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The new google mobile app for symbian brings the google desktop to the mobile phone. Well, almost. It still does not index the contents of your mobile phone, but its a step in the right direction.

The mobile application which starts up at the tap of the backspace key, allows you to load the google search page interface which is linked to the gmail mobile and google maps app, google news, picasa page and few other google services. It still does not include reader in its list which is surprising considering that google reader is one of the finest aggregators out there.
The application is something like a google services control center on your symbian mobile. A bit of android in your symbian?
Read more of the new release on the official google mobile blog or download the application here

A recent survey reveals that most enterprises still love to flaunt Internet Explorer as their default browser. Most of the security updates in the organization are for IE as well. Major reasons which could be attributed to this are:

1. It is bundled with Microsoft windows.
2. Most Microsoft office applications work better with IE
3. Outlook Webaccess works better with Internet explorer
4. Microsoft sharepoint services work with Internet explorer
5. Its easier to put in admin policies for a non-open source browser
6. Other software used in the organization are dependent on Internet explorer
7. It gets updated with the windows updater
8. Its “Microsoft” Internet Explorer.
9. The admin does not know about Firefox or Chrome
10. There is so much you can do with Internet explorer
11. There are no Macs which run Safari or Firefox
12. Users have trouble learning to use any browser other than IE
13. The IT policy says so.

Let us know what you think in the comments..Should IE be the browser of choice in organizations?

Its Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and many of you would have encountered the Holiday Doodle on Google and wondered what is all about. Google has a series of pictures (each of them featuring the google logo in some manner) which make up the Google Holiday Doodle. Each day one picture until you get the whole series on the last day.
We’re on the last  today…so here is what I see on clicking Google’s Holiday Doodle logo! 

You can read more about the Doodle for Google competion here! The Google Holiday Doodle countdown runs until it reaches main holiday…You can see few of the earlier Google Doodles below

All of Google’s logos are trademarks and copyrights of respective owners and they are presented here only for illustrative purposes

I almost forgot, you can see the Google doodler – the google doodle creator here! And…Happy Holidays!!

Google themes now..before that we had google labs which brought into gmail a plethora of features mostly useless..first it was gmail, then it became gmail with chat, then support for new smileys..now it chat with video support..

All because Gmail became too fat!

Isn’t gmail becoming too bloated with features, though definitely most of them useful nevertheless..

Even worse is all those new smileys and video chat doesn’t even find support on the gtalk application..I wish they would have focused on the gtalk application when trying to improve the chat experience..Now what do we have? support for these smileys over mail…yeah! great…and of course I really need voicemail when I am dealing with a mail application…honestly…This is not just with the Gmail but also the same with all their other applications….Take a look at google chrome, I already have firefox (thank you!).. But first it was orkut and now even youtube asks you whether you would like to try google chrome…maybe just so that you could feed it doughnuts! Maybe I am indulging in too much of google bashing, but then I prefer the good old days of gmail when mail was good…and it was just mail with no webclips (don’t I already use your google reader?)…And I almost forgot AIM integration for chat,  which brought in my feeds, no math to work out when you send out mails at night and lots of other silly lab features…

I wouldn’t say that there hasn’t been features on the useful side, IMAP is a great feature to add on to any mail service. I love the space in my box definitely, after all “Who needs to delete when you have over 2000 MB of storage” , the awesome feature of labelling mails, starring important ones, the ability to create instant filters and 100s of other small bits which make my mailing experience pleasurable everyday….

True, gmail has been changed email as we know it..and I have forgotten what mail was, before gmail..but I wish gmail would focus on gmail…the gmail app on my mobile and lots of other things which I haven’t even thought about..but then, that’s what the google team’s job is..I guess, I haven’t even sent a mail from my gmail account in the past few months…so to tell you the truth, I use the chat more than the mail

I remember using this one long back, so I decided to write a post about it…This one is for all of you who use browsers like Google Chrome, Flock and are unable to install the stumbleupon toolbar.

A quick introduction, Stumbleupon is the remote control for the web, websites are voted and reviewed upon by users and lets users stumble upon webpages on the internet…based on your interests, search criteria, keywords etc..

Now, Stumbleupon runs courtesy the Stumbleupon toolbar and if you a browser which is unsupported or you just do not wish to install the toolbar, there is no way you can stumbleupon sites…unless of course you enable the Stumbleupon bar which you can enable by dragging the following link to your bookmarks toolbar or clicking on the following link.

Stumbleupon

The Stumbleupon bar frame lets you stumbleupon on new and exciting sites, just the way it would have done if you had installed the toolbar. But, things aren’t so rosy…hmmm, the bar doesn’t let you login with your SU username and you can’t share your favourites with your friends…but you can send something you like to your email address..And since there is no login, the pages may not be from the topics of your interest…

This bar also works great when you are at a PC on which you can’t install software on and you are bored with no work… (if you liked this post, link to it and help promote SU on unsupported browsers)

The logo reminds me of some japanese anime weapon which would split open and attack the baddies..but then the browser does exactly does, not just the baddies…defeats all other browsers straightaway…The minute I woke up today, I brushed my teeth and went over straight to start my google chrome download…The installer downloads the file and I keep waiting with bated breath…

We use gmail for mail, gtalk for chat and every browsing session begins with the home page as google and ends with a google search result..so shouldn’t your browser be google’s as well?

