I get a lot of emails from cruel, annoying, persistent individuals and I sometimes don’t know how to deal with them. If I had this little extra button in my email program though, boy-oh-boy-oh-boy. I’d be even more passive aggressive.
Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t have this button after all. [Murray the Nut]
Popularity: unranked [?]
Despite the apologies and quick-fixes, Google still has a lot of explaining to do about Buzz. And if the FTC decides to hear the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s complaint, we’d get some answers right quick.
EPIC’s 16-page complaint, filed yesterday, cites a dissatisfaction with the measures Google has taken so far to shore up Buzz’s security. Users still have to opt out of the service, and Buzz still uses address books to build follower/following lists.
An FTC complaint is significant because it frames the discomfort over Buzz legalistically. Should the agency choose to investigate—which given the degree of public outcry and clear privacy violations, they may well—that could result in government regulation of the service. If nothing else, it’s another black mark on Buzz, and another indication that while Google may “do no evil,” they don’t necessarily always do good. [EPIC via Ars Technica]
Popularity: unranked [?]
Technology does so much to bring us together, it’d be a shame to let language keep us apart. VoxOx is the first to overcome that hurdle, with a free real-time translation tool that lets you chat seamlessly in dozens of tongues.
The VoxOx Universal Translator is basically a social Babel Fish, built into VoxOx’s communications software. As you can see in the demonstration video, if you input the language of the person you’re communicating with over SMS, IM, email, or select chat services (such as Facebook), VoxOx automatically translates both ends of the conversation for you.
Only one person needs to be using the service for it to work, so you won’t have to convince your new friends in Minsk to download random software. In fact, you can pretty easily convince them that you’re a native speaker as well.
It’s one of those services that seems so inherently useful, it’s a wonder that it’s only just now a reality. But since it is, buena suerte making friends around the world.
VoxOx First to Introduce Real-Time Language Translation for SMS, Chat, Social Media and Email in One Interface
VoxOx Universal Translator instantly and seamlessly breaks down language barriers in mobile and electronic communication
BARCELONA (MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS) and SAN DIEGO – February 16, 2010 – VoxOx® by TelCentris®, the first and only free consumer service that unifies today’s key communication channels – voice, video, IM, text, social media, e-mail, fax and file sharing – into a single user interface, today announced the launch of the VoxOx Universal Translator™, the first translation service to be natively built into a communications software, enabling seamless, real-time conversations. The VoxOx Universal Translator is also the first service in the industry to provide instantaneous foreign language messaging translation across four major communication channels – text messages (SMS), chat (IM), email and select social media networks. The service supports dozens of major languages, and only one person has to be using VoxOx to have a two-way translated conversation.Announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the new free service makes it easy for two people who speak different languages to instantaneously communicate back and forth via SMS, IM and email. VoxOx users can also automatically translate and broadcast their Twitter @replies (public messages directed to specific users), as well as hold two-way translated chat conversations with social networking friends on Facebook and MySpace. Users simply opens up their VoxOx Universal Messaging Window (chat window within VoxOx client), select their language as well as their contact’s language, and then begin sending text and chat messages, emails or Twitter @replies to anyone in the world. The Universal Translator instantly translates the messages for both parties in dozens of major languages. All language settings are customizable by individual contact and automatically stored in the cloud for future conversations. The service is completely interoperable with major instant messaging services, including Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live, AIM, ICQ, Skype and GoogleTalk.
“Never before has it been so easy for people of different languages to communicate instantaneously,” said Bryan Hertz, CEO of TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. “We expect this innovation to help friends, relatives and business colleagues better communicate and connect with each other.”
VoxOx is the first service of its kind to fully address the instant communication needs of international audiences. Consumers previously were required to cut and paste messages using online translation web sites and translation “bots,” or download clunky, client-specific plug-ins that both parties have to install. Translation has been particularly challenging in two-way SMS conversations, especially for older phones without an Internet connection or applications. With its built-in live translation option spanning four communication channels, VoxOx has advanced its relevance within the international community, while providing a seamless user experience.
“The VoxOx Universal Translator breaks down language barriers and has important business implications as well – for example, providing better customer support, or communicating with colleagues, partners and business contacts in another country and another language,” said Michael Faught, president of TelCentris. “We look forward to the global feedback on this service. We are very excited and proud to launch this new capability for our users worldwide at such an international venue as the Mobile World Congress.”
The VoxOx Universal Translator is just one capability of the overall VoxOx service, which Computer Shopper recently named the Best Software / Service at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Currently in beta, VoxOx also provides users with a free phone number; two-way texting; video conferencing; integrated social networking and chat; fax and file sharing capabilities; a free personal assistant for helping answer, manage and screen calls; and much more.
For more information on the VoxOx Universal Translator, please visit http://www.voxox.com/whats_new.php. To download the free VoxOx software, please visit www.voxox.com.
Popularity: 3% [?]
You have just come across a new website at example.com that offers an interesting software utility or an ebook for free. The offer is simple – you give them your email address and they’ll send you the download links over email.
