Friday, April 03, 2009

Five Years Of Gmail: What Would Gsus Do?



How time flies! Gmail is five years old already. That is ages in internet time. I was an immediate convert and an evangelist. It is more than extra space, it is different, I would rant and rave. There still are people around who have email but who are not on Gmail. I try not to judge. But I will have to admit, it's hard not to.

Begs the question, what will Gmail be like in five years? It is hard to predict. I will give the Steve Jobs answer. When asked what the iPhone will look like in five years, he said, I don't know. He said he could not have predicted five years earlier there would be maps on the iPhone, but you got maps. So it is not easy to predict what technological breakthroughs we will see over the next few years that will make new, exciting features possible.

But I do have a wish list.

(1) More Space

That was Gmail's first selling point. The least it could do is stay up with the hunger of the power users. Say if you offer 50 GB, and only 1% of your users use 10 GB or more, you still get to boast that you are offering 50 GB, right?

If the internet were to end up with a trillion websites, Google should not be complaining, right? More pages, more searches, more ads, more revenue. Gmail is the same way. More email inside that Gmail account, more ads you get to serve. So why complain?

I am especially thinking of my friend Sree here. I read his piece in Forbes earlier, and I am unhappy that Gmail has been bleeding his wallet.

(2) Two Inboxes

One for people I have emailed at least once, and one for the rest. I should not have to create a new, private email account just because I became famous, right? This arrangement would also add to Gmail's already great spam filter. I mean, if I have never emailed you before.

(3) My Gmail Should Be My Phone Number

One global phone number. I hope all the hype about Google Voice is true. There is talk Google Voice is to be integrated with Gmail. Swell.

(4) Video Mail



Video chat is great, but so is text chat. There is text chat, and there is text email. So there needs to be video mail.

(5) Social

Keep adding social elements to the service.

(6) Better Integration

I should be able to go from my Gmail account straight to my Google Reader account, and why not? Maybe there are a few other services to integrate.


The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Biz Stone
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorNASA Name Contest



















I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Search: Much Is Lacking
Google Books: Primitive
Google Audio, Google Office
The Next Search Engine
Google Video
Google: Free, Wireless Internet Access, Pay Per View Video
Yahoo Phone, Google Office, Google Finance
Email, Search, News
Google's To Do List Keeps Growing
In Defense Of Google Digitizing Books
Google's Corporate Transparency
Google And Languages
Google Again
Google Video Has Hit The Docks
Google And Browsers And More
Google: Poised To Be The Number One Software Company In The World







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Monday, March 30, 2009

The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream







The Search Results

I am not even that old, and I vividly remember when AltaVista was king.

The Links

They are everywhere.

The Inbox



The Inbox was not copyrighted by Hotmail.

The Stream

The Stream has not been copyrighted by Twitter, so I was perfectly cool when Facebook went ahead and imitated Twitter. Of course they can do that.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter























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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter


Fractal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A fractal is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of ..." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
Apple invented the PC. Microsoft invented that original rectangle: Windows 95. That was the peak year for Windows. Netscape slid in to suggest a browser is all you need. Google came to say, you don't even need a browser, you just need one site, a search engine, your gateway to all that there is online. Facebook came along to say you don't need the entire net, you just need people you know and you need to see the internet through that prism, let them filter it for you, it is too chaotic out there. Twitter came along to say people are important but not that important. All you need is bite size information, bite size communication. It is not who you know, since you can follow anyone you want. It is what you know, what you can know.

I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter

How Twitter Works In Theory


That begs the question, what might be next?



I guess you could start all over again with the mobile space, and claim, well, Apple went ahead and invented the iPhone all over again. So watch the drama unfold.

But about the big rectangle itself? What's next there?

Right now I am more interested in posing the question than attempting an answer, although I guess I could take shots, make guesses, offer vagueness. Be nebulous.

But then I personally might be more interested in stuff beyond the rectangle. The rectangle is fascinating, but not of primary professional interest to me. I am more interested in Web 3.0, or what I call Web 3.0. (Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb, Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition)

What is that journey from big, ugly mainframes to PCs to Twitter? Can it be argued that we have tried to get closer to the human dimension? And beyond? On Twitter, it can be argued we are at though process level. So it really is about people, right?

And if each human being is unique, the web is so much poorer for every human being who is not yet online.








Fractal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cynthia Lanius' Lessons: A Fractals Lesson - Introduction
Sprott's Fractal Gallery
The Spanky Fractal Database
Fractals
The fractal geometry of nature - Google Books Result
Fractal -- from Wolfram MathWorld
Fractals
Coolmath4kids - Fractals ( Geometry )
fractalus (Fractals/Fractal Art, Contests, and Info)






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Thursday, March 26, 2009

I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic

http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1395909715
http://twitter.com/SteveCase/status/1396557074

SAN FRANCISCO - MARCH 10:  Twitter co-founder ...Image by Getty Images via Daylife



http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1397036314
http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1396372381
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390833818
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390025531
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390019459
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390009306
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390004039
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1389082919

Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter

I moved to New York City to work on my tech startup, but got distracted for a few years by some urgent political work for Nepal, best work I ever did so far: the king of the country had pulled a coup, now we are a republic. Obama 2008 furthered the distraction, kind of.