Google Chrome is to browsers what Iphone is for phones..The interface is fresh and slick….its very light compared to the slow and bulky Firefox (whoa! I never thought I would say that…well, thats competition…)
But still there is time before I drive the foxes out..I still cannot drive away the fox because of one primary reason – the addons. When you load Google browser, you get to a page which has screenshots of all your frequently added websites, this quite reminds me of the speed dial feature in the Opera browser (though with Opera its user set, and not based on number of visits)..It has tabs which run as different processes unlike in any other tabbed browser…
Another notable feature is, in addition to the usual tabs and windows, you can open something known as a “Incognito” window and anything you decide to open on it, is off record (cool!). Its a browser faster than the Safari and lighter than the fox and renders pages like a miracle…Chrome is something which I would call a smart browser which learns a lot from your browsing habits (automatic search engine preferences, automatic most visited bookmarks and automatic everything…) If you have been using the fox, it even imports everything to continue your browsing experience!
There is another option called application shortcuts which lets you create shortcuts on your desktop, quick launch or start menu for every website/webapp you encounter. Just go to the site and create a shortcut..The shortcut loads using chrome (but sans the home, back and front button…just like a regular application…) Brings the web to your desktop…A full list of features is to be found here

There is still news of a security flaw doing its rounds on the internet, but then till I switch completely to Chrome, I guess I am safe and if I am not, its ok..its a price to pay for such a great browser which is so good even its beta version…So I guess you should stop reading her and go and download it here..

This is one of the fastest reviews I have ever written so the grammar is terrible and the spelling could be wrong in several places…I just wrote this review in such a hurry..

Get more updates on the browser @ Get Google Chrome

Firefox and Google talk are two apps which I cannot really manage without…but then what do you do if you share your PC with someone else? Maybe someone else at home. Each of us have our own collection of bookmarks, addons and of course logins.

So you would need to get Firefox and Gtalk to run multiple instances. The secret to running them is to use Firefox’s in built profile manager. We need to invoke the profile manager by changing the shortcut path on your desktop. Ideally, the target looks like this “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”

Change it to

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -profilemanager.

Run the shortcut and you will come across the profile manager.

Firefox profile manager

Click on create new to start the new profile wizard.

add new profile firefox wizard

But, even now, there firefox would not let you run two profiles at the same time. Which means if you open another firefox instance when one is running, it will still belong to the same profile. Now to work around that, we need to change the path to

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”  -no-remote -profilemanager

Run the shortcut and you will come across the profile manager even if you have one firefox instance running already. Great now you can login two people can login to two gmail accounts at the same time…

Now, Gtalk is not as customizable as Firefox is, but still they manage to give us two workarounds to run multiple instances.

1. Download Google talk. Run it as instance no.1. Download Gtalk labs edition, run it as instance no. 2

2. I do not recommend gtalk labs edition as it is still in limited beta and has quite a few shortcomings compared to the regular gtalk app. So we lets get to playing around with the shortcut target for google talk as well, considering you had a default install of gtalk, the shortcut target should be “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe”. And yes, its a bit different if you run Vista.  Lets change the shortcut to

“C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

Gtalks! galore, run as many as you want….

Multiple Google talk instances

Enabled superstars for Gmail and then decided that I should make a post to honour this Gmail labs feature. It is an extension of the existing starred conversation feature available in Gmail. To enable the feature, Go to the labs tab of the setting page and enable Superstars as shown below.

Now, everytime you may star a conversation and clicking repeatedly on the star would change the star indicator. By default, there are 5 options which are circled as you click on the star. However, you may enhance the number of stars available by going to Settings -> superstars as shown below. Just click and drag whatever stars you additionally need.

While, you are at it. I would really recommend that you turn on the signature tweaks feature on the labs page. Whenever you forward mail, your signature now appears before the forwarded mail. Now that makes sense. There are other features through, so play around and have fun! I especially loved the one which allows you to have images when you use google chat inside gmail…

.

Google also provides encryption and a secure connection to its mail service. To enable this, go to https://mail.google.com instead of http://mail.google.com. Makes your mail checking activity more secure

Ah! here is something..Something drastically new from the Google stables. I love Lively. I presume it was some poor startup acquired and made a part of Google labs (If this statement is wrong, feel free to correct me)

Lively’s description says “Create an avatar and chat with your friends in rooms which you design”

Google lively is a mini secondlife clone. where you can create your 3d avatars, interact in real time in interesting rooms which are filled with avatars. Lively allows you to download its client software which allows you to login to lively (for which you use your google id.) But all the action happens inside your browser window (currently it supports IE and firefox) . Select a name for your avatar and your appearance. Select a room to go and you are all ready to mingle in the 3d world. Clicking on a place in the 3d dimension, takes u there instantly. clicking and dragging your avatar moves you around. chatting works great, the animations are slick and smooth, but the load times are a pain. a few screenshots of how the world looks anyway.

But be warned that lively is still in beta and still inside Google labs and you are likely to face lot many issues, many of which I have already faced. So if at all there is something you would like help on, ask me and if I have come across the issue, I would be more than happy to help. I love lively, Google’s very own second life.

Do give it a try here. And don’t forget to leave your comments down here.

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