I am a gmail user. I love gmail. It’s 102 degrees in my apartment, my computer is overheating, and I’m writing to tell you about a bug. It’s that important to me.

Running Windows XP, Gmail does not seem to function on Firefox anymore. Maybe this is a bug. Maybe it is a virus. I really don’t know, but it’s too hot to care.

I want to present you with a link that will tell you more. It’s a thread on a Mozilla blog. Mozilla is the company that makes Firefox. I posted on it.

It’s baffling because I had so much love for Firefox. Now… well, now… now I just don’t know anymore. I’ll have to revert back to 3.5.10.

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/715725

(By the way, this doesn’t seem to affect my Mac running Snow Leopard.)

Update: Friday, July 9, 2010

I tried reverting back to 3.5.10 and the problem persisted.

I’ve made the switch to Chrome and so far have been quite pleased except for the ‘new tab’ stubbornness–that is, you can’t customize what page you see when you open a new tab. Highly annoying. There’s an extension to redirect this, but that isn’t exactly authentic and seems rather flakey to have to do.

So. No more Firefox for me, or so it seems. We’re talking about migrating our entire office to Chrome now, as well, to prevent further suckary on behalf of the once noble Mozilla project.

Update: Saturday, August 7, 2010

It’s been a month since I switched from Firefox to Chrome. In general I’m very pleased with it. It’s much faster than Firefox or IE, which is as nice as it is curious. I will have to look into how they do this.

There are tons of plugins, just like FF. The screen real estate is handled well. It’s all very thin. There are also lots of themes, but I don’t usually get into that for the sake of saving a few megabytes of memory.

The one thing I really, REALLY don’t like about chrome: When you hit the new tab button, you get a very lame history page that looks quite terrible. It is poorly designed and incredibly ugly–despite its being rather useful. What I would prefer is my own option of setting the new tab page to be Google, ironically, which I can do with a plugin, but it isn’t an elegant solution.

Welcome to the future, everyone. Just let it sink in a little…

United States – Percentage of Population on Facebook in 2009

Tables are essentially just spreadsheets in their presentation. But in function they are actually more like SQL tables that you interact with via an API. You can store your own data on here and interact with it–read: you really don’t need a local SQL installation on your web server to create powerful web apps. Perhaps the most interesting thing of all is that there are also public tables, many of which include valuable socially and politically relevant data.

From within the Google Fusion tables account, you can also generate on-the-fly interactive charts, graphs and maps.

Google Wave is a new web application designed to make it easier for groups of people to work together in real-time, using rich text, images, video, maps and more.

See how organizations are using Google Wave.

• If you are a Google Apps domain administrator: Learn more about enabling Google Wave.
• If your domain does not yet use Google Apps: Sign up for a free trial.
• If your organization uses Google Apps but you are not the administrator: Let your administrator know that Google Wave is available!

Google Wave is a part of Google Labs and there are a number of things we have planned before it will be ready for large-scale enterprise deployment, but this is an opportunity for you and your organization to try it out.

Join our webinar
To learn more, we invite you to join our webcast on Wednesday, May 26th at 9:00 am PDT. We will share real world use-cases from businesses and other organizations and answer your questions. Register for the webcast.

For more information, visit our Help Center.

Happy waving!
The Google Wave team

As it turns out, she’s yet to figure out how to disable the automatic posting of Tweets and other such “Connected Sites,” which seems to have the default setting of integrating everything. Well, Nadia, this one’s for you and everyone else out there who would rather read instructions than click around and break stuff. (Webbies around the world salute you.)

Removing integration for Google Buzz’s “Connected Sites” feature/annoyance is easy. Just follow these steps:

1. While logged into your GMail, click on Buzz.
2. At the top of the page, you’ll see your personal Buzz area–the place where you would type a post. Click on Connected Sites near your name. A tasteful lightbox window pops up.
3. Click on Edit and then Remove Site on any and all of the Connected Sites you want to remove.
4. Click Save at the bottom.

That’s all there is to it! Happy buzzing, Nadia.

Oh, and do visit her blog at postmatterpostings.wordpress.com because it’s pretty awesome.

]]> http://systemsconsciousness.com/2010/03/03/want-google-buzz-to-buzz-off-heres-how-to-disable-connected-sites-in-google-buzz/feed/ 0 http://systemsconsciousness.com/2010/02/05/google-and-the-nsa/ http://systemsconsciousness.com/2010/02/05/google-and-the-nsa/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:09:52 +0000 Dean Haddock http://systemsconsciousness.com/?p=1090 The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

Read the full story at the Washington Post website.

Enter Google Voice. I heard about this some months ago, but it never really struck me as useful. I’m highly suspicious of Google, despite their “Don’t be evil” tagline. There’s got to be some evil reason behind hording all of this data. Our emails? Texts? Websites? Now our voices and phone numbers? Oh that’s right, if you sync your contacts with Google Contacts they already have them. So for my personal line? Never! I have no desire to use Google Voice for this. Frankly, I don’t even trust the phone companies with my data, but this may be a necessary breech for now. But for business? Yes! Google Voice has great potential for the independent business person.

Google Voice comes in two tasty varieties: Use your own number or get a new one. If you use your own, your stuck. No additional number for you. If you choose the Red Pill, then you’ll get a new phone number that you can set to ring at any number of phones. It’ll get your voicemail when you don’t answer. It’ll even send your voicemail as text messages. That’s right. Rumor has it, voice to text. Don’t panic yet…

Features for using your own number

• Google voicemail: voicemail like email
• Voicemail transcription: read what your voicemail says
• Custom greetings: vary voicemail greetings by caller
• International calling: low cost calls to the world
• Notifications: read voicemail messages via email or SMS
• Share voicemails: forward, embed, or download voicemails

Features if you get a new Google number

• One number: a single phone number that rings all your phones
• Free SMS: send, receive & store text messages online
• Block calls: send unwanted callers straight to voicemail
• Record calls: record phone calls and store them online
• Conference calls: join several people into a single call
• Screen callers: hear who is calling before you pick up

Here are some videos to wet your appetite. If you have a Voice account, please send me an invite! I applied for an account last week. Now I’m just waiting… and waiting… hitting refresh on my email over and over. Nothing but emails from cute girls. Where are you Google Voice invitation?