Google to Launch Priority Inbox
Email overload has taken up one’s life and Gmail, owing to the notional ‘unlimited’ space attracts a lot more unwanted emails than others. Google has announced the launch of ‘Priority Inbox’ that automatically identifies your important email and separates it out from everything else.
“When you click the Priority Inbox navigation link on the left-hand side of your mail, you’ll see messages grouped in three sections: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything else.
If Priority Inbox mistakes an email as important or doesn’t flag one that’s important to you, you can teach it to make better selections. Just select the message in question, and click the “mark as important” or “mark as not important” button; they’re the buttons with plus and minus icons just to the left of the Move to and Labels drop-down menus.
When you mark a message as not important, it will move out of the Important section. Over time Priority Inbox will learn what’s important to you and incorporate the feedback you give via these buttons.
The signals that Gmail uses to prioritize your email are never surfaced to other users — they’re only used to prioritize your mail for you. So if you always ignore email from Bob and those messages are marked as “not important” in your inbox, it won’t affect how Bob sees the conversation in his inbox.” – source
The service will be rolled out over the next week.
Watch this demo video
Hotmail supports push email to phone
Hotmail has announced support for push email, calendar and contacts with Exchange ActiveSync.
Starting today, you can get your email, calendar, and contacts pushed automatically to your phone using Exchange ActiveSync (EAS). EAS keeps everything in sync between your phone and Hotmail, so whatever you do on your phone, like delete an email, add an appointment, or update one of your contacts with a new number, will also be reflected on the web, and vice-versa. – source
Twitter to support OAuth only
Starting August 31st, Twitter will support only OAuth (and not basic auth anymore)
In order for Twitter applications to access your account, developers have been able to choose one of two authentication methods: Basic Authentication or OAuth. Both require your permission, but there is an important difference. With Basic Auth, you provide your username and password for the app to access Twitter, and the application has to store and send this information over the Internet each time you use the app. With OAuth, this isn’t the case. Instead, you approve an application to access Twitter, and the application doesn’t store your password. – source
Google Reader – Trends
Boon for all bloggers (and RSS feed hoggers), Google Reader now gets into full screen mode (toggle with ‘f’ button). Additionally, you can use ‘shift + u’ to show and hide the navigation panel so you can easily change what you’re reading without leaving fullscreen mode. [source]
Another interesting feature launch is the ‘lifetime reading count’. The trends page now shows your lifetime reading count. Here is mine.
“Since January 26, 2006, you have read a total of 102,207 items.”
What’s yours?
Site of the Day
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ – A musical partnership showcasing Google Chrome’s HTML5 capability.
“Today we’re excited to launch a musical experience made specifically for the browser. Called “The Wilderness Downtown”, the project was created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google. Building this project on the web and for the browser allowed us to craft an experience that is not only personalized, but also deeply personal for each viewer” – source
M&A Roundup
Google Acquires Mobile Gaming Developer Company, SocialDeck
Google has acquired mobile gaming developer firm, SocialDeck. Google recently acquired Slide, Jambool and invested in Zynga. Guess the launch of Google Games is imminent?
Intel Buys Infineon Wireless Radio Chip Unit for $1.4 Billion
“The global demand for wireless solutions continues to grow at an extraordinary rate. The acquisition of Infineon’s WLS business strengthens the second pillar of our computing strategy — Internet connectivity — and enables us to offer a portfolio of products that covers the full range of wireless options from Wi-Fi and 3G to WiMAX and LTE. As more devices compute and connect to the Internet, we are committed to positioning Intel to take advantage of the growth potential in every computing segment, from laptops to handhelds and beyond. – press release.
