Interesting elsewhere

During his keynote at SXSW this afternoon (live blog here), Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced a new “At Anywhere” platform, which allows websites to more deeply integrate the service into their sites. The idea is to offer a more seamless experience to Twitter users navigating third party sites like the Huffington Post and the New York Times, giving them Twitter content without forcing them to jump off the page they’re currently viewing. The details on the new platform are still scant, but this is Twitter’s answer to Facebook Connect, which we reported on back in January.

Among the features:

• When you browse a site that uses @anywhere, people and brands that have Twitter accounts will be highlighted with a hyperlink. Mousing over that hyperlink will show a small box (a “hovercard”) containing their Twitter information, including their most recent tweet (in effect it means you don’t have to click over to Twitter’s homepage to see their Twitter profile)
• Publishers will be able to more deeply integrate their own Twitter profiles, making them easier for their readers to ‘follow’ them
• Sites will be able to implement @anywhere with a few lines of Javascript.
• The new platform is launching with a number of major sites and services, including the New York Times, Huffington Post, Meebo, Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, and eBay.

It looks like the platform may eventually be hosted at Twitter.com/anywhere, which currently features a placeholder Twitter account that tweeted “Stay Tuned”. Update This may actually be a Twitter account related to the platform — it just tweeted “If you’re a javascript guru and want to help us build @anywhere and work with publishers @jointheflock”.

From the Twitter blog:

We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.

When we’re ready to launch, initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube. Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning. Twitter has proven to be compelling in a variety of ways. With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting.

CrunchBase InformationTwitterInformation provided by CrunchBase

There aren’t many articles covering incompatibilities, or CSS differences in Firefox alone — and for good reason.

Firefox has always done an excellent good job of supporting both CSS and JavaScript in a standards-compliant manner without too many awkward bugs.

There are, however, a few CSS properties and selectors that aren’t supported by one or more of the versions released since version 3.0., which I will cover here.

This article will cover bugs, inconsistencies, and nonsupport. So, if you’re having trouble with a CSS property or selector in Firefox and it’s not listed here, then you’ll probably have to rethink your layout and reconsider what the culprit might be.

Since Firefox 2 is virtually non-existent, I won’t be considering that version specifically, but this information will generally apply to that version by default.

And I should note that the material for this post was taken primarily from the newly-updated SitePoint CSS reference, which is hands-down the best and most comprehensive CSS reference available anywhere.

The Outline Overflow Bug

In Firefox 3.x, when an element overflows the border of a parent that has the outline property set, the outline will stretch to fit the containing element, as shown in the screen capture below:

The correct implementation is shown in the next screen capture taken from Chrome:

As shown above, the outline should encompass the element that is being outlined, and should not be affected by any overflowing elements. To ensure there’s no confusion, note that this is a bug in the implementation of the outline property, not the border property.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: outline Property

Tables with Collapsed Borders

In Firefox, when a table has its borders set to collapse using the border-collapse property, the table’s top and left margins in relation to nearby elements is 1 pixel off. This is shown in a zoomed-in screenshot in the image below, which displays the bottom border of a block-level element (red) touching the top border of a collapsed table (blue):

Here is the correct implementation of this property/value pair, as shown in Chrome:

As shown above, because the borders are “collapsed”, and because the table is not a block element, there should be a slight offset in the left margin, and the top margin should be even with the bottom border of the element above it.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: border-collapse Property

Empty Cells in Table Rows

This is a property value that is not implemented properly by any browser, including Firefox. When a table row has no visible content and all its cells have their empty-cells property set to hide, the entire row should behave as if it were set to “display: none”, with no borders or backgrounds visible.

No browser handles this correctly, so the table row is still visible, as shown in the image below.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: empty-cells Property

Word Spacing on Inline Elements

In Firefox 3.x, a negative value on the word-spacing property will be treated as zero on adjacent inline elements. The negative value should cause the inline elements to overlap one another, as would be the case with text, but this doesn’t happen. Instead, the elements are just given zero white space separation with no overlap.

The image below displays both the correct and incorrect implementations:

In the examples shown above, the three words “Fruits”, “Vegetables” and “Other Foods” are individually wrapped in <span> elements, while the paragraph that wraps them has its word-spacing property set to a negative value.

The second example (Firefox) fails to apply the negative word spacing, except between the last two words because those words are not individually wrapped by spans but are natural text elements.

As a side point, this bug occurs similarly in IE8, but not in previous versions of IE.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: word-spacing Property

Text Decoration on Floating Descendants

When an element has a text-decoration value set, that value should not be inherited by floating descendants. In Firefox 3.x, floating descendants are given the same text-decoration values as their parent, even though this should not be the case.

In the image above, the first line is a screenshot from IE8, displaying a <span> element floated inside of an anchor. The text inside the <span> does not have a visible text decoration, which is the correct way to display it. In Firefox (shown in the second example), the text-decoration is incorrectly applied to the floating <span>.

You may have noticed this bug in Firefox when trying to remove the text-decoration from floated images inside of anchors.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: text-decoration Property

pre-line & pre-wrap for the white-space property in FF 3.0

Using the white-space property in Firefox 3.5, you can specify whether multiple space characters should be collapsed down to a single space or not. By default, HTML documents will collapse multiple spaces down to a single space. In some instances, you can apply white-space: pre to prevent white space from being collapsed, which is similar to the use of the <pre> HTML tag. Subsequently, you may want to remove that setting using white-space: pre-line (to collapse white space).

Firefox 3.0 does not support this value, so the white space will be retained. Firefox 3.5 collapses the space correctly. The image below shows both examples:

Similarly, when a paragraph of text is set to white-space: pre-wrap, this should preserve white spaces between words, but should naturally include line breaks. Firefox 3.0 fails to implement this correctly, while later versions (and all other browsers) include the natural line breaks. Both examples are shown below.

