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Google Wave combines e-mail, documents, photo sharing and chat in one Web app. Credit: Google Ever feel like you have information overload? You start Gmail to find a few dozen new messages, thousands of spams and a bunch of friends shouting at you via instant message the moment you sign-in. Then, you hop over to Picasa, Google's photo-sharing software, to find your family and friends have just uploaded hundreds of snapshots of their trip to Aruba or of your baby cousin. Finally, you make a pit stop in Google Docs to see that your co-worker has added a few new documents that need your approval. Could Google Wave, the new product that the company announced today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, help us cut through the noise? Probably not. The app just dumps everything onto one page. The interface should be familiar to Gmail users -- just with a lot more stuff. If you've checked out the iGoogle custom home page, that should give you a better idea of the hyper-integration that Google is going for. Wave displays your e-mail in one column and your incoming photos in another. Folders sit on the left side-bar followed by contacts, which you can access to start new communications, called "waves." And with ...
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Twitter creator Jack Dorsey at a Washington cafe. Credit: Mark Milian
Keep it down! It's not easy for Twitter creator and Chairman Jack Dorsey to focus on ways to improve the product when everyone won't stop chirping about it.
Every celebrity from Ashton to Zac Efron (though, this may not be his real account -- thanks, readers) is Twittering, and it was even the subject on Oprah last month. Dorsey and his co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, have been featured in countless profiles in practically every major publication. And now there's talk of a Twitter TV show.
Will the hype ever die down?
"I hope so," Dorsey said over lunch at a sidewalk cafe in Washington this month. "I think Twitter succeeds when people don't talk about it as much and just use it."
Don't get Dorsey wrong; he's flattered by all the excitement over his brainchild. But the publicity could be a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"The buzz is definitely good right now, but it's also potentially dangerous," Dorsey said. "It may put us into a fad."
He's hoping Twitter can transition from this really cool thing that everyone feels pressured into trying to that thing you need to use in order to stay in the loop and be successful.
"It should just become second nature," Dorsey said. "It becomes something like an e-mail, where it's just used on a daily basis because it's just the most efficient way to communicate."
However, almost since Twitter's conception about three years ago, its efficiency has been hindered by its reliability.
"We had a terrible first year and a half," Williams told Charlie Rose in February, referring to stability issues (or the "fail whale," as early adopters called it). "That almost killed us."
But after feverish work on keeping the service accessible and a recent redesign that puts search at the forefront, Twitter, the service, could soon transform in ...
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 Spammers are taking advantage of the panic about swine flu. Credit: zugaldia via Flickr.
Security experts are warning today that computer viruses may be the next part of the swine flu outbreak. Spammers, it seems, have taken advantage of the worldwide panic over the disease to send out e-mails mentioning swine flu to try to trick people into opening them, according to McAfee Avert Labs. The spammers advertise drugs and online pharmacies, McAfee said, and the lab "predicts more nefarious scams are coming," including links to malware-laden websites. McAfee has also seen an increase in domain names that refer to swine flu. At least the spammers are creative. Some of the subject lines include: "Salma Hayek caught swine flu!" and "Madonna caught swine flu!" and "Swine flu in Hollywood!" Less exclamation point-heavy messages include "U.S. swine flu statistics" and "Swine flu in USA." Ironically, McAfee's e-mail about this flood of spam also contained a subject line referring to swine flu. -- Alana Semuels
 The Google Chat phishing scam at ViddyHo.com. It was a rough day for Gmail.
First, Google's e-mail service experienced an outage that lasted several hours in the early morning. Then, a phishing scam made its way around Google Talk, the chat protocol embedded within the Gmail Web interface.
For the former, Google issued an apology and an explanation via its Gmail Blog. For the latter, Google added the apparent perpetrator of the the phishing attack, a website called ViddyHo.com, to its blacklist.
The users transmitting the links have been blocked, the website marked as malicious in Google search results and the domain indicated as a phishing website to people using the Firefox, Safari and Chrome browsers, a Google spokesperson said in an e-mail. Basically, the action meant that if the ViddyHo.com domain was ever worth anything to anyone, it's not anymore. The website also appears to have been taken offline.
People targeted by the scam received a message from what appeared to be a friend's user name. The message contained a link, which led to a Web page asking for the user's Google log-in name and password. Those who did that had their accounts used to send similar messages to their online contacts.
Google is urging those scammed to change their passwords immediately. The company hasn't received any reports of suspicious activity on targeted accounts, aside from using them to spread the scam, the spokesperson said, adding that the outage and the phishing outbreak were unrelated.
-- Mark Milian
 When he left Google for Imeem, Jason Shugars' goodbye e-mail started, "So long, suckers." Credit: Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times. It was not the most eloquent subject line for a farewell e-mail to 5,000 co-workers: "So long, suckers! I'm out!"
