Googlemail to become Gmail For UK users
British e-mail users with Google accounts are now able to change the end of their addresses from @googlemail.com to @gmail.com.
A five year trademark dispute meant that Google was not allowed to use the name Gmail in the UK.
In 2005 a company called Independent International Investment Research claimed it had used "Gmail" first.
Google claimed at the time that the settlement IIR asked for was "exorbitant" and dropped the name.
Within a year of launching the free e-mail service in the UK, Gmail became Google Mail.
While early adopters received a gmail.com address, all subsequent new accounts were given the suffix googlemail.com.
"Since 'gmail' is 50% fewer characters than 'googlemail' we estimate this name change will save approximately 60 million keystrokes a day," wrote software engineer Greg Bullock on Google's Gmail blog.
Google Chrome Experiments – Wavy Scrollbars
Here is a little bit of fun for all of you Google Chrome users out there. I just found a little "experiment" which fills your window with scroll bars which will wave up and down as you move your mouse around.
Heres a comment from the author :
Touch scrollbar thumb to make waves. Based on verletphysics library by toxi.
Check it out here :
http://the389.com/experiment/
Note : This is only designed to work with Google Chrome and may cause other browsers to crash. IF you try it in other browsers then please let us know how it goes for you.
10 Reasons Your Insurance Might Not Pay Out
Just buying an insurance policy does not mean you are certain to get a payout if something goes awry as many people find to their cost each year.
Tens of thousands of holidaymakers who battled the odds to get back into Britain following the volcano eruption in Iceland, may find themselves out of pocket when they come to make a claim on their insurance . Some insurance companies refused to pay out, saying travellers would not have been covered under their policies.
A spokesman for the Association of British Insurers (ABI) said: "When it comes to insurance, you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, if you bought an off-the-peg insurance policy, it is not going to cover you for everything."
It is not just travel insurance claims that are rejected. We explain how to avoid the common pitfalls when it comes to insurance claims, from travel to home insurance to critical illness .
Google and page load speed – what’s it all about?
If you keep up to date with the goings on in the SEO world you will have read about Google’s recent announcement regarding their inclusion of page load times in to their search ranking factors. With a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon to use this to sell their services I wanted to address what this means to your website and what you can do to make improvements.
The full announcement from Google can be found here is well worth a readhttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html. In summary the key points to take home are:
- Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests
- While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page
- Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point
Police back down over domain name
The Government's police inspectorate has backed down after protests from social media activists over its choice of name for a new website.
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) had unveiled plans for a project called MyPolice.org.uk.
But the name was already being used by a project started in 2009, intended to allow crime victims and others to report feedback to police forces.
HMIC said it had chosen to stop using the name to avoid confusion.
"To ensure the public gets the benefits of both services with no chance of confusion, we will change the name of the 'my police' pages on our website," HMIC said in a statement.
"We are currently consulting on the best option, and will announce the results in the next week."
The HMIC website was intended to be used by members of the public to find out information about how their local force is performing.