Edunology - Saumya Aggarwal

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The much-awaited Facebook email service (Project Titan) was finally announced on Monday. Facebook email is actually part of a larger, simplified communication system called Facebook Messages. Facebook Messages will have email, SMS, chat conversations with your Facebook friends under one thread.

I have to respectfully disagree with my colleague, Nikhil Pradhan, and his views on how Facebook email could actually beat Gmail -- but in all fairness, his article was written before Facebook's email announcement. Although Facebook email (and Facebook Messages) definitely has convergence and simplicity of use going for it, but from the evidence of Facebook's announcement and Facebook Messages' first look, the service is far from upsetting Gmail -- let alone kill it. Here's why:

Threaded conversation: Most Gmail users prefer Gmail's email conversation view -- it was the first webmail service to have email conversation view back in 2004. Emails on the same subject appear as threaded conversations in Gmail, putting the latest email right on top of the pile. Facebook Messages will have emails, SMS, chats between two individuals as one thread -- irrespective of the subject. This may get confusing after a while, and the length of scroll over time difficult to manage if Facebook continues with posting the most recent update to a conversation at the bottom of the pile.

Spam: To put it simply, Gmail has a pretty robust spam filter deployed to prevent spam from reaching your Gmail inbox. It has a spam-filtering mechanism that learns when Gmail users report a spam email. Historically, Facebook has had trouble stamping out spam attacks in messages and chats. Facebook has said it will deploy an unnamed third-party filtering mechanism for inbound emails for Facebook email service, but as of now Gmail still triumphs.

Multiple Email Accounts: I currently use multiple email accounts (Gmail and others) to send and receive email from my Gmail inbox. This makes Gmail central to my webmail experience -- it works great for anyone who has multiple email accounts and doesn't want to use several email clients or access multiple inboxes.

IMAP support: Facebook email won't have IMAP support -- which is a popular email protocol. IMAP really helps if you're accessing your inbox from different locations or different devices. Gmail includes IMAP support.

Attachments: Facebook emails will only be able to preview attached Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Excel files within their browsers -- through Facebook and Microsoft's Docs service. It won't preview PDFs, for example -- something that Gmail does.

SMS/Chat/Phone: I understand it's great and will help Facebook users when email, SMS, and chat comes under one Social Inbox. But Gmail has already converged the three a while back -- it has Gmail chat, SMS, and Gmail free phone calls, all within your inbox window. Facebook just goes one step ahead by converging different forms of communication under one thread -- as far as services offered, there's nothing new or groundbreaking.

via pcworld

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Google Inc will begin blocking Facebook and other Web services from accessing its users' information , highlighting an intensifying rivalry between the two Internet giants.

Google will no longer let other services automatically import its users' email contact data for their own purposes, unless the information flows both ways. It accused Facebook in particular of siphoning up Google contact data, without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users' information.

Facebook, with more than 500 million users, relies on email services such as Google's Gmail to help new users find friends already on the network. When a person joins, they are asked to import their Gmail contact list into the social network service. Facebook then tells the user which email contacts are also on the social network.

In a statement, Google said websites such as Facebook "leave users in a data dead end." Facebook did not immediately provide a comment on Friday.

While Google framed the move as an attempt to protect its users' ability to retain control of their personal data on the Internet, analysts said the move underscored the battle between Google, the world's largest search engine, and Facebook, the dominant Internet social network.

"The fundamental power dynamic on the Web today is this emerging conflict between Facebook and Google," said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes. "Google needs to evolve to become a big player in the social Web and it hasn't been able to do that."

"If people do search within Facebook, if they do email within Facebook, if they do instant messaging within Facebook, all of these will chip away at Google's properties."

RECIPROCITY

Google said that while it makes it easy for other Web services to automatically import a user's contact data, Facebook was not reciprocating.

"We have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren't aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook, they are effectively trapped," Google said in an emailed statement.

"We will no longer allow websites to automate the import of users' Google Contacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites," Google said. 


via ET

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A lot of Gmail users are noticing a major drop in the performance of the user interface in the recent times. A small trick which can really help in slow connections:

1. Turn on Offline Gmail.
2. Turn on Flaky connection mode.
3. That’s it.

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The biggest search engine in the world has decided to take on the US government, suing it for anticompetitive practices. Certainly big news, it still isn’t much of a shocker, as Google seems to be rather justified in its stance.


Google is suing the Department of Interior (DOI) for not considering Google Apps for its web-based document and messaging needs in its Request for Quotation, which stated that the solution had to be a part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. This according to Google is “unduly restrictive of competition”, and an "arbitrary and capricious, and abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to law" requirement.

DOI so far maintains that Microsoft’s solutions offered something the competition didn’t, specifically “unified/consolidated email” and “enhanced security”. Google of course disputes this claim, and pointed out several flaws and problems with Microsoft’s solutions, including recent vulnerabilities and downtime issues. In other words, Google is accusing the DOI of Microsoft favouritism.

Google has been competing against Microsoft for various government contracts so far, and both have had their victories at the state and city level. According to Google though, it has been attempting to demonstrate the many benefits of Google Apps to the DOI since June last year, but it had been reputedly refused since. Google now says that though DOI kept insisting that the contract was wide open in this period, work had already started with Microsoft's solution. Now, Google wants a fair chance to make a bid for the job, 'in accordance with applicable law and regulations'.

Microsoft has not commented on the lawsuit so far.

via Thinkdigit

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Urging Indians to contribute to the growth of Wikipedia in a bigger way, Mr. Wales spoke about the uniqueness of the country in the manner in which its people used Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia is offered in 12 Indian languages, 81% of all edits made by Indian users were in the English language, something very rarely seen in other countries, whose people tend to use and edit the content in their local language. This disparity is also seen in page views from India to the English section of Wikipedia.

A recent count of the number of Wikipedia articles in local Indian languages yielded the below figures:
Hindi - 57,823 articles
Telugu - 45,963
Marathi - 31,400
Tamil - 25,263
Gujarati - 17,142
Malayalam - 14,830

Jimmy Wales went on to comment that WMF hopes to have matured content of at least 100,000 articles in the top 10 local Indian languages by 2015, seeking to serve 80% of the population. To this end, Wales said that WMF is actively seeking the involvement of 75% schools in India, and that it wants increased access to be provided to them, both offline and online. He also urged various governments to release content into the public domain.

Wikipedia in India
The highlight of Wales’ talk was his announcement of opening an Indian Wikipedia office soon, which when opened, will be the second Wikipedia office in the world after the WMF headquarters in San Francisco. Certainly big news, Wales spoke about how India was a significant factor in the tremendous growth experienced by Wikipedia in recent years, and how the country’s multi-lingual talents should be tapped to their fullest.

Also praising the exceptional rise of local language articles combined with English articles from India, Wales spoke about why India was the perfect choice for a second office: “As a media project, for me India was the perfect place because we wish to work with a variety of people and India has a lot of communities. The community in India should lead and Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) will follow them.”

Though questioned, Wales did not reveal which Indian city would be chosen as the site for Wikipedia’s India office. He clarified “We are talking about an office of three or four people. It's not a huge investment. One of the benefits of an office in India is it would facilitate communication with local communities.” The office would also work hand-in-hand with the Bangalore chapter of the WMF, seeking to help train and find contributors and also provide technical support

via Thinkdigit