The Cyanogen Mod

It has been about two years since we bought the Nexus One. Which is great timing for the two-year itch - that starts something like “Now that the phone is not under warranty, do you think we should ...”.

To add to the itch was a real problem - Nexus One's fatal flaw so to speak. The phone has a minuscule amount of memory on board - a paltry 512MB which not only included the entire Android installation, but other pre-installed crud disguised as system applications. This meant even after moving some of the applications to the SD card, we were forever playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to free up just enough disk space for the phone.

That is when I decided to replace the original firmware with CyanogenMod 7(CM7). And since this was a phone that was not going to be customized heavily - the reasons to modify were fairly light.

• Because I could
• So that I could uninstall the various system applications like the Amazon MP3 for instance
• So that I could get App2SD capability inbuilt
• Because I could

The process I followed was the official process prescribed in the wiki over at the CM site. Here are some notes to go with the instructions in the wiki, that I am not planning to leech over.

Backup

Always important to backup. Especially since the process of unlocking the bootloader will reset your device to factory settings.

I used GO SMS Pro to backup SMS. Which by the way, is a great replacement for the custom SMS app. Astro File Manager to backup all applications. Then connect the phone to a computer and copy over the entire SD card as well.

Unlocking the Bootloader

A couple of things to keep in mind while unlocking the bootloader - firstly the phone is going to reset to factory settings. Don't ever think that you will be able to keep it like-for-like. Secondly a by-product of the reset is that if you have had to enable the developer mode to access the SD card via USB, you will need to re-enable that.

Custom Recovery Image

While the wiki mentions this in passing, once you reboot this step is essentially undone. So moving from this step to the next must occur without a reboot. Which brings us to the second question - how does one then “boot into recovery”? The process varies by phone, but in the case of the Nexus One - briefly click the power button after installing the recovery image. This will refresh the options on screen giving you a recovery mode to boot into.

Flashing CyanogenMod

If you were following along, here is where you need a lot more preparation than the wiki lets you in on. In reality you are already in step 4 of this section by the time you are done with the previous section. So if you were planning on downloading the zip files at this point - tough luck. Maybe that is something you do when you backup? Or at least when you get the recovery images in, make sure you copy the CyanogenMod version you want to install onto the root of the SD card. Otherwise, you might have to re-boot into the factory fresh device to do that.

Restore from backups

Final bit of a heads-up. When you restore from backups using Astro File Manager, it has a tendency to restore all applications to the phone internal memory. So after the first few, the rest of them are going to fail. So you might have to restore them one-by-one, moving the big apps to SD along the way.

That is it, more than a week into the installation, and the phone is still going strong. A detailed view of CM is probably going to follow - but so far really good.

+1 and the persistent Like

+1 is Google's latest attempt at cracking social. After the famously obscure Orkut, and the disaster that was Buzz, it was about time Google got it right.

With +1 Google seems to have gone about social differently. +1 is a highly scaled down version of a social network - the opposite of Facebook. Facebook built the interaction feature-set first, then used the Like button to spread it. Google's approach seems to be focused on building out the +1 button and eventually coalesce the rest of its sharing services around it.

+1 has two things going for it - it is persistent and contextual. Persistent because unlike the Like button, the core idea for +1 is not to broadcast the action to everyone. When you "like" something, that act itself is shared by Facebook. Which works for Facebook, because communication is what Facebook is all about. But +1 is more persistent; it hides in the sandwich layer between web-content and you - the search engine.

Persistence is important, because this shifts the playing field away from conversations - which Facebook and Twitter are good at, to algorithmically mining history - something Google is great at. This is where context comes in. Google owns your landing page on the web: the search results. It is a powerful page, and is also contextual. Unlike the static Facebook, Google's use of +1 can morph itself to add context to what you are in the mood for at that time. Unlike a cacophony of likes, you instead get the few +1's that are highly relevant to what you are doing at that time.

This is the strategy that worked for Google in ads, and the bet is that it will work for social as well.

