Me Google That For You (or LMGTFY, for short) is your way to respond to every dumb question that others ask you where your first thought is (and your immediate response would be, if you were less polite) "Why are you asking me? Why don't you just Google it for yourself?" Here's how it works. Does it seem to you as if Google spies on where you've been on the web, showing you Google ads (you know, those "Ads by Google") that are based on where you've just been, instead of where you are now? Are you starting to feel as if Google is evil, despite their "do no evil" mantra, using some sort of special Google spyware to show you Google advertising based on your travels across the Internet? Do you feel as if Google is following you around the web? Well, you're not far off. Google is following you around, in the form of a cookie that they have trailing you. A cookie that tells Google where you've been, and Google then chooses which Google ads to show you based on that information. Most commonly, you will see ads advertising something in which you showed an interest previously, on another site, in an effort to rekindle your interest and induce you to buy. This is known as "retargeting". You can opt out of this Google privacy invasion, which Google calls "interest-based advertising", but you have to know how. You win some, you lose some. Put Google Wave in the latter category. Today Google announced that it was officially pulling the plug on Google Wave, its wiki-like service that was created to offer "real time communication and collaboration" to the masses. For most of the last seven years, Google Adsense Publishers (i.e. people with websites which have "Ads by Google" on them) have been in the dark as to what the revenue share between Google and them has been. Oh sure, we all know we can make money with Adsense clicks (read here to learn how to make money with Google Adsense) but Google was famously secretive about what the actual Adsense revenues split was. Was the Adsense earning split 50/50? 60/40? 80/20? 95/5? Nobody knew what the Adsense profits formula was, except some folks on the Google end of the equation. Now Google has revealed the big Adsense secret. Google news has started mining Twitter to flesh out their latest news headline results, including displaying your tweets as "latest news" mixed in with the news headlines, in a rolling marquee that does an auto-refresh much like a Facebook page does. A perfect, albeit sad, example is today's news that actor Andrew Koenig - son of Walter Koenig, who played Checkov in the original Star Trek - was found dead of an apparent suicide, in a park in Vancouver. As thousands tweeted about the sad event, their tweets started showing up in Google News along with news headlines about Koenig. In an Internet law ruling that is not only the first of its kind, but that may have wide implications - indeed worldwide implications - for Internet law, privacy law, and Google and any other sites that host images, three Google executives have been sentenced to 6 months in prison by an Italian court, over the public posting of a video of a disabled boy with Downs syndrome being subjected to bullying by four bullies, in Turin, Italy. The three convicted Google executives are Google Privacy Director Peter Fleischer, Senior VP David Carl Drummond (formerly director of Google Italy), and George De Los Reyes, a retired Google financial executive. As Google threatens to pull completely out of China, following allegations that the hack attacks against Google, code named "Operation Aurora" and first disclosed by Google last month, originated at two Chinese universities with strong governmental ties, the Chinese government is trying their own brand of shaping the Internet - by encouraging its citizens to send "red text messages", also being referred to as "red snippets" and even "red jokes" (although they are not jokes). The Chinese term actually translates as "Red Duan" - 'duan' relating to measurement, such as a piece or stretch of time - in other words, a red era. According to authorities in China, the red text message - or red snippet - is intended to facilitate "the spirit of Chinese culture for an Internet age" and to combat the invasion of American culture. In the meantime, Google contemplates pulling out of China altogether after their discoveries in the wake of the Operation Aurora hacks, unless China agrees to allowing uncensored search. Google, Apple and Yahoo (as well as Oracle and Applied Materials) this week prevailed against a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request that was seeking to require them to share their workforce data as it relates to race and gender. Under the Freedom of Information Act request, the San Jose Mercury News newspaper wanted to know what percentage of Apple's, Google's, and Yahoo's workforce was African American, what percentage was Hispanic, Asian, caucasion, etc., and what percentage were women. Apple, Google and Yahoo, and Oracle and Applied Materials, claimed that these details were trade secrets, and that their businesses would be negatively impacted if they were forced to reveal this information. If you haven't visited your Gmail settings in your Gmail account for a while, then you may have missed the fact that you can now apply Gmail themes to your Google gmail email account! Instead of that plain old default theme, you can have zen stones, a sunset on the beach, or glorious mountain views - and many, many more themes, all available at the touch of a mouse-click! Google Buzz hit the world this week, but just what the heck is Google Buzz, how do you use Google Buzz, and why should you care? Google Buzz is yet one more social networking service plus social network aggregator. Imagine Facebook if Facebook also republished all of your public Google stuff - your Google Chat stream, your Picasa Links, etc.. Now imagine that you can also add your Twitter feed to that stream, and even add the RSS feeds for some websites that are under your control. That's Google Buzz. It's true - Google is developing the Google Translation Phone. In fact, even though it is, by all accounts, two years off, the world is abuzz (we can no longer say aTwitter without risking a copyright complaint, can we?) with news of the Google Translator Phone. Is this the Star Trek Universal Translator, or the Babel Fish from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, come true? It may be the biggest celebrity breakup of the 2009-2010 season. No, it's not Brad and Angelina, or Jon