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You never thought of that,… or maybe you’re scared of that. What does google know about you? You can say that there are at least 2 types of info google picks up about us: the information we tell him/give him, and the information we don’t, but it is our behaviour online.

What do we tell google about ourselves?

• A good way to tell google about yourself is your google profile, that is: contact info, about you, the blogs you write, websites you work for, any links related to you, where you have been on the earth, the sidewiki, your picassa albums picture flow, etc.
• Google dashboard – google picks up from online the services you use and centralizes them, allowing you to change your personal data in these accounts: the blogger account, calendar, the contacts, google docs, gmail, iGoogle, orkut, picasa, the profile, google reader, google talk, google voice, google voice, and your web history – your history/items in these services.
• whatever you put online about yourself and is searchable, starting from a website, a blog, twitter, a profile page, a network, a forum, etc. Or what the others say about you.

What we don’t tell google about ourselves, but he knows/picks up/learns about us

• our web searches and web history, our preferences – if or even if not we’re logged into our google account. He records this and then personalizes your results according to what you last time visited – he “learns” you….
• your emails tell google what kind of adds to display, depending on the words you have in the emails; the same with the google chat: google picks the words/people you talk to/about the most…. your preferences…
• your google docs tell google about you, your preferences, your collaboration, your friends, your trends, and it offers you an unlimited space where you can put your docs online;
• if in the States, your google voice – the transcribed conversations, google taps into them…. – not harmfully, “do no evil” being their motto;
• all the google services you use, whether on the desktop or online, tell google a little about yourself. You may not know that much about your preferences, but google learns from you, adapts, serves you what you want…. Maybe you use google docs, gmail, google calendar, google desktop(nice, useful, customizable, gadgets), igoogle, google chat, youtube, picasa, google notebook, google maps, google earth, the google search engine + various versions of it, google checkout, google analytics, google trends, google toolbar, etc(a list can be here).

Uhm… these articles are supposed to be short…. yet this one is interesting: google offers more and more free products, “free versions of the existing commercial products/softwares in the market“, and we gladly use them(they are free, they are online, you just need… a browser! By us using them, giving feedback, or even without it, google learns of our behavior, our personality, preferences, etc… Guess what: even if we don’t use the google products/services, by indexing the web, google finds you/about you wherever you are! Even on facebook, even with your secret profile, he finds you in your friends’ friends list! Same on twitter. So why not be open about it all and create your profile, “feed” google with the information you think is relevant about you…

Should we be scared about that? I honestly don’t know. What I know is that it is getting more intense – addictive – interesting. With google wave, with the other startups that have such cool features that we use & then google buys them,… I don’t know….

Google is lowering prices of extra storage for Google Mail and Picasa: 16TB (!) for US$ 4,096 p.a.; http://j.mp/2aqMk2

Gruppen wurde im Web ursprünglich eingeführt um Informationen, E-Mail Adressen usw  nur Gruppenmitgliedern zugänglich zu machen aber auch um sich gegen Spam E-Mail zu schützen. Bei Google Groups kann man das Profil so einstellen, dass nur Gruppenmitglieder E-Mail an die Gruppe verschicken können. Umso mehr ist man überrascht, wenn man plötzlich Spam E-Mail erhält. Die Spammer sind inzwischen raffinierter geworden – sie melden sich bei offenen Gruppen an und können dann E-Mail an die Gruppenmitglieder verschicken. Das kann man unterbinden, wenn man im Google Group Profil den Beitritt anonymer Benutzer sperrt. Hierzu muss die Option “Beitritt nur auf Einladung” aktiviert werden.  Dann können neue Mitglieder nur beitreten wenn sie von Mitgliedern der Gruppe eingeladen werden. Allerdings sollte man die Gruppenmitglieder auch darauf aufmerksam machen, dass sie keine Einladungen an Unbekannte verschicken.

So hier mal eben eine kurze Beschreibung wie man seinen Kalender, sowohl am Mac als auch am iPhone mit Google synchronisiert.

Zuerst muss man den iCal in Mac OS X einrichten. Hierfür natürlich erstmal alle Kalender sichern über:

Ablage -> Exportieren -> Exportieren.

