https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34056

I think that Google have found a USP for their messenger application: you can archive your "chats" online.

It seems to have been the case with a lot of google products lately big promise, small delivery. Certainly Google Talk has suffered from few features which should be standard. Now it seems that there is a reason to use it, and that is that every chat you have using Google Talk can be archived in your gmail account and presumable included in any searches. This is a big leap forward, it's been ages since there has been any visible movement for Google Talk. I wonder how long it will be before those wacky Google developers allow you to send emoticons, or possibly in google speak "Gemicons."

I'd be interested to see what the online version is like. This is a departure from the usual, no big 2 year beta, now it's just a big announcement of a beta at some point. Maybe after the video and analytic debarcles, Google are being a little less risky. I hope not.

Gmail is to get webclips, basically a way to turn gmail into an aggregator.

Does this mean the end of http://reader.google.com - I don't think so, but will this be a better way to read news online, will it have the functionality that reader is missing?

Well I can't say yet because it doesn't seem to have been activated on my account. There's lots of more functionality been added to the site, go check it out.

This crept under my radar.

I've started to come around to online news reader services. I'm using bloglines at the moment but to be honest I'm finding it a little bit clunky. Either they need some souped up servers or they need to rethink their delivery method.

I was thinking about knocking something up just for myself, but then I stumbled on Google Reader via TipMonkies » Blog Archive » The Ultimate Guide to Google Services

Anyway, it seems to be a little rough around the edges and still it doesn't do exactly what I want. I'll give it a go and see how it beds down.

I just want to see a simple list of blogs with items that I haven't read or have marked. Clicking an item would load the entry. That's it. I find bloglines just too slow, and I can't quite get over the use of a frameset. As for google reader, it's very gmail which is nice and familiar now, but so far it seems a little bit clumsy.

And about time too, it's been more than a year since I forecast the entry into the IM market. Google have finally joined in the fray:

http://talk.google.com/

It's more like the very first yahoo messenger I used in 1998, no icons, no group chats. The windows do dock rather nicely, and it has an exceptionally small footprint. The gmail notifier is also vastly improved allowing you to navigate a preview of your emails.

Unsurprisingly it's in beta, but that's to be expected atleast for the next few years.

I've just sent my first rich formatted email from my gmail account.

If only there were a proper HTML tag that provided us with a rich text editor text area.

 

Yesterday I noticed that the left hand navigation on my gmail account had a link to an ATOM feed. It seems that the feed gives you some information about the number of unread emails in my account.

Today, it's gone!