IT Masala

Google Labs has added lot of features in Gmail. Google labs says it giving these features for try out and these are not permanent,they might disappear sometime ! It gives you to lot of stuff such as photo in gmail browser chat, mouse gestures,Super stars, hide count, random signature, date format change,signature tweaks,pictures in chat and lot more.. . For some serious chat gurus.. there's a nice little thing saying "Email Addict" which makes you go invisible for around 15min and invisible too.(Shaanya can use this :P) 

These are only some of the latest features added by Google on Gmail. There are lot more in the list. Just goto Settings>Labs in Gmail and enable whichever feature you need to experiment with.

How to disable these new features if something goes wrong ?

If by chance you enable some feature and it breaks or you are having trouble logging on to your account, just use this just go to http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 and Labs will be temporarily disabled.

[ Learn more about Gmail Labs ]

While going through Orkut apps, we happened to look at this event notification. Google is going to host Google's largest developer  event.As said on the site,Its a two day event which covers in depth on how to develop application with Google and Open technologies.Its at San Francisco on May 28-89.

Sessions consists of talks on OpenSocial, Google App Engine, Android, Google Maps API, Google Web Toolkit and more ..presented by Google's leading developers like David Glazer, Alex Martelli, Steve Souders, Dion Almaer, Mark Lucovsky, Guido van Rossum, Jeff Dean, Chris DiBona, Josh Bloch.

Registration is $50 fo students/teachers !

[ Sign up ] [ Google I/O ] 

Gspace is a lovely firefox addon and supported on 3 platforms(Windows,Mac,Linux). It makes life easier to store all your stuff on Gmail very easily. What do you do with a 6Gb online space, use it as a storage space..just dump all your stuff.

- Install the firefox addon : | Windows | Mac | Linux |

- Goto Tools -> Gspace . The panel will open up in a different tab (chrome://gspace/content/gspaceWindow.xul )

You are shown a 2-column panel , left side is your pc and right side is your gmail storage space. Nice thing about this addon is, it shows the total space and the free space and shows details of files with timestamp etc… Below is the capture of how the email message looks like in the inbox.

How to use: Login to your account using your gmail account and password. You can create folders and put your stuff into your account. When you upload your stuff, it shows up as shown in the screenshots. To avoid showing all the upload messages in your inbox, archive the mails sent by Gspace.

PS: Using this addon maybe(not sure) against Gmail's TOS. So be careful !

[Gspace] [Gmail] [Firefox addon]

The most widely used video site Youtube, launches its Indian edition.This Indian version of Youtube(Desi Youtube) is being used by companies like Rajshri to market their serials.

There have been already many Indian videos on Youtube.Some of them are ,IIT Madras has put up advanced engineering classes, companies like eros entertainment,Rajshri Media use it to release movie trailors and serials and many colleges release their college videos too..

[Youtube India] 

Since many weeks I saw my friend Niru playing IPL(Cric Xchange) app on Orkut using his wife's id as Orkut Apps wasn't enabled for his id. I was wondering why Orkut hasn't enabled this new feature for everybody on Orkut, normally they choose random users and enable new features only to them. But this time, there was a pattern, only people in India had got this feature and very few people outside India, as far as I have observed. As per the usage, Orkut must have enabled this new feature to people in India and maybe Brazil too, as these are the two countries where there are highest users of Orkut.

This trick is for all those Indians who haven't got that feature..(not really a trick..just a…)

How to enable Orkut Applications for your profile?

1. Login to Orkut using your account

2. Edit your profile, change the country to India.

3. You will see a block on the left side below the profile photo called "Apps"

4. Click on Add and you will see a directory of the 'Applications'

5. Add Applications & njoy ! 

Here are some screenshots:

[ Orkut ] [ Google ] 

While going through Youtube,watching some videos.. I came across something new and better. It was the nice looking new Youtube Player(Beta). Youtube new player comes with a nice sliding volume button and a new form to share your youtube videos.They have also changed the way we browse through the related videos after the playing video finishes.

How to use the new Youtube Player(Beta): 

Click on the link which comes just below the Youtube videos you are watching, it says " YouTube Player Beta | Use the old YouTube Player" . Check out the screenshots.

Old Youtube Player                                          New Youtube Player

New Youtube Player in action(share,related videos) 

[ Youtube ]  

Google introduces artist themes for iGoogle. Make your iGoogle homepage look cool. Select any of the artist themes for iGoogle.

Check out Google's logo today and its changed. Google has featured a theme by Jeff Koons. 

About the artist : ( from iGoogle page)

American artist Jeff Koons burst onto the international art scene in the 1980s. He creates iconic work such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Rabbit, and Puppy. He is exhibited throughout the world. 

Themes totally change the look and feel of the page. It looks more lively. Not that I use iGoogle regularly. I always use classic page of Google, as its clean and elegant, but these themes will certainly make me use iGoogle rather than the classic homepage. Start using iGoogle and you will certainly change from the classic homepage of Google to iGoogle(with lovely artistic themes).

Here are some screenshots :

[ Google Classic ] [ iGoogle ]

Google takes on Wikipedia with Knol - The idea is called Knols, or “units of knowledge.” “Knol”, just announced at the official Google blog, is a currently private, invitation-only knowledge sharing service.

Google’s Udi Manber says, “Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results.” Knol pages will be made available for indexing by search engines, Google announced.

Will Knol be same as About.com ? Will it destroy Wikipedia !! wooooo!! . So that it can be called Googlepedia ?? 

Here's a screenshot of Knol from the Official Google blog :

Knol Project: Google Experimenting With User Generated Encyclopedic Pages

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html

Is it  the end of Wiki ? lots of such questions arising ….. Anyway Knol will surely be a huge hit !!

Google said on Monday it has agreed to acquire e-mail security company Postini for $625 million expanding its package of online applications to compete with Microsoft's Office software.

Google said its Google Apps has been adopted by more than 100,000 businesses to date.

"With this transaction, we're reinforcing our commitment to delivering compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in a statement.

Google said Postini will become a wholly owned subsidiary. The deal is expected to close by the end of the third quarter.

Even Postini has put up on their homepage(title too) too have a look. Postini 

When we search on Google…here's a screenshot..have a look.

Learn More.. 

via [ zdnet ] 

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. has pulled its advertising from search company Google Inc.'s AdWords network in the United States, an eBay spokesperson said Wednesday.

"This is part of an ongoing experiment to look at how we market across all media channels," said eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy.