Google Weather Service And GMail Improvements

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google has added US-only weather forecasts to their web search. Type e.g. "weather palo alto, ca" (zip codes work too) and you get a small illustrated weather forecast on top of the search result. (Yahoo has been providing a similar service for quite a while.) You can also send your query as SMS to 46645 (GOOGL), as the official Google blog reports." Relatedly, Shachaf writes "Looking at my GMail account, I see that Google has added two new features: integration with Picasa and plain HTML support. Now you can 'Log in to Gmail directly from Picasa and send the photos from your Gmail account', and view your email from any web-browser."

Comments

Looks nice

[nefele]

But does anyone know how to make it display the temperature in Celsius degrees? Not everyone in the US knows how to interpret this horrible abomination that is the Fahrenheit scale...

Re:Looks nice

[Hektor_Troy]

Actually the reason Fahrenheit has such "odd" numbers, is that the two points you chose have no baring on how it was scaled.

As I understand it (and there are numerous ides on how it was done), 0 was chosen as the freezing point of salt water (as in what you find in the local ocea). That's fine and all.

The oddity comes from where he set 100 to be. The natural temperature of a healthy horses blood.

Now, that's as natural a set of points as night and grass.

If he had chosen two points on the same items temperature scale, then it'd be a lot simpler. He didn't, so it's not.

New features and the final frontier

[saitoh]

One thing I submitted a while ago was the ability to import your POP3 box (say from Outlook, or Apple Mail), thus make that transition to webmail and still have all your stuff which seems to be a real focus for google.

It seems that nobody really has solved the email transferal problem have they? (please correct me if I'm wrong) And while I'm biased, it would be an interesting marketing ploy for those who wanted to switch, one that Apple has used with Apple Mail.

Why can't they add it to my home Google?

[Drunken_Jackass]

That's what i'd like to see. Your default google.com page would display your weather, and a check box for a local.google search. I mean you can save your location preference in local.google already. And how hard would a link to gmail be? And news? Why not display the top headline for categories that you choose? Why not put everything you want together? Put some settings in our preferences, and call it what it's becoming - a Portal.

Then again, i don't consider google a "portal". Wired just had an article about google vs. Yahoo!. It's quite an interesting read.

Not only SMS

[The Hobo]

You can also use a web browser and send your queries to google by visiting them at http://466453.com/

(GOOGLE on the telephone)

Gmail beta forever

[teslatug]

When is Google going to "release" Gmail to the public? I know that for all intents and purposes anyone that wants to can get an account, but I won't consider it open until I see a link on their homepage. It's not like they couldn't have a beta and a released Gmail.

On an aside, I have a feeling that they will have to redesign their homepage soon as it's starting to get crowded.

Poor HTML coding

[neoform]

i would have thought Google would have better HTML than that.. "" i got 40 errors with the W3 Validator.

Beating spam the Gmail way

[NaDrew]

I guess this is as good a thread as any to post about how I'm beating spam in my personal inbox using Gmail's powerful filtering, without changing my email address.

Gmail now offers every member 50 invites. Millions of users and the power of a single spam database have made Gmail's spam filter one of the best. Gmail also offers POP3/SMTP access to the service. Combined, these provide a perfect method to utilize Gmail's powerful spam filtering on my primary email address--without the trouble and fuss of actually changing addresses. Here's how I did it.

1. Create a new Gmail account, using an invitation from one of my existing accounts.
2. In the "Forwarding and POP" tab of the "Settings" section, set the following:
   • Disable forwarding (default)
   • Enable POP for all mail
   • When messages are accessed with POP, archive Gmail's copy
3. Redirect your primary email account to your new Gmail account. Note that this usually requires administrative access to your mail server, or a friendly mail administrator.
4. Configure your email client (Here are settings for Opera's M2 mail client). Note that I am using my existing SMTP settings, and am only using Gmail for POP3.

Now mail coming in to your primary account is automatically bounced to your Gmail account, where the Gmail spam filters are applied. Then your mail client downloads your mail from Gmail to your local inbox, just like normal. Since you didn't change your outbound settings, replies and new mail are not affected.

I set this up a couple of weeks ago and so far Gmail has filtered almost every spam message I would have received. That's spam I didn't download!

You'll want to log in to the new Gmail account once a week or once a month to check the spam folder. This is just to check for false positives--"good" messages which may have been filtered as spam. It won't happen often but it's worth checking once in a while to make sure.