Slashdot Mirror
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."
Google isn't forecasting the weather, they're controlling it.
http://www.theplaceforitall.com/2005/03/report-on- gmails-basic-html-view.html
Dashboard Widgets
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...
My area is currently blue in the satellite photo... with a combo box error shaped cloud passing over me.
http://www.sandstorming.com
The National Weather Service at noaa.gov is excellent. Detailed local forecasts with NO ads.
Just in case you need it...
Clickie!
This should be even more interesting when they integrate it with Google Maps :)
Am I the only one who dislikes having to do a search to get some information? Of course it can be bookmarked but it just feels a little weird. Maybe it's just a matter of habit...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Yahoo has been providing a similar service for quite a while.)
Here we go again, Google innovating and everybody else copying them and claiming to be innovative. As usual.
Looks like zip codes work as well. Nice.
Here's mine, 64119.
There are folders. They're called labels, and do everything folders do, plus some more things (a message can belong to several labels)...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I don't think that's quite true. You log into a portal and all that crap is surrounding what it is you really want to get accomplished. Google, on the other hand, is a simple and elegant interface where you only get what you ask for. If you're not looking for the weather, it's not going to clutter your screen with it. Now if only they could make my weather report accurate (it says we're having thunderstorms all day, but it's sunny and clear - typical forecast).
I am happy that Gmail/Google have listened and added support for the Konqueror. Or, is it that the KDE programmers have added support for Gmail? I say this because I am now using KDE's latest Konqueror release candidate (3.4rc1) which works on Gmail just like other browsers do. Any Slashdotter sees this as positive I know.
I just sent a suggestion that they make "wx" interchangeable with "weather" as in "wx 02134" or "wx boston, ma"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I don't like the method of well-meaning interference with a search. When you enter "weather east podunk, NY" they first give you the current weather - with very little knowledge that this is what you are looking for. It's just as likely you are looking for historical climate data, or your friend Karl Weather living in Podunk. This clutters up search results, and adds another kind of meaning to the search words. It has all the disadvantages of in-band signalling, and the signalling isn't even defined for the user.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
...or is Google becoming a jack-of-all-trades and master of none? Remember when Google focused on their search engine? Yeah, me neither.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
That's what the "Archive" feature is for. It'll appear under the label and under "All Mail" but not in your inbox.
This message composed using 100% recycled electrons.
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.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
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.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
This is quite cool, but I still prefer the ForecastFox extension for now.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
You can also use a web browser and send your queries to google by visiting them at http://466453.com/
(GOOGLE on the telephone)
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
... or am I the only one who's been logging into gmail through Picasa and sending pics? If I understood correctly, this particular feature has been offered ever since Picasa 2 came out.
Is God working for google now?
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.
Well, you wouldn't have to think about two scales when you were doing some decent scientific or engineering work...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
You know, I prefer GMail's "labels" metaphor for mail to the "folders" metaphor used by most mail clients (and IMAP). I find it easier to organise and find my emails through the GMail interface than through Thunderbird.
It's interesting that Google is taking the CLI approach, which gives a lot of functionality without adding clutter to the interface.
Slashdot users, as a whole, might be more comfortable with that approach than the GUI approach, like Yahoo.
At what point does Google make a Yahoo-style frontend for the "newbie" users, just as an option, of course.
Seriously, this isn't a troll. Why are such trivial features of google search such a big deal that they make the front page of slashdot? The poster even points out that Yahoo! already has this feature.
Scientists use Kelvin so comparisons work. Celsius is pegged to 0 at water's freezing point, Kelvin is pegged at absolute zero - below the freezing points of hydrogen and helium. That way you can compare ratios of temperature: 10 deg. C sounds twice as warm as 5 degrees (and feels that way), but to a scientist the ratio isn't 2:1, it's 283:278 - a much smaller ratio. This comes in play in things like gas pressure, which is proportional to absolute temperature.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Google's latest changes to Gmail include the introduction of a "basic HTML view" for people who's browsers cannot display the default view properly. This includes MSIE 4.0+ (pre 5.5), Netscape 4.07+ (pre 7.1), and Opera 6.03+, which previously couldn't be used to access Gmail.