The problem for Google's social has not been building out social feature sets. The biggest impediment has been changing the nature of social to fit with Google's strengths. +1 could well be the game changing strategy that Google so desperately needs.

1 Gpbs Bandwidth (infographic)

Infographics was a way was for me to tackle and (try to) express uncommon news and large numbers. One such opportunity came along when I heard of the Gigabit per second experiment that Google was planning. I had followed with amusement as cities did everything that they could to woo Google.

But the Gigabit per second is a truly revolutionary concept, for which there are no known applications at the moment. Yes, there are ideas - but in the classic chicken-and-egg style - nothing has materialized.

The problem with solutions that come in search for problems is this - they could either herald the next big thing. Or they could just be the beginnings of a bubble, that was driven more by a vague promise than hard reality.

This was my attempt at putting down on paper, why the 1 Gpbs is a lot of bandwidth. And this is also the first infographic that uses layers in Inkscape.

Indian zeitgeist interpreted

Google released their annual zeitgeist, including country-wise insights. The Indian zeitgeist, for me, holds special relevance - fortunately or unfortunately, Google is one of the most important ways that I stay in touch with India. And here is what I deciphered from the results this year.

Bollywood and cricket still rule: Just look at the list of fastest rising people searches, all you have is either heroines and cricketing personalities. Out of the 10 most popular movies - only 2 are Hollywood movies.

Value is most valued: The brands that are successful are the ones provide most value - nokia, micromax, samsung, maruti. And value isn't just price - IRCTC has an incredible proposition (railway tickets online), something that caused it to top the charts in 2009 as well.

Entrepreneurship is alive and kicking: The youngsters want to impress girls, kiss, tie ties, improve their English, build websites and make money. Some are stressed and want to meditate, but thankfully not as much as last year. All pointing to a young populace itching to get out there.

There is a certain sense of brand loyalty: Yahoo mail still beats gmail, Nokia is up at the top, quite unlike their destinies elsewhere in the world. Same with Dell. When brands spend the time, they get rewarded.

Yet people are adopting the latest: I know this is contradictory, in a sense, to the earlier point, but that is India. Facebook, Twitter, Lady Gaga, Twilight are all what we searched for (thankfully, no Justin Beiber).

There is only so much that can be interpreted from six top 10 lists. And I am sure there is enough and more confirmatory bias. But looking at the amount of contradiction I have in one post, makes the gut feel it is just right.

Artificial Neutral Networks

Net Neutrality means many things to many people. For some it means the network is indifferent to the packets that flow through. For others it represents the freedom for the little guy to take on the big corporate - and have a chance. Others view it as an unwelcome encroachment of the Government into yet another business. Still others see it as an archaic concept representing the early dawn of the Internet, ready for retirement as IPv4.

Net Neutrality is all that and more, depending on who you ask. Events over the last few weeks, in my mind, are watershed. Irrespective of the outcome, the arguments made now will define the nature of discussion going forward.

First the basics - Net Neutrality means that the networks are agnostic to their traffic. Drawing a rough parallel, it is like the highway system is agnostic to the type of vehicle. You could drive a Lamborghini or a commercial 18-wheeler, the rules of the road apply the same. Similarly, proponents of Net Neutrality want the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep their hands off all traffic, arguing that the democracy on the web was the key for innovation over the past few decades.

On the other hand, opponents characterize it as an impediment to the natural evolution of the Net, where unnecessary oversight (by the FCC) will reduce competition and eliminate choice.

The graphic is what advocates promise will happen without neutrality, and opponents ridicule as being far fetched.

Personally, I love the idea of Net Neutrality. Like Open Source, it represents an idea of single-minded meritocracy - the best idea wins. But realistically, I think the idea is always going to be little more than an aspirational goal. But as a law, there is little that network neutrality can deliver. Paradoxically, any legislation that enforces neutrality automatically puts someone else in charge of the network.

