08.22.05
And the World Stands Still
What happens when you start relying heavily on something and it’s ripped away from you without notice?
Well that is how I have been feeling about my Gmail account. For the past four days I have not been able to access my gmail account at all. Now like most “onliners†I have multiple email accounts – each for a different reason. One of my personal mail accounts at Gmail is still working fine, but the one that I mostly use for work correspondence is kaput.
What a nightmare it was! At least I was not the only one experiencing this issue.
I was frantically looking around online and finally ended up at the gmail help forum where I found numerous posts about this very topic. Somewhat relieved to hear that others are also experiencing my pain, but mostly annoyed to be disconnected from the “world at largeâ€. Eventually this got sorted out during the day, but it just led me to think that we rely so heavily on our technology and it could go *poof* in a blink of an eye.
Google releases Desktop Search 2. It will offer features such as integration with Outlook, indexing of email at Gmail, a sidebar with nifty widgets to display photos, headlines, RSS feed and a virtual scratch pad. The changes will likely have folks at Microsoft and Yahoo nervous but Google users pleased. Some of the changes will also no doubt kick off another round of speculation that a Google OS may be coming.
Yahoo has finally extended its local search component beyond business listings and now also contains restaurant and event listings among others. The service is still only available in the US only though.
That’s all for today!