Tech Talk

Google will launch a new feature as early as this week to make sharing media and updates with friends easier, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The new module, which will be integrated into Gmail, is intended to make the e-mail application “more social” by allowing users to “view a stream of status updates from people they choose,” the newspaper reported.

The new feature seems to expand off of the Google Talk application currently integrated into Gmail. 

I regularly update my Google Talk statuses to reflect what I am doing, and utilize the application to communicate with friends and colleagues — as I once did on AOL Instant Messenger.

The difference, according to the Journal, is that the development will include an area where users can sift through a stream of updates — that includes the Google-owned YouTube and Picasa services —  in a similar timeline view as on Twitter and Facebook.  It remains uncertain if updates from non-Google entities will be included.

If the development goes across networks, Mashable notes:

[T]he new features could be thought of more like a TweetDeck or Seesmic, looking to provide an aggregate view of your friends’ social media activities along with the ability to push status updates to the services you use from inside of Gmail. If not, it could be thought of as a major competitor to Twitter and Facebook as Gmail looks to covert its millions of email users into users of a whole new breed of social media service.

When I received an e-mail recently with the subject, “Please change your twitter password,” supposedly from the popular social network, I was suspicious. After all, many scammers seeking to seize sensitive information make similar claims.

Nonetheless, I read the e-mail, which began:

Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset. Please create a new password by opening this link in your browser: [with a link here]

This will reset your password. Remember to choose a strong password that is a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. Do not reuse your old password.

Although everything looked legitimate, I remained skeptical about its authenticity.

So I decided rather than clicking any of the links, I would attempt to log into my Twitter accounts.  One of my accounts made me change my password immediately, which seemed to confirm the contents of the note.

Since then I have read Internet reports confirming the authenticity of the e-mail.

John Paczkowski of All Things Digital received the following statement from Twitter:

As part of Twitter’s ongoing security efforts, we reset passwords for a small number of accounts that we believe may have been compromised offsite. In one case, a number of accounts posted updates indicative of giving their username and password to untrusted third parties. While we’re still investigating and ensuring that the appropriate parties are notified, we do believe that the steps we’ve taken should ensure user safety. We’ll continue provide updates as warranted at @safety and @spam. We do, as always, encourage our users to read our help pages on what to do if your account is compromised: http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/10713/entries/31796 and how to stay safe on Twitter: http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/10711/entries/76036.

It is important to remember that if you ever receive an e-mail that does not seem right, or that you are suspicious of, not to click any links in the e-mail. I would recommend verifying the information from said e-mail by accessing the site directly rather than clicking a link.  If you have further issues, I would recommend attempting to contact the respective company or organization directly.

This is also a good time to remember the importance of having strong passwords unique to each respective account that contain special characters.

Great news!

Additional Google Wave invitations were released this evening.

Wave, a revolutionary platform that encourages communication and collaboration, is among the most coveted invitations on the Internet — as invitations to GMail were.

I am happy to report I received my invitation, and have one to spare.

It would only be appropriate to share it with you, my loyal reader.

So, if you would like to score an invitation, simply e-mail me at wave@jamiedeloma.com and mention this blog in the subject.  I will select one person at random at midnight on Monday morning to nominate for an invitation — and announce it on a subsequent post.

The invitation will be requested immediately, but could take Google several days to process.

Good luck.

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Will electronic communications splinter into various fragments, as is currently happening with mass media?  This very question was addressed in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Are the days of e-mail dominance to be replaced with a plethora of social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr?

While e-mail will surive into the future, it is clear it will no longer be the dominant form of electronic communications.

In fact, the days in which e-mail dominated the way Person A communicated with Person B are already over.  While I continue to send and receive e-mails every day, I sift through more tweets, Facebook messages, RSS feeds and blog postings.  Heck, you are reading one right now.

E-mail is becoming increasingly obsolete. 

Among the reasons:

• Why do you need to ask someone to send you something that has already been posted? 
• Why do you have to e-mail 30 people something you could post for the world — or make private just for a finite group of people in a matter of clicks? 
• Why do you have to send large attachments through several e-mails when you could just post it all online in a matter of seconds? 
• Why do you have to send updates of a project through multiple e-mails when you could simply update a page or communicate in real-time through a chat?

Social networking allows one person to reach the masses in both real-time as well as when the masses want to be reached. 

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr all allow users to check up on what they missed in their own time and without being bombarded.  With e-mail, users have to sift through countless worthless and outdated notes and information around the clock to stay current and still risk missing the information they want.  With the more modern social networks, a user could go straight to the information he or she want.

Of course, the splinter of e-communications has its own inherent risks.  Chief among those, in my opinion, is the real chance Person A will not be able to reach Person B. 

With so many social networks available, it is easy to get lost or not be tuned in to the same ones.  If I send out the cure to cancer on my Twitter account, but no one is listening, does it matter?  At least with e-mail, you could make fairly sure it reaches the person.

In addition, the amount of energy and time necessary to stay abreast of all the social networks can be overwhelming and one’s productivity could suffer in the process.  It takes a lot of time and energy to stay current in all the social networks available.   To be blunt, it’s a huge investment.

While I do not intend on abandoning e-mail anytime soon, I recognize the need to stay relevant, up-to-date and branch out.  This is why I am an active social networker across platforms — and think you should be, too.

Yahoo! has announced a number of exciting new third-party applications and widgets for Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Connected TV and Zimbra e-mail.

The news, which was made on its corporate blog today, promises to give users easy access to tools designed to make our lives easier — from planning your next meal to sharing photos and videos with friends.

To see screen shots of the new tools, please click here.

Among the more exciting developments, users will have the ability to:

* Connect directly with PayPal
* E-mail files as large as 100 MB at no charge
* Manage your finances and find money-saving tips

To check out the beta version, please click here.

Despite being a long-time Gmail user, the advancements Yahoo! has given me a lot to think about.  If Google does not soon match these, I may give serious consideration to returning to my Yahoo! Mail roots.