Google adds POP refresh button to Gmail Labs
Mar 9th
Google has made the managing of multiple email accounts through Gmail much simpler. However, there’s always been something missing–the lack of push. Let’s say you have your Hotmail account set up in Gmail using POP and you receive an email. Depending on the algorithm used by Gmail to fetch from your Hotmail account (time varies based on past fetchings), it could take minutes, or even an hour to actually see that email in your Inbox. This can be very problematic for time sensitive material.
Thankfully, one of Google’s engineers (inspired by his kid sister) has come up with a simple solution–let the user control the refresh. True, up until now, you could visit your Gmail settings and tell it to fetch POP emails on the spot, but with multiple external accounts, this task can become pretty cumbersome. As posted on The Official Gmail Blog, there’s a new Lab to help assist with the fetching task. It’s called “Refresh POP accounts” and when enabled, it will give you a nice little “Refresh” button at the top of your mailbox.
With a single click, the new feature will initialize a fetch of all your POP email accounts. Gmailers are sure to welcome the new Lab. Let’s just hope Google doesn’t retire it like they did Muzzle.
Famous in an hour, because of a one tweet
Mar 6th
If you have ever wondered if you can instantly become the next Internet celebrity in an hour, the answer is yes, and it was all done from a single “tweet”. Conan O’Brian changed a girls life forever, by making her the only person he is following on twitter, and posting about it.
Websites all around the world instantly caught on and began posting about it. Conan made LovelyButton, aka Sarah Killen, instantly famous in an hour, ranking up over 2,000 followers within an hour of the posting.
It is unknown why Conan picked someone random to follow, but he knew how the Internet would react to such a simple thing as following somebody on Twitter. LovelyButton had a total of 3 followers before Conan picked her at random, which now has well over 9,000 followers, in only 9 hours – which is roughly 16 followers a minute – at the time of writing.
Conan has over half a million followers, and a single person he is following. It’s safe to say that Twitter is easily a very powerful tool that can instantly change lives.
Google adds email notifications to Wave
Mar 4th
Since Google launched Wave back in May 2009, one of the biggest complaints has been the lack of tie-in to email. For a new technology like Wave to catch on, users need to have some sort of backwards compatibility with legacy communication services. This would remove the annoyance of having to manage your email, and then also manage your waves.
Google has now brought this possibility one step closer with Wave email notifications. According to The Google Wave Blog, all Wave users should now see the “Notifications” option in their Inbox dropdown menu. Once selecting it, you will be presented with the following choices:
Google recommends the “Immediately” setting so that you never miss out on a wave. Google will only send you a single email between each time you actually visit the wave. Google does this to ensure that you aren’t spammed with an email for every single update that takes place.
There are still some kinks to be worked out. Google promises to have them fixed over the next few weeks. These are them:
- Sometimes emails don’t show all of the wave’s participants.
- You may get an update about a wave even if you were the last one to update it.
- The link in the emails that let you to change your notification preferences doesn’t work. You have to change it the same way you enabled it.
Facebook revenues estimated at $1 billion for 2010
Mar 3rd
Facebook’s revenues could be up to an estimated $1.1 billion in 2010, according to insidefacebook. Facebook is very tight-lipped about how much income the website generates, from advertising, gifts and other third-party deals, when the likes of Microsoft invested heavily into Facebook.
Facebook pulled in an estimated $150 million back in 2007, where that number double to an estimated $280 – $300 million in 2008, which again doubled in 2009, estimated between $600 – $700 million. Experts can only speculate how much revenue Facebook earns each year, estimated at $1.1 billion for 2010.
However, Facebook is still a privately owned company, according to company officials the records are kept very private:
”Facebook is a private company, and we do not publicly disclose our financial results. We understand there is a great deal of interest and curiosity in our past and potential financial performance. However, external attempts to forecast revenue are fundamentally speculative and should be treated as such. We’re focused on building our business to be successful over the long-term.”
Nicholas Carlson, from businessinsider, managed to gather some insight on Facebook’s financial records from sources close to the company. None of the sources know exactly how much Facebook earns, but gave some estimates on how much it earned in 2009:
- $125 million from brand ads
- $150 million from Facebook’s ad deal with Microsoft
- $75 million from virtual goods
- $200 million from self-service ads.
Total: $550 million