Category Archives: Google/Yahoo

My thoughts on search engine giants. I love both Google and Yahoo equally and I also hate them equally.

Gmail has a Delete button now

Published Jan 18, 2006 | In Google/Yahoo

Finally Gmail has a ‘Delete’ button now.

Gmail Delete button

Just read about it in the ‘What’s New‘ page of Gmail. As with all other feature releases Google hasn’t yet added this button for every one. I think they are testing it out before they could enable it for everyone. Even I am yet to see it appear in my account.

I was waiting for long time for this. I had a doubt that this is going to happen when Google changed the text for the delete option.

But I would be still more happy if Google could introduce a new keyboard shortcut to delete a message in addition to the Delete button so that I need not take my had away from the keyboard.

Hmm, I think the feedback that I gave to Matt is really working. Keep it up Matt and don’t forget the keyboard shortcut in addition to the delete button.

Update: Delete button has started to appear in my account too.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged | 5 Comments

Matt, Here is my Feedback

Published Jan 11, 2006 | In Google/Yahoo

Matt Cutts, (the-guy-next-to-God for SEO’s) is a asking for feedback about various Google products and services at his blog.
Initially I thought of giving the feedback as a comment in his blog itself. But it was only after I gave the comment I realized that I need more from Google. So Matt here is my feedback

GMail

  • Gmail as my default mail application – I want to read mail from my other POP3 accounts
  • DELETE button and also a keyboard shortcut to delete the message
  • Keyboard shortcut to assign a label to a message.
  • Single keyboard shortcut to do a couple of things like pressing D makes all unread messages as read and achieve them
  • Ability to add my own custom RSS feeds for web clips

Google Talk

  • INVISIBLE mode
  • Offline message
  • Ability to add my webcam too
  • Connect it with telephone like Skype
  • Infinite archive of conversation

Google Pack

  • Ability to add our own software to the list provided

Google Earth/ Maps/ Local

  • Add India and the rest of the world too.

New products/ Services

  • Google Calendar
  • Google Office
  • Google Browser
  • And also Google OS 🙂

So guys, have you ever felt of giving feedback to Google? If so then here is your chance.

Matt’s Feedback url’s

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Yahoo has got its Majo back

Published Dec 19, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

I have been waaay behind on blog reading for about two weeks now, thanks to my crashed Harddisk, lost mobile and work pressure. And today I got some time so I opened my bloglines and was skimming through the posts.

I was taken back a little when I found that there were lots of activities taking place at Yahoo.

Normally it will be Google who will be on the news for yet another new service, but now it

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Gmail Delete Option

Published Dec 8, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

I was checking my emails in Gmail today and when I wanted to delete a message, I selected it and was searching for the ‘Move to Trash‘ option in the drop down and was surprised when I was not able to find it. On second notice I found only a new option ‘Delete‘.

I still have a feeling that it was ‘Move to trash‘ option before but I am not very sure. Can anyone (Who has better memory than me) confirm it?

Update: Google has also deleted messages in the Trash which are older than 30 days and has freed up the space. I think Google is up to some space-recycling sphere.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged | 7 Comments

Happy Birthday Google

Published Sep 27, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

Happy Birth Day Google.

Google has turned 7 this month. And the birth day gift is that Google is expanding it’s web search index by 1000 times.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Gmail Outage ScreenShot

Published Sep 2, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

I cannot believe this. Gmail is down. Here is the screenshot which I took on 2-Sep-05 at 10.15 pm (IST Indian Standard time) (GMT + 5.5hrs)

Did any one else noticed it?

PS: If the screenshot is not clear, here is a big one http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudarmuthu/sets/870900/

Update: 11:00 PM Gmail is back again.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Google Talk released

Published Aug 24, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

I opened my aggregator (Bloglines) today and found out from Mark Jen that Google is going to release their IM Google Talk today.

I am one of those who have been waiting for this day. I went to the Google Talk site and downloaded it and installed it. The interface looks very thin and sleek and it supports both text and voice. (But yet to test it as none of friends have downloaded it yet)

And when I was looking around the interface I clicked the about box and it had the usual copy right notice and below that I found this text Play 23 21 13 16 21 19 . 7 1 12 5 and I was breaking my head to find out what they mean by it. Then only I found that I was the only one do so.

Asa has a nice guess for this and gives an explanation in his blog. If any one else has a better guess do leave a comment and also let me know about your experience with Google Talk.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Features that I want in Blogger

Published Aug 18, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

Improbulus wrote in her blog that Google is conducting a survey for users of Blogger. And I went to my dashboard and followed the link to give up my feedback. There were some questions like how long have been using blogger, how frequently you have been using it etc.

After that they asked for the features that I want to be implemented in Blogger. I thought posting my answer here so that we can discuss about the different features.

So here is my list of features that I want in Blogger (in no particular order)

  • Reduce Spam
  • Better support for editing posts.
  • Support for classifying posts into different Categories.
  • Trackback support.
  • RSS Feed for comments.
  • Blogger tags for displaying the total number of comments and trackbacks.
  • Ability to keep track of the comments that I have posted in other Blogger blogs (you can list the comments that I have made in my dashboard).
  • Email notification of other peoples comments on blogs in which I have commented.
  • Ability to add an ‘about me’ page.
  • Custom Index page (the first page that comes up when we type the blog url).

So guys what you say? If you feel that I have missed out some, leave me a comment I will add it up here.

It seems that one of my feature requests is answered. Google has released a Blogger for Word toolbar. I have just downloaded it and it works great. This post is posted from my Microsoft Word itself 😉

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged | 2 Comments

Yahoo 360 Invites available

Published Jun 11, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

Oops forgot to mention this, I have lot of Yahoo 360 invites left. So, if any of you need it just leave a comment here. If you are leaving a comment don’t forget to leave your email address.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , | 26 Comments

Comments about Yahoo 360

Published Jun 9, 2005 | In Google/Yahoo

After much struggle I managed to get an invite for yahoo 360. Tyler West was kind enough to send me an invite. Thanks Tyler.

Right from the day, I heard about Yahoo 360 from Jeremy (ofcourse) I was eager to try it out and even thought of shifting my blog from Blogger to Yahoo 360. That eagerness made me to hunt for Yahoo 360 invites and after much struggle I found that Tyler has some invites left, from his blog.

I don’t know why, but my initial enthusiasm for yahoo 360 dropped a bit after seeing the home page itself. But the Yahoo 360 team has really put in a lot of effort and they have integrated lot of features which Yahoo is providing. The problem with me is that I don’t use most of those features now ;-). And I found that I have very limited options for my blog. For instance I cannot even change the template for my blog. I played with the different features available and even created a blog out there. You can check it out here.

But we should’nt forget that it is still in beta so probably these features could be shipped with the final release. Over all I found that Yahoo 360 team has put in lot of effort, but the product has to evolve and lot of things (at least for the blog) need to be incorporated. And it is really useful for people who use Yahoo’s features extensively and is tightly integrated with messenger. You can even compose and post your blog without stepping out of your messenger. That’s really very cool.

Regarding my decision to move my blog from Blogger to Yahoo 360, I have dropped that idea (atleast for now), since it does not have trackback or category for posts and also I cannot have my own templates. And also the permanent link for the blog articles are not human readable. For instance this is the permanent link for my first article (http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-kSayz_4ibqJseoaTYa_GjkjSzJzcqg–?p=1)

Hoping that things will change once the final release comes out. BTW some one let me know whether I am totally out of track. Till then I have to be happy with Blogger.

Posted in Google/Yahoo | Tagged , | 1 Comment