My Google Wave Invitation Request

Here's what I asked on the Google Wave invitation request web site.

I want to collaborate with others in my corporation in real-time and prefer to use web-based tools to enhance productivity and avoid information being locked up in silos such as inboxes and MS Sharepoint behind a firewall.

What did you ask in your request?

Google Gears and Myspace: Cool

So what exactly does it do? Does it really enable searching and sorting of your myspace inbox? I never installed used because it just has too many privacy implications. Never use it on a computer other than your own (it stores your myspace inbox on your hard drive!).

MSN/Live/.Nyet Web Messenger Sucks!

I just tried logging in to the MSN Webmessenger and I get this lovely message:

We can't sign any more people in right now. Please try signing in again later.

Perhaps Microsoft should consider using Google App Engine.

Google's Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) Knob Tweaking

It looks like the query deserves freshness knob has been tweaked a little too far. A query for details in El Google shows the USGS data for the recent quake in Sichuan, China as the second result. The only curious thing I can see in the code is that the details link is the first link after the first H1 and H2 HTML tags.

Search Engines User Data

I just read this article Search engines warned over data, and it really makes me mad. Why can't the search engines just use a unique id for each user, using a one-way hash function which cannot be decoded back to the original IP address unless it's brute-forced, which would take years just to get one ip address unless you're the NSA with their alien technology?

Or is the real privacy problem with relating different searches together, and not ip addresses? They could merely be removing ip addresses like they say and not removing your GUID linking the searches together for their relational data.

I hope someone at Google reads this.

Also I doubt Yahoo! has done anything like the article says, and if they have, when why did they give up data on the chinese dissident blogger who is now sitting in jail? It's hypocrisy, and Yahoo!'s privacy reputation is now ruined forever. They are the Micro$oft of search engines.

Gmail Custom TimeTM

Google's newest april fools joke, Gmail Custom TimeTM, brings up a great idea for Gmail, or any email service or architecture. What about sending an email in the future? If my eight year old Nokia phone can schedule an SMS text message at a certain point in the future, why can't gmail?

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Google Docs And HTTPS (SSL)

Google docs now supports HTTPS. It's enabled for spreadsheets, presentations (powerpoint work-alike), and documents (writely). Previously you could enable https, but only on the docs.google.com domain (eg only in writely) , and only by typing the https URL directly. This is great news for anyone editing documents online. See the screenshot for proof.