Posts Tagged with “google”

Fix "Google Calendar invitations cannot be forwarded via email" error messages

There are 2 steps to solving this issue:

1. Add your second, non-Gmail email as an alternate email address – Sign in to your Google Account with another email address

2. Setup Google Calendar to accept invitations from the alternate email address – How to respond to invitations forwarded from your alternate email address

Need a step by step guide with screenshots? Check out this article on TechRepublic – Add alternate email addresses for calendar scheduling

Fever + Sunstroke = A great RSS reading experience

Google Reader is “retiring” next week. Like many I have been looking for a replacement. Feedly is a service I have been using and quite like. However I also took the opportunity to experiment with a feed reader that I’ve heard about for years called Fever.

fever fluid

Developed by Shaun Inman, Fever is a web app, not a desktop app. I like it so much that its made me enjoy RSS again and relegated Feedly to my backup RSS reader.

Why Fever is awesome

Hot Links

Traditional RSS readers get crowded and overwhelming when you subscribe to a lot of feeds. With Fever, it actually reads your feeds and compiles the most frequently talked about links into a Hot Links page. So the more links you follow, the better Fever gets.

My RSS feeds in Fever

Click to embiggen

I wondered how well this would work. I’m glad to say it works great. Fever constantly shows me the top Apple and WordPress news: exactly the news I want to see. Read More »

Google drops H.264 support from Chrome: Who's interest does this serve?

Earlier this month, Google announced that it will drop support for the popular H.264 video codec from it’s Chrome browser. Being the web geek that I am, I’ve researched and thought about and wrestled with this issue to the detriment of my productivity.

And after all that I have come to the following conclusion: Google is at it again. And by ‘it’ I mean being two-faced liars who have lost my trust.

For background on this issue, see these 2 excellent articles:

I want to believe that Google’s decision was motivated by the desire to help advance adoption of HTML5 video, which would make publishing video on the web so much easier. I really wish that Google is sincere in it’s claim of wanting to build an open web by promoting WebM, their open source video codec.
Read More »

Help your Parents with TeachParentsTech.org

I’m really loving Google’s new TeachParentsTech.org website. You can use it to send your loved ones instructional videos on computer and internet stuff.

My fave so far is the one above where the Asian dude explains how to spot phishing emails. He even winks at you halfway through!

Watch all the videos here – teachparentstech.org/watch

[RANT] Why I stopped trusting Google

Lately I’ve been telling many of my friends to be very careful about Facebook because they don’t take our privacy seriously. This past week another company joins that list – Google. In addition to privacy, their business practices also make me highly suspicious of them.

Google’s recent actions have made me stop trusting them. I admit, these are very geek reasons that many of my friends won’t understand, but they’ve made me seriously reconsider my relationship to Google and how much I should support them.

Here’s the short version. They’re a great company but they hide behind their unoficial motto of “Don’t be evil” when they are clearly happy to be a little evil. I hate it that they’re two-faced, because I can’t trust people that are two-faced.

So now, if you’ve got a little time to listen to me rant, here’s why I stopped trusting Google: Read More »

Should the USA 'protect' the internet?

Secretary Clinton Delivers Remarks on Internet Freedom

2010 kicked off with a very interesting high-stakes drama unfolding between Google and China. The situation has now blown up and got the US government involved. Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a speech on Internet Freedom which basically outlined a new foreign policy for USA and extended it to the internet.

In a nutshell, the US wants to help ensure the freedom of the internet to everyone, all over the world, especially in countries like Iran and China. Erick Schonfeld in Techcrunch says it best:

Apparently, it is now the U.S. government’s foreign policy to protect and promote these freedoms throughout the information “commons” which extend beyond our physical borders.  It is also U.S. foreign policy to encourage corporations, particularly those in the technology industry, to protect these freedoms.

I’d highly encourage reading the Techcrunch article which does a great job of explaining Clinton’s speech – Hillary Clinton Extends Foreign Policy To The Internet And Wants Your Help. For background on how this all came about, check out CNET News’ roundup (Google’s challenge in China), especially this video that summarises everything – Video: China’s attack on Google explained.

My Thoughts

I’m really not a fan of politics and international relations. However this seems like a really big development that may impact the internet throughout the world, and not just in China and USA.

This also smacks of USA being the world’s sherrif, but I ask myself who else could or would even try to protect the internet. And on the other hand is China – the world’s largest country and possibly the most powerful – is censoring the media and the internet like nobody’s business. If our silly politicians here try to censor the internet we would be up in arms right?

I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I definitely don’t want the internet to be censored or for there to be a Chinese internet and an English internet. What do you think?

Photo Credit: Flickr/ U.S. State Dept

Adobe is making Flash searchable.. but only to Google and Yahoo. Link

The new new Google Reader for iPhone is sweet!

Neowave e-commerce blogger survey+linkbait

Neowave, the company behind behind the webShaper shopping cart software, has posted a piece of link-bait on their blog. Their incentive–Google goodies. As a side objective, it looks this is also some free research for the marketing boys.

Well, I’m happy to help in your research and I definitely would like Google goodies. So here are my answers to your questions:

1) Do you shop online? If so, why? If not, why not?
Yes I do shop online. I do it mainly because I can’t buy the products here, or have no other alternative. E.g. I’ve bought Flickr subscriptions, Jinx t-shirts and a DVD from Amazon.com.

2) What are your preferred payment methods for online shopping? (credit card, debit card, bank card, online banking, cheque etc) List 3 in accordance to preferences.
My favourite method would be PayPal actually because I don’t have to give my credit card number to the merchant. Plus because I can’t withdraw money I’ve earned elsewhere from PayPal easily, I need to use it up. No 2 would be credit card because I am protected by the credit card company. I only use these methods for buying online. I don’t like online banking because the merchant may take my money and run and I’m not protected like with credit cards.

3) Do you use search for product pricing and information before you buy instore? Which search engine you use the most?
Yes, always! I look up reviews on CNET and Amazon. I only use Google and so that’s why I want those goodies. It would be even better if the phone in the picture is included…

Oh yes, must not forget to contribute to Neowave’s Google Juice – SEO Shopping Cart 😉

P.S. Guys, its difficult to leave a comment if its only registered users and you don’t let us register.

Found via Get Found.

Google acquires DoubleClick

Google acquires DoubleClick. From the official blog post:

This new partnership represents a tremendous opportunity for us at Google to broaden and deepen our inventory of available ads and to better serve both our publishers and users. Together, Google and DoubleClick will empower agencies, advertisers, and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, which will, in turn, provide a better experience for our users.

Wonder if I can buy DoubleClick space through Google AdSense now.