After five years of being in 'beta' status, Google has decided Gmail (and all of it's Google Apps - Docs, Talk, etc.) are not longer in beta! Hurray! And for some very pointless reason, if you really loved seeing "BETA" Google put in a setting that lets you toggle it back on... Wow. Thank goodness we can do that!
Check out the full scoop here.
I've had the new iPhone 3gs for about a week now. Overall I am very pleased with the upgrade. The most notable difference is the speed at which the device functions. The best word to describe this is 'snappy'. The iPhone 3gs performs a lot 'snappier' then it's predecessors. In turn this has a dramatic impact on the user experience. With the increase in snappiness there is a decrease in bugginess, also benefiting the user experience. The video recording capability is excellent. Like all things Apple it is intuitive and easy to use. Check out a sample recording below. The integration of the compass with maps is also a big plus. This enables a basic equivalent of turn by turn directions found in dedicated GPS devices. My favorite feature, which is enabled on all iPhones running the 3.0 OS is the ability to turn of multiple text alerts. That drove me crazy! This article describes what you can expect in the upcoming iPhone 3.1 OS.
It's been a little over a month since the Palm Pre launched on Sprint's Now Network, but how has it been doing? Well, considering that in June alone it sold over 300,000 units and 70,000 units in the last week or so of May, things are looking pretty good for both Palm and Sprint.
Now if we toss out this little tidbit, it gets kind of exciting - the last Palm phone sold only 350,00o-ish phones in its first fiscal quarter. So actually, the Palm Pre is really kicking butt! Nicely done Palm, nicely done. It may not be much compared to the zillion or so iPhones sold, but I do think Apple is a little uneasy about the success of the Pre launch. In the end it's great for all of us, the consumers.
As an IT professional, email security, especially spam protection, is one of my biggest bugaboos. As a matter of fact, it is nothing short of a major pain in the ass for administrators and end users alike. Spam protection is very much a cat and mouse game. You optimize you mail server, it reduces spam levels, and a few months later you are getting more spam then before the optimization. In this recent report from Google mail and threat filtering service Postini, my assessment is confirmed. Read more.
Last month Microsoft released their latest search product, Bing. Bing is an example of semantic search, meaning you can ask a question, it understands the question (as opposed to matching search terms), and in turn delivers far more relevant search results. I'm noticing it coming up in the top 5 organic traffic sources on almost every web site we are managing. For a search engine that is a month old that is pretty impressive. What does this mean to us as advertisers? We should consider this as an option in our traffic campaigns for both organic and paid search. Because the search results are so much more relevant the subsequent click has that much more value. Check it out.