Now while the website policy clearly states that they “won’t sell your email address to third-parties,” you aren’t feeling very comfortable sharing your private email address with a website that you’ve never heard about before. What do you do then?
Do you plan to skip the offer just because you’re worried that spam might hit your email Inbox? Well, stop worrying and get a disposable email address that will auto-expire after some hours (or some days).
There are quite a few websites that offer disposable email addresses for free but my favorite is 10minutemail.com. Just visit the and you’ll get a temporary email address that you can use anywhere on the web just like your regular email address (you can even reply and forward message).
The email addresses will self-destruct after, you guessed it right, 10 minutes. They regularly switch their email server domains – you might have been allotted abc@hello.com today but the alias next day could become xyz@bye.com. This prevents forum administrators from blocking members that use temporary addresses.
When Disposable Email Addresses Aren’t Enough..
You may use disposable email addresses when filling out online surveys, registration forms, comment forms, etc. but when you need to share your email address on a public website (like Twitter), disposable addresses won’t help as they expire pretty soon.
You still have a couple of options though.
Scr.im will convert your email address into a short web address (URL). People will have to pass a small CAPTCHA test to see your actual email address (see example).
Another service that can potentially save your email from spammers is reCAPTCHA. The service will require “human” users to solve a CAPTCHA for them to see your full email address in plain text. Here’s a demo:
Please click here to reveal the full email address.
Spambox.us will let you generate temporary email addresses that can last up to an year. Any email message that’s sent to this temporary address will be auto-forwarded to your main Inbox and, if you think you are getting spammed, you can simply cancel your Spambox address.
Then you have whspr.me that turns email address into a web forms. Anyone can reach you over email by simply writing the message in this form. You can delete the email form manually anytime or set it to auto-expire after ‘n’ days.
If you have a Google Account, you can check the setting in your Google Profile that says – “allow people to contact me without showing my email address”. Other users who are logged into their Google Accounts can then send you direct messages – see the “send a message” link in my Google profile for a live example.
And finally the most common method – you can consider creating an image of your email address using labelgen (or even Facebook). Most spam bots won’t notice your email address while humans can easily read the address without having to solve complex CAPTCHAs.
Email Cover can also help you mask your precious email address but, unlike regular email to image converters, it doesn’t use straight fonts so your address will possibly stay protected from spammers who are smart enough to perform OCR. See example:
Related tips: Hide your Email Address on Websites
Give Out Your Email Address Online in a Safe Way
Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Whatever Google Buzz is, it’s certainly got people talking.
After the launch of the company’s new attempt to integrate social networking and email on Tuesday morning, some of the reaction has been good (people “may flock to Google Buzz,” said web pundit Louis Gray) and some of it is bad (“They put a virus into Gmail,” cried urblogger Dave Winer).
Despite the talk of a “revolution” at the launch, a lot of Google Buzz looks awfully familiar, from the Facebook-like sharing of information to the Twitter-like “@” replies. But most of all it is reminiscent of FriendFeed, the activity stream aggregator that was bought by Facebook last year for an estimated $50m. No surprise, perhaps, given that FriendFeed’s founders had previously worked on Gmail and Google Maps.
Indeed, the similarities were so glaring that during one journalist asked during the launch event Q&A how Google had managed to acquire the rights to reproduce Friendfeed when it was Facebook that bought the service.
The eerily familiar feel to Buzz – delivered in that sparse-yet-sometimes-overwhelming style that is Google’s hallmark – means that the product’s certainly not as confusing on first glance as Google Wave. But it still has to make its mark.
At the event I shared a brief, interesting chat with Google VP Bradley Horowitz, who previously tried to champion social search at Yahoo before (somewhat controversially) switching sides in 2008. Is Buzz part of Gmail or a separate product? It’s already got several standalone components, he said – it will be able to stand alone soon.
And, he stressed, it is part of a long-term plan the company has to expand into social areas and improve the way it brings you the information you’re looking for. Indeed, Sergey Brin seemed annoyed that the company’s previous forays into the social web have been deemed failures. Other companies would kill for the sort of penetration Orkut has in Brazil, he said (but clearly Google would kill for the sort of penetration that Facebook has, well, pretty much anywhere else).
Horowitz is right when he says it’s a long game – whatever happens with Google Buzz, this growing warfare over the social web is unlikely to go away any time soon.
Anyway, as I’m writing this, my email inbox still hasn’t been Buzz-enabled yet – so I’ve yet to give it a proper, real-world test run. Have you got it yet? And will you be using it?
Popularity: 3% [?]