and Kate Gosselin. It's Apple and Google. In a meeting at Apple's Cupertino headquarters last week, Steve Jobs let loose a no-holds-barred rant against Google and their pretence (at least) of do no evil, culminating in his saying that their "don't be evil" motto is "a load of crap." Some observers even claim that what Jobs actually said was that Google's 'don't be evil' is "bullshit". Now you can listen to free music online without downloading it, thanks to Google's new music-playing search result feature! Goodbye music download, hello instant music gratification! Instead of searching for downloadable music, now you can just search for the music you love, and play it! Being called by some the Google Music Service or the Google Music Player, here's how it works: when you search for music online through Google, the search results offer you the ability to play that music - for free - directly from the search results, with a little 'play' box. This is all the result of a partnership between Google and music streaming sites such as Pandora, Lala, MySpace Music, and Real Player's Rhapsody service. Google Maps has now mapped the Ruins of Pompeii - complete with street view! Now, without leaving your chair, you can experience (ok, nearly) what it's like to walk around the Ruins of Pompeii! There is a lot of chatter on the Internet today about the search term "Exercise Bike Clearance" and how Target has been gaming Google search results so that no matter what you search for (such as, for instance, "Exercise Bike Clearance") you will find a link to a Target page in the top of the search results, even though Target doesn't have the item for which you are searching. In fact, that's even more the rub - because these Google listings pointing and linking to Target.com are a result from Target telling you that "We could not find matches for {your search term}. Please try your search again." Google hasn't moved to Greenland, even though the TLD (Top Level Domain) of its new URL shorten service "Goo.gl" is the domain for Greenland. With the announcement of Goog.gl, Google takes on other URL shortening services such as Tiny URL and Bit.ly. And in case you are wondering what does URL stand for or "what is a url", here is the URL definition: The term "URL" refers to the web address of a page on the world wide web. URL stands for 'Uniform Resource Locator" - "uniform" because the addressing is standardized, "resource" refers to the content (or 'resource') on the web that you want to see, and "locator" referring to the fact that it points to that resources location on the web. The Goo.gle service allows you to take a long URL and shorten it to something that is much shorter but still takes you to the original page. Google has just launched their own public DNS service, and appears to have focussed (now) competitor OpenDNS firmly in its crosshairs. We'll get into that in a moment, but first, for those of you with a glazed look who are wondering "just what is DNS, and why should I care?", a little tutorial on what DNS is, and why you should care. Now this is new! If you have a Facebook account, searching for your name in Google will turn up not only a link to your Facebook page, but includes a list of your friends, as well! And that's even if your privacy settings on Facebook are set to disallow public access, such as the "only My Networks and Friends can see my profile and personal info" settings. Google is gracing nearly 50 airports in the U.S. with free airport wi-fi for the holidays. Two of the airports - Seattle and Burbank - will keep their free airport Internet access, and offer free airport wi-fi permanently. (The full list of airports offering free Google wi-fi is below.) The City of Los Angeles will be paying Google $7 million to allow the city to move email hosting for all 30,000 of Los Angeles city workers to Gmail. That's right - what tens of millions get for free, Los Angeles will be paying a cool seven million for. Of course presumably by paying for Gmail premium, they will be getting a few other services, like the ability to call in for tech support during normail business hours. Believe it or not, it's extremely easy to create custom notifications, alarms, and ringtones on the T-Mobile G1 Google phone! And doing it this way will allow your own custom sound files to show up in the same list as the pre-installed sounds! You may have noticed recently that Google has started offering an "auto unsubscribe" option for some of the email that you report as spam to Google. First announced earlier this summer, Google says of their autounsubscribe from spam option, "With an easy way to unsubscribe, everybody wins. Your spam folder is smaller, and senders don't waste time sending you email that you no longer want." Google has announced that they have partnered with Twitter to allow your Twitter messages - known as "tweets" - to be searchable in real-time on Google. This means that as soon as you say something publicly on Twitter, it will instantly be available to millions and millions of people who don't know you - or who do - in their Google search results. A new service called Micello is touting itself as the equivalent of Google maps only for indoors, such as when you get to your destination, and can't find that store inside the mall, or that office where you're already 10 minutes late for a meeting. Anyone who uses Gmail with a "From" address that is different than their actual Gmail address is familiar with Gmail's inserting an "On behalf of" in the sending information. For example, if your Gmail address is "JaneDoe@gmail.com", but you have Gmail using your work address of "jdoe@example.com" as your "From" address instead, when you send email through Gmail, instead of your recipients seeing "From: jdoe@example.com", your recipients may see "From: JaneDoe@gmail.com on behalf of jdoe@example.com." Google has officially confirmed the new search engine juju on which they've been working, previously in secret, for the past several months, now code-named "Caffeine". Google Caffiene provides a new search infrastructure and algorithms that are intended to provide enhanced indexing speed, accuracy, and "comprehensiveness", among other things, according to Google. Now Google is inviting folks to test Google Caffeine and rate it against old-formula Google, which we hereby dub Google Decaf. But will it give web publishers a Caffeine headache? In case you aren't aware of this, every time you visit a site that has Google Adsense on it, and every time you visit