Archive for month: March, 2009

As part of a continuing “series” of posts, here are some of the recent feature enhancements for Gmail from the teams at Google Labs.

• Title Tweaks — Changes the order of the browser title and tab title so that “Inbox (xx)” is first. This lets you see the number of unread items in your inbox when using another tab and when the window is minimized.
  
• Multiple Inboxes — Add lists of emails in your inbox to see even more important email at once. The new lists of threads can be labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.

To use these features, your administrator must allow access to Labs. Go into Labs and click on “Enable”.

In an interview for a recent article in the New York Times, Steve Ballmer (Microsoft’s CEO), drew a diagram of Cloud Computing.

Look at the diagram for yourself and let me now if you think that Microsoft “gets it”.

The following features have been added to Google Apps (multiple editions) over the past week or so.

In Gmail:

• Mark as Unread Update:
  If you’re reading a conversation that had unread messages when you opened it, when you mark it as unread, Gmail will only mark as unread the messages in that conversation that were unread when you first opened the message.
  
• Analytics for Gmail:
  Premier and Education administrators can now view statistics about how their organizations are using Gmail (like users’ locations, languages, length of visit, etc.) in Google Analytics. This extends the Analytics statistics currently available for the control panel, Google Docs and Google Sites
  
• Name Format Options:
  Google Apps Administrators can now choose how users’ names will be displayed in Gmail. Administrators can select whether to display names either as: First Last (example: John Smith) or Last, First (example: Smith, John).
  Administrators can also choose whether to allow users to customize this setting.

In Google Docs (Forms):

• Form Summary Page: Provides current information about completed responses to a Google Form (attached to a Google Spreadsheet)
  
• Collect username in Google Docs: You can now automatically collect a respondent’s username when they submit a form in Google Docs.

Once again, Windows systems (every supported version) is vulnerable to a significant security attack. As reported in ZDNet, Microsoft was alerted to the issue a year ago and has failed to provide a patch.

Time again for IT staff to spend time and energy working around a security problem instead of on projects that help businesses thrive and grow.

Now that I think of it, maybe the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) will petition the FTC to stop Microsoft from selling systems with security holes. Given Microsoft’s track record, it sounds like a better case than EPIC’s complaint against Google.