Send YouTube Holiday Cards

Bored by the free (full of ads) e-cards you get every holiday? YouTube offers something special this Christmas. You can now greet your relatives or best friends with video holiday cards by following a few simple steps. First, either pick a video already on YouTube or upload a new (customized) one yourself and click on this banner next to that video:
Then pick a template you want and type in your name, personal message and recipient:
And you're done! Your card is then hosted on YouTube with a public link that you can save for later use (maybe for next year :P):
Your recipient will receive a notification like this in his/her Inbox and would be redirected to the holiday card when clicking on the video snapshot:Your friend can now watch the video:
I think this is a pretty nice way of staying connected with your overseas friends and you can really 'say' something or even 'show' him/her around your newly renovated room.

Gmail Colored Labels

You can now use colors to distinguish labels in Gmail with Gmail 2.0. Click the color swatch next to each label to assign a color:You can also easily remove labels from the top of an email:
[Via Official Gmail Blog]

New Gmail Login Pages

Gmail is testing out some new login pages which put more emphasis on its integration with other Google products and its spam-filtering technology instead of storage and search. This is quite understandable as Gmail has already initiated a dramatic increase in the amount of free storage provided to consumers on web-based email clients (i.e. Hotmail is up from 2MB to 5GB while Yahoo goes from 10MB to 'Unlimited'). This design emphasize the benefits of getting a Gmail account:

Gmail gives you more than email

A Gmail account gets you access to many other useful Google services, like:

	Google Docs Create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. Open Gmail attachments in Google Docs and begin collaborating right away.
	Google Calendar Organize your schedule, share calendars, and search for public events. Gmail automatically displays an "Add to calendar" link for messages that contain event information.
	More Google products Get access to photo sharing with Picasa Web Albums, discussions in Google Groups, and track blogs and news in Google Reader.

Gmail's unfailing efforts in fight spam has made it stand out of the crowd:

Gmail keeps spam out of your inbox

Gmail users often cite great spam protection as a key reason they love Gmail. To keep spam out of your inbox, Gmail uses:

	Advanced spam-fighting technology Gmail's spam filters run on the same computing infrastructure that powers Google search, and use innovative Google technologies to detect and block spam.
	Community spam reporting By reporting unwanted messages, Gmail users play an important role in keeping spammy messages out of millions of inboxes.
	Rigorous checks Gmail supports multiple authentication systems and performs rigorous checks on all incoming mail.

You as a Gmail user, what feature(s) do you think is more unique and makes you like Gmail?

Microsoft Challenges Picasa on YouTube

Still remember the tag line Microsoft used to promote its latest operating system Windows Vista? Wow! This was the same reaction I got when I visited YouTube's homepage today. Microsoft is running a campaign on YouTube promoting Windows Vista and Windows Live. Windows Live is Microsoft's series of products that aims at regaining the lost market share to Google's online applications. After you have watched the video title "So many memories, so many easy ways to share", you might agree with me that the campaign is targetting Google's Picasa by promoting its own Live Gallery:

The campaign also includes a promotion video on YouTube's homepage and a channel called WinVistaLive (which has uploaded one video so far). :

Apparently, Microsoft has decided to disable ratings and comments for the video as it has received pretty negative ratings:

Some YouTubers took this opportunity to express their dissatisfaction about Vista on the campaign channel homepage. Here are some of them:

• "Windows Vista SUCK!!"
• "I am running Vista right now ... And i am kinda considering switching to Mac..."
• "Why did Microsoft copy apple's ideas"

I use Picasa and I like it very much. Picasa to me is iPhoto on PCs.

Google Maps Shows Terrain

Google Maps has been such a feature-rich product that so far includes traditional road maps, satellite images, or both (hybrid), traffic conditions, street view, local business information and even your own stuff (My Maps). Now, it adds terrain as well. The terrain view shows geographical details where elevation looks like shadows. Here is how Grand Canyon looks like in terrain view:
The Satellite view now shows the previous hybrid view by default. You can toggle the button and uncheck 'Show labels' to hide the map details:
[Via Google Blogoscoped]

Happy Thanksgiving

The above is the doodle on the Google homepage celebrating Thanksgiving. The one below is the first Gmail doodle to celebrate Thanksgiving:

Got Ideas to Improve Google Docs? Suggest It!

The Google Docs Team is open to your suggestions. Fill out this new suggestion form and vote for those that you are desperately wanting. They have categorized suggestions for documents, spreadsheets, presentations or the whole app. Here are some of my most wanted features:

• Print Layout in documents
• Footnotes and page # in documents
• Vertical merge in spreadsheets
• Export to PowerPoint!
• Slide Master

It is good that they are listening ... it is going to take some time to implement all though.

Picasa Public Albums to Show in Google Image

Beware! Your lovely family photos on Picasa Web Album might appear in Google Image search results. Google has recently changed its policy and to include public albums in Google Image Search. Here's the official word:

Integration with Google image search results

Get more exposure for the public albums you're currently sharing on Picasa Community Search. Now, public albums from users with 'Public Search' enabled may also be included in Google image search results.

So if you don't want somebody else to see your private photos, better unlist them.

iGoogle Hong Kong Themes

There are more themes coming to your iGoogle homepage very soon. And more surprisingly, there is one tailored for Hong Kong! Here's how it looks like throughout the day:
Some other themes are Aja Tiger, Autumn, JR and Solar System. Enter the following into your browser's address bar when you are at google.com/ig:

javascript:_dlsetp('preview_skin=skins/jr.xml');

Where jr.xml can be any of the above XML filenames.

It seems Google is desperately promoting iGoogle. Still remember the interesting iGoogle ad I talked about previously?

[Via Google Blogoscoped]

What is Missing in OpenSocial

OpenSocial is a project initiated by Google for developers to create applications across various social networks. So far, all the major social networks agreed to participate, such as MySpace, Hi 5, Ning, Friendster, etc, except Facebook. The idea is that, with just a single platform, developers will not have to waste time developing the same application multiple times just to fit their codings into various social networks. But will OpenSocial be the ultimate solution to cross-platform social network application development? Not yet.

Just as Nicholas Carlson from Valleywag points out, OpenSocial does not allow applications on one social network to communicate with another. This means that the same FunWall application I have on orkut wouldn't be the same as the one on MySpace. Also, some of the participating social networks are still planning to launch their own application platform.

Also, Facebook won't have the incentives to open up its current application platform (which already accommodates 5000+ applications) as they know developers wouldn't dare to give up such lucrative market. The problem of multi-platform still exists.

OpenSocial is clearly a good start but there are more to be done before its ideals would take effect.

Update: OpenSocial does allow cross-platform communication through containers. Thanks, Ad!