a site that uses the DoubleClick ad management system, you have the potential for being tracked via a cookie that is injected to your computer. The cookie is known as the DoubleClick DART cookie, and, in fact, there is a very good chance that you are being tracked by one of these cookies. This is so that Google and DoubleClick can better serve you, providing better ads which, in theory, you will find more interesting and enticing. If you use Gmail, and also use Facebook, it can be very easy for someone to password crack and access your Gmail account using Gmail's recover password retrieval feature. This is because Gmail's access password recovery feature allows anybody to guess the answer to your "forgot password" reset security question. And if the answer to your forgotten password reset security question happens to be information easily gleaned from your Facebook account (or some other social network information), then password hacking your Gmail account is as easy as typing in that password protection answer. (And we use the term "password protection" loosely.) The news of Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest, and subsequent death, caused such a tsunami of searches on Google that the search giant's system believed that it was under attack, and triggered Google's attack defense mode, including requiring searchers to solve a CAPTCHA. Searchers searching for information on Michael Jackson were met with an intermediate page which said "Your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application," and apologetically asks them to solve the CAPTCHA. A Dutch boy who was mugged and robbed last year by a pair of 24-year-old twin robbers just happened to find an image of the moment before the mugging occurred, in the Google Street View on Google Earth. Some of you may have already seen the new option which Google offers when you do a Google search - it's called the Google WonderWheel. The Google Wonder Wheel offers you a graphical representation of related searches - that is, searches related to your initial search. It is similar to "mind mapping", which seems to be the newest info-fad. A website in Holland - Miljoenhuizen.nl - has been held liable for the summary that Google search turned up for its site. Yes, you read that right - they were held responsible for the fact that Google excerpted and concatenated text from their webpage in a way that suggested that the plaintiff, the BMW dealership Zwartepoorte, had gone bankrupt. Perhaps you've heard about Microsoft's WIndows Live new "Family Safety" software, which you can install on your Windows computer, so that your children can safely surf the web without fear of exposure to material that is not family friendly - or 'family safe'. Apparently in Microsoft's view this includes competitor Google, although oddly it does not include their own similar search engine, Live.com. The British Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), has announced plans to provide pro-West Islamic groups with search engine optimization (SEO) training, to help them to acheive higher search engine rankings in Google search than their more radical and terror-focused counterparts. Forget terrorists using Google maps to find targets; criminals are already way ahead in that game, using Google Earth maps to find their next victims - even stealing the very roofs off buildings that they have found using Google maps! Legislators in California - that state of the eternal budget crisis - have decided that it's a good idea to spend money trying to force Google to blur Google Maps images of what are known as "soft targets" for terrorists, such as schools, churches, hospitals, and government buildings, to protect them against terrorist attacks. Because you know, terrorists can't find an address without Google Maps. It's no secret that Google is scanning entire books and putting them on the Internet. In fact, we reported their first wholesale scanning project - scanning books from five major libraries - more than four years ago. That lead to outcries and debates over whether Google's scanning of books was copyright infringement, and sure enough, in what seemed like a New York minute, the Author's Guild sued Google over that scanning. If you were unable to access your Gmail account yesterday morning, you weren't the only one. It turns out that Gmail had a massive outage that affected Gmail users all around the world. The Google Streetview lawsuit filed by Aaron and Christine Boring, claiming invasion of privacy because the Google Street View van snapped pictures after going down their posted, private road, has been dismissed by the Court. You may have heard a lot of talk about "the triple bottom line" lately, and you may be wondering just what the triple bottom line is. The triple bottom line (also expressed as TBL, 3BL, or "people, planet, profit") is a way of measuring an organization's social and enviromental impacts as well as its financial health. But what about a triple bottom line analysis of the Internet? "The site you are about to visit may harm your computer" warns a by-now familiar refrain from Google. And usually they have their reasons. But over the weekend, Google said that about the entire Internet. Oops. Google has announced today that a new feature is available in the Google Labs: Offline Gmail. With Offline Gmail you can access your Gmail email right on your own desktop or laptop computer, even when you are not connected to the Internet. Google's controversial Street View feature - often accused of invading privacy - is back in the news again. The Google Street Views are created primarily by compiling thousands of images taken by a team of roving Google StreetView vans equipped ... For those who are constantly checking both Twitter, and Gmail, now you can have your cake and eat it too! Twitter Gadget is a Gmail gadget that allows you to both read and post to Twitter right from your Gmail interface! Want to know the flu picture in your area? Don't wait for the Center for Disease Control to tell you - use the Google flu tracker! According to Google, their new Google Flu Trends service can tell you as much as two weeks earlier than can the CDC! Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all signed on to the Global Initiative Network, pledging to protect the privacy of their users around the world, including - perhaps particularly - users in countries such as China, where demands that ISPs rat out their users are routinely made. Google has just released Mail Goggles (do you have any idea how hard it is to not typo that as "Mail Googles"?), a new enhancement for Gmail designed to keep you from sending that 3 a.m. email while under the influence that you know you'll regret in the morning, but send anyways. The Google Goggles work by requiring you to solve several math problems within sixty seconds before allowing you to effectively hit "send". Firefox and IE both have site blocking (or at least, site warning) built into their current iterations. Google also does site blocking now. All do site blocking based on some metric, known only to them, that tells them that a site is more likely than not to be a malicious site, such as a phishing site, or a site loaded with spyware. The problem with site blocking browsers and site blocking search engines such as Google is that sometimes they get it wrong. An untold number of users attempted to log into their Gmail account recently only to be confronted with the chilling message, "We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue. Did you know that if you lose some of your email from your mail client, and you pop your mail from Gmail, that you can actually re-download your email from Gmail again? Not only that, but with this trick you can redownload email from specific dates - meaning you can re-download from Gmail just the email received on the dates that you want! If you retrieve your email via POP from Gmail, you may on occasion find that Gmail completely rejects your password. Now, having Gmail rejecting your POP password can be very disconcerting, not to mention frustrating! Your mail client keeps prompting you for your Gmail password, you keep entering the password that you know is the right password, and Gmail keeps rejecting it. It's enough to drive you crazy. The Internet is all abuzz today with a line from Google's response in the invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against Google by Aaron Boring and Christine Boring of Pennsylvania. That line is "Complete privacy does not exist." There's only one problem - Google didn't actually say it. For any number of reasons, you may want to know how to delete Internet history from your computer. Whatever the reason, here is how to delete the Internet history from your computer if you are using Internet Explorer, Safari, IE7, or Firefox, and also how to clear your search history from Google Toolbar and even Google itself. In a move that can only be described as, at best, disingenuous, Microsoft testified this week before the U.S. Congress that if Yahoo were allowed to partner with Google in a search advertising deal, it would, they implied, be an illegal monopoly. Oh, right, but if Microsoft buys Yahoo for the very same reason, that's ok?? There has been a big stir created by the announcement that Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has signed on with Google to create exclusive video cartoon content for their Adsense ad network. But we think that the big stir is no more than a tempest in a teapot. Google had its Gmail tail handed to it on a platter when a German court held - not once, but twice (in preliminary and final orders) - that it could not use the name "Gmail" in Germany, as it infringed on a prior user of that name. As a result, Google is banned from using the Gmail name in Germany, and German Gmail users and others in Germany who wish to access the Google email service are banned from accessing the service via the Gmail name. Pool crashing is the newest in thing with teenagers in Britain, and could well catch on quickly in other countries. The teens are using Google Earth to locate swimming pools in their area; then setting up the pool crash party by announcing it on Facebook. At their I/O developer event held in San Francisco's Moscone Center this month, Google unveiled two exciting enhancements to Google Earth. The first is a Google Earth plug-in enabling you to fly anywhere on Earth, viewing content in your browser. This mirrors the functionality that used to require downloading and installing a desktop application. Google has a new favicon. It may seem like small news, but when you consider that it's a complete rebranding, even if only in a microspace - it's a space seen by millions of people a day - heck, millions of people an hour. Google has responded to privacy concerns about people being recognized from Google StreetView map images, and begun deploying new face blurring technology to mask their identity. So those blurred faces you see aren't an accident, or the result of the subjects having drunk too much the night before. Google has released a Preview Version of Friends Connect, a new service that lets website owners easily add social networking features. For website owners the benefits of Google Friends Connect are clear; adding social networking features to an already popular site encourages visitors to stay longer, engaging with other users and with new and updated content, as well as providing content of their own in the form of comments, reviews and message board entries. We're sure that our readers are well aware that we live at a time of uncertainty, and in a world in which conflict seems to be constant. Scenes of the displacement of innocent civilians, especially women and children, into refugee camps, in Darfur, Iraq, the Sudan, and Afghanistan, are ever-present on the news. It's extremely heartening, then, to hear about Google and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) jointly making available the Google Earth Outreach project, to raise global awareness of the almost 33 million displaced people that the UNHCR is today helping. Did you know that people from all over the world use Google Gmail, and not all people want to (or can) use Gmail in English? Welcome to Gmail for the global community, because Gmail . com is now distinctly international. Why have your Gmail sign in greet you in English when your Gmail .com account can be set up for any one of dozens of languages? Quiere correo Gmail? No problema! In fact, the top searches relating to Gmail these days are in foreign languages! Speaking of which, can anybody tell us what these mean?: gmail ustvari nov naslov, gmail geslo, gmail prijava geslo, gmail raziskovalec, gmail sprememba gesla, pozabljeno geslo za gmail, zamenjati geslo gmail, sprememba gesla gmail, gmail prijava, gesla gmail, prijava v gmail, or ustvari gmail? In addition to the breed of filth known as "typo squatters" (people who register domains which are common misspellings of popular domains, and then put