But Nepal does not go away, Obama does not go away. 75% of the work on Nepal is done, 25% remains, only Nepal does not have to be my sole preoccupation no more. So recently I got into a little online discussion at a private online group. In the course of making my moves I went to check out my Nepal mailing list, the largest in the world. I hit a message that said the mailing list had been removed by Google. I panicked. There was no way for me to contact Google Groups directly.

So I wrote to Google directly on Twitter. And it worked like magic. My mailing list is back. It deserves to be. It played a key role in Nepal's democracy and social justice movements.

Thank you, Twitter.















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Saturday, March 21, 2009

Cisco Unified Computing System: To Tidy Up Data Centers


Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior: "We're going to compete with HP. I don't want to sugarcoat that."
Looks like Cisco wants to do to data centers what Apple did to cellphones with its iPhone.

In this tight economy it is but natural that once partners will elbow into each other's space. But that is the cynical view to take. This is a story in innovation. As to how it will play out, we will have to wait and watch.



Tech companies like Amazon and Oracle have swam upstream in this dire economy. And now Cisco has come up with a major announcement. This will boost the morale of the larger economy. Otherwise it feels like there is bad news on every page of the newspaper.

In The News

Cisco's Unified Computing System Products Unavailable Through ... ChannelWeb
Cisco's Unified Computing Vision - Is It Too Much Cisco? InformationWeek
Cisco's Unified Computing system ITworld.com
Cisco's Unified Computing System stirs competition, old and new Search Networking
One Cisco Unified Computing System beats 15 coal-fired energy plants ZDNet A single Cisco chassis can hold as many as eight blade servers. A “networking fabric extender” can tie together 40 such chassis, bringing 320 servers under the control and supervision of Cisco’s Unified Computing System Manager software. ...... Every second, Web users view 1,200 videos on YouTube, share 11,000 songs and send 2,000,000 emails. This plus the equivalent of 3,000,000 trees turned into paper and printed can fit in the system memory of one Cisco Unified Computing System. ........ All 138,893,908 Individual Tax returns filed last year in the United States could be stored in the memory of one Cisco Unified Computing System. ....... It takes only 40% of the Cisco UCS’s system resources to host all of the US Wikipedia. ...... The amount of obsolete cabling and support infrastructure that could be eliminated equates to 3,007 miles of legacy servers and infrastructure, when set side by side. ......... 31,103,864,053 Kilowatt hours per year saved, by unifying aging traditional servers and supporting infrastructure. .......

This could:

  • Double the available electricity in the ten poorest countries worldwide increasing education, healthcare, and overall standard of living.
  • Equal the energy output of more than 15 U.S. coal-fired electric plants and 35 million tons of C02.
  • Almost equal the entire amount of wind energy produced in U.S.



Cisco Systems, Inc.Image via Wikipedia

Is Cisco really going to take on Apple? Not quite.

ZDNet - ‎Mar 20, 2009‎
Cisco’s acquisition of Pure Digital, maker of the Flip camcorder, has sparked a lot of discussion about the networking giant’s intentions. ...

Cisco Needs BMC To Supply Unified Virtual Management

InformationWeek - ‎Mar 19, 2009‎
At stake is Cisco's blade server, which will combine converged network components, then link to virtualized network and store resources under a single ...

Cisco, Red Hat to bring unified computing system to Malaysia

NetworkWorld.com - ‎Mar 20, 2009‎
"UCS will result in a unified architecture tantamount to next generation data centres: data centre 3.0," said Cisco Malaysia managing director Anne Abraham. ...

Cisco's consumer electronics dream

CNET News - ‎Mar 20, 2009‎
by Marguerite Reardon If you haven't noticed, Cisco Systems, whose products have been used to build the Internet for 20 years, has spent the past 6 years ...

BusinessWeek’s Burrows: Cisco to battle Apple? Not likely

MacDailyNews - ‎12 hours ago‎
"Put me down as a skeptic regarding Cisco’s acquisition yesterday of Pure Digital, the maker of Flip video recorders. In fact, my first thought wasn’t ...

Home IBM Why Is IBM, Not Cisco, Buying Sun?

eWeek - ‎Mar 18, 2009‎
Cisco Systems, with its ambitions for dominance in the data center, seems like a much better suitor for Sun. Commenting on a pending acquisition is like ...
Video: Money Minute: IBM, AIG, Compensation

Cisco Israel head resigns

Ha'aretz - ‎2 hours ago‎
By Amitai Ziv Bina Rezinovsky, the general manager of Cisco Israel, announced her resignation at the end of last week. Rezinovsky, 41, has managed Cisco's ...

Laid-Off Janitors Protest At Cisco Headquarters

CBS 5 - ‎Mar 19, 2009‎
Read more in our Privacy Policy At least 200 people gathered outside Cisco Systems headquarters in San Jose on Thursday to protest the layoffs of about 75 ...
Fisher: Taking back the economy San Jose Mercury News

Around the Web 3.19.09: Cisco now makes servers, IE8 comes out ...

Los Angeles Times - ‎Mar 19, 2009‎
Personal Technology -- Cisco Systems released its server computer -- an affront on companies for which it usually provides software. ...

Citigroup, FedEx, Alcoa, Cisco among big movers

The Associated Press - ‎Mar 19, 2009‎
NASDAQ Cisco Systems Inc., down 27 cents at $16.23 The computer networking gear maker will buy Pure Digital, maker of the popular Flip Video camcorder, ...




















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