Why is this relevant now? Google and Verizon came up with a policy proposal a few days ago, outlining a set of seven framework ideas as a basis for a future for network neutrality. There was a swift response from news sites and blogosphere, mainly critical, including accusations of a Google sellout. ATT called it reasonable - and the battle lines are drawn. Google did come up with an explanation of sorts, but only helped paint a stark picture of how this debate is only going to get clearer than mud in the months ahead.

As I said, these are defining times. Ideas and decisions taken now will define the nature of the Internet and innovation in the future. All most of us can do, is wait and see.

Update: A follow-up article to the destructively accurate article over at Wired; a very pragmatic outlook.

Wave waves Goodbye!

That was quick. Last year, I had written about a new technology from Google, which was - as usual - going to change the world. The Google Wave. The unified replacement for email, IM and social networking with an immersive collaborative environment.

Apparently Google recently pulled the plug on it.

There are a number of reasons outlined in the post by Google, still more by pundits all over the interwebs. But something else struck me - the time-line. For a company that was comfortable keeping the beta tag on a core services for years, it took just 14 months before pulling the plug on something that didn't work. And that after opening it up to general use hardly 2 months ago. This seems to suggest a growing business savvy to the company, with an increasing ability to take hard decisions fast.

Combined with the rumors of Google going back on Net Neutrality, this seems to reinforce their increasingly pragmatic business outlook. And when hard business sense conflicts with philosophy, guess what wins.

Embed Google Fast Flip

If you use Google News, you probably have seen Fast Flip. Fast Flip basically takes screenshots of news articles from a certain set of new sites, and allows you to browse the news by flipping through images. As a result you get to see news formatted better than in a news aggregator, but still cover news from a variety of sources.

I wondered if there was a way to embed fast flip in my site. There wasn't a gadget I could find, but with a bit of copy-pasting it was not so difficult after all. The code for doing it follows after the embedded fast flip.

<iframe class="gadget-iframe-contents" frameborder="0"
src="http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/embed?source=news&browse=2&fullw=300"
style="height:450px;width:300px">
</iframe>

Disclaimer: Did not see anything that suggested Google frowns upon using fast-flip this way, but use it at your own risk.

Gmail ID - good email ID

When Google got into the business of providing a free email service, I was first in line to get myself an account and play with it. At that time one had to be invited for a gmail account; and being early meant that I got myself a very good email id - a pretty common first name back home.

What I had not realized at the time, was the flip side to having a common email id - the pseudo-spam.

First, there is the 'mistaken' use of my email by folks for all sorts of account activities. I have updates from two bank accounts sent to my email id. There is one broadband and three mobile companies that see fit to remind me of payments due. And at least one kid can probably never get to any online sites because he keeps using my email id for parental consent (that I promptly decline).

Now I have been diligent about trying to let the bank and telecom companies know that their customer does not 'own' my email id. But if a website wants me to log into the account to unsubscribe, there is little I can do about it.

Then there is the the appropriation of my email ID for online activities. I know at least three match-making companies that believe I still need to be hitched. About four universities are waiting for me to register this fall. Some think I have cars to sell, others think I want to buy property. And then the job sites - I have offers from across globe in fields I did not even knew existed. I try to unsubscribe where I can, mark them as SPAM if possible and for the particularly annoying ones I have to go via the forgot password route to log in, change the contact id to abuse@gmail.com and the password to i-am-an-idiot.

Thirdly there are the forward lists I am on. Just because someone knows someone with my first name, they think they can mail me to keep in touch with them. I get baby photos, 'must-forward' emails, jokes and reminders from one school principal that seems to think I am on her staff.

Finally the unsubscribable sites. Horoscopes, yellow page listings, naughty sites and mass-mailing sites - everywhere one does not want to use their own email id. Guess who's easy to remember email ID comes in handy. Yup, mine!