ads on them), and "drop squatters" (people who grab established domains the moment that the domain's registration lapses (i.e. is "dropped") - and set up shop on the domain - again, nothing but ads - to take advantage of the traffic that comes to the domain), we want to bring to your attention a particularly slimy breed that we call the "Doppelganger Squatter". Reports emerged this week from a Holland-based internet security consultant, Dancho Danchev, of a new technique - known as poison Google links - being used by hackers attempting to use legitimate Google searches as a vector to smuggle malware onto the machines of unsuspecting users. So far the poisoned Google links all contain the string "IFRAME SRC=//" followed by an IP address, most recently and commonly 72.232.39.252, but that could change in a heartbeat. According to a tip received by the Internet Patrol, the resident evil behind the throngs of social networking and other sites that are tricking people into logging into their AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail accounts, and scraping their address book, has a name, and that name is Sigma Visual Technologies. Sigma Visual Technologies provides software that allows sites to get their users to import and email all of their contacts in their address books. Put another way, it lets these sites scrape and spam your contacts. In your name! Here's a good question: Why use the + when searching on the Internet? (I.e., why use the plus sign when searching on the Internet?) A Gmail confirmation scam email is going around, asking you to verify your Gmail account. "Dear Account User," the request starts out - and goes on to say that you need to confirm your Gmail account, or it will be closed down. Of course, the language is wrong, and it wasn't even necessarily sent to your Gmail account, but still, people will be taken in by this scam, which asks for your account username and password, your date of birth, and your country of residence. Here's the scam reproduced in full - if you get this, don't reply! Massive Gmail storage plus the awesome folder view provided by a Gmail account equals the perfect spam folder! If your anti-spam program can forward all detected spam to a separate email address, then you can create your own Gmail spam folder account too! Gmail mail is the perfect way to scan all of your spam for mail that you actually want, because the Gmail email folder view shows you the first sentence of the email along with the subject, making it super easy to determine if the mail is really spam or not without opening it! First, set up a Gmail account (sign up for Gmail at gmail . com here), then forward your spam to it. Now check Gmail mail to easily scan the contents of your spam folder to determine if there is any email you actually want. Here are step-by-step instructions, and a view of our Gmail spam folder account! If you are one of those people who aren't the least bit interested in using Google Gmail Chat (Google's instant message chat program in Gmail, similar to AIM and iChat), you probably want to know how to sign out of Gmail chat. So here's the information you need to disable Gmail chat - to turn the Google chat "feature" off, and deactivate Google Gmail chat instant messages. The mega popular Facebook site has joined the ranks of social networking sites that trick you into providing your password so that they can steal your AOL , Yahoo, MSN, or other address book, and spam all of your contacts. Only this time it's with a twist - they are actually spamming your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) contacts in your Buddy List! The spam starts out like this: "According to his Facebook status, Friend's Name (their username) is now "Friend's Nickname". Friend invites you to join Facebook and keep up with what he and your other friends are doing." What we want to know is WHY are AOL, Yahoo, and MSN continuing to let this go on? Perhaps nobody is more glad than Google itself that Google this week rolled out its You Tube Video Identification (You Tube Video ID) program - which does video fingerprinting in order to identify copies of copyrighted video material as it is uploaded to YouTube. With very little fanfare, Google has unleashed their relatively new web history feature on their users. If you had any doubt that Google has the ability to store and track your every move you make - at least through them - let this put all doubts to rest. Here's what's really behind that "New! View and manage your web history" link you're seeing on the Google page. A new round of phishing spam, phishing for Gmail account information, along with your date of birth and citizenship, was unleashed on the Internet this week. "Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently," reads the subject. Project Unity cable - a plan by Google to build a massive, undersea Internet cable across the Pacific ocean, was outed this week as sharp-eyed Google watchers pieced together clues which lead to the discovery of the Unity cable project. For the third time in as many months, Hotmail is down, and users across the country cannot get to the Hotmail servers to read and retrieve their email. Users across the world are flocking to our site, searching for information and help with queries such as "hotmail down", "hotmail down?", "hotmail is down", "is hotmail down", "is hotmail down?", "hotmail servers down", "hotmail down today", "hotmail servers", and "hotmail outage". If this has affected you, then it probably really is time to switch to Gmail or Yahoo. We are asked all the time "How can I make money on the Internet?" or "Where can I learn how to make money on the Internet?" In fact, we're asked often enough about how to make money online - and we have a vested enough interest in making sure that people do it appropriately, without spamming and following the rules and observing best practices - that we now offer this article. If you use Gmail, it is likely that on occasion you will get an email that says something like 'Message left on server: "(no subject)"' or 'Message left on server: "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender"', or 'Message left on server:" followed by some random subject. The message, which comes from "Gmail Team If you must have free email, we strongly recommend switching from Hotmail to another free email service provider such as Yahoo, AOL, or Gmail. We personally recommend either Yahoo or AOL. Now that you're all set up with your gmail.google.com account, you're going to