Damit ist schonmal ein Backup vorhanden und wir können die Daten in den Google Kalender uploaden. Dafür einfach in den Google Kalender gehen und unter den Kalendereinstellungen auf Importieren klicken und die gewünschten Kalender auswählen. Jetzt kommt ein Schritt bei dem ich mich etwas unwohl gefühlt hab, aber der eigentlich  kein Problem darstellt durch das grade erstelle Backup. Es müssen jetzt alle exportierten Kalender aus iCal gelöscht werden, da wir sonst später alles doppelt haben. Nachdem das erledigt ist geht es in die iCal-Einstellungen.

iCal -> Einstellungen  -> Accounts und einen neuen Account hinzufügen.

Jetzt muss man als Art “Google” auswählen und mit sich mit dem Benutzernamen und Passwort anmelden. Jetzt tauchen schonmal alle Termine die man grade geuploaded hat wieder auf. iCal am Mac ist jetzt fertig eingerichtet. Weiter geht es zum iPhone.

Unter Einstellungen -> Mail, Kontakte, Kalender -> einen Account hinzufügen.

Jetzt wird es interessant. Man erstellt einen Microsoft Exchange Account und muss nun folgenden Daten eingeben: Email und Passwort sollte sich von selbst erklären, hat man beides eingegeben taucht erstmal ein Fenster auf und fragt ob man das Zertifikat akzeptieren möchte, das mit ja bestätigen, danach erscheint die Servereingabe. Hier muss “m.google.com” eingeben werden.Wichtig man kann nur die Mail und die Kalenderdienste in Anspruch nehmen, da Apple und Google andere Kontaktinformationen verwenden. Soweit so gut. Es fehlt nur noch ein Schritt zur schnurlosen Übertragung unseres Kalenders via Push. Jetzt muss man mit dem Safari am Mac auf:

http://m.google.com/sync

gehen und hier die Sprache auf “English (US)” umstellen und dann das iPhone auswählen. Jetzt kannst du deinen iCal auf dem iPhone öffnen und siehe da die Termine tauchen auf.

Once you have created your Google apps account you can build a lot of things using  Google mail, Google docs and Google calendar.

I started doing this and learned a lot; trial and error.

However, I would have been better off planning things out a bit more using a Mind Map rather than playing around with headings, images, logos, etc.

In questi ultimi anni Google ci ha abituati a servizi e applicazioni di elevatissima qualità, molti dei quali senza paragoni con la diretta concorrenza. Non sfugge a questa regola neppure il servizio mail di Google, GMail, che ha saputo dalla sua apertura al grande pubblico – inizialmente per alcuni anni è stato disponibile solo per una ristrettissima cerchia di fortunati – conquistare gli utenti per qualità del servizio, spazio di archiviazione, funzionalità. Eppure GMail rimane un mostro un po’ misterioso, dalle mille funzioni sconosciute e dall’enorme potenzialità repressa. Per questo ho raccolto una serie di trucchi e curiosità sulla webmail di casa Google, per imparare ad usarla sfruttandone appieno le infinite funzionalità.

Doppia mail, in un unico account – Probabilmente pochi sanno che quando si crea un nuovo account in GMail, Google ci assegna due indirizzi mail: il comunissimo nome.utente@gmail.com ed il meno conosciuto nome.utente@googlemail.com. La posta inviata ai due indirizzi sarà comunque recapitata nel nostro account, segnalandoci da quale dei due domini arriva.

Il punto, questo sconosciuto – Un’altra caratteristica poco conosciuta è che GMail ignora completamente i punti contenuti nell’indirizzo mail. In questo modo dare a qualcuno mariorossi@gmail.com o mario.rossi@gmail.com o ancora m.ari.oros.si@gmail.com sarà equivalente. I messaggi ci saranno in ogni caso recapitati.

Il lato “plus” di GMail – L’ultima curiosità sul gioco dell’indirizzo è anche la più interessante. GMail prevede di inserire il simbolo “più” ( + ) seguito da una qualsiasi combinazione di lettere e numeri. In questo modo possiamo personalizzare a piacimento l’indirizzo secondo le proprie esigenze. Potremmo ad esempio iscriverci a siti che temiamo possano inondarci di mail non richieste con mariorossi+spam@gmail.com oppure dare ai colleghi di lavoro l’indirizzo mariorossi+ufficio@gmail.com. Sarà così possibile creare infiniti indirizzi mail con un solo account, che con l’uso di semplicissimi filtri riordinerà in modo veloce ed efficiente la nostra casella di posta.

