On the anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution—which launched the nation's current, contested regime—Iran has blocked Gmail and slowed all internet service to such a crawl that some say they can't access any web-based email. A Google spokeswoman confirmed a "sharp drop in traffic." She continued, "Sadly, sometimes it is not within our control." [NYT]
The uber-geeks who run Google don't seem like to think about the messy world of law and politics. But it can't be avoided. The latest example: A Bear Stearns manager done in by a GMail account he thought was closed.
GMail is still down. But forlorn users of Google's email service are not without ways of coping with their waking nightmare. Together, we will get through this. Here's how.
Remember when Gmail first came out? Virtually unlimited email storage, free! A few people bitched about the ads, but even those were an improvement over Hotmail and Yahoo, which shoved ads into the middle of personal messages rather than alongside them. Nearly five years later, Gmail's new video chat feature is resoundingly meh by comparison. CNET old-timer Rafe Needleman, who got advance review access, listed shortcomings rather than breakthroughs in his writeup. Needleman had embedded in his article a self-produced video demo by one of the Google engineers who built the thing. The doofy-but-sincere video has been removed from YouTube. Dear Google PR: That's everything wrong with your company right there.
Mail Goggles is a Google-built version of a feature email users have joked about for decades: It makes you stop, think and pass a sobriety test before sending messages after a certain hour or on weekends. The name is a pun on Beer Goggles — but it gets the logic backwards. Somebody must have been drunk.Michael Arrington at TechCrunch worries Mail Goggles is a hoax — fair enough, since Google developer Jon Perlow didn't explain how to find it unless you already know where it is. Typical engineer. To test-drive Mail Goggles, login to a Gmail account. Click Settings in the upper right corner, then click Labs at the far right. Mail Googles is halfway down the Labs page in alphabetical order. That alone should serve as a sobriety test. (Photoillustration by Digital Inspiration)
Of 49 Google products, 22 are still in beta — not including anything released under Google Labs. In technology parlance, a beta product is one that is still being tested. In fact, Google's even charging users of Google Apps for Your Domain money for both Gmail and Google Docs. So why the beta tag? My theory is it's an easy way to keep from having to offer customer support when problems arise, since beta also traditionally means "use at your own risk." [Royal Pingdom]
Nobody reads terms of service agreements, those legal documents new users have to click a box to say they've read. And the truth is, they hardly matter to anybody but the cyber-rights-now crowd who get worked up by articles on Boing Boing, and the paranoid lawyers at large Web companies who want to avoid money-fishing lawsuits. But sometimes they go far beyond protecting corporate interests into la-la land. Did you know that when you download Google's new Chrome browser, you agree that any "content" you "submit, post or display" using the service — whether you own its copyright or not — gives Google a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute" it? Google's ambitions for Chrome are even larger than we thought; by the letter of this license, Google will own all information that flows through its browser. But Chrome's terms of service are just the latest in a long line of ludicrous legalese.
Can Google charge for a service it mostly gives away — and that doesn't always work? That's the experiment it's conducting with Google Apps. Gmail, the email service at the heart of Google Apps, went down three times earlier this month, and Google has sent a note to customers who pay for its "Premier Edition" — typically colleges and small businesses. As Fortune notes, Google hasn't had much success breaking into the large business accounts where Microsoft rules. The tone of Google's apology speaks volumes. It's mostly apologetic, but there are overtones of Stanford-comp-sci huffiness:
Fired Reddit cofounder and noted nontrepreneur Aaron Swartz says developers shouldn't roll out software with a Hollywood-style launch, as the rock-star coders at collaboration-software makers 37 Signals say. Swartz favors "the Gmail Launch," he writes on his blog, Raw Thought. The gist of his argument, below.
Last time someone came out with a Gmail exploit, it was possible to completely hijack your account with just email filters. This time around, hackers found a way to break into your account via "session" cookies. Mike Perry — a reverse-engineering specialist in San Francisco — is debuting a tool at Defcon that can sniff out the browser's cookies during your session of email crunching. When you click on links from inside email messages, website operators can use that Gmail cookie and be able to find out your account information and password.
Reader Francis writes:
Our "l33t" sister site Lifehacker, your source for anything and everything to help make you the hyper-efficient Valley worker demanded by our workaholic culture, managed to get some of their Better Gmail browser extensions embedded into new features that Google is rolling out to Gmail users through its Gmail Labs project. We here at the 'Wag, longtime Better Gmail users, can only say it's about time. [Lifehacker]
Google has introduced Gmail Labs, a digital playground for Googlers to develop new features for Gmail in their spare time. It's a well-staged PR event, a timely effort to remind the press — and through them, potential hires — that Google lets engineers spend 20 percent of their time on side projects. Gmail Labs, though, is a sign of how 20 percent time as early Googlers knew it is vanishing from the Googleplex.
There's a sign in the bathrooms at Apple headquarters that read: "Take 20 seconds to debug yourself." Here's how they do it in Mountain View. Or maybe this bar of soap serves entirely different purposes? Let us know by writing your own caption, below. We'll re-headline the post with the best entry. Monday's contest was won by photographer Matt Schlicht. The Ustream.tv asscoiate commented about his snap of egoblogger with Robert Scoble kissing Schlicht's underage colleague Mazyar Kazerooni: "Oh - jesus. I didn't want to see that picture again. I'm pretty sure I took it but I don't remember clearly..."
I tried to send an email to New York Times columnist David Pogue, but I failed. It appears that Google's Gmail has been blacklisted by the Sorbs spam-blocking system. At the moment, Sorbs claims to be in a "maintenance period." Pogue's email provider could be blocking all mail because it can't reach Sorbs — but why would it be down for maintenance in the middle of the day? See the full error message after the jump and tell me if you can figure it out. In the meantime, David, call me? Everybody sing! Let the sound of your voice turn winter to spring.
