Cody Taylor

Many readers noted an outage affecting Google’s gmail service last night. Firmafest points to a statement from Google, according to which only a small subset of users were affected. According to reader CaptHarlock, mail itself remained accessible through IMAP clients, and the chat feature via external applications. jw3 asks “Of course, gmail is just one of the many providers of web-based e-mails. When I look around, almost everyone seems to be using them nowadays. So — what do you do? Do you trust that the site of your web-based e-mail provider will never go down? Do you make backups of all your e-mails?” (Some readers still seem to be unable to reach the site, too.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many readers noted an outage affecting Google’s gmail service last night. Firmafest points to a statement from Google, according to which only a small subset of users were affected. According to reader CaptHarlock, mail itself remained accessible through IMAP clients, and the chat feature via external applications. jw3 asks “Of course, gmail is just one of the many providers of web-based e-mails. When I look around, almost everyone seems to be using them nowadays. So — what do you do? Do you trust that the site of your web-based e-mail provider will never go down? Do you make backups of all your e-mails?” (Some readers still seem to be unable to reach the site, too.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AJAX Solutions can be used by web developers to create amazing applications. Dozens of projects, even Gmail, made with AJAX provide new interactivity for applications that can have enhanced user functionality. Using AJAX, better, faster, more flexible web solutions are available. AJAX is the first step toward web applications of the future.

CrazyCanucklehead writes “At the Blackhat security conference in Washington, DC, researcher Michael Sutton has detailed how common XSS flaws in web applications employing (Google) Gears and HTML 5 Database Storage can leave local databases wide open to attack. This comes just as Gears is starting to take off, and just yesterday Google demonstrated a beta version of offline Gmail on phones, thanks to HTML 5 support in WebKit-based browsers, such as those used by Android and the iPhone. Sutton drove home the point by walking through a real world example on commercial site Paymo.biz, which has thankfully since been fixed.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nk497 writes “Hackers at the Black Hat conference have shown that SSL encryption isn’t as secure as online businesses would like us to think. Independent hacker Moxie Marlinspike showed off several techniques to fool the tech behind the little padlock on your screen. He claimed that by using a real world attack on several secure websites such as PayPal, Gmail, Ticketmaster and Facebook, he garnered 117 email accounts, 16 credit card numbers, seven PayPal logins and 300 other miscellaneous secure logins.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What are we to make of Google’s “beta” products and “experimental” features? Gmail has been in “beta” for five years! And Gmail has more than 35 so-called “experimental” features. They’re attracting users, beating competition and helping Google make billions of dollars. See Google’s use of these terms for what it really is: a marketing gimmick.

Google has added an experimental feature to Gmail that automatically lets the recipient of your e-mails know where you penned your missive.

Google has added a new option to merge multiple contacts into a single entry. It’s only treating the symptom, but it’s a step in the right direction.