Keep in mind that the outer element is given white-space: pre while an inner <span> is attempting to override the lack of line breaks using pre-wrap. On its own, pre-wrap would not have any effect.

Firefox 3.x also treats the some of the white-space values differently from other browsers when those values are applied to the <textarea> element. For example, applying white-space: nowrap should cause all typed text in a <textarea> to form one line, but Firefox 3.x does not do this.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: white-space Property

Page Break Properties

CSS allows developers to specify where page breaks should or shouldn’t occur using the three properties page-break-before, page-break-inside, and page-break-after. Opera is the only browser that fully supports these properties, while other browsers offer partial support or no support.

The page-break-inside property specifies whether or not a page break can occur inside a single block-level element. Firefox does not provide support for this property. Using the syntax page-break-inside: avoid, you can prevent an element from being divided during printing. The image below, from a print preview in Opera 10, shows how this property can prevent an unordered list from being split over two pages:

By contrast, look at the image below, taken from the print preview option in Firefox 3.5:

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: Paged Media Properties

Orphans and Widows on Printable Pages

The orphans and widows CSS properties are supported only by Internet Explorer 8 and Opera since version 9. This property is used to specify the minimum number of lines from a single paragraph that can occur on a printed page, either at the bottom (orphans) or the top (widows). Depending on the number chosen, lines will be moved from one page to the next (or previous) in order to prevent a single line from being printed at the top or bottom of a page.

Even with the orphans property set to a value of “3″, as shown in the image below, Firefox’s print preview shows a single line at the bottom of one of the printable pages:

Similar to the page-break-inside property, Firefox also fails to support the values avoid, left, and right for both the page-break-before and page-break-after properties.

References: SitePoint CSS Reference: orphans Property | SitePoint CSS Reference: widows Property

The :first-line Pseudo-Element Bug

The :first-line pseudo-element allows the first line of any given text block to have different formatting from the rest of the text. For example, the first line of a paragraph of text can be changed to uppercase or to a different color. For this CSS element to work in a practical manner, it should allow for the possibility of nested block-level elements. For example, a <div> element that contains a <p> element should allow the :first-line pseudo-element to change the styling of the first line of text inside the <div>. In Firefox (and in many other browsers), this is not possible unless the pseudo-element specifically targets the child paragraph.

Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, and Safari implement this feature correctly, preventing nesting of block elements from breaking the styling, as shown in the image below:

In the paragraph above, the text is inside of a <p> element, which resides inside of a <div>. The <p> has the :first-line pseudo-element set to color: blue, which fails in Firefox because of the nesting of the paragraph inside the <div>.

Reference: SitePoint CSS Reference: first-line Pseudo-Element

CSS3 Support in Firefox 3.x

Firefox has gradually added better support for CSS3 since the release of version 3.0. Below is a description of how Firefox handles different features of CSS3. Some of these may still be in the working draft or candidate recommendation stage, therefore we can’t be dogmatic about what should and shouldn’t be supported until they have reached the recommendation stage.

• Firefox 3.0 doesn’t support the text-shadow property
• Firefox 3.x doesn’t support the box-shadow property, except when using the proprietary prefix -moz-
• Firefox 3.x doesn’t support the box-sizing property, except when using the proprietary prefix -moz-
• Firefox 3.x doesn’t support multiple columns unless the proprietary prefix -moz- is used
• Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 do not support CSS3 gradients and multiple backgrounds (both of these were recently added in 3.6)
• Firefox 3.0 doesn’t support the border-image property, but 3.5 supports it using the -moz- proprietary prefix
• Firefox 3.0 doesn’t support a number of CSS3 pseudo-classes (:nth-child, :nth-last-child, :nth-of-type, etc.)
• Firefox 3.0 doesn’t support CSS transforms
• Firefox 3.x doesn’t support CSS transitions
• Firefox 3.x doesn’t support CSS animations

Other CSS Features Not Supported

Some of the more significant bugs and incompatibilities were discussed above, but there are a few others worth noting.

• Firefox up to version 3.5 doesn’t support the value run-in for the display property
• Firefox doesn’t support the ::selection pseudo-element
• The @page at-rule is not supported by Firefox
• The @font-face at-rule is not supported by Firefox 3.0

Conclusion

After going through this material, you can clearly see that lack of support of CSS features in Firefox is minimal, and in many cases quite irrelevant since many of the properties discussed here are not very commonly used.

Nonetheless, I hope this will provide a decent reference for the most significant bugs and inconsistencies in Firefox. If you are having problems with a particular feature of CSS in Firefox that isn’t listed here, chances are you’re doing something wrong or may not fully understand certain CSS concepts and principles.

So, in that respect, this reference should work well as a reverse-reference, since those not listed here can be trusted to work fine if they are implemented correctly with proper syntax.

Of course, if there’s anything I’ve missed, or any errors, please comment and I’ll do my best to make any necessary corrections and additions.

Further References

• CSS improvements in Firefox 3
• Newly-supported CSS Features in Firefox 3.5

Firefox Image provided by Rakaz

This post was written exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Louis Lazaris, a freelance writer and web developer. Louis runs Impressive Webs where he posts articles and tutorials on web design. You can follow Louis on Twitter or get in touch with him through his website.

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: E4ip7a

When it comes to apps, the iPhone platform is now bigger than the Facebook platform, according to a report by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company. Flurry said today that Apple’s iTunes App Store has over 140,000 applications compared to 60,000 apps available on the Facebook platform.

“Since the App Store launched in July 2008, 35,000 unique companies have released applications, which translates to 58 new companies launching apps each day,” Furry said in its Smartphone Industry Pulse report for February 2010.