want to know how to whitelist something, or how to whitelist someone, in Gmail. It's not difficult to whitelist with Gmail - in fact, it's much harder to figure out how to whitelist with Gmail than it is to actually do it! So here's how to whitelist in Gmail. (P.S. It's actually mail.google.com, but gmail.google.com will get you there.) Did you know that you can use Gmail as a spam filter? Among Gmail's many wonderful features, one of the most useful is the incredible spam filtering. I've not come across any spam filtering solution that's as efficient as Gmail's and there are a number of ways you can take advantage of this free service without having to change your current email address! Did you know that Google,com offers more than 600 cool Google gadgets and Google widgets for your use, for free? And you don't even need to put them on a Google desktop or your Google home page! You can put them on your own website (or put them on a Google homepage and your own website! And it doesn't take a Google scholar to go to Google and get these cool Google gadgets from Google. com! It's easy! (By the way, gmodules.com is the Google gadgets domain.) Google Adsense Referrals is a new program with the potential for top paying Google Adsense payouts. The Google Referrals program allows Adsense publishers to hand-pick the Adsense ads that they want to appear on their site, and get paid per action (i.e. sale or sign-up) rather than per click. Setting up your Adsense Referral ads is not hard, but the site is not as straightforward as it could be, so we're here to help you figure it out. Recently I started getting invitations to join Flixster from complete strangers. Obviously, this was spam, but why were these complete strangers sending it to me? And why were they always from AOL and Hotmail? Now people are asking - is Flixstr accessing your AOL and Hotmail contacts list and spamming them in your name? Melanie McGuire is currently on trial for the murder of her husband, William McGuire. And while many people now know that your Google and other search engine searches can be discovered, apparently back in 2004, Melanie McGuire did not. For among the searches that the prosecution has found on her computers - searches which she conducted on the days leading up to the murder - were searches for "instant poisons", "undetectable poisons", and "fatal digoxin doses." And while those alone don't necessarily prove intent, another search, "how to commit murder" is pretty unambiguous. This week it was discovered that you can zoom Google maps by zooming Google Earth to a degree that you can actually see people's faces, and lots of other interesting stuff. Zooming Google Maps and zooming Google Earth is possible in several areas, although not in all locations, but finding the locations in which you can zoom Google maps is half the fun. Check out these pictures of camels in Chad and secret of the famed Treasure Island boat in Las Vegas for examples! Over the holidays, many people logged in to their Gmail accounts only to find that their email had vanished. Gone. Nowhere to be found. Their Gmail email had completely disappeared. James Kim, his wife Katie, and his two daughters, found themselves snowbound and stranded on Bear Camp Road, between Grants Pass and Gold Beach, Oregon. But were they mislead by an online mapping service such as Google Maps? Is Google eavesdropping? Google researchers recently announced a method to allow them to listen in to your life by listening in through your computer's microphone. Is Google listening? Will they? There has been a recent increase in the number of spammers who are using Google URLs in their spam in an effort to trick people. They way they do this is to camoflage their URL so that it looks like a Google URL. After all, nearly everyone knows, recognizes, and trusts Google. How sinister could clicking on something which appears to be a Google search result be? If your search results during a Google search turn up sites which Google has reason to believe may attempt to shove malware (spyware, adware, etc.) onto your machine - and if you click on one of those result links - Google now serves up an intermediate page warning "the site you are about to visit may harm your computer!" During a discussion at Stanford University a few months ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt indicated that he thinks that the "perfect economic solution" to click fraud is "to let it happen." The Spyware Guide has broken wide open a story involving Google's Orkut service. Having discovered what it has dubbed "Orc.Malware", the Spyware guide has investigated and found that Google's Orkut is infested with the malwaree. Google has just announced that they are buying their Mountain View headquarters and a neighboring complex in a $319million dollar deal, adding the Mountain View campus along with their Nasa Ames property to their California holdings. Google has been secretly building a massive complex - Code name: Project 02, and being dubbed the Googleplex (naturally) - in The Dalles, Oregon, at the Oregon/Washington border, along the Columbia river. Google has been sued by New York politician Jeffrey Toback, who claims that Google intentionally provides and promotes - indeed that Google's business plan includes - child pornography. Google is complaining loudly that Microsoft has made their own search engine, MSN Search, the default search engine for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) - well they would now, wouldn't they? This despite the fact that Google is the default search engine for Firefox, Safari and Opera. Google SketchUp is the latest from those whacky guys at Google Labs. Google Sketch Up is a new 3d modeling service from Google. And you can drag your Google Sketch-Up models into Google Earth! Google has announced that they are going to start selling downloadable books online, putting them in direct competition with Amazon's plans to do the same. Through the unintended publication of some internal notes, Google this week inadvertantly revealed their plans for "infinite storage", a project they call GDrive, and keeping all of your files on their server for you. What is "net neutrality"? We've been getting a lot of questions asking us to explain what this new term, "net neutrality" means. So we will. It all started with the introduction of the "Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006". The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is warning that a new feature of Google's Desktop, called "Search Across Computers" copies entire documents and an enormous amount of data from your hard drive to Google's servers. The Feds want your search records from Google, in a lawsuit designed to prove how much searching there is being done for child pornography. Should you be worried? You bet you should. And guess what. AOL, MSN and Yahoo have already given those records up. Microsoft and Google have settled the lawsuit which resulted from Google's poaching of top executive Kai-Fu Lee. Is this the end of it? Google free wifi is coming to Mountain View, California. While no date has yet been announced, Mountain View mayor Matt Neely says that the free Google wifi will come to Mountain View "in the very near future." Free email providers get far more out of free email services than do the users of the free email services. A splog is a garbage website put up for the sole purpose of either displaying ads or linking to another target site to give that target site more inbound links. In that way splogs serve to artificially inflate the page rank of the target site. Google has been quietly testing a new service, called "Google Base", which allows you to list items on Google. Leaked screenshots of Google Base show a form where you can enter your listing, and which says: "Post your items on Google. Google ... Google is controlled by the Pentagon! At least according to one group. Google Reader is a new RSS reader which aims to bring RSS feeds to everyone. RSS feeds are a way for a content-based website to tell you when new content has been published without your having to go to the site itself and check. Google Wifi, or Goog-Fi, has been quietly launched, along with Google Secure Access, a free piece of software you can use with Google Wifi to help make the connection more secure. Google has been sued for copyright infringement over the book scanning under their Library Program. The class action lawsuit was filed by the Authors Guild, and authors Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles, and Daniel Hoffman. Google is in the process of scanning books from libraries around the world and putting them online. But is it copyright infringement? Should Google be allowed to scan books and put them online even when the books are not in the public domain, and are subject to copyright protection? Some say yes, others say no. Microsoft to Google: "We can settle this lawsuit tomorrow if Google will agree to take today's preliminary injunction, keep every word without a single change, and enter it as a permanent injunction..." Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the former Microsoft executive who left MSFT to join Google, and over which Microsoft sued Google, may start his job at Google pending the outcome of the trial, the Court says 2Search spyware is nasty stuff. It shows up uninvited on your computer, and then hijacks your web browser, taking you places you don't really want to go, and exposing you to even more spyware. Google Talk is Coming! According to News Reports, Google is launching a new instant messenger service, called Google Talk, some time this week. Says the LA Times, "According to a person who has seen the service, Google plans to let users chat using ... Well, thanks to Grant Robinson, I have a new time waster: Guess the Google. Guess the Google should be more properly named "Guess the keyword which resulted in these images being returned in a Google image search", but I guess that ... Is Google Wifi around the corner? Rumours are flying that Google is secretly setting up a unbiquitous free wifi service (which Aunty now officially christens "Goog-fi") which would allow users anywhere to access the Internet (and Google, of course) for free from ... Lead by terrorism fears, search engine giant Google has been asked by no less than the head of Australia's nuclear energy agency to please remove images of Australia's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor from Google's database of satellite images. The fear is that ... This would actually be funny if it weren't so seemingly petty. No, wait, I take that back. It's funny anyways. Back on July 14th, CNet News reporter Elinor Mills wrote a story on Google and privacy. As an example of the ... I've received a lot of questions asking what Baidu is, and why all the hoopla over Baidu? Well, Baidu (Nasdaq symbol "BIDU" - more on that in a moment) is the Chinese search engine which is being tauted as the next Google, and ... According to a survey done by AdultMatchmaker.com (which begs the question, are there sites out there devoted to matchmaking for children?), as many a third or more of all online daters will do a Google search of their intended before going out on ... Perfect 10, an online and offline publisher of adult content, has filed a lawsuit against Google and Amazon, claiming that by turning up images of Perfect 10's... um... "models"... in searches for, oh, who knows, maybe "nekkid women", Google and Amazon's A9 are ... In an at least temporary victory for Redmond giant Microsoft, in a lawsuit which defending Mountain View giant Google is calling "a charade", a Washington state trial court has ordered ex Microsoft employee Kai-Fu Lee to refrain from starting his new job at ... Every so often Aunty runs into some interesting things which make her life a little bit easier, and her Google searches a little more productive or, sometimes, fun. So here are a few which Aunty is going to pass on to you today. I ... Along with the limited beta release of Microsoft's new Windows Vista came a beta version of IE7 (Internet Explorer 7). Almost immediately, Vista and IE7 users began reporting that their Yahoo! and Google toolbars had..vanished, while other less, um, competitive toolbars (pop-up ... Aunty has told you about the evils of click fraud. And how Google was sued over click fraud just last month. Now comes this company, which offers to track all of the pay-per-clicks on your site, giving you a full report ... Is it a case of sour grapes, or good business? Microsoft this week has sued Google. Not over technology or copyright. Nope. Over poaching one of their top executives, Executive Vice President Kai-Fu Lee. It's no secret that Microsoft has ... This just in: Google wins rights to typos. Seriously. According to their recent press release, the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) has issued a ruling giving to Google the rights to the Internet domain names "googkle.com", "ghoogle.com", "gfoogle.com" and "gooigle.com". Google