Earlier this month, Google stated that they plan to kill off their revolutionary cloud collaboration service, Google Wave, citing lack of user interest (and prompting some protest). In case you didn’t know already, Wave was a collaborative communications suite that effectively combined email, instant messaging, wikis, and blogging abilities into one software that you could update in real time.
It seems that Google has got the message that some people liked Wave and had found effective uses of the software, and don’t want it to die; because they’ve now announced their plans for Wave’s future. Quite simply, Google has said that it will be offering developers a reduced-functionality version of its defunct Wave application suite dubbed ‘Wave in a box.” Read the rest of this entry »
Last night, Google officially launched a new VoIP telephony service called GMail Calls. The service, which lives inside Google’s Email service, GMail, can be used to call landlines and mobile phones directly within Gmail, simply by clicking the new “Call Phone” icon. The service is currently only available for American users, but Google says they will roll it out to other countries as soon as they can.
It seems the service has got a significant early interest and may well prove to be a good move by Google, because in a statement released today, Google claims to have logged one million calls in the first 24 hours of the service being launched! Google is obviously pleased about this and is calling this a very successful launch, and who can blame them? Google confirmed the news in a Tweet, although it didn’t give information on where the callers were placed.
I read this news earlier in the week, but I decided not to talk about it because I didn’t trust the source and thought it may be a joke. However, with the story now being picked up by wider media, I think it’s safe now to mention it.
Starting from August 1st, Google has reportedly been rolling out a new feature that allows users to sign into multiple Google accounts in the same browser. According to a post on the unofficial Google Operating System blog, a Multiple Sign-In option is beginning to appear in the Personal Settings area of your Google Accounts page — and if it’s not there yet, it will be soon.
The feature gives you the option to sign into another Google Account after you’ve already signed in to one, and then use a link switch to quickly switch between the two (or more). Obviously it’s ideal for people who have multiple GMail inboxes, because you can sign in to every account and then switch between all your boxes with two clicks, if you so wanted. It is also supported in six other Google products: App Engine, Code, Calendar, Reader, Sites, and Voice. Sadly, no other Google property allows for multiple logins yet, although Docs is listed as “coming soon”. When you sign in to a property that does not support it, the first email address you signed in to will be used.
Now Google is quick to point out that this is a work-in-progress, and not everything will work smoothly just yet. Indeed, some issues have already been discovered, such as use you cannot use offline calendars or mail while signed in to multiple accounts, and some Google gadgets break or mess up. You also can’t use it on the Mobile versions at the moment. Even so, this is a very useful feature that some are already praising Google for.
But what do you all think? Leave your comments below or on the Forums. And if you want to know more about this new feature, you can find more info on Google’s Getting Started: Enabling Multiple Sign-In help page.