That’s quite amazing, considering that Facebook launched its platform more than a year earlier than the iPhone platform and has north of 400 million users. In comparison, the iPhone OS platform has about 70 million devices. And developer momentum for the iPhone platform isn’t going to wane anytime soon.

Why? To paraphrase Jerry McGuire, Apple is showing developers the money. Thanks to its one-click payment option, it’s easy for app developers to make money -– whether it’s by selling apps or selling virtual goods within apps.

With the iPad showing up as a platform extension, more developers are looking to focus their energies on the iPhone platform. “Over six weeks since Apple announced the iPad, Flurry continues to measure a significant increase in iPhone OS new application starts within its system,” the analytics firm said. Much of it is said to be developers looking to adapt their applications for the larger-format device.

The most interesting part of the Flurry report was the iPhone developer DNA. Its analysis revealed the following categories:

1. Native iPhone: Companies founded to create applications for iPhone (e.g., PageOnce, ngmoco) 2. Traditional Media: Companies established on Film, TV, Print and Radio (e.g., Disney, TBS, New York Times) 3. Mobile: Companies having started on J2ME, BREW, BlackBerry, etc. (e.g., Digital Chocolate, eBuddy) 4. Retail & CPG: Brick-and-mortar companies or ones that manufacture goods (e.g., The Gap, DKNY, Kraft) 5. Online: Companies who began on the web including e-Commerce, social networks, online gaming, streaming music, etc. (e.g., Google, eBay, Facebook, Pandora, PopCap, Zynga) 6. Traditional Gaming: Video game companies from console, portable or PC (e.g., EA, Activision, Namco, etc.). Despite the fact that the App Store is now maturing, reaching its two year anniversary this summer, we are encouraged that native iPhone application developers are still relevant, representing 20% of the heritage pie, the second largest category. This means that the barrier to entry is still low enough for start-ups to enter and innovation to flourish. However, those days may be numbered as “discoverability” has become a significant issue, and now “marketing muscle” is starting to count more in the App Store.

On the Web, there is a lot of confusion over where Google Wave fits alongside the recently-introduced Google Buzz, or even if Wave is supposed to be a companion or competitor to Gmail - which could potentially cannibalize the company's extremely visible (and profitable) e-mail business. Today at the SXSW conference, the team leading Gmail said the company has to take risks, learn from mistakes, and yes, even sometimes build products that are in conflict and may replace one another - in the name of keeping competition from doing it themselves.

As it was described this afternoon, Google Wave, which debuted in early beta last year, is a "leapfrog project", which goes beyond today's environment, but is set to impact a future Web. The team working on Wave, as discussed with the product launched, is looking to do more than just build a collaborative service, but to possibly even replace e-mail itself, something the GMail team recognized might seem at conflict to their core mission.

"When people ask if we are cannibalizing our own services, we would rather cannibalize our own services than have other people do it," said Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz.

Putting significant resources into disparate product lines that may come to future conflict might seem crazy, or even a bit paranoid, but it sounds like that is par for the course for the team, which said it likes to take big risks, which might not ever see the time of day, or die when they do. In fact, we learned today that Google Buzz's original incarnation began several years ago.

"Most of the things we try fail," said Jonathan Perlow, software engineer on the Gmail front end, responsible for GMail Chat and Mail Goggles. "We have lots of things that are false starts. We recently launched Google Buzz, and it had some false starts before it launched. We started something like Buzz around when we launched chat four years ago. Good ideas live on, and you figure it out."

Figuring things out for the Gmail team can be very quick. The team boasted of a close-knit engineering environment where ideas can be discussed and coded quickly, and where meetings are the exception rather than regular practice.

But while most failures for Gmail have occurred in testing and not made it outside of the walls of Mountain View, the initial failures for Buzz happened thanks to the team making some core mistakes and not having a testbed of real-world users, relying too heavily on their open corporate mentality.

"Gmail thought that e-mail and chat networks were also the social networks, and we missed the boat there," said Jackson. "(Autofollow) worked really well within Google in a trusted environment. Googlers rarely used block."

While Gmail's focus has changed over the last six years with the additions of Chat, Buzz, user interface updates and other features, the product initially aimed with three main goals: enable users to never delete e-mail, have a spam filter that really works, and build a Web interface with the level of quality of a desktop application - concepts that nobody knew how to do, but wanted to accomplish anyway.

"One of the lessons I learned is that when we start with ideas that are crazy at the time, but we thought we could do, they would be pretty great for users, said Perlow. "They had no idea how to build these things, but had to figure it out."More: louisgray.com | RSS | Buzz | E-mail | Cell: 408 646.2759louisgray@gmail.com (Louis Gray)

This afternoon at SXSW, a panel of Gmail and Google Buzz team members took part in a panel where they discussed what goes on behind the scenes at Gmail. The panel covered a smattering of topics, covering everything from Gmail stickers to site speed, but eventually the discussion turned to the elephant in the room: Google Buzz’s privacy shortcomings when it launched last month.

Google Product Manager Todd Jackson said that Google had learned a lot from the incident, acknowledging that Google was in error when it made the assumption that users wanted to move their email and chat contacts over to their Buzz social graph, and auto-followed them.  To make sure that kind of blunder doesn’t happen again, he revealed that Google may start pre-releasing new Buzz features to small subsets of users.

So why exactly did Google Buzz launch with some key social features missing? Jackson said that while Google employees were testing out the product internally, they never had much desire to mute any of their coworkers, and that their email contact list closely matched the people they wanted to follow on Buzz. Obviously, that wasn’t true for most people once the product was released outside of the Googleplex. Which is why Google is considering pre-releasing new Buzz features to a few thousand opt-in users long before they’re rolled out to the public.