Scorciatoie da tastiera – In GMail esiste la possibilità di utilizzare delle scorciatoie da tastiera, per velocizzare la lettura e la scrittura di mail o anche solo la consultazione della casella. Per attivarle, Impostazione > Generale > Scorciatoie da tastiera > Attiva scorciatoie da tastiera. Per ulteriori informazioni sulle scorciatoie disponibili, clicca qui (mail.google.com).

Il GMail Labs – Andando su Impostazione > Labs troveremo numerose funzioni sperimentali pronte da essere attivate e provate. Alcune sono pressochè inutili, altre si potrebbero rivelare utilissime per chi fa di GMail un uso industriale.

Usare GMail come un client – Capita spesso che una persona abbia più di un indirizzo mail per svariati motivi. Nel caso sia impraticabile l’uso di un client di posta (come Microsoft Outlook o Mozilla Thunderbird) GMail è la soluzione adatta. In Impostazione > Account > Aggiungi un altro account email di tua proprietà è possibile impostare GMail come fosse un client, con ottimi risultati. GMail scaricherà la vostra posta da qualsiasi altro indirizzo e impostandolo vi permetterà di inviare mail utilizzando altri indirizzi, il tutto senza uscire dalla Webmail di Google. Unica pecca è il supporto al solo protocollo POP, che include la quasi totalità dei servizi mail esclusa Hotmail/Windows Live Mail (@hotmail.com, @live.com e @msn.com) che usa il protocollo HTTP, non supportato da GMail. Da segnalare che l’aggiunta di account POP non funziona con gli indirizzi Libero (@libero.it, @iol.it, @inwind.it e @blu.it), a meno di non possedere la versione Libero Plus (a pagamento). Una pecca vera e propria, considerata la diffusione di questa webmail in Italia.

Le etichette – GMail non permette l’archiviazione in cartelle o sottocartelle, ma ha creato un sistema per alcuni versi più potente delle cartelle: le etichette. In GMail è possibile assegnare ad una mail una certa etichetta e visualizzare tutte le mail archiviate sotto una specifica etichetta. A differenza dell’archiviazione a cartelle, si può assegnare più di un’etichetta allo stesso messaggio, rendendo più facile la consultazione delle mail. Le etichette si possono anche colorare, per facilitare ulteriormente l’idividuazione (soprattutto in Posta in arrivo) delle proprie mail.

I filtri – Su Impostazione > Filtri è possibile creare delle regole per smistare (o applicare altre azioni) la posta arrivata. La funzione non è completa come i filtri presenti nei vari client, ma per molte delle azioni desiderate è più che sufficiente, con risultati in ogni caso ottimi.

I temi personalizzabili – GMail ti permette di personalizzare il tema della tua webmail. E’ sufficiente andare su Impostazione > Temi e scegliere quello che più ci piace. Ce ne sono tanti e per tutti i gusti.

Naturalmente elencare tutte le funzionalità di GMail è cosa lunga e faticosa, vista e considerata la mole di funzioni, trucchi e caratteristiche della mail. Io mi sono semplicemente limitato a raccogliere ciò che mi è sembrato più interessante e meno conosciuto, per tutto il resto vi rimando a due fonti: GMail Tips – The Complete Collection (in lingua inglese), una raccolta di trucchi e curiosità su GMail, e GMail Blog, il blog ufficiale del team di sviluppo.

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Today has been quite frustrating , trying to enable a client access Gmail on her new Samsung Jet phone. Loads of web searching, producing lots of useful (or not-so-useful) ideas.

At last a link led me to a page on Samsung’s own site
http://www.samsungmobile.co.uk/support/configurephone/emailSetting.do
where you can complete the settings online, and then have them downloaded to the phone. And we can now create a message too. Hooray!

Oops, spoke too soon. Message stuck in Outbox, despite using various combinations of what should be the correct  SMTP settings. Frustrating… Aha, deleting previous attempts at setting up email profiles seems to have done the trick.

So, success at last: using the Samsung website to send settings to the phone seems nearly to work
(although you need to change a few settings manually – see below),
providing you only have one email profile,
and – somewhat bizarrely – that you access Googlemail through the Games menu
(rather than the more intuitive Google widget accessed from the front page).

Summary of Google Mail email settings needed for Samsung Jet phone

Use SSL: Yes
Port: 995
SMTP Server:     smtp.gmail.com
SMTP Port: 587
Secure connection: TLS
Incoming Server: POP3
POP3 Server:    pop.gmail.com
POP3 Port: 995
APOP login: [unchecked/not ticked]
Secure connection: SSL
My address:     your original isp address (username@gmail.com or username@googlemail.com)
User Name:     your Gmail username (excluding ‘@gmail.com’ or ‘@googlemail.com’)
Password:     your Gmail password
SMTP authorisation: [checked/ticked]
User name and Password [same as googlemail or gmail]

Alistair

You would feel like i´m thinking ahead for you.