So there you go, first in line with Google, and I get 80% pseudo-spam that gets through Gmail's capable filters. Who would have imagined having a good email ID would be so much work. Maybe I should just have gone with SJPnvTB0HWwhVVo4JFpn@gmail.com

Googlicious

Seems like a lot is happening with Google. Two noteworthy blog posts in the same day - at least noteworthy for me.

First, the Nexus One phone (which our household owns) will no longer be sold via their online website. I am sure it is a sound decision given their sales problems. But it takes away the one chance for the mobile phone market in the US to finally break free of the carrier choke hold. Funnily, this was timed just days after we picked up the new Car dock accessory for the phone.

Second, looks like Google Street view has been collecting a lot more information than the previously disclosed. Not only were the Google cars collecting the names of SSIDs and MAC addresses, but they had been collecting fragments of actual payload (data transmitted unencrypted through the network).

So that is one apology and one surrender. Not bad for day's work.

Updated: Link to google.com/phone no longer is live, updated to static Nexus One page.

Google -> Topeka

Updated: Seems like a very Happy April fool's day from Google

Official Google Blog: A different kind of company name: "Google employees once known as “Googlers” should now be referred to as either “Topekers” or “Topekans,” depending on the result of a board meeting that’s ongoing at this hour. Whatever the outcome, the conclusion is clear: we aren’t in Google anymore."

Standard Voicemail Mode: Do you ever grow nostalgic for your old voicemail system and its long list of idiosyncrasies? That's where Standard Voicemail Mode comes in.

Introducing Translate for Animals (beta): Bridging the gap between animals and humans.

TEXTp saves YouTube bandwidth, money: It’s great news that there are 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we support 1080p and HD uploads are rising quickly, but that’s also meant increasing bandwidth costs cutting into our bottom line. And so, in our drive to keep expenses under control, we’ve decided that April 1 is the perfect day to take the important step of offering a new way to experience YouTube: text-only mode, or TEXTp.

The Google Annotations Gallery is an exciting new Java open source library that provides a rich set of annotations for developers to express themselves.

Upload and store anything in the cloud with Google Docs: In January, we added the ability to upload and store any file in Google Docs, and in response to your feedback, we increased the maximum file size to 1 GB a couple weeks later. Based on the overwhelming response to this feature, we're happy to announce a big update. Starting today, you can upload and store anything in Google Docs. With this change, you'll be able to store items in the cloud and access them from any computer - all you need is an Internet connection and a Google Account.

Try out new Google Wave wave notifications!: We know that one painpoint for people using Google Wave is that sometimes they don't know when others are trying to wave with them or whether anyone has responded to their waves. In designing notifications, we realized that people use lots of different tools on the web, but one system that is compatible with everyone is the physical world. So, today we are excited to roll out an early preview of Google Wave wave notifications.

Uncensored: google.cn

Seems like the beginning of a new phase in Google's life. For better or for worse, this is a big deal.

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update

Nexus One

There is always a phone, that comes out a little after you buy your own phone that makes you regret your own purchase. It is but a fact of modern life. Looks like this is the phone that is going to do that to me :).

Google Wave

WOW. If you have an hour and 20 minutes at some point, this is a must see. The Wave is Google's ambitious replacement of the email, instant message, tweet, blog and pretty much every other means of communication and collaboration currently available. But Google's approach to do this is not by providing yet another replacement, but by linking to these means of communication and extending them transparently.

At its heart, the Google Wave is email done right. Updating the current paradigm of point to point communication bursts offered by email, Google Wave offers a centralized client-server real-time collaborative alternative. What this means is that email is no longer delivered to your Inbox. Instead, your Inbox is a sort of a window into a central location, that essentially hosts a dynamic, ever changing web page which is your email. As people contribute to this web page - called the Wave, the client (in this case a HTML 5 compliant browser) automatically updates itself to reflect a common shared view.