That would stand in contrast to what Google does for many of its major product launches, as Jackson says that the company doesn’t like to preannounce things (it frustrates users when they can’t try the new release out for themselves). But in the case of Buzz, where changes can have a major impact with respect to user privacy, it sounds like Google may be making an exception. Jackson also noted that he had actually asked SXSW speaker danah boyd to give her keynote talk on privacy and publicity at Google headquarters.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase

Shared by AnnikaLidne
Wow! Just read another post were the big G said it wouldn't shut down google.cn

Financial Times:
Google to shut China search engine  —  By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Kathrin Hille in Beijing  —  Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities …

Wow! Just read another post were the big G said it wouldn't shut down google.cn

Google's Apps suite for domain owners and businesses has finally received some star treatment with the launch of the Apps Marketplace. Which Google-friendly apps are free, worth the cost, and entirely useful? These 10 are definitely worth a look. More »


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Har hamnat i en period där den ena bakterien värre än den andra tycks springa stafettlopp i min kropp. Och i samma utsträckning blir bloggen lidande…

Men -  efter cirka 35 timmar i samma säng (och äntligen ett behållet intag av rostebröd x 1 2 och glas avslagencola x 1 2 1/2…) känner jag att jag i alla fall behöver ta mig samman, upp i sittläge och skriva några rader om YABA (vilket är det sista riktiga omvärldsintrycket jag upplevt sedan i tordsdags). För, som ni kan se bevis på i den här videon, är ju nu thejennie.se tillsammans med 62 andra bloggar, också betraktad en ”YABA-blogg”.

Torsdagens prisutdelning var i alla fall en fantastiskt trevlig och påkostad tillställning (fri bar och inhyrda mattor, need I say more?) och härligt att få vara med och applådera de bästa av de bästa. Utöver de redan annonserade vinnarna (Björn Alberts inom marknadsföring, Joakim Jardenberg inom medier, Johan Ronnestam inom trender och webbtjänster och inUseful inom design och interaktionsdesign) var det riktigt kul att se årets ”specialpriser” delas ut – inte minst för att två av de åtta pristagarna har en fot i Blustret där jag i friska fall hänger om dagarna, och att en av dem är en blogg som jag själv varit med och bidragit till.

Specialkategorierna och vinnarna inom respektive var:

• Årets blogginlägg – med flest inlänkar gick till Ohsohightech.se för inlägget  “Vad är twitter och hur använder man det?” (48 inlänkar). Stort grattis till Blustraren @raawmarkus och @olaj – synd dock att ingen av er kunde vara där och ta emot =(.
• Årets mest inlänkade blogg blev Mindpark med 676 inlänkar. Tog mig inte för att kliva upp på scen (förlåååt) men tar åt mig en liten liten ära för att åtminstone ha bidragit med dessa två inlägg: ”Wordpress och den kollektiva koden” samt ”Dell Hell, konsumenten och den oinskränkta bloggmakten”. Dock största grattis till @jocke som sköter Mindparks roder så galant.
• Årets mest långrandiga blogg – flest ord per inlägg i snitt fick Brit Stakston med sina i snitt 868 ord per inlägg håva in pris för. Skönaste kategorin med en helt klart värdig vinnare…
• Årets mest aktiva blogg – flest inlägg gick till Webbfeber (1113 inlägg). Gillar verkligen Feber men hade inte riktigt koll på precis hur aktiva de var. Nu vet jag =). Och är också lite extra glad över att vi på Disruptive Media fått med Febers @rogeraberg som en av paneldeltagarna till konferensen Social+Cash den 25:e mars.
• Mesta twittrare – flest tweets någonsin: @deeped – 30705 tweets (vid Daytonas mättillfälle). Inte förvånad. Deep’s our bird!
• Årets Twitter-beef (nej, okej, jag tar tillbaka – det här är nog skönaste kategorin): Gick till både inblandade parterna, @theplanninglab & @pleasecopyme, i en beef jag helt missat men väl borde, eh, gratta till??!
• Årets frihetsfrisyr satt på Walter Naeslunds hjässa. Får lov att hålla med – snackar någon frilla frihet är det (eller numer var det?) Walters.
• Årets tröstpris gick till Per Torberger för detta, enligt Daytona, ”legendariska inlägg”. Måste hålla med om att det är strålande – grattskrät (min egen form av verbet ”gråtskratta”…) när jag läste det!

Mest stoltglad är jag dock förstås över att boyfriend (Joakim Nyström) mr Social Video (Björn Falkevik) och ”creative mindmaster” (Mattias Östmar) fick ta emot det för i år nyinstiftade hederspriset som Daytona delade ut för deras insatser med Sweet Sunday Web Crunch. Läs själva om vad priset betyder för dem och glöm inte att kolla in nästa SSWCrunch-avsnitt imorrn! 20.00 kickar de igång med tillfälligt Sverigegästande Fredrik Wass i soffan och en hel del schpännande intervjuer .

Här nedan hittar du Bambusningen från hela YABA-prisutdelningen…

…och som relaterat vill jag passa på att nämna att: Som jag tidigare bloggat om hade ju även en annan webbshow, signerad Bella och Tyra, premiär i torsdags. På grund av hälosläget tog jag mig inte för att se den förrän först idag, och det jag kan säga är väl egentligen bara att Emanuel Karlstens recension av den är riktigt träffande. Gör nästan lite ont att erkänna – men kommer förmodligen att se den igen (om inte annat för att den nog kan hålla mig uppdaterad på en annan del av bloggosfären som jag lyckats hålla mig lite för duktigt långt ifrån…). Första avsnittet av Bella & Tyra show hittar du här.

