Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Gmail Priority Inbox

New Feature In Gmail

    Automatic sorting

    Gmail uses a variety of signals to identify important email, including which messages you open and which you reply to.

    Sections keep you organized

    Incoming email gets separated into sections: important and unread, starred, and everything else. Don’t like these? Customize them.

    Predictions improve over time

    Over time, Priority Inbox gets better at predicting what’s important to you. You can help train it using the Gmail priority inbox buttons buttons.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Now share your location with friends on FB

Facebook has introduced a new location-based functionality called 'Facebook Places'. Now Facebook users will be able to add their current location to their status updates via Facebook Places.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, highlighted the three main uses of Places, "Help you share where you are, help you find where your friends are, and discover new places around you."

You can also add places and can check-in at places. However, Facebook does not show you nearby places, but places it thinks are relevant to you.

Also photo tagging has been incorporated with Places. You can "tag" friends that are with you at a specific location. Thus, everybody doesn't have to check-in on their own. Implementation of tagging seems to be one of the best features of the platform.

The privacy controls for Places comprise of removing check-in and the "Here Now" button is activated only after you check in. You are notified when you are tagged and you can only tag your friends. You can also remove tags or turn off being tagged in Facebook Places. You also have the option to report a place on the iPhone if it's inaccurate or don't want it on the system.

Another interesting feature of Places is "Is this your business?" It allows owners to claim a business page. So, something is there for the business owners as well.

Facebook has kept developers in mind as well while creating Places. There's a Read API for reading check-ins and learning more about check-in pages. There's a Search and Write API for making check-ins and searching through them.

Ref: Silicon India

Thursday, August 19, 2010

TCS to introduce cloud computing for SMBs

As an attempt to make the information technology services affordable for the SMBs in the country, India's leading IT company TCS is set to launch a new project, a cloud offering. The offering is expected to launch by September, writes Achalla Venugopal from WATBlog.com.

This cloud service aims to lower the cost of ownership by 35-40 percent. The traditional licensing model will be replaced by a monthly subscription model. The IT stack includes hardware, networking and software. New customers will be locked in for three years. TCS plans to focus on the domestic market with this offering first and then later expand to overseas markets too.

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources.

The service is expected to be a major growth engine for TCS. It can revolutionize the way Indian SMBs do their businesses providing them the same IT infrastructure which they could otherwise not afford. This offering which has yet not been branded is also been talked about as the last big-ticket project from Ratan Tata.