For a platform billing itself as the business user’s best friend, BlackBerry’s list of unsupported protocols that have achieved ubiquity is actually astonishing: you can’t do two-way read status sync with an IMAP email account, for example, and amazingly, you can’t natively connect to an Exchange ActiveSync service without being routed through RIM’s back-end software. In a shocking move that’s straight out of 2002, it seems at least one of those niggles is going to get patched up soon thanks to a leaked list of email features in BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0, the software carriers deploy to marshal all data connectivity on the handsets they’ve deployed to customers. Yes, that’s right: you’ll be able to synchronize read status and sent items with your Gmail account, just as if you were using virtually any other phone produced in the last several years! It’s hard to fathom that it’s taken this long, but hey, we’ll take it — unfortunately, it’s up to each carrier to decide when they’re going to deploy BIS upgrades, so your mileage may vary on the wait time. Of course, RIM could just add IMAP support directly to its phones so that this whiz-bang tech would work with any third-party email service and wouldn’t have to go through BIS in the process, but that would be crazy talk, right?
[Thanks, Jeff]
RIM’s BIS 3.0 email features apparently leaked, finally does Gmail justice originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Popularity: 1% [?]
TechCrunch reports that Facebook is working on a full webmail system to replace their current messaging platform, including full POP and IMAP support and a customized @facebook.com e-mail address. The codename for the new system: Project Titan.
In the TechCrunch post, Arrington suggests that Facebook has been working towards a webmail service for some time, expanding their messaging platform to be searchable and allowing Facebook users to send messages directly to non-Facebook e-mail addresses. The site has also shown interest in giving its users a more accessible and more complete online identity with the recent implementation of personalized URLs and the proliferation of Facebook Connect login on third party sites.
Project Titan would take this effort a step further, giving users a personalized username@facebook.com e-mail address and letting them access it on Facebook itself or independently via POP and IMAP. Facebook already has 175 million people logging into their site each day, but adding a true webmail solution would be a strong step in their transformation from a centralized communications hub to a broader platform for staying connected online. [TechCrunch]
Popularity: 1% [?]
Contrary to what it says in a hoax email going round, pictures of Gordon Brown “actually smiling” are not going to crash your computer.
Your inbox may contain a message that claims: “Emails with pictures of Gordon Brown actually smiling are being sent and the moment that you open these emails your computer will crash and you will not be able to fix it!”
“SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW”
Yes, obviously, it’s a hoax, so please don’t pass it on.
The same email also throws in a free bonus: it warns against “a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which ‘burns’ the whole hard disc C of your computer.”
Graham Cluley of the Sophos anti-virus company speculates in a blog post (Can Gordon Brown’s smile infect your computer with a virus?) that “the Gordon Brown virus hoax was started by someone as a joke, taking the mickey out of the notoriously dour Prime Minister”. But since Brown’s YouTube smile was in the news more than nine months ago, it seems to have taken the joker a long time to give birth to something so feeble.
Several sites keep track of these fake emails including Snopes, Hoax-slayer, and Urban Legends. It’s always better to spend a few seconds checking that an email is a hoax, though the chances of this sort of thing being genuine could be on a par with winning the lottery.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I have two accounts on Twitter – the @labnol handle that I use for writing personal tweets and the other account is @labnolfeed that some people use to follow this blog on Twitter.
If you are like me and have multiple accounts on Twitter, you are probably aware of the fact that you cannot associate the same email address with multiple Twitter accounts. Try that and Twitter will throw up an error saying – "Email has already been taken".
There’s however a simple workaround that will let you use the same email address with all your Twitter handles – the only condition is that you should be using a Gmail or Google Apps email address.
In Gmail, you can add a dot (.) anywhere in the username and all emails marked to that new address will still reach your own Inbox. For instance, if your original email address is hello@gmail.com, any emails sent to he.llo@gmail.com or he.ll.o@gmail.com will safely reach you as Gmail will automatically ignore the periods in the username.
And that’s what you can use to trick Twitter.
Twitter will consider hello@gmail and he.llo@gmail as two separate and valid email addresses even though they point to the same Gmail Inbox.
Another Workaround
When you open an account in Gmail, you automatically get another valid email address that uses the googlemail.com domain.
So if you only have two handles on twitter, you can use the gmail.com address with one handle and the googlemail.com address with the second handle.
Check the Twitter guide for more tricks.
Use One Email Address with Multiple Twitter Accounts – Published at Digital Inspiration (RSS)
Popularity: 7% [?]
You know how easy it is to upload Office documents to Google Docs – just attach the files to an email message and send it to a secret address that has been assigned to you by Google Docs.
See your pictures in Google Docs
The Google Docs page says that you can only upload regular office files, HTML pages and PDFs via email but there are some other formats that are allowed as well (undocumented).
In addition to documents, you can also send pictures to your Google Docs account via email (or upload them from the web browser) and each attached picture will appear as a separate document in your Google Docs dashboard.
In my test, I could successfully upload photographs and screenshot images that were rendered in PNG, GIF and JPEG formats. The image file name become the title of the document while the email subject and text in the body of the message were discarded.
Can’t think of any practical application for this “undocumented” feature but maybe if you have a picture on a mobile phone that you want to put in a Google document, you can quickly email that file from the mobile phone itself instead of transferring it via cables.
Related: Google Docs Guide
Yes, You Can Email Pictures to Google Docs – Published at Digital Inspiration (RSS)
Popularity: 13% [?]
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