Related posts:

1. Rapport från Stora Bloggpriset – om vinnare och fylletweets Jo, igår var det ju som de flesta vid...
2. Yaba yaba yeah! (vinnare, tack, kuriosa och sång samt några rader om Blondinbellas nya talkshow) Kan inte minnas när jag var så här sjuk så...
3. Fettisdagswebbiga OS-tips från en äkta Vancouvrare Okej, dags att sälla sig till mängden och blogga lite...

Relaterade inlägg tack vare Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Today’s update includes a handful of experimental features, a bunch from third-party developers and one that lets you build new features yourself. Enjoy!

Fast new windows in Gmail
Working with email in a single window can slow you down, so throughout Gmail there are places where you can launch what you’re doing into a new window and accomplish two things at once. For example, you can search your inbox and compose a new message at the same time. While this has been part of Gmail for a while now, we’ve just made it better by dramatically speeding up how quickly new windows open. No more waiting for the new window “Loading...” bar to finish — now you can do what you do in Gmail faster!


Gmail Labs updates
We’ve made a handful of updates in Gmail Labs, our experimental testing ground where Google engineers can quickly launch new Gmail features and get feedback from users. Based on usage and user feedback, six Labs have graduated to become full-fledged Gmail features: Search Autocomplete, Go To Label, Forgotten Attachment Detector, YouTube Previews, Custom Label Colors and Vacation Dates. We also retired five Labs that weren’t as popular. Finally, we introduced one new Lab: Refresh POP Accounts. If you use Gmail to retrieve messages from another email account with POP, this Lab immediately checks your other account for new mail when you click the “Refresh” link in Gmail.


Calendar Labs updates
We also have Labs in Google Calendar, and we’ve cooked up a few new experiments there as well. Event Flair lets you add custom icons to appointments, Gentle Reminders prevents event reminders from interrupting your flow in the browser and Automatically Declining Events blocks people from double-booking time on your calendar when you’re already busy.


Apps Script Gallery
Google Apps Script is a flexible system that lets you add custom menus, buttons and functions to spreadsheets, as well as make the components of Google Apps work together in new ways. For example, you can trigger a set of automated Gmail messages and add appointments to your calendar based on changes in a spreadsheet. On Wednesday, we made Google Apps Script available to everyone — not just businesses, schools and organizations — and we launched the Apps Script Gallery to share script examples and help you get started scripting.


DocVerse joins Google
We’re always looking for ways to help people transition smoothly to the cloud. With this in mind, last week we acquired DocVerse, a small team that’s built a powerful set of add-ons to help teams work together more efficiently with Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications that they’re familiar with. Stay tuned for more information about our plans with DocVerse.

More apps for Google Apps
Google Apps customers often decide to move even more of their technology into the cloud, but it hasn’t always been easy for them to find good web-based solutions that meet their needs and to integrate those solutions with Google Apps. This Tuesday, we launched the Google Apps Marketplace to help customers find technology from trusted providers and give developers a platform where they can sell their products. When Google Apps administrators find something they like in the Marketplace, it takes just a few clicks to integrate a developer’s application with Google Apps. Authentication to third-party applications can be handled automatically by Google Apps, and developers’ applications can integrate with and securely share data among services like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar. There are more than 50 applications available in the Marketplace today, ranging from accounting and project management apps to graphic design and customer relationship management tools.



Who's gone Google?
We’re pleased to welcome another crop of new businesses and schools to Google Apps. More than 11,000 crew members at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines took flight with Google Apps, and the Sports Basement switched teams from Microsoft Exchange. National Geographic is exploring the world of real-time collaboration, and Hamilton College is learning a few new tricks with Google Apps, too.

Hope you're enjoying the latest round of new features, whether you're using Google Apps with friends and family, with colleagues or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Yesterday, Foursquare turned one. You read that right: The mobile social network that made its splash at SXSW 2009 and has tremendous buzz is just 366 days old.

Despite that short amount of time, Foursquare has more than half a million users, 1.4 million venues and 15.5 million checkins, and it’s still growing. Experian Hitwise decided to use this milestone to analyze Foursquare’s growth.

As you might imagine, not only have Foursquare’s mobile apps seen growth, but so has Foursquare.com. What did strike us as surprising is that the site’s number-one referrer is Facebook, which accounted for a whopping 33% of upstream visits last week. That’s even bigger than Google (22%) and Twitter (8%) combined. It’s yet another indicator of how much traffic the world’s largest social network can drive.

Searches for Foursquare have also been sharply rising, accounting for around 0.00032% of all U.S. searches. Its most recent peak was February 20, about the time Please Rob Me was gaining the press’ attention.

With more than 15.5 million checkins and nearly 300,000 yesterday (many due to SXSW), Foursquare seems to have a bright future. However, competition from Gowalla, Yelp and Facebook in the local space could give the startup a run for its money this year.

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Gowalla, Twitter, Yelp

Tags: foursquare, Mobile 2.0

Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China. He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government.

In the presentation, Kuo (who also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a week ago) clarified how censorship in China works. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the Great Firewall that has the most impact in China - but something China calls "self-discipline." Kuo also discussed what the next moves will be from Google, since he believes that the ball is in Google's court and Beijing won't push the situation.

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History of Google in China

Before getting down to the nitty gritty of the current Google-China standoff, Kaiser Kuo gave some valuable context to Google in China.

In 2005 Google started to hire aggressively in China, he said. Google's decision to enter China with a censored product immediately brought grief to Google, with some pundits describing it as a "black day for Internet freedom." Google defended its actions at that point by saying that not providing search to a fifth of the world's population would be a greater loss than having censored results.