Unfortunately, the new browser detection code they are now using seems to have been put together in a rather sloppy manner, which means (amongst others) Opera 8.0 users are forced to this "basic HTML view" when the fully-featured default view works perfectly well with that version of Opera. (Indeed, one of the many new features of Opera 8.0 is XMLHttpRequest support, which allows Gmail to work in full.)
Any Opera 8.0 user who logs into Gmail as usual will no longer be able to do some basic things, including create filters, amend their settings, check spelling, access keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete addresses. Fortunately, there is a workaround, which is to use the URL http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser, which solves the issue.
This issue doesn't only affect Opera 8.0 users: users of MSIE 6.x, Camino and other browsers have reported the same problem on the relevant Google group. I don't use any of those browsers but I'm fairly sure that the same workaround will work for them too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
While looking through all of the recent services Google has added, it occured to me that they really haven't come up with anything original - I mean, all these new services, weather included, have already been nearly mastered by Yahoo! It almost seems like Google is playing catch-up with Yahoo!. The question is, are they taking away resources from their foundamental goal of building a simple, powerful search engine, in order to create these fairly unnecessary additions? Google Advisor
Then you could use evolutions vfolders, which work pretty much like labels.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
i would have thought Google would have better HTML than that.. "" i got 40 errors with the W3 Validator.
MABASPLOOM!
Actually, we're already a metric country in any way that matters. Does miles per hour on a highway sign or measuring a recipe in cups and tablespoons really matter all that much. HELL NO!. What matters is machine tools, and they've been converting over for quite a while now. What matters is that a transmission manufactured in Detroit can be mated to an engine block manufactured in Japan.
So yeah, I remember when Google focused on their search engine. My short term memory isn't that bad.
I guess your short term memory is terrible, then?
Clever signature text goes here.
Did it ocurr to you that Google has been public since it made invites available? It's a brilliant scheme to offer invites mainly via referrals. This allows Google to build a huge "degree of separation" database between people and use it for data mining. When Google knows who your friends are, and who their friends are, this becomes an extremely powerful markting and research tool.
They shouldn't be detecting the browser at all. It's fragile, it breaks with unusual browsers, and you have to keep updating the detection routines whenever a new browser comes out. It's Javascript straight out of the 1990s.
The proper way of doing it is to detect objects not browsers. If you need XMLHttpRequest, first check to see if XMLHttpRequest is defined. If so, use it. If not, try instantiating it the Microsoft way. If you get the object, use it. Otherwise, give the user the fallback plain HTML version. You don't need to worry about which browser is being used, so long as it supports the APIs you use, and new browsers, or browsers that you haven't heard of, work automatically without you having to alter your code to accommodate them.
The problem with Anchorage zip codes will be corrected shortly. That's a good catch.
Don't violate your system's integrity, choose linux...
Prodigy did this back in like 1989. Google rocks
Next Google will rollout the next revolution: "keywords"
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I logged in on January 30 to find that all of my inbox mail for the month of January was gone. It wasn't in my trashcan, etc.
I exchanged emails at a Very slow rate with gmail staff. Mostly just responding to their form letters and taking whatever action they requested.
Not until nearly a month later, on Feb 24, did I receive the following pathetic response:
Hello,
Thank you for your reply.
We have completed a thorough investigation of your Gmail account, and can
confirm that a technical problem did not cause the behavior you reported.
We apologize for any inconvenience you might have experienced.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team
I have never lost email on Yahoo or Hotmail.
The good news? I have 100 gmail invites.
Now, that is COOL!
Neither Yahoo nor Hotmail have this feature!
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.
- Create a new Gmail account, using an invitation from one of my existing accounts.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE