GMail offline

Link Credit: Shubham 

Anyone with a standard account can choose the option to manage their e-mail even when they're offline. (This can be accomplished by clicking on "settings" and then entering Google's "labs" section.)

After the e-mail box synchronizes with a computer's hard drive, virtually all of Gmail's usual tools become functional offline — except for the ability to send and receive messages. Those chores are handled the next time a computer connects to the Internet.

Yahoo Inc's e-mail service has been able to work without Internet access since last July. To take Yahoo mail offline, users first have to download the company's Zimbra software to their computers. The Zimbra program also can be used to work offline on competing services, including Gmail.

Gmail is making its offline leap through Gears, a Google-owned service that the much smaller Zoho relied on to provide offline access to its e-mail program last year.

For more: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/offline-googles-gmail-will-still-be-available/84091-11.html

‘IT-as-a-service’ for SMEs

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/23/stories/2009012360781100.htm

 

Tata Consultancy Services has launched its "IT-as-a-service" for Coimbatore small and medium businesses. (Friday, Jan 23, 2009)

The solution offered hardware, software and networking services. It was based on the "build as you grow, pay as you use" model. Companies that already had the hardware could go in only for the software solutions. 

Mailman - mailing list manager

Many of us are already running or planning to start online communities. Mailman is a software that can be used to manage your own mailing list instead of using a service like YahooGroups or Google Groups. Though it also means that you will have to manage storage of all emails that are exchanged on  the mailing list. 

Mailman is free software for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. Mailman is integrated with the web, making it easy for users to manage their accounts and for list owners to administer their lists. Mailman supports built-in archiving, automatic bounce processing, content filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more. See the features page for details.

For more: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/

However, in today's era of SaaS tools, it is quite unthinkable to replace a service (like YGroups) with a software which you install and maintain on your server on your own. 

Also, if your mailing list is primarily for people to subscribe to content (like Arbit Choudhury Comics) and not for community discussions, you would prefer tools like "FeedBurner " which provide you integrated  feed management where people can use email or RSS to subscribe to your content. 

The Green Book

http://www.morganstanley.com/about/community/littlegreenebook/

GMail in Hindi (and other Indian languages)

Available interface languages

The Gmail interface is now available in many different language settings. Pick from the following:

Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, UK English, US English, Ukrainian, or Vietnamese.

To change the language view in Gmail go to Settings on Gmail - though your Gmail's display language doesn't affect the language in which your messages are sent and received.

Secure GMailing

GMail by default uses https (secure http) only when you are logging in; it defaults to http soon after that. What does his protocol mumbo-jumbo mean? 

HTTPS is the secure format of HTTP. When you browse a site using HTTPS, all the data interchange between you and the server happens in an encrypted format - which means that if someone was to eavesdrop the communication in between s/he would not be able to "read" it. 

Which is why Gmail uses https while logging in - to protect your passwords from getting stolen. But, I guess all of us would also want to protect our email messages from such eavesdropping. This is simply done by inserting an 's' after http, after you log in. 

Or, now GMail provides a 'setting' to automate this -> just go to Settings Tab of Gmail, scroll to the end and select "Always use https" in the 'Browser connection' setting.

Talk Numbers to me baby ...

http://www.afaqs.com/perl/news/?sid=22430

Some marketers have brands that are actually numbers (remember Maruti's 800, 502 Pataka Chai or 555 cigarettes). Radio stations, food delivery companies, handset makers, information desks, cab services and even TV companies have all used numbers to stay connected. FM stations promote the overall combination of the station frequency along with the brand name (like Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM). Domino's and McDonald's have been promoting their 'Hunger Helpline' numbers over their past few campaigns. Nokia always promotes its models, which generally carry numeric names (like Nokia 6600). Information dial-up services such as Just Dial (69999999) or DNA Infoline (26666666) find it imperative for their numbers to stick in the consumer's mind. A more recent category – radio cabs – also considers numbers important.

The question is: Should a marketer spend his ad bucks promoting the brand name, the number involved or a combination of both?