Archives For Web Life

In today’s world we are more and more connected and using the Internet as an integral part of our lives.

Google offers Calendar and Contact Synch with iPhone and Windows Mobile

Paul Spoerry —  February 9, 2009 — Leave a comment

If you have an iPhone or a Windows Mobile, you can now synchronize Google Calendar events and Gmail events using Google Sync. “Once you set up Sync on your phone, it will automatically begin synchronizing your address book and calendar in the background, over-the-air, so you can attend to other tasks. Sync uses push technology so any changes or additions to your calendar or contacts are reflected on your device in minutes,” explains Google Mobile Blog.

Before synchronizing data, read the known limitations of the initial release and follow the instructions from Google’s site.

Google mentions that the service available for iPhone and Windows Mobile uses the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol. “When setting up a new Exchange ActiveSync account on your phone, all existing Contacts and Calendar events may be removed. Please make sure to back up any important data before you set up Google Sync.”

Before giving it a shot you might want to Merge Duplicate Contacts using the built-in contact merge feature in Google Contacts. Just find the duplicate contacts, tick their checkboxes, and click “Merge these contacts”.

In GMail, Google, iGoogle, Tech, Web Life, Windows , ,
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Google Gmail positions to overtake Hotmail

Paul Spoerry —  February 8, 2009 — Leave a comment

Gmail could suprpass Hotmail’s numbers in 2009. Between September 2007 and September 2008, Gmail’s visitor total grew 39%, from 18.8 million to 26 million, ComScore figures indicate. Windows Live Hotmail during this period saw its visitor share decline 4%, from 46.2 million to 44.6 million.

Between December 2007 and December 2008, Gmail’s number of unique monthly visitors in the United States grew 43%, from 20.8 million to 29.6 million, according to ComScore. Windows Live Hotmail lost 5% of its unique monthly visitors during this period, falling from 45.7 million to 43.5 million.

If Google’s Gmail growth rate rises to, say, 46% over 2009, it could reach approximately 43 million unique U.S. visitors by the end of the year. And if Windows Live Hotmail continues to bleed visitors at a rate of, say, 3%, it will finish the year with around 42 million unique visitors per month.

Given all the recent announcements that Google has been making, all the new Google Labs features being pushed into Gmail, etc… Google seems poised to overtake Hotmail.

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Charter Implements Bandwidth Caps

Paul Spoerry —  February 8, 2009 — Leave a comment

A source familiar with the plans says Charter will be imposing a 100GB cap upon any Charter connection of 15Mbps or less, and a 250GB usage cap for broadband tiers “over 15 Mbps up to 25 Mbps.”

Cable carriers are concerned about being transparent in the way they handle congestion on their networks, given that in 2008, the FCC sanctioned Comcast for lying to consumers about their network management policies. With a new (and potentially more network neutrality focused) FCC boss in Julius Genochowski, cable carriers are making sure that whatever they’re doing — they’re informing customers about it first.

Charter’s new, $140 60Mbps tier will not have any limitations. Speeds of 15Mbps or slower will have a 100GB monthly cap, while 15-25Mbps speeds will have a 250GB monthly cap. “In order to continue providing the best possible experience for our Internet customers, later this month we will be updating our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to establish monthly residential bandwidth consumption thresholds,” Ketzer confirms. “More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows,” he says.

Charters Acceptable Use Policy can be found here.

In Bittorrent, Tech, Web Life , , , ,
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Gmail Adds Multiple Inboxes

Paul Spoerry —  February 6, 2009 — Leave a comment

Gmail Multiple InboxesThe updates coming out of Google this week are fast and furious. Today marks the announcement of yet another labs feature. This one will enable multiple inbox panes in the Gmail interface. All you have to do is go into the Labs tab in your Gmail account to enable the new feature; you’ll then be able to enable Multiple inboxes tab in your Gmail interface. Once turned on you can pick up to five different panes. The panes can be set to display to the right of your inbox, above your inbox, or below it.

There are plenty of uses for this feature: If you pull mail in from multiple sources each can have it’s own inbox pane.  Alternatively, you could set it up to provide a quick view of important labels, starred, superstarred, or draft messages all in separate panels.

When setting up your multiple inboxes, you can use any of Gmail’s search operators to create any sort of search you want. For example,  inboxes might include searches like:

is:starred
is:unread
has:attachment

Again, this has been a big week of announcement for the Google camp. So far this week the following announcements have come out:

You can read more over at Lifehacker or as always hit up the Official Gmail blog.

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Offline Google Calendar

Paul Spoerry —  February 5, 2009 — Leave a comment

Offline Google CalendarRight on the heals of the announcement that Gmail Goes Offline with Google Gears comes the announcement that Google Calendar is getting the Offline mode treatment as well. Google’s help page mentions that users can decide which calendars are available offline. “Calendar keeps you on time, even when you’re not online. Offline Calendar allows you to access your events through your browser without requiring Internet access. It’s perfect for flaky connections or for when you’re in between meetings and have no idea where you’re supposed to be next. Note that while offline, Calendar will be read-only – it will not be possible to create, edit, or delete events.”

In a very non-Google fashion, Offline Calendar is being rolled out to Google Apps users FIRST. Typically, Google Labs swag gets rolled out to regular old Gmail users first, and then it will eventually make it’s way into the Google Apps users hands. This time around, Google Apps users get first dibs.

Offline Google Calendar will work with multiple calendars, but not on first sync. Your first sync will only grab your default calendar. No worries though, once you’re synced up, you get really basic options on your Settings page to manage which calendars you want synced to your account.

The only downside… it’s read only… at least for the time being.

You can read more About Offline Calendar from Google.

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