Google homepage now also reads ""New! Download Chrome (BETA) - the new browser from Google"





The web browser with no chrome is Google's fresh take on the browser. It does however have a chrome, but it doesn't try to stand out and get in your way.

This browser has been built from scratch; the Google Chrome comic strip explains the concepts that lay behind it and how and why things were done. Its a is a quick and easy way to understand what is different about Google Chrome.

Although Chrome may not have set any world download records today, I'm sure it's not going to be long before we start seeing this Google Chrome user agent making significant inroads into website stat logs.

It's probably safe to say that the browser wars have becoming really intense with Google joining in. So I guess the next question is, for how long will Google continue its funding of Firefox?

My Google Shared Stuff page is missing all the stuff I had shared on it! What gives?

It's true that I haven't used the service for some time; mostly due to Google Reader Shared Items feature. I noticed this when I was looking for something that I remember sharing using Google Shared Items, but when I went to the page, it was blank, it said You have no shared stuff!

Lucky for me I also had added my Google Shared Stuff into my FriendFeed, so I found the page I was looking for. But, where is my happy ending, where have all the shared stuff gone...

What’s wrong in the email that I got below? Well for one thing, I didn’t try to reset my password, and the email doesn’t tell me what to do if I was not the one who initiated this password reset process.

Someone had recently attempted to reset my Google Account password. I'm not sure if this happened by accident or if it was an intention attempt to gain access to my account. Either way, it got me thinking "What if someone stole my Google account? What can I do?” If you had your account stolen and what sort of impact is it going to have on your life?

If you've just been using it to access various Google services, you no longer will be able to access any of them. If you've been using Gmail with that account, then other online services that you've associated with it get compromised as well. For example, at http://digg.com you can retrieve a lost user name or password by simply entering your email address. What this means is, if someone stole your email account (that’s used with digg); they've basically taken over your digg account as well.

Life is going to be very frustrating and you'd need to recover from this situation as quickly as possible. Leaving aside all the freaking-out, head-banging and sobbing there is hope.

Google Accounts Help provides support when you face "issues that prevent you from accessing your account". However, if you want to have your problem solved quickly and efficiently you need to do your part and help out with some information regarding your account. The more you know the faster your turnaround time is going to be.

Some of the questions that you'd be asked to prove your ownership of the account include:

- Last successful login date
- Account creation date

- If you use Gmail:
    Most recent secondary email address
    Up to five frequently emailed contacts
    Names of up to four labels

- If you signed up via an invitation:
    Invitation URL (listed in your Gmail invitation)    
    The Gmail username of the person who invited you to create an account
    The email address to which your invitation was sent

- Google products you used with this account and the date you started using each one

While you are not required to answer all these, being able to answer at least some additional questions will definitely help your case. Knowing this, I took a few minutes to find the answers to some of these questions.  Just in case.

Google has given Google Webmaster Tools to "provide you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly". Although I have yet to use it for that purpose, I do occasionally log in and check what Google have done with the tools. They haven’t updated it much since the last time I logged in, except for maybe tweaking the dashboard a tad.

But I did notice something odd. Here is what was displayed on the summary:

and here is a Google search result for kavinda:

How did Google show that result of a blog post I did today if Googlebot last accessed home page on Jul 24, 2007? Is the data on Google Webmasters Tools in-accurate or does Google update its index without crawling the site? rss feeds? feedburner?

Some of us got blown away by twitter, some of us just got annoyed that it didnt work with Google Talk for Google Apps. But surely it should work right?

For GTalk to talk with Twitter you only need to add/invite twitter@twitter.com to your Google Talk contacts. It will instantly accept the invitation and you're only your way. It’s that simple. However that's only if you're signing in using a Gmail account (e.g. yourmailadd@gmail.com).

If you're a user of Google Apps and use Google Talk with that account, then simply adding/inviting twitter@twitter.com will get you nowhere. At least that’s where I got.

So, why didn’t it work?