At first Google had a notice on their search results stating that they were censored. Kuo also pointed out that Google only omitted results that users wouldn't have been able to view anyway had they clicked through (because the pages or sites were blocked). At that point, Google didn't host Gmail, personal search history, Blogger or other services that had personal information. Google in China also protected their employees, Kuo noted.

Google never had an easy time of it in China. For example, many Chinese users couldn't spell the word "Google." Regulators made it difficult for them, as did their Chinese competitors. Google did manage to make good revenues and market share, but never "moved the needle" against its Chinese search competitor Baidu. Kuo remarked that Google was not singled out for any special treatment by the Chinese government.

In 2009 Google got into trouble due to pornography in its search results, and it went dark for a short time as a result.

There has been a massive growth in Internet users in China in the four years since Google entered that market. There were 2-3 million Internet users in China when Google began operations there; now there are 384 million Internet users in China. Google has around 35% market share in China, which has not been matched by any other Western company. Its annual revenues in China is around $300-400 million in revenue, which is nothing to sneeze at.

In mid-December 2009 there was a hacker attack on Google, which in January Google claimed on its blog came from China. At that time Google also announced it would stop censoring search results on google.cn. Kuo doesn't believe this announcement was a cynical retreat from China due to its being defeated by Chinese competitors, which many pundits suggested at the time.

Kuo said that the challenge to Google's business model is around trust, for personal data in the cloud. So Google's blog post in China was appropriate, Kuo believes.

Some people have suggested that the Chinese government used the strategy known in China as "Using Quiescience to control action." The government has however unblocked Google Docs and Groups, and has not blocked any further Google services since January.

Currently Google is still hiring in China and is in the midst of negotiations with the Chinese government. Kuo believes there is deliberate confusion right now."It's impossible to grasp what Google is up against without having a better grasp of how censorship in China works."

The Great Firewall

There are two main types of Internet censorship in China, said Kuo.

The first is The Great Firewall of China, which has been nick-named "Iron Curtain 2.0." It's a system of filters at domain name or page level. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and other western sites have been blocked at this level. Kuo said that it's fairly simple for Chinese Internet users to "hop the firewall " using proxy services, free VPNs.

So The Great Firewall is more of an inconvenience. Kuo pays for a VPN that allows him to access Western websites.

Self-Discipline

The second form of censorship is "more pernicious and effective," according to Kuo. It is carried out by Internet companies, on instructions from Chinese government. All Internet sites in China have to practice what is termed "self-discipline."

Failing to adhere to this form of censorship means having your website or service shut down. There are some 30,000 "Internet police." Two cartoon avatars are wont to show up if a Chinese user visits pages with content offensive to the Chinese government.

Most Internet users in China don't come across the Great Firewall, because most Chinese Internet users don't use Western services like Twitter and Facebook. But, Kuo said, "Google is different." It has become "a real part of the Internet culture in China."

Kuo then talked about how Chinese censorship nowadays is almost all social media sites, such as social networks and microblogging sites.

How Chinese Netizens Use The Internet

Kuo mentioned that the Chinese Internet is more "entertainment superhighway" than "information superhighway." Online gaming is big in China. Most Chinese Internet users, Kuo said, enjoy the Internet that they have - rather than worry about the one that Western pundits think they should have.

The Internet has also emerged as a de-facto public sphere in China. As long as you don't overstep certain boundaries (political activism and so forth), then the "will of the masses" is often expressed on the Internet through the likes of bulletin boards or social networks.

Regularly, Chinese netizens are exposing public officials. However Kuo warns that there are "very very serious limits" to what is emerging in the public sphere. For example, anonymity leads to a lot of trolling. It's ad-hoc, reactive and informal - however it is a "squeaky wheel that is regularly getting grease." Also, a minority are pro-democracy - most of the netizens in the public sphere are pro-Chinese government.

Next Moves from Beijing and Google

Kuo said that the Chinese government will wait for Google to make the next move. It realises it has nothing to gain by pushing Google or being openly hostile. The ball is in Google's court and it will probably keep to its word that it will stop censorship in China. It may still shut down operations in China, which in practice means closing google.cn. But this has a lot of problematic scenarios - including the difficulty of having translations done for Google.com and staffing issues of closing down.

The pros of pulling out of China include saving face and appeasing western users. But the cons are significant. They include a backlash from tech-savvy, urban Google users, a setback to scientific research, a global black eye for their image, and ceding the virtual monopoly in search in China to Baidu.

The moderate scenario is that Google.cn is shut down, but continues to work with its mobile partners in China, R&D and sales continue to operate in China, and Google services will be unblocked.

The best case scenario, Kuo believes, would be if Google stopped censoring google.cn - but the service stays online.

Discuss

Richard MacManus123885098846351416170149833257550809208109023187338371646574137630645979904138730357762680528310645918166100326992238460

Sometimes it is obvious where the world is headed, but some people and industries become frozen in place and time. They are like the duckbilled dinosaurs happily munching on the still-abundant plants around them when the meteor strikes instead of the small furry mammals underfoot who take cover every day by natural habit. In the print newspaper industry, it’s the same story. Everyone wants to wall off the Web and keep grazing on declining ad revenues.

A week ago, I wrote a post based on a conversation I had with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen in which he made the case that print media companies would be better off shutting down their print operations now (“Burn the boats”) and move forward unencumbered into the digital age, no matter how painful that may be. That suggestion hit a deep nerve, and continues to do so.

Just yesterday, Allan Mutter, who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, took exception to Andreessen’s advice. By his estimate, in 2009:

Print-driven newspaper revenues still are running at better than $30 billion a year. It doesn’t take a certifiable Silicon Valley genius to see that no business can walk away from some 90% of its revenue base without imploding.

