Google has issued an apology for its system wide GMail outage for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon.
Many of you had trouble accessing Gmail for a couple of hours this afternoon, and we’re really sorry. The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly. Everything should be back to normal by the time you read this.
Gmail, including the email service provided by Google Apps, is estimated to have about 100 million users. Around 20 million users access GMail each day, and for a few hours yesterday afternoon, they all see the same “Temporary Error (502)” when accessing GMail. The error was first reported by users around 2pm PST, and twitter was storming with complain posts about the email service downtime. Well luckily for us, Google never highlighted in its apology that its GMail service is still under beta, as labelled under the GMail logo.
The first iPhone application “I Am Rich” made specially for the rich and not so famous, now has a full length guided tour on YouTube, courtesy of NPomerleau.
Apparently eight people actually bought the $999.99 iPhone application before Apple took it off the App Store. “I Am Rich” shows off what money can buy these days, and it comes with a mantra to inspire the rest of us to work harder:
Google has added an iPhone interface to its Google Translate service, which let you convert on-the-go from one language into one of the 23 available languages. You can access Google Translate by choosing the “more” tab in Google mobile (www.google.com) on your iPhone or iPod touch. Or you can go directly to translate.google.com in the Safari browser.
In time for your summer vacation, Google has reworked the mobile interface using AJAX technology so that it retrieves as few data over the net as possible, in order not to break your bank when you’re abroad for data roaming charges. Google software engineer Allen Hutchison noted that he could get between 200 and 400 translations in 1MB of data download.
Google Translate on the iPhone also remembers all your previous entries, so your past translations will be there each time you come back to the page. This allows you to go back and re-translate them all to another language without reentering. Also, Google has added the feature to allow reverse the two language in translating on the fly. This quick switch is convenient when you are communicating with someone else in foreign land, you can let the person type using their own language.
Billed by Logitech as “the most advanced keyboard in the world”, the diNovo Edge bluetooth wireless keyboard has only been available for Windows. Logitech has now released its high end diNovo Edge keyboard for the Mac. Logitech diNovo Edge Mac Edition has the “PerfectStroke” keys and a touchpad-like touchdisc for keyboard navigation, multimedia keys and Mac-specific keys.
“We’re truly delighted to offer discerning Mac enthusiasts our highest quality in keyboard design and performance,” said Denis Pavillard, vice president of product marketing for Logitech’s keyboards and desktops. “From the piano-black finish to its built-in TouchDisc(TM) touch pad, the diNovo Edge can make it a pleasure for you to type, control music or launch your favorite applications.”
diNovo Edge Mac Edition has a thin 1/2 inch or 11.05mm design and soft-orange backlighting. The aluminium palm rest with anodized-silver finish complements the design of the iMac and MacBook computers. In addition, it has a power button for you to switch on/off your Mac remotely. It comes with a charger base/stand and a four-hour charge is able to give you up to one month of battery life. The Logitech diNovo Edge Mac Edition wireless keyboard by design has no numeric keypad, and has a suggested retail price of $159.99.
Batman sequel “The Dark Knight” crosses the $400 million box office mark in record 18 days, less than half the time the previous record holder “Shrek 2″ took when it reached $400 million in 43 days back in 2004. We have updated our article Let’s Look At All The Box Office Records Of The Dark Knight to reflect this latest achievement.
“The Dark Knight” just scores its third straight weekend number 1 when it beats “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” grossing $42.7 million Friday through Sunday to reach $394 million. “The Dark Knight” took in $6.3 million on Monday to bring its tally to $400.03 million, Warner Bros. Pictures said. However “The Dark Knight” fails to beat the highest third weekend record which is set by “Spiderman” when it amassed $45 million during its third weekend in 2002.
Warner expects “The Dark Knight” to add at least another $100 million to its North American ticket sales, and is optimistic that it will surpass the $461 million haul of “Star Wars” to become the number 2 movie of all time in the United States and Canada. However it will be a tough call to be able to beat the $600 million all time record set by 1997′s “Titanic”.
Apple has released the first update to iPhone 2 software since its release almost one month ago with iPhone 3G launch on July 11th. Version 2.0.1 of iPhone software is a minor point release which Apple says is for “bug fixes”, no update details are available. iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod touch users can download the 249MB firmware via iTunes.
Hopefully iPhone 2.0.1 addresses the random application crashes encountered by many, and improves on the responsiveness and smoothness in general usage. Please share with us if this update solves any of your iPhone 3G or iPod touch problem.
You do not always have to use the Dock or the Finder application folder to start an application under Mac OS X. There are other ways and techniques you can accomplish such trivial task, some are obvious, some are improvements and some might appeal to your way of working. Choose your pick.
Yahoo! launches a revamp to the popular social bookmarking site Delicious with a substantially different look and new features. The URL to the site has also changed from del.icio.us to just delicious.com.
Delicious’ new interface now positioned the four main categories (Home, Bookmarks, People and Tags) via persistent navigation buttons at the top of the site. Bookmarks can now be sorted alphabetically. View Delicious’ new features.
Beside new interface and features, Delicious.com is now located in a new infrastructure that promised faster page load and reliability. Yahoo! has also overhauled the search engine to make it faster and more powerful. In fact this new version is a complete code rewrite of the old site after Yahoo! acquired the site in December 2005.
