K World

Google introduced a new feature in Gmail service. Gmail now shows last 5 access types and IP addresses which accessed the current account and lets you end sessions from other locations (where you might have hit remember me option)

Seriously, this is one kick ass feature I’ve been looking for in gmail and they’ve done it with a sweet add-on (I never expected the remote sign-off feature) and for this feature, love you Google.

Don’t ask me why I’ve covered my IP address, I’ve no clue why I did that. May be because, I usually find IP addresses and IDs concealed in screenshots.

Google is a great company. It sure is. What ever Microsoft has done to IBM twenty years ago (I’ve no clue about it as I was three years that time, but I read this a lot of times whenever I read about Google. Being a hardcore fan of Google, I believed it) Google has done to Microsoft few/five years before. Now, Google is the same awkward position in which Microsoft was(is). Google has lost its “That Company” tag among the Great Engineers and others of the IT world. Now, its not the hottest/coolest place for those great guys to work. Welcome the the new kid in the block, who is becoming Google’s Google - Facebook.

I saw an article in TechCrunch - Facebook stealing Googlers at an alarming rate. Facebook knows the best place to get engineers just like Google knew when it was growing from 100s to fifteen-thousand. It has recruited much talent from Microsoft, and now, its losing talent to Facebook. Here is a note from Justin Rosenstein telling that Facebook is “That Company”

A couple of months ago, after three years as a Google product manager, I decided to leave for Facebook. I am writing this note to spread Good News to all the friends I haven’t already overwhelmed with my enthusiasm: Facebook really is That company.

Which company? That one. That company that shows up once in a very long while — the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago. That company where large numbers of stunningly-brilliant people congregate and feed off each other’s genius. That company that’s doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can’t pull off. That company that’s on the cusp of Changing The World, that’s still small enough where each employee has a huge impact on the organization, where you think about working now and again, and where you know you’ll kick yourself in three years if you don’t jump on the bandwagon now, even after someone had told you that it was rolling toward the promised land. That company where everyone seems to be having the time of their life.

I’m serious. I have drunk from the kool-aid, and it is delicious. Facebook is hiring ambitiously across the organization. If you’re an engineer, UI designer, product manager, statistician, bizdev god, general entrepreneurial badass, whatever, and you would even consider considering Facebook as your new place for hat-hanging, please send me a Facebook message. We can have lunch, or I can give you a tour, or we can go kick it with Mark Zuckerberg — whatever it takes.

Well, yeah. <sarcasm>So true. Facebook is the best company to work for</sarcasm> There are two things to consider here as reasons. One is money, second is passion. Money is the obvious reason for many guys to switch a company. Facebook is a hot company right now and its going to become public, and its offering stock options - any guy with working brain can see lots of potential money in front of him. So, they are switching to Facebook. There is another interesting version of reasoning and it is “it’s not just about the money. Entrepreneurs want to work at the hottest place on earth and right now that’s Facebook.” Well, as always, for any story, there will be “My Version”, “Your Version” and “The Truth”.

Here, the possible truth could be the combination of money-factor, hottest-place-factor and not-a-big-company-factor, as many intelligent people prefer to work for themselves or a small company rather than a big company. Google is no-more the new kid in the block, its been nine years and is fifteen-thousand-employees in size. Microsoft did a big mistake when Google was small, it should have acquired it. When, Google became big, it was nothing but a search-engine, now its competing with Microsoft in all possible fields. Right now, Facebook could be just a social-networking platform, but who knows what it got in its bag for us in the future.

[The following information is collected from various sources, believe at your own risk]

Google made it easier for companies to migrate their legacy email systems to Google Apps by offering an Email Migration API. This is what Google tells about their API

The Email Migration API enables you to migrate email from any data source into Google Apps. You can write extraction code which operates against an email server data store, interface protocol, or email client data store, then, using this API, upload the email messages to a target mailbox, specifying the correct labels, date, and status. The Email Migration API supports both end user tools and administrative tools. This API is only available in Google Apps Premier, Education and Partner Editions.

The new migration tool will move emails in any system including Outlook or any type of server to Google Apps (all editions other than the free one)

In releasing the new API, Google appears to understand that any mid- or large-sized company would be reluctant to rip and replace its current e-mail server with another system. However, by allowing a company to run both systems concurrently, Google may have ameliorated a major concern [1]

In order to convince the mid-or large-sized companies, they are currently offering Postini for free, which assures safety. They indeed have proved that Large companies can trust them by making Capgemini their customer.

Google has got complete “army” of tools for Google Apps to fight with Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino or any other Email solutions. If you take a look a the Google Apps Solutions page, they listed a solutions category wise which will do your work at some price if you are not willing to invest money in developing something using the APIs released.

A small research on available solutions and cost

Google Apps Premier Edition which includes Gmail (25 Gigabyte-mail-box with IMAP, POP support ), Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Page Creator and Start Page, Policy management and message recover by Postini, SSO, Migration, User Provisioning and Management, email gateway support etc., costs $50/user/year.

According to a source, similar services on Microsoft Exchange Hosted Service costs around $23/user/month. Over all, there is a huge cost difference. Big companies might prefer in-house services rather than outsourcing their emails to other hosts. Companies like Accenture and Wipro have migrated a while ago from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange to reduce their cost, enhance security and for some other added advantages. However, I couldn’t get much data on cost-per-user for Exchange and Lotus, but, as per this report, in-house deployment of Exchange will cost around $438 per/user/3Years and IBM’s solution costs $406 per/user/3Years.

These are results. (I’m damn sure that they aren’t correct, but atleast, they might give you an idea. And, cost of in-house solutions are indicated along with hardware and running costs. Software only costs are just the licensing costs) However, the sizes of email boxes are different, Google Apps at 25GB and remaining at less than 500MB or reaching a max of 3.6GB per box.

Apart from some disadvantages, Google Apps looks like a very good option. Good Luck Google. Who could have expected a search engine to start a webmail service give a Gigabyte box, scare every other webmail service provider, slowly convert it into a collaboration suite, offer it to enterprise customers for decent price and scare the companies who are in this business from long time. Well, I’ve done some work which is not quite my type of research. Now, going back to read about those APIs.

In the recently declared Google’s war on Facebook named OpenSocial API, MySpace joined the allies list of Google. TechCrunch quoted that "Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game"

Guess, the social networking world didn’t manage to digest the huge success of Facebook. Now, they are backing up Google in fighting back Facebook. By looking at the partner’s list of Google’s OpenSocial, all that was left in my mind was same question asked by TechCrunch - "Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial ?"

By the way, for the tech folks out there, You can signup here for access to Orkut developer sandbox. I wasn’t very much interested in testing it as my profile would be available to all gadgets with access to the sandbox.

What ever is going on there on the top I’ve the following doubts for myself - Should we take this as competition between Google and Facebook or should we confirm that Google is scared of Facebook by looking at the force it’s trying to face it. Is Google following it’s motto - "Don’t be Evil" even now ? Google is resembling Microsoft all of a sudden. Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read/Write Web has some concerns which might make you think little more against "OpenSocial".

Leaving that apart - Microsoft’s investment in Facebook, Google’s answer by partnering with big communities like MySpace, LinkedIn, hi5, Hyves, salesforce.com makes this fight very interesting.

Happy Birthday SRK !!!

Gmail got some nice UI improvements, actually it got little more intelligent. These are the stuff I managed to see as new.

• Chat can now be Turned On/Off (It use to reload page completely in previous version)
• Your view-page is updated in the URL (You can now bookmark a particular mail or view)
• Class name of div containing ads is changed and ID of the div is dynamic (Now, good old greasemonkey script to hide ads doesn’t work) I didn’t try to modify my old script as there is still an option for Older version on the top. I could be wrong completely as I didn’t give much time analyzing it
• New skin detects Firebug and asks you to disable it/or atleast some features of it
• It’s kinda faster than the older version
• A brand new Contact Manager

Despite above features, I’m going to stick to my old version of Gmail as long as they give me an option to use it. Guess, what makes it so special ? It makes me to check for new mails again and again

Click image on left to see the screenshot of the version I use. For the new version, login to your Gmail.

I’ve take some scripts from userscripts.org and edited them for this particular look. Calibri font looks very smooth. Everything’s so perfect for (my) eyes. If you wanna try that, let me know. I will mail those scripts.

Update: As per /. Google is calling it Gmail 2.0 and you can see the screenshots here