Mutter’s indignation is typical of the response to the article, even among enlightened newsosaurs. But that is exactly what Andreessen is saying. As I noted in my original post, he is quite aware that “at risk is 80% of revenues and headcount” (or 90%, if you take Mutter’s numbers).

Yes, the Internet media business is much less lucrative than the print side, and may never replace it in terms of the revenues it generates. But Andreessen’s point is that the meteor is on its way and the sooner that media companies start looking for cover, the more likely they are to survive.

He is not trying to be an alarmist. He’s just a realist. In the technology industry, similar disruptions happen all the time. The companies that survive are the ones that adapt and jump onto the next wave of technology before the one they are on finishes cresting. So the real question is one of timing. How long will it take that $30 billion print business to go to $20 billion, $10 billion, or zero? No doubt, it will take years, probably decades. But how long do print media companies wait before they leave their old business behind?

The people who read print newspapers and magazines are getting older and older, while advertisers always chase the young and impressionable. That audience is already on the Web. And they are no longer satisfied with getting all of their news from one or two trusted sources. They get their news from all over the place: newspaper sites, TV news sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook. More and more, the news is coming to them through their friends and the various streams they consume. The old days of cross-subsidizing political news with ads from the Travel and Auto sections are over.

The longer media companies wait, the bigger disadvantage they will have when they cross over to the other side and find a whole new host of competitors who never had any print legacy businesses to protect. Those competitors right now are blogs and online news hubs who are still furry little rodents in the underbrush, but who won’t stay little forever. The sooner print media companies cross over, the sooner they can be on pure offense. Their online strategies and business models won’t be crippled by any allegiance, or need to protect, to the old print business. If they wait until their online revenues become 25 or 50 percent before they fully commit, it will be too late.

But that is probably what will happen. Media companies are still surrounded by $30 billion worth of leaves that look mighty good.

Photo of duckbilled dinosaur fossil by Ed Schipul .

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams believes social networks will become a fundamental way the public communicates with government.(author unknown)020246868293810042171445039734351550780810882268172186676989

Some think that social media is free. And yes, most services are but we pay with our time instead. In this chat with Steve Rubel, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital
we talk about social media business metrics, how to measure the value and cost of corporate social media and - return on - not investment or involvement -  but time.

Enjoy! Oh, and remember that we talk about this as the upcoming Social+Cash conference!

Annika Lidne

Jag har alltid gillat byggföretaget JM. Jag gillat deras lägenheter och deras kommunikation. Jag har varit på deras visningar och jag har varit VIP-kund som fått hem deras kundtidning. En potentiell kund mitt i deras målgrupp. Det är slut på det nu. Och det är JMs eget fel.

I veckan kom det nämligen hem ett brev från JM. Där fanns ett VIP-kort och ett brev. I brevet hade de skrivit ut mitt användarnamn, min mailadress och mitt hemliga lösenord till “Mina Sidor” på JM.se. Detta fick mig att bli jäkligt förbannad. Deras hantering av mina och alla andra kunders uppgifter är vårdslös och respektlös. För det första så är det helt idiotiskt att spara lösenordet i klartext. Lösenord ska vara krypterade, punkt! För det andra är det helt idiotiskt att distribuera samtliga uppgifter i tryckt form, utan att jag har bett om det. Användaruppgifter skall aldrig distribueras utan att jag själv har bett om det.

Effekten av detta blir alltså att jag nu har begärt att de raderas samtliga uppgifter om mig i sina system och jag har lovat att aldrig någonsin registrera mig hos dem igen så länge de inte har presenterat en kraftfull förändring av den här hanteringen.

Så snabbt kan det gå att helt förlora ett förtroende och en kundrelation som man byggt upp under lång tid. Tänk på det, JM och alla andra.

Jag har inte ens orkat undersöka hur mycket detta står i strid med PUL, men jag gissar att JMs hantering är helt oförenlig med den lagen.

Ett utdrag ur Användarvillkor för JMs webbplats:

Policy för behandling av personuppgifter
JM har som målsättning att alla personer vars personuppgifter behandlas av JM alltid skall kunna känna sig säkra på att den personliga integriteten respekteras och att hans/hennes personuppgifter behandlas med tillbehörlig försiktighet.

JM kommer att följa nationell datalagstiftning gällande insamling och användning av till individer kopplade data (personuppgifter), såsom Personuppgiftslagen. Personuppgiftslagen reglerar behandlingen av personuppgifter och kommer att tillämpas för de flesta av JMs aktiviteter.

henrik09917718567116114696

Shared by Jardenberg
Anders Mildner är ovanligt rakt på. Det märks att han, liksom jag känner stor frustration. Jag är också frustrerad och det blir inte bättre av sånt här. http://www.resume.se/nyheter/2010/03/09/ny-lobbygrupp-tar-upp-kamp/ Anders Mildner om nya medier och ny kultur Anders Mildner är ovanligt rakt på. Det märks att han, liksom jag känner stor frustration. Jag är också frustrerad och det blir inte bättre av sånt här. http://www.resume.se/nyheter/2010/03/09/ny-lobbygrupp-tar-upp-kamp/

The answer is 'unlocking' content bit by bit, not one big paywall, says Fraxion co-founder(author unknown)18348372124908345326

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:
Reuters to Journalists: Don't Break News on Twitter  —  Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter.

(author unknown)0676876068642569078017366187857571471994086012294057711260301809600637932981348113191904390542113787

It seems like in the past few months Google has relentlessly released new applications, some of which perhaps could have used some more baking in the oven before they were unleashed on the general public. To some it's becoming a tiresome exercise simply to try to keep up with everything that Google is doing week in and week out. But there is a method to the madness, and it has a lot more to do with Google's bottom line than you may think.