If that is all that Google Wave was, then it would potentially have ended up as an optional Google Labs widget for Gmail. Instead, the Wave team took this further. They added real time - character by character refreshes; provided drag and drop functionality for rich media like photos and videos; enabled collaborative edit features for all content; and provided a means for existing communication mechanisms to interact with the content and updates. Suddenly the Wave seems much more than just a handy email gadget. Instead, it is a new way to think about communicating, sharing and collaborating.

The best part about Wave is that it forces you to think differently about communicating, by providing fundamentally different tools and mechanisms. A particularly enlightening moment in the presentation is when an old Wave was dug up where participants initially began communicating serially like an email, and realized mid-way through the process, that there was a potentially more productive way of continuing the same conversation through the editing features provided in the tool. It is this ability to simultaneously apply two diametrically different paradigms, that is the real potential for Wave. Users will no longer have to choose to learn a new paradigm - instead they can choose to stay the same, and wean off at their own pace.

The second major feature has to be its extensibility. The opening remarks encapsulated Google's approach to Wave - as a Product, Platform and Protocol. True to looking at it as a protocol, Wave developers seemed to have incorporated several real-world requirements into it. One example that sticks out is the ability for multiple Wave implementation to keep each other abreast only of updates that they really 'need to know'. Such an approach reflects today's Legal discovery requirements really well, and demonstrates Google's commitment to making this a broadly acceptable protocol.

The potential issues that Google will face in trying to establish a Wave based communication platform will probably not be technical to Wave at all. Google Wave assumes that ubiquitous connectivity, which seems to be the direction they have been driving with all their offerings. Of course, the Wave is going to use HTML 5's cache functionality to provide offline usage, but connectivity is still going to be critical in Wave's acceptance. HTML 5 brings another item of resistance for Wave's acceptance. It was only recently that Firefox finally overtook IE6 in terms of usage. Browser adoption has and will never be as cutting edge as Google will want it to be. Not having a HTML 5 compliant browser will effect Wave's adoption.

The second issue will be user acceptance. People have gotten used to email in the traditional sense. For the vast majority, thinking in terms of email is as far of a change as they can fathom. Forcing a truly dynamic paradigm upon them, may not be very successful.

The third issue is corporate acceptance. Large scale user and technical acceptance of new technology has always been tied to acceptance in the corporate world. Your company pays for you to learn something new, like say email, and you then take it up on your own. Wave offers collaboration aimed at smaller, widely dispersed teams. Unless companies are convinced about the benefits of Wave-ifying their email or IM, it may end up remaining just a geek's toy.

Google: My Search

It is about time google put together this. Everything that Google produces has me responding in one of two ways - Can they really do that? or Damn! Why did they take so long to get this out.

And this is an example of the latter. Google already does our searches for us. It already has all the strings with it. All it has to do is dump them in a database of some sort and allow us poor mortals some intertface to browse through it. And bingo - an awesome addition to the Google arsenel.

And again, as with everything that Google does, some people are saying just one thing - What about my privacy? Which is the ridiculous statement that is the reason for this blog.

What privacy are you losing when Google is just showing you a copy of what you have already done on their website? There is no additional information that Google is collating together that they dont already know. Knowing Google, it is probably already a part of their servers and you are just getting to see and delete it now! You ought to be happy that you have access to delete a history of all your searches.

And finally it is an opt-in option. You are not signed up my default for you - you need to go in, sign yourself in and remain that way for this to work.

Go ahead - take a break. Have fun. And get some work done quickly for a change.

your refrigerator knows what you are storing inside it
dont use it
-- ravi

The Alternative Desktop

One of the biggest selling points for Open Source and/or Free software has been the alternative desktop -- an alternative to the Microsoft desktop. There has been a great gig and dance about how Open Source can replace Microsoft on the desktop. However it is something that has not materialized and might not in the near future too.

The problem with the statement "replacing the desktop" is that it is so vastly oversimplified. It is a statement that assumes the desktop to be a single monolithic entity, held hostage in a fortress, guarded by a dragon. But that is not the case, there is no single dragon that can be slain in order to own the desktop -- rather there are a variety of komodo dragons, dogs, falcons and lizards that guard different strong holds in the desktop. An understanding of the future of the desktop is in understanding the map of the desktop topology and the wars that are in the offing.