When I checked the "Service Settings" for chat in the Google Apps Domain Control panel, it was obvious; to IM outside the Google network, you will need to edit your Service (SRV) records in domain settings. Ah, so that’s why!

The support document from Google said I'd need to enter the following DNS entries.

_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

Something was still not right; the invite to twitter@twitter.com was not getting accepted; even after leaving plenty of time for DNS entries to propagate.

It was time to try out another IM client. Google supports the jabber/XMPP protocol. This means I should be able to use any other IM client that supports the jabber/XMPP protocols.  

I choose Pidgin because it had a useful debug window! So I installed Pidgen and configured it to connect to Google Talk for my domain as instructed, and tried to sign in.

 

 

Now I'm getting somewhere! I was still missing some more DNS entries. _xmpp-client._tcp.kavinda.net could not be found. After a quick nslookup to see the entries for _xmpp-client._tcp.gmail.com

 

I added similar entries for my domain kavinda.net.

_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com.  IN SRV  5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com.  IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com.  IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com.  IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com.  IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk4.l.google.com.

In goDaddy domain control pannel you'd enter the record,
_xmpp-client._tcp.kavinda.net.  IN SRV  5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
like:

That did the trick, I was able to sign into Pidgen. Now Back to Google Talk; Signed in using my Google Apps account, added twitter@twitter.com and it was accepted instantly. I had arrived.

 

I was surprised that Microsoft Live Search had managed to gain market share from Google and Yahoo according to recent comScore ratings. It was attributed to the Live Search Club. A place where you play games, earn tickets and get prizes.

The games were setup with a search box at the bottom so that when you were looking for information you could continently do the search within the same page. So during a game a player would do many searches on the internet. Also once in a while, it would do a search on its own and show the results (for example, when you’ve solved something, it would do a related image search).

I guess this is an effective way to get people to use live search and get used to it. However, to me it only

How? ...

When I was trying out Dingbats and wanted to find an answer, I did a few searches on live.com and then thought of checking out what Google could tell me. Google quickly gave me a full answer sheet for the Dingbats games.

Maybe that’s why Google has lost some market share, you don’t need to do multiple searches to get what you’re looking for, Google will give it to you in one search! (or at least it's pretty close to that level of seach quality)

 

Its Official. Google has acquired FeedBurner.

Google shifted gears to venture a little deeper into the desktop by launching Google Gears(Beta), an exciting and new open source project that will bring offline capabilities to web applications via a browser extension. Google Reader was the first to put this new technology into use with an offline mode.

"Google Gears builds on the web's existing programming model by introducing new JavaScript APIs for sophisticated data storage, application caching, and multi-threading features. With these APIs, developers can bring offline capabilities to even their most complex web applications. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux." - Google Press Center

Google Docs and Gmail seem to be the other obvious candidates to enable offline capabilities. This also means a "Google Office" product could be just around the corner. However, even if there eventually is such a product I don't think its going to compete with the likes of MS Office but instead cater to a different section of end users with different needs.

..the new name of the Google Personalized Homepage.

About a couple of weeks back, Google went "back to basics" by renaming Froogle as Google Product Search because the name had caused confusion for some because by not clearly describing what the product does. Now the "Google Personalized Homepage" is re-named to "iGoogle".

On the day I finally got my SLT ADSL connection, after dozens of calls to the SLT "Hotline" 1243, Google announces a better way of taking your home on to the information super highway. What’s ingenious about this is that it uses the already available infrastructure of every home.

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

Why should I switch to Google TiSP?
* It's fast. In our testing, TiSP delivers a 10x higher flow rate than basic DSL.
* It's FREE. No more paying hundreds of dollars a year for Internet service that doesn't even necessarily extend to your bathroom!
* It's good for you. Your FREE TiSP service includes a Google Toolbar-based analysis of your dietary habits and genetic predispositions, along with recommendations for healthier living.

Along With professional installation service, you can also have your Google Checkout purchases delivered directly through the sewage network into your bathroom.

So, dont wait for SLT ADSL; get your free TiSP system installed today!