But Jason Shugars worked at Google, whose off-center corporate culture is more forgiving than that of your average buttoned-down investment bank. In the rest of his goodbye, Shugars, a senior sales compliance specialist, reminisced about workplace moments that included putting cake down his pants at a sales conference, stealing a boss' $8,000 leather couch and singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in a miniskirt and braids.
"It took me a long time to write it," said Shugars, 34, who left Google to become director of ad operations for the music streaming website Imeem. "I didn't want to send out a stale 'good working with you, please reach me here' e-mail. Who wants that?"
That's a good question these days, now that thousands of people are finding themselves with pink slips and the need to let colleagues and contacts know they are moving on and -- perhaps more important for job seekers -- how they can be reached.
The farewell e-mail has suddenly become commonplace, a new art form in the electronic age. Yet like so many aspects of the Internet era -- how to unfriend on Facebook, how much to reveal on a personal blog -- the technology has gotten ahead of the etiquette. There are, quite simply, no rules.
Read the full story for more examples of how the universality of e-mail and the confessional spirit of the times are spicing up goodbye messages.
-- Robin Abcarian
 Google is pushing harder on yet another front in its bid to dominate all of online advertising: e-mail.
Yahoo and Microsoft still have an edge when it comes to your inbox, but the Internet search leader is pushing to win more share, the Financial Times reports.
Google is reportedly banking on Gmail, the Web service it launched in 2004, to deliver more advertising dollars and get users to spend more time on Google products. To accelerate its progress, the company has been rolling out a steady stream of new features and improvements -- even safeguards for those who are strangers to sobriety.
Yahoo and Microsoft are not sitting idle. Yahoo has pledged a "smarter inbox" that will allow users to add photos, status updates and more. Microsoft is making its Windows Live Hotmail inbox even more social too.
So far, Yahoo and Microsoft each have more than 250 million users to Gmail's 100 million. But Google's service is gaining ground.
Wonder which service Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan would use if "You've Got Mail" were filmed today?
-- Jessica Guynn
Photo: Tom Hanks as Joe Fox makes a love connection in Warner Bros' "You've Got Mail." Credit: Brian Hamill
Reports circulated today about a virulent piece of malware making its way around Facebook, a major hub of the social Web with 120 million users. Because of its walled-off internal e-mail system, Facebook has long been a tough target for spammers and other fraudsters, but the "Koobface" virus is a sign that the relative viral calm on the site -- which just today announced an ambitious program to extend its services outside its own tight perimeter -- may have been a luxury.
The virus' most insidious property is that users receive the offending message from a friend: On Facebook, only people whom users have explicitly approved as friends can send them e-mails.
The Koobface e-mails have a subject like "You look so amazing funny on our new video," and contain a link to a YouTube-like video site that appears to contain a movie clip (see image). The video, however, doesn't play, and the website then asks the user to update his or her video software by downloading a file. It's that file that contains the malicious code.
"Unfortunately, users are very trusting of messages left by 'friends' on social networking sites. So the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high," said Alexander Gostev, a security analyst at Kaspersky Lab, in a several-month-old blog entry about the virus. "At the beginning of 2008 we predicted that we'd see an increase in cyber-criminals exploiting MySpace, Facebook and similar sites, and we're now seeing evidence of this."
A variant of the Koobface virus was reportedly circulating on MySpace earlier this year but was eliminated after new security measures were put in place.
Facebook has posted limited instructions about how to remove the virus on its security page: In essence, users should install one of several available anti-virus programs, and be sure to change their Facebook password here.
UPDATE: Here are some more detailed instructions Facebook evidently sent to users whose accounts may have been compromised:
We have detected suspicious activity on your Facebook
account and have reset your password as a security precaution. It is
possible that malicious software was downloaded to your computer or
that your password was stolen by a phishing website designed to look
like Facebook. Please carefully follow the steps provided:
1. Run Anti-Virus Software: If your computer has been
infected with a virus or with malware, you will need to run anti-virus
software to remove these harmful programs and keep your information
secure. For Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/viruses/xp/av.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/default.mspx
Then they had a link for Mac users too but it was broken. Will update if we get a better one.
-- David Sarno
 Don't you hate it when you're jetting among your houses in Malibu, Aspen, Paris and Timbuktu and you just can't keep up with your snail mail? After all, you don't want the butler to open that letter from the agency trying to find you a new butler.
Earth Class Mail wants to manage your mail for you. Just have it sent to one of the addresses the Seattle company provides, and it will put electronic scans of the mail you receive online. Then you log on and see what mail you've gotten, and you can ask them to open it or send it to you (or shred it, as the case may be).
Today, Earth Class Mail opens a store in West Hollywood. That means all you jet-setters and jet-setter wannabes can have your mail sent to 8605 Santa Monica Blvd., and Earth Class Mail will do its job. Non-jet-setters and people who want to avoid the post office can also use the store to send and shred mail.