Office applications is the biggest fortress of all -- guarded by the fiercest of all dragons. Office applications - we are defining as text editor + spreadsheet + presentation. The second bastion is email + PIM client. The third biggest fortress is the browser -- and in particular the starting point of browsing, namely search. The next biggest war ground is the multimedia - this is less of a fortress and more of a live, action-filled battle ground. Then there are thousands of other forts, small and large, strewn all over the place.

For some reason Open source has decided to publicly attack the biggest and strongest of all fortresses - the Office applications. By choosing to replace word, maybe, FOSS has chewn more than it can swallow. The reason is simple. The fort is not only the best entrenched, but the dragon protecting it is desperate enough to do anything protect it. MS Office is very strongly entrenched with its users because of the hostages it carries - user data. There is a large amount of user data held inside the proprietary formats of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. People have written macros in Word and Excel that run business processes now. Everyone has their favourite powerpoint templates.

This fact is acknowledged by FOSS alternatives like Open Office and Star Office when they provide compatibility with Microsoft formats. However that is like dragging the donkey by its tail. Providing compatibility, allows existing users to afford continuing with their chosen FOSS option. It is not an incentive to get new users on board. And it is no reason to be an 'alternative'. A true alternative would have to be indistinguishable from MS Office with respect to file formats, macros etc. And any such option is no longer an "alternative" - it is the thing itself. The sheer gigantic wall of having to work with existing data makes FOSS options a non-starter in the Office applications part of the desktop.

Then we have email. Outlook, apart from its infamous record in security, has a major disadvantage working against it - SMTP. Outlook has to, whether it likes it or not, work with SMTP. And SMTP being an open protocol, alternatives are a lot more possible with Outlook. Further, with options like GMail, yahoo and hotmail it is possible to use email without even having a client. And data already existing with Outlook is also exportable and is only a one-time activity in almost all cases. The uniformity of existing data, medium dependency on tool, and an established existing open protocol makes email a good breeding ground for alternatives. Also given that corporates typically go for entereprise-wide implementations, any tool can be implemented across the organization, and provide the same rich set of functionality, without haveing to worry about breaking compatibility of those outside the organization. Inter-organizational data transfer happens using SMTP, which will continue uninterrupted.

The browser is the other major fortress, which is very vulnerable. By the very nature of the web, proprietary-ness is forced to marginalize itself. Formats are more or less open, accessible and available to user regardless of tool used. There is nothing other than the sheer laziness of users preventing a switch from existing browsers to a new browser and from there on to a third browser. The little data, such as bookmarks, that needs to be migrated is typically handled by the installables of the new tool that is replacing the old. The only barrier offered by the incumbent, IE, is the use of ActiveX. However given the stigma already attached to ActiveX, this is not completely insurmountable.

The next battleground is that of multimedia. The field here is data heavy. However this is also the land of the DRMs, restrictions, proprietary standards, incompatibility, RIAA and lawsuits. This is as yet undefined a field, with everyone desperate to corner a pie for themselves. There are fundamental questions about the existence of multimedia on the desktop that have not been answered.

That brief survey over, it is time to look at where the alternative is going to come from. The current Office-focussed FOSS methodology does not look very promising. They seem to be answering a question alright, but it is starting to look like it is the wrong question they are grappling with. The Google approach on the other hand is a lot more viable. Rather than take on the biggest bastion on the desktop, they are going for the rest of them. And rather than seek to replace any of them, they are building powerful allies, making friends, offering services and building a base that they can trigger at any time to provide a true "alternative" on the desktop.

