Tag Archives: Gmail

Google Chrome on TV

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Google now starts to promote the browser Google Chrome on TV.The latest video clip is saying how convenient the extensions on Google Chrome work.

I have to admit that I am a Google fan:I’m using Gmail to send and receive emails;I’m using Nexus One which is a Google phone with Android system;I’m searching stuff by Google search engine;Even now I’m open Google Chrome to write this blog post.Google is everywhere in my life and that’s what Google’s doing-try to touch into everybody’s daily life and it is the exact way that Google generates income.

Well,Google is not satisfied with what it’d done and wish to go further to attract more attentions from potential users.TV advertisement is really a good way to go.

Do you like this video?I like it very much as it’s showing how technologies could help us build up a warm memory.Guys behind Google are too smart. :)

Gmail was down several hours ago

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Gmail Actually Gmail was not completely down,but its web interface.Many Gmail users always are familiar to check or send emails through visiting the web interface instead of using IMAP/POP access.Thus,the downtime of the web interface causes a lot of users pending on their workings.

Google posted the explanation on official blog with a long article written by by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar.Cutting it into short,the issue was an underestimation during offline maintenance.The details are as follow:

This morning (Pacific Time) we took a small fraction of Gmail’s servers offline to perform routine upgrades. This isn’t in itself a problem — we do this all the time, and Gmail’s web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.

However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers — servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system "stop sending us traffic, we’re too slow!". This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn’t access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn’t be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don’t use the same routers.

The Gmail engineering team was alerted to the failures within seconds (we take monitoring very seriously). After establishing that the core problem was insufficient available capacity, the team brought a LOT of additional request routers online (flexible capacity is one of the advantages of Google’s architecture), distributed the traffic across the request routers, and the Gmail web interface came back online.

Gmail team also promises that they will enhance the service by adding more capacities of routers and optimize the system policy to avoid this kind of matter happen again.

As a loyal user,I hope Gmail won’t make me disappointed again.

Prism

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Prismlogo(1) Do you think you can put your favourite web-based applications in your desktop just like computer software?It comes to be the truth.Prism is designed to create a better environment for running your favourite web-based applications.Some web-based applications become more and more important.With the advanced web technology,lots of web-based applications are increasingly powerful and usable. As a result, applications like Gmail, Facebook and Google Docs are soaring in popularity.

You could choose to use Prism by installing the Firefox extension or the standalone version.Here are video clips teaching you how to use it.

Using Prism for Firefox

Using Standalone Prism

Wow,I like this very much.It brings web apps much closer to their users.Thumb up! :)

5 year-old birthday of Gmail

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The fifth birthday cake for GmailYes,Gmail is coming to the fifth year and I have used it for five years as well.

Actually now I have several email boxes,but most of them are provided by Gmail and only two are provided by hotmail.

I have to say that I like Gmail very much as it provides unlimited-alike storage.It supports POP3;even checking emails through the website is still a hassle-free thing as Ajax makes it load very fast.Furthermore,some useful features let Gmail more colourful such as chatting,even voice chatting later on and dressing tons of themes up etc.

The only thing which Gmail should improve is lesser downtime and minimize bugs.As the user of Gmail,I had experienced system down for 2-3 times in the past two years.I only wish that Gmail could be more stable than ever.

Happy birthday,Gmail!

Gmail goes to Gfail

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I’m sorry to hear that because I’m a very sincere user of Gmail for many many years and so it is the only mailbox for me currently.This failure means that I lose my contact temporarily on the method called “Email”.It’d been some kind of disaster for me,really it is.

Gmail is dead...

In a Google Discussion forum,a post sounds like an official announcement is just showing:

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail. We will provide an update by February 24, 2009 6:30 AM PST detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

Well,I could only wait in front of the computer and keep trying on it.Perhaps I should have some alternative mailbox,right?

UPDATE 1:

I found the latest announcement from the official Google Blog there:

If you’ve tried to access your Gmail account today, you are probably aware by now that we’re having some problems. Shortly after 10 9:30am GMT our monitoring systems alerted us that Gmail consumer and businesses accounts worldwide could not get access to their email.

We’re working very hard to solve the problem and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience. Those users in the US and UK who have enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox, although they won’t be able to send or receive emails.
We’re posting updates to the Gmail Help Centre at http://mail.google.com/support/ and Google Apps users can visit the Google Apps help centre at www.google.com/support/a.

Thanks for bearing with us while we sort this out. We’ll report back as we make progress.
Posted by Acacio Cruz, Gmail Site Reliability Manager

Hopefully the issue can be solved asap.

UPDATE 2:

The same person gave out another statement in midnight,here it is:

The Gmail outage that affected many consumers and Google Apps users worldwide is now over. Users should find that they’re able to access their email now without any further problems.

Before you can access your Gmail, you may be asked to fill in what’s called a ‘CAPTCHA’ which asks you to type in a word or some letters before you can proceed. This is perfectly normal when you repeatedly request access to your email account, so please do go through the extra step – it’s just to verify you are who you say you are.

The outage itself lasted approximately two and a half hours from 9.30am GMT. We know that for many of you this disrupted your working day. We’re really sorry about this, and we did do everything to restore access as soon as we could. Our priority was to get you back up and running. Our engineers are still investigating the root cause of the problem.

Obviously we’re never happy when outages occur, but we would like to stress that this is an unusual occurrence. We know how important Gmail is to you, and how much people rely on the service.
Thanks again for bearing with us.

 
Posted by Acacio Cruz, Gmail Site Reliability Manager

I believe no one want to see this kind of issues to come again because it does brings tons of inconveniences to the users.I think Google should try their best to investigate what causes the occurrence and how to avoid it.Please do things right!