had filed a complaint ... You may recall that earlier this year Aunty lectured you about click fraud, and even mentioned that Google was suing an outfit over their alleged click fraud. In fact, last month Aunty showed you a news release from a company which tracks ... A report released this week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that when it comes to Internet searching, and turning up adult content, MSN is better at blocking such results than either Google or Yahoo. Whether this is a bug or a ... Google sure does a lot of nifty things with their search and archive capabilities! And one of those things is that it now archives your search history. Meaning that if you are logged in to Google, and perform a Google search, ... A newly discovered worm dubbed "Gpic.aol" and being transported via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) arrives as an instant message along the lines of "damn this looks just like me lol" and proffering a link which claims to be a link to pictures.google.com However, as ... DALLAS, May 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Online advertisers who are concerned about click fraud have a new online clearinghouse, http://www.lostclicks.com , where they can learn more about a pending class action lawsuit against the major search engines and Internet corporations, and about recent developments in what is now ... A new, and oh-so-simple and deviously obvious scam has hit the Internet. According to a report in iAfrica, phishers are now purchasing ads on search engines such as Google, offering cheap airline tickets, and then sitting back and waiting for unsuspecting bargain ... If you blinked you might have missed it. Google's labs had put up "Google X", a Google search home page which emulated Apple's Mac OS X look and feel, particularly with respect to the dock function. When you used the Google ... Mark Lucovsky may not be a household name in your household, but his name is well-known among Microsoft pundits and geeks. However soon his name will be associated with Google, and not just because "Lucovsky" turns up more than 13,000 hits in ... Google has taken the unusual step of apologizing for its search results. But only, it seems, for results obtained by searching on the word "Jew", the results for which have been deemed offensive. Linked from the top result obtained by searching the ... Have you heard about Adsense "click fraud"? It's one of the latest Internet scams. Click fraud has been in the news a lot lately, and with good reason. Click fraud accounts for 10-20% of all clicks on Internet ads such ... First the library brought you the Internet. Now the Internet is bringing you the library. Google has just announced exclusive deals with five libraries, including the New York Public Library, and university libraries at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Oxford, to ... Just when you think that you have heard everything. Perfect 10, a website which offers nude photos of women, has sued Internet search giant Google, claiming that Google's search engine allows people to access lists of Perfect 10 usernames and passwords, and that it ... Reuters is reporting today that China has blocked its citizens' access to the English-language version of Google News, instead providing access to a special, sanitized Chinese-language version which it has arranged with Google. According to media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, China has been ... Are you ever tempted to click on a friend's AdSense, or to have them click on yours? Well, don't do it! Google takes doing this, which is known as "click fraud", very seriously. Why just last week, Google filed a lawsuit against someone for ... Google has announced that their Gmail service is going to start offering POP access to users' email accounts, meaning that rather than having to log in through Gmail's web interface, users will be able to download their Gmail to their own computer using ... Two things are now clear to Aunty about Google's upcoming IPO: 1) They are moving forward with their somewhat novel concept of making their initial offering directly to individuals, by email, and 2) they are worried about that email being zapped ... The BBC reports today that the California Senate has passed SB 1822, aimed at limiting Google's ability to scan email coming in to the users of their Gmail system, and also limiting Google's ability to archive and sell the resulting information. Now, Aunty is ... As many of you know, Aunty was one of the people blessed with a Gmail account early on (relatedly, she was also 'blessed' with everybody and their brother coming out of the woodwork asking her to please get them a Gmail account, too). After ... I've been testing Google's Gmail for 5 days now, since April 18th. Woohoo. In addition to openly soliciting email to the account, and even posting the address on the web (shedevil@gmail.com), I've forwarded all of my email coming to my other accounts to ... As I've mentioned elsewhere, Google's Gmail's "sophisticated spam filtering technology" isn't. And I'm beginning to wonder about their AdSense technology as well. So far Gmail is (not) batting 1000 - all spam has ended up in my inbox, and the only two pieces ... For those playing along at home who are interested in, or even concerned about, the privacy issues being raised by Google's new Gmail service, the EFF raises some fairly thought provoking issues, to wit: with the advent of Gmail, along with a ... Somehow, I lucked into having a Gmail beta account (who knew I had friends in those high places?) Here are my first impressions: First, Gmail doesn't work with Safari; very annoying. It does, however, work with Firefox. I also found it frustrating ... Much has been made in the past dozen days about Google's announcement of their new service, Gmail. First, the press release was leaked on April 1st, leading to wide speculation: was it an April Fool's gag, or was it not? (It wasn't.) Then ... |
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fleabag: Just made the switch to Gmail. I will not miss you, hotmail. You're like a "friend" who only brought drug store toys to read John: 14:48 still can't open my hotmail account... read MCL: Have not been able to access my MSN e-mail for over EIGHT hours! Disgraceful. read Josh: Just made the move to GMail. F-off Hotmail. read Beth: This sucks. I can't even import my Hotmail contacts, etc. from Gmail. I feel paralyzed. read
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