Google is uniquely poised today. On the web, the majority of users start from its pages. It has acknowledged that search is something everyone wants - so it is searching for everyone - news, ecommerce, images and even user harddisks. They are quietly getting into corporations, with their ubiquitous search button. They are aligning themselves with all the new technologies on the web -- keyhole, blogger -- all with a view to providing users the ability to search on it. They are one of the biggest buzz words on the email scene with their touted GMail. They are browser independant and have quiet links with the challengers to IE. When multimedia wars settle into some semblance of order, Google will be there, searching away, pointing people to the multimedia they need. And most importantly, they have shown themselves to be quite unmoved by the existence of MS Office.

It is this wide footprint and their reluctance to touch the word processor that is uniquely equipping Google. In the coming years, Google will be all over the place, either directly or by buying companies out. And when it decides to, it will be in the perfect position to push for the "alternate desktop" -- a desktop that will enable users to do everything they want to do except perhaps create documents. How will this "desktop" look like -- I dont know. But knowing Google, they'll think up of something simply awesome.

Heres to the Googletop
-- ravi

New Blog templates

It is wonderful how a company makes a difference to a product. For all that dilbert says about companies, which I am sure I almost always agree with, it its own way the company is an indespensable part of getting something done. Yeah, it will always be slower than a motivated individual, but it will always be better than the majority of us randomly spending time who might effectively cancel each other out.

And I slowly start to believe that companies actually have a character of their own that rubs of very explicitly on its employees. Just a few days back I was writing to a groups of friends from way back in college. And they commented on how different I think. They asked me if my educations had anything to do with it. No. The company did.

Eerie, unacceptable, grossly unappropriate but true.

You might be wondering how this ties up to the heading. Well, I was looking through some of the options of blogger and somehow I felt that google was behind some of them. It may be the layout, the style, the wordings I really dont know. And additionally when blogger came out, it gave an awesome set of tools to make your own template. But a majority of us out here dont have the patience nor the expertise to make good templates for ourselves. We would depend to a great extent on templates given by blogger. And check out the awesome set of templates that are available now. I *think* google has something to do with it.

holding on to the me in the company

- ravi

GMail: A First Look

I am sure that it would be very different for someone like me, who has been desperately looking forward to have a dekko at GMail to give anything other than a positive first view of GMail. So I sat over it a full weekend, and I still feel the same about it. So here is my review of GMail. This in fact is one of my first full fledged reviews.

gee mailing away,

- GMail <> Gnu Mail?

GMail

This is todally wonderful. They actually said that I was an active user of blogger. Wonder how they found that out. Read news that this beta was now being opened for blogger users. Was disappointed when I came here the last time and did not figure out how to do it. Anyways, now that I am in, feels totally wonderful.
I dont know what it is about technology that gives me the shivers. Have been feeling hopelessly cold the last few minutes, because the excitement has still to settle in. Whopeee! I am Betaing for GMail...

The first reports of GMail rolling in. Using it for a few minutes, the the single most important feature is the simplicity of the interface - almost austure. No more options to sort by this and that. No more complicated interfaces to to deal with the various sort options you use to view messages by. There are just three elements - the mail, the message group it belongs to and the time it was sent. Period. Nothing else matters.

Have exchanged almost 11 mails till now and I have just four items in my inbox. One of that is a set of conversations with 8 different mails in it. So this is their famed feature of message grouping. Also, there is no complicated viewing of the mails possible - grouping order is just based on time and nothing else. Virtually no views of threading are possible as of now. Dont know if that is a good thing or not. Will tell you later. The interface for viewing the grouped conversation is also interesting. More about it in a more structured Beta Report. Will do it over the weekend.

Second most important item as far as first looks is concerned. The mail is blindingly fast. As fast as google. Imagine what that is going to do to your view of the Internet. Keep imagining, will get back to it later.

As I said - will come back with a full report during the weekend. However the reason I am writing this is to link to my site and increase the number of pages linking to it. Seems www.anarchius.org is not being linked by enough sites for it to be spidered. Will change it. Also keeping track of all that I am doing to get it onto the google index. Will keep you updated on that too.

warm regards,

- anarchy

www.anarchius.org