Gmail’s chat has been getting better and better with time. First it added video chat facility by simply downloading a plugin and then it allowed to make phone calls, at some great rates. Calls to US and Canada are absolutely FREE ! (yes, true). The latest news is that now you can pickup more than one call. So you can also pick up someone Else’s call (Voice or Video) and put the current one in ‘Hold’ mode. But you can at maximum make simultaneously only 2 outgoing phone calls. This is a great feature since you don’t need to make other Gmail caller waiting if you are busy with someone. You will get notified that some other user is trying to call you and you will have the liberty to pick that another call or reject it. This way you can handle multiple incoming calls while putting other ones on ‘Hold’. You can also put a single call on ‘Hold’ if you are going for some ‘just a second’ work.
One thing impressive practically are its call rates. You get some amazingly less rates compared to other market players like Skype. Plus no hassle of connection fee like Skype does. Although you don;t get advanced facility like getting a permanent telephone number online but pretty cheap compared to others if you want to simply start making phone calls. Here is the complete list of Google’s Calling rates to different nations.
Google Document viewer is an excellent service for opening several common file formats online itself rather than downloading it. This way you can view less important files online and not get in the mess of downloading the file and then deleting it. You can upload your files on google docs and send its link to people you want to share that document with. It supports most common formats like Adobe PDF and MS Word, excel, powerpoint,etc. This online service by google does not support all file formats to be read or accessible online. But it keeps adding new file formats as time passes. It recently added .ZIP and .RAR , 2 most common compression file formats by WinZip and WinRAR. Here is a list of file formats that it supports :
Archive file types (.ZIP and .RAR) (Latest addition)
Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF)
Apple Pages (.PAGES)
Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
TrueType (.TTF)
XML Paper Specification (.XPS)
About an year ago, extension .co.cc was being allowed to be registered for free (yes, free!) by a Korean company as they control this extension. Now this extension is being removed by google in its indexes as lot of spammy sites have got this. So you won’t find any .co.cc extension URL in google search as it won’t index it and all existing in its indexed database have been removed. I suppose as they were being offered for free with DNS server, lot of spammy sites got registered as it was all free with no single penny to pay for.
I have been lately reading organized tech sites like CNet and ZDNet and Bnet… (list goes on) that for their every post (most of times), they write a brief introduction and link to another page and that leads to some other ‘Next’ Page. So by the time you end up reading their analysis, white papers or some ‘How to…’ or ‘Top ten …’ type of articles, you have clicked 10 times the ‘Next’ button. Now that’s absolutely frustrating.
A reader is more tended to read the whole informative post you guys wrote on a single page (that too loaded up with all possible multimedia) rather than passing through 10 different posts to end it. I am not against ZDnet or BNet, i totally agree these guys the news first on web (directly from source makers anyhow!) and then write a 1000 word analysis and data stuffed post, but just making users pass through 10 different pages so that a single article records 10 page views and advertisers end up literally paying manifolds than they could cut down to, as they pay per CPM.
The advertisers pay per 1000 impressions (or page views) on most of big Network sites. So when you do this strategy, it highly increases page views, thus more profit for these big site guys.
Here’s are some great tips to secure your Gmail and facebook accounts online, how to prevent hackers from getting access to your account. I had earlier posted about how Gmail is risking users account. It also has some good tips on what precaution should be taken so that you aren’t hacked or taken advantage of it anywhere.
http://www.labnol.org/internet/online-accounts-security/19763/
The post is on a technology blog ‘Labnol’. I especially liked the Gmail or google account securing part. In case someone (even yourself) access your account from some other place (IP), he or she will have to give additional code apart from password to login. The additional randomly computer generated code will be sent to your Cell Phone, so if you are the one accessing it from other place, you have the additional code while hacker will not. (Just make sure you don’t have low battery 
).
Here’s the google link for 2-step verification for your google account.
https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/SmsAuthConfig
Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner recently at company’s worldwide partners conference announced than upto 75 more Retail stories chain will be opened by company throughout US in coming 3 years time (2-3 years actually). This is in addition to already about 10 retail stores it has in US. This may be great for people who hate buying for some reason Microsoft’s Product from AT&T, Verizon stores and will benefit great by actually buying from company’s stores where they can get all company’s product at one stop including its Worldwide partners product. So not will company sell its own Windows OS phones, accessories, Microsoft strategy games like Age of Empires and various work related softwares but also sell its affiliated Partners products. In future, Microsoft has several times hinted they would like to go out of US to open more retail stores, probably in Europe region.
Its is but obvious, opening about 75 stores, the company will sell other products also, not only its own products. I have always believed that online companies should have offline presence, the reason why travel company MakeMyTrip clicked in India due to people’s trust in ‘What they see is what they get’ attitude. Opening about 75 Stores throughout US, it will be expected to cover major cities of US. No definite data has been released by Microsoft about its stores location yet.
Facebook has recently announced adding video chat as an option to its users. They will be using skype’s video chat facility for it. What Mark zuckerberg told was that difference between other video calling and facebook would be that it’s going to be real simple to use. Unlike skype where you need to first download the software, it’s going to be real simple, like one we have gmail video chat (inbox), where we download a plugin and ready to go ! So you as facebook user would be simply downloading a plugin and then start video calling with your friends in facebook window itself.
I found a video of this thing being explained by its founder.
Mark zuckerberg talks about facebook video calling
I may be the last person to blog about this, but here I acknowledge that facebook has a real competitor now. All of you know Google’s latest social media project named Google Plus – Google+ . Google says this new thing of theirs is going to make real time sharing possible and google has introduced some concept as circles. You will be able to share anything, from text to files to interesting stuff. You can store stuff in form of text, audio or multimedia which you can later view it. That we will know in mean time as it goes public open. Currently its by invitation. Google+ page on facebook has been giving invitation to facebook users who post their e-mail ID.
Google Plus has also added $20 billion more to google’s market capitalization. Too early to conceive anything but its sure going to be a great thing, logically, obvious when you have an addictive thing like facebook around in this niche.