What i do for you, if you use me:
I sync all messages, no matter if it send from sms, mail or massenger, it will apear in one line. All communications in Facebook, Mail or IM´s in one place (oh i´m so great)

pre sync mail

It combines elements of e-mail, instant messaging, photo sharing services and documents in a single tool.

San Francisco. (MarketWatch).- Google Wave, the Google tool to improve communications between users in real time, cease to be an exclusive club members and counting as of this Wednesday will be used by almost 100,000 users.

Google announced today that about 100,000 people, mainly programmers and application users of the browser, starting tomorrow receive invitations to use Wave, which has been dubbed the email revolution.

Wave combines elements of Google email, instant messaging, photo sharing services and documents in a single tool to send messages and content to a wide range of contacts. However, Google removes Wave mails back and forth and keeps all messages on a single page, allowing simultaneous conversations between different members of the group.

Lars Rasmussen, co-creator of the popular mapping service Google Maps and one of Google’s Wave makers warned on the corporate website of the browser that this release could still cause problems and fail on occasion. “We have focused almost exclusively on the scale, stability, speed and ease of use of the service,” said Rasmussen, who in presenting Wave said last May that the tool is “what will be the email if been presented today.”

Following this month’s widespread outage, early accounts would seem to hold that Gmail has again been knocked by some kind of service interruption.

I’d imagine that this must say something about our communal reliance on a single mail platform for coordinating a large swath of information, but it’s probably likewise telling that the only way to find out if anyone else is having trouble is to search on Twitter (just try Googling the problem. Just try).

Von Google gibt es die Applikation Google Mobile, die Verknüpfungen zu den einzelnen Googlediensten, z.B.

• Google Suchmaschine
• Google Mail (GMail)
• Google Kalender
• etc.

vereint. Hierdurch ist es möglich, durch den Start der App die gewünschten Googledienste ohne die Eingabe über den Webbrowser zu erreichen.

Hier die Verknüpfung zur Google eigenen Suchmaschine Google.de

Die Applikation verbinden Verknüpfungen zu folgenden weiteren Google Dienste

Für die besagten Google-Dienste benötigen Sie jedoch ein Google-Konto, welches Sie sich kostenlos zulegen könnten, falls Interesse an diesen Diensten besteht.

Eine sinnvolle applikation, die verschiedene Programme vereint, ohne das man diese Dienste umständlich über den Browser erreichen müsste.

As Google grows its portfolio of applications for small businesses through Google Apps, going head to head with Microsoft and Zoho, one thing is obviously missing: CRM.

We’re delighted to plug the gap!

Sign in with your Google Apps domain using OpenID (click to enlarge)

Google Apps users can sign straight in to the WeCanDo.BIZ website using their Google Apps domain via OpenID, as launched by Google and WeCanDo.BIZ in July of this year.

Once signed in, activation of our Social CRM application gets you straight into WeCanDoCRM after you’ve provided your company details.

WeCanDoCRM provides Social CRM, connected to public profiles on the WeCanDo.BIZ website, with the ability to also easily import contact data from across the web, including Google Mail, LinkedIn, Outlook and CSV files.  Twitter and Facebook contact importing is coming soon.

With a consolidated view of ALL your contacts from on-line and off-line sources, users can then communicate with those contacts using rich email, SMS (text) and survey marketing tools.

Check out our video on what WeCanDoCRM offers below!

I recently upgraded to windows 7 64bit (RTM) from Vista 64bit. It all went suprisingly well and after only a couple of weeks I’ve not had any issues to speak of except an annoying browser issue which I only really nocticed when using Google Reader and Google Mail.

When tryign ot user Google Reader, I notices a huge performance decrease when looking through a feed.
In Google mail I noticed a decrease in performance and then sometimes unresponsiveness, or what looke like a lost connection.

I assumed that this would be the new virus softwarer I had installed (AVG, which seems very good by the way) because it was the only new software I’d installed other than Windows 7, because Onecare no longer worked.

After some searching around I found that the problem lies with the Skype add on I have installed. DOnt ask me why, but disabling it sorted everything! I hope this helps someone else!

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=1&comments_parentId=429871