We all know that the way the search engine giant makes money is through advertising - over $23 billion in 2009 - but what may surprise you is that its advertising-based revenue comes almost exclusively from sites that are owned by Google.

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Guest author Daniel Cawrey is a freelance writer and tech enthusiast, among other things. You can check out his latest musings in blog form at thechromesource, where he writes about Chrome browser, Chrome OS and just plain Google in general.

Take a look at this graph from the Silicon Valley Insider that depicts the location of advertising and the dollars associated with it:

Ever increasingly, Google is relying on itself to make money through its own real estate - places where it can position the ads that advertisers purchase. This is a concern for publishers that rely on Google for revenue through Adsense because there has to be a point at which this is no longer a profitable exercise for the company.

If it reaches that point, Google will essentially be subsidizing publishers. And it may not have a choice but to keep doing so. Because without fresh content creation, what is there for users to search for on the Internet that is of value? The main tenet of the search business is to provide quality results, and while that may be the case now, if publisher's Adsense revenues were affected, one can wonder what kind of effect that would have on content.

So although Google may have made some mistakes with applications like Buzz, along with the half-hearted emergence and now slow death of features like Gears, expect them to continue to increasing space for content to grow, even if that means one of several strategies:

Become an ISP

An experimental program has been announced whereby Google will provide gigabit service via fiber directly to homes in select markets. Interested municipalities and community organizations are encouraged to submit a proposal for this right. At the World Mobile Congress, CEO Eric Schmidt talked about the goal of this program being purely experimental, which means showing infrastructure operators such as cable companies that this is possible, rather than Google becoming a full fledged ISP. But once the fiber has been rolled out, it doesn't roll back in, does it? How long does the "experiment" last?

Trounce the Competition in the Browser Wars

Google's Chrome browser is getting a lucky break over the next few weeks. That's because Windows users in Europe who use Internet Explorer will be getting an update to their machines notifying them about browser choices that they have. This is in response to the European Union's ruling that Microsoft's practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows restricts competition. While the update offers many browser choices, the result will be a boost to market share for Chrome. It has steadily grown in popularity and already has roughly 5% of the market since emerging in 2008.

Offer Computing Architecture to Device Manufacturers Completely Free

We've seen this already with Android, and it appears that the no-cost operating system has basically saved Motorola from a fall to obscurity with its release of the Droid. Expect to see more of these developments as 2010 unfolds with Chrome OS attempting to break into not only the netbook market, but also tablets and smartbooks, which fill the gap between a high end mobile phone and a netbook.

So when you hear these new announcements of applications and services that Google rolls out, think of content. Think of how they can better deliver information to users. They want it to be as easy and as seamless as possible. While sometimes these initiatives don't always work out, they aren't going to stop trying.

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Guest Author03560200052926293134023977027311797144920478404662611976234602752975871852931726161071775925755325031711792019422530792413859082372515322554022200582733595342910493635068713891596105349847155601036327067870765942805074680603948541460831797813607290874558823759

The Web is huge. And growing. Faster everyday. It's almost like an ocean where there's no evaporation (the data on the Web stays there virtually forever), but yet, it's always raining in it. The rain is the new content that's added into the ocean.

Every tweet is a drop, every blog post is a drop, every check-in is a drop that falls into the ocean. This ocean is almost constantly under a tropical storm in some places, like Twitter or Facebook.

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Guest author Julien Genestoux is the founder and CEO of Superfeedr, a company dedicated at making RSS and Atom feeds realtime. It has implemented PubSubHubbub from day one and now host several hubs, including ReadWriteWeb, Tumblr, Posterous and Gawker. Follow Julien on Twitter.

When you're a search engine, you obviously have an exhaustivity requirement. You can't really skip on indexing the Indian Ocean. Google sends its bo(a)ts all over the ocean where it's raining to update its index. However, the ocean is growing so fast that it will eventually become harder and harder to stay exhaustive.

Unfortunately, not only the ocean is growing, but it's also raining more, which means that if a bo(a)t is away from a zone for too long, when it will be back it will have changed tremendously. That's what happens when you see results in a search engine that are 1- or 2-years old, or even older. They're not wrong, they're just often inaccurate, but rank well.

It's a real technical problem for search engines to know where to send their bo(a)ts, and at the right time! And when Google says they're going to feed their search index with PubSubHubbub data, that's what they're trying to do: save a little bit on the boats.

I strongly disagree with John Battelle when he says this is not a huge deal. My take is that he sees this only as a great technical and infrastructure opportunity for Google, not so much as an immediate benefit for the end user. I strongly disagree - and so do you. You disagreed when you typed "earthquake" into Twitter Search, or even "hudson crash", or "Mickael Jackson". At that point, you knew that Google wasn't able to provide you with the information you were looking for, and this is a massive loss for Google.

Google will have a hard time getting this brain share back. The first thing it needs to do is to actually have results that date back from the minute when people look for these things.

You may argue that if you search 10 times a day on Google, you go maybe once a week to Twitter search. I'm the same, no worries. Yet, I know that Twitter is much better than Google at contextualization. When I do a search on Google, I expect to find the absolute truth. If I look for earthquake, I'm looking at facts about earthquakes: pictures or maybe historical data. If I look for earthquake on Twitter, I'm looking for context; I want what is being said about earthquakes now (and here!).

As a matter of facts, Google always had a lot of issues about context because they know so little about the people who search there (or maybe they know a lot, but don't want to scare us). Adding PubSubHubbub is a way for them to be able to take the "time dimension" back. They many never have the conversations that Twitter has, but they will have a much bigger ocean of data than Twitter's sea of Tweets

Photo by Pam Roth.

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Guest Author1610717759257553250308836827498289184555