West Hollywood is the first of three "prestige addresses" being launched by Earth Class Mail to ensure that the mail-challenged don't lose face by having their mail sent to Oregon, the location of the company's largest facility, or another rather unglamorous destination. Soon, the company will launch ...
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 Gmail released its new set of graphical 'themes' today (access them by going to the Themes tab under Settings -- it might take a day or two to appear on everyone's account). I don't know, I think maybe I'm too jaded to have a lot of fun changing background colors. The old thrill (and I mean, at this point, 20 years old) of seeing a close-up photo of pebbles, waves or outer space appear magically on the screen, is mostly gone for me.
But perhaps by the same token, I was tickled to see the 'terminal' theme, a nod to old-school computer geeks who remember the tribulations of text-based e-mail -- the lost drafts, the accidentally deleted missives, the premature sends. Pine, anyone?
Don't get me wrong -- you can do plenty of neat things with text. Check out this cool text-art generator. And then there are crazy text paintings like these. But when it comes to e-mail, I think we're all comfortable with the direction in which things are headed.
(Plus the 'terminal' thing is a pretty flimsy facade -- when you get an e-mail with graphics or images in it, the whole illusion is kind of ruined.)
But congrats to the Googler who came up with this one. It's sort of like a built-in history lesson for these spoiled young whippersnappers who've had life served to them on a GUI platter.
— David Sarno
When you can't count on one hand the number of drinks you've had over the course of the night -- was it two tequila shots or three? -- sending an e-mail to an ex-lover, boss or anyone, for that matter, is rarely a good idea.
Google software engineer Jon Perlow found that out the hard way when he suggested to a former girlfriend that they rekindle their relationship, as Perlow explained on the Gmail Blog. So, for his own benefit and for the welfare of the tens of millions of Gmail users, Perlow developed Mail Goggles, an optional test feature that acts as a barrier for those late-night e-mails we so often regret (once sobriety kicks in).
Mail Goggles asks you to solve a series of simple math equations within an allotted time. If you can't answer, the message won't send. The feature is only active late on weekend nights -- the most likely time that adults are well-lubricated and eager to divulge their innermost feelings. (Check out this KTLA Channel 5 video, which includes a demo, giggly stories of drunk e-mail shame and a reporter drinking sake live on camera.)
Gmail includes Mail Goggles in its growing list of add-ons from Google Labs. Email Addict is another feature meant to protect users from their own bad habits. It forces them to take a break from work, periodically shutting out e-mail and chat for 15 minutes at a time.
 Google isn't the first company to attempt to trip up a boozer (you know, for their own good). Swedish car maker Saab is currently testing a gadget that will leave drivers stranded when they've had one too many. The Alcokey is a breathalyzer built in to the car's key fob. It can be optionally installed for 250 euros (about $340, though Saab currently has no plans to release it in the United States). If the driver's blood-alcohol content is above the legal limit, the engine won't start.
Cellphone manufacturer LG includes a breathalyzer on three of its phones -- the LG-SD410, LG-KP4100 and LG-LP4100. But it's just for informational purposes. It won't block calls to your employer or phone you a taxi when you blow a 0.08.
A few iPhone users have already posted their recommended solutions for the all-too-prevalent phenomenon of "drunk dialing." Spurred by a tipsy text message meant for his girlfriend that found its way to his mom, one Internet forum user, BaldyUK, proposes someone create an application that, when activated, prevents you from calling or texting preset phone numbers in your address book during the late-night hours.
If he were living in Australia, his phone would have already been outfitted with such a feature. Through a service called Dialing Under the Influence, Virgin Mobile subscribers can dial "333," then enter a phone number, and it will be blocked until the next morning.
In the U.S., some T-Mobile subscribers have found a work-around to save themselves from inebriation-induced embarrassment. The wireless carrier offers a service called Family Allowances for parents to set up blocks on certain numbers for their child's phone. It turned out to be a fine solution for protecting your sober self against your drunken self, but that wasn't the company's intention. "Family Allowances allows parents to easily manage when and how their kids use their T-Mobile phones," company spokesman Dave Henderson said in an e-mail response to our question about whether T-Mobile deliberately offers a drunk dialing lockout. "This was designed for families however, not the scenario you’re writing about."
It should be entertaining to see who comes up with the best technical solution for averting awkward, alcohol-fueled discussions.
But as for Goggles, some bloggers don't see it as the clear solution. "Some of us actually get better at math after having a few beers," wrote one blogger for Sector 930. "Maybe highest level asks for a structured proof of something interesting like the Heine-Borel Theorem or its close cousin the Bolzano-Weierstrauss Theorem."
Looks like this guy's exes won't be seeing any fewer sauced salutations.
-- Mark Milian
Top, Mail Goggles photo by Google
Bottom, bottles photo by Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times
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