I know my recent posts are a bit Google based and fortunately or unfortunately this is also based on a product of Google, Gmail

By the help of TwitterGadget, one can tweet from Gmail. If you are Gmail addict or kinda loyal Gmail user like me, then I hope this would be helpful to you. In order to add twitter service in Gmail just follow these steps:

• Go to Settings section
• Under Settings go to Labs tab
  
• Enable Add any gadget by URL and save the settings
  
• Now if you again browse under Settings tab, you will see new tab called Gadgets
• Just enter the URL: http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml in the input box found under Gadgets tab and you are done

If all works fine, you will see twitter gadget in the left side of Gmail below Label section.

References:

• TwitterGadget
• How to Add Gadgets to your Gmail Account

Happy tweeting from Gmail

Finally, Gmail users will be able to manage their to-do list. This feature was missing for a long time in Gmail(also in other web email clients like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail). I usually manage my to-do list from desktop like most of the people with to-do.txt. But I think I will go for a while with Gmail’s to-do list. In Gmail it has been labeled as Tasks. The feature can be found in the Labs section of Settings link. After enabling this feature, it will appear in the left side of Gmail UI below Contacts.

The to-do list feature is also available in Google Calendar with the label Quick Add. But in near future I hope we would be able to see some additional features with to-do list like sharing the list with others and integrating them with other Google applications (esp. Google Calendar).

Update

More information can be found about this feature here (Gmail Blog Post) .

I am using Google’s hosted application service Google Apps and I have been quite satisfied with the service. But just now I am witnessing some crapy stuff in GMail. Have a look at the screen shots below:

Quite amazing! When I navigate through the Contacts link, it shows the 403 Forbidden HTTP status code but when composing mail or doing any other tasks it works as usual. What the hell is happening? Really no idea whatsoever.

Can anybody explain this to me???

Update:

After googling about this issue it seems that other people are/were also having this type of problem. The issue has been addressed by Google here. but not for Contacts and Chat section, rather than for Login section. Certainly, being a computer geek I don’t think my computer has been compromised or affected by malicious programs/virus as mentioned by Google as the primary cause of this problem. So at the end, I tried by clearing all the browser cache and cookies and guess what it still does not work. And as suggested by Google I tried using Firefox and damm it worked fine. 

I am slowly but surely becoming Chrome fan but this issue has surely made me think that I still should not forget Firefox and other browsers.

I have been using Chrome for sometime and I am quite liking this browser (not as compared to Firefox). I frequently use Google Reader to view blogs and news stuffs. I have also subscribed to Yahoo! Business News Feed. But when I browse items from that feed particular window of Chrome crashes with the error message Yahoo! Application State Plug-in has crashed. I was quite amazed. I was curious to find out what was going wrong. After digging through the source code, I was able to find the cause.

Whenever I was logged into Yahoo!, the plug-in get activated. The purpose of this plugin is to tell Yahoo! pages whether you have Yahoo! Messenger installed, which versions you have, and wether you are currently logged in. Only yahoo.com is supposed to have access to this information, to ensure this the plugin tests document.domain property of the page that loaded it. (It can be manipulated using Opera and Firefox. See here)

But when I destroyed my Yahoo! session by logging out, the problem just gone.

The problem may be that whenever one is logged in, the plugin gets activated and Yahoo! have not created condition in their code for Chrome. But Chrome and Safari uses the same open source rendering engine called WebKit so it should not have occured. Since I have no knowledge of that plugin’s source code so, I am not in the state of confirming. Lets hope Yahoo! solved this issue quickly.

Update:

I guess this issue has been solved. I am not experiencing browser crash when opening Yahoo! News in Chrome.

Google Chrome

Today the search giant Google released its own browser based on WebKit framework. WebKit is also used by Apple for its Safari browser. The release of Chrome is significant in the sense that yet another browser is added in the already crowded browser market. But its not any another company, its Google. So. I am
expecting some radical shift of trend in this new browser war. The unique features of the Chrome as mentioned by Google are:

• Each tab has its own process which means if one of the browser tab is hanged whole application will
  not crash as in IE and Firefox.
• New JavaScript engine code named “V8″.
• Task manager for each tab as of Windows Task Manager (Seems to be really cool feature to know which tab is behaving rude or slowing the browser)
• Private browsing or so called “porn mode” available as incognito.
• Web search, address bar and web history in a single bar (This feature is somewhat same as in Firefox 3.x which is also called awesome bar).

Beginning of the new browser war

In this networked information economy, the web is the primary source of information in the form of social networks, blogs, micro-blogs, bookmarking sites, and so on and the browser is the gateway to access those information. Microsoft’s IE still holds more than 70% of the browser market while Firefox has about 20% market share a, Safari with 6% and remaining for other browsers. The success of Firefox has already proved that the consumer can tend to shift from one browser to another if one offers peculiar performance and features. Firefox is also one of the most successful open source and community driven project most of which is funded by Google. The alliance between Google and Mozilla Corporation has proved to be quite successful in grabbing the market share from IE. In my opinion, the success of Firefox within the short time frame has been possible not only from the contribution of the Google and other major Corporations but also from the bunch of enthusiast community. One can find whole lots of add-ons and plugins for Firefox that could make and indeed is making the life in the web quite easier and interesting.

I am calling this the initiation of the new browser war because Google has the tendency to make the impossible possible. As more and more people are using the web as the base of their daily activities Google does need a browser to compete directly with its arch rival Microsoft. With IE still holding one third of the browser market the introduction of Chrome by Google definitely has draw a new line in the already tensed rivalry between Google and Microsoft. Microsoft’s Live search is the default search in the IE. Though Google has the partnership to with various vendors like Dell to make its search as the default one, it may not be enough for them as Microsoft is doing everything it can to challenge Google search dominance.

Basically, if we go through the history, the browser war can be divided into the mid and late 90’s battle between Microsoft and Netscape and the splendid rise of Firefox within 3 years or so. Microsoft won the first browser was with Netscape because Microsoft gave IE free of charge and Microsoft had robust complementary products to compete against Netscape. In the second browser
war that is still continuing, Firefox gained significant share of Microsoft because Microsoft virtually stopped developing any new features for IE from 2001 to 2005 and they also did fail to live up to the expectation of the consumer. With the release of IE 7 and Firefox 2, the battle did intensify. Now with the entry of Google in the browser market we can expect some cool innovation and
neck-to-neck competition among all major browser vendors. Google will certainly wants to make Chrome the de facto gateway for users to perform any web related activities bypassing dependency on Microsoft’s IE.

It is sure that the browser will be everything in the future with people needing only OS to run it. Every computer related activities will be performed in the web with the advancement in the web technologies and the speed of the Internet. So, with the entry of Google and the initiation of new browser war the ultimate winner will be us i.e. the users.