Soon after seeing how Yahoo! has integrated Facebook on their website, Google announced that they are marrying Twitter. Google already has a social networking service called Google Friend Connect but with 8+ million monthly users, Google is not happy with that. With this collaboration, Google users would be able to log in to their accounts with their Twitter IDs and vice versa.

I don’t know about you but I am really not that comfortable with the concept of Open ID. Sure I like the fact that there are less usernames and passwords to remember but wouldn’t this make it easier for hackers to hack? Were we not told time and again to regularly change the passwords of our accounts to various websites, especially email and financial websites?

Anyway, I don’t know how well Google and twitter users will receive this service. To me, Twitter is a really simple and no-frills microblogging service. I don’t see why we should complicate it.

If there was yet another gripe that I have with Gmail, and I do have a number of gripes (teehee), then it was the inability to enclose attachments in emails that I intended to send while offline. That’s why I never used that feature. You know, if you wanted to send an email while offline and you wanted to attach a file but you were unable to, then that’s not the email that you wanted to send, isn’t it?

The good news is that this shortcoming has been looked into and addressed but of course, if you haven’t already done so, you will have to enable Offline Gmail first then set up Gmail in offline mode with Google Gears and then you can send your email with Gmail while offline and attach files in your emails.

However, do bear in mind that if you are offline, you would not be able to send inline images in your email. You’d need to be connected to the internet for that.

A friend, webmaster of a huge website in Malaysia, alerted me of a new Google Pagerank update, hot on the heals of the recent one on 31st October, 2009 or thereabouts. Normally, Google would take sometime for a new round of update; as short as three months but could be as long as six months.

Actually, I no longer pay attention to the Pagerank of my blogs. They have been bombed by Google and I have moved on from that incident but then I read that Google plans to do away with their PageRank and silly Pagerank algorithm that I suspect even the writers of the code sometimes do not understand it. Teehee!

Anyway, I told this friend that there will be no more Pagerank, hence he told me about the latest update, signifying that page rank is still very much alive, and it still rules the search engines. Oh well, I guess for bloggers and webmasters who are obsessed with their Pagerank and how well their keywords will be placed on Google Search, it looks like they can’t retire yet!

I used to have no such problems with my Gmail accounts until I switched to Firefox as my default browser. i found that about half the time, the loading bar that we see before the Gmail inbox is displayed cannot finished loading. It gets stuck halfway or around the 90% mark and then either shows me the blank page forever, or lets me know that the Standard view of Gmail could not be loaded and I could opt to access the basic HTML version of Gmail.

Sometimes, I would opt for the simple view but found that there are many features that could not be used and it doesn’t work too well. For example, when using the Google search bar at the top of Gmail, my whole page gets taken over by Google search results when it would be better to open the results in a new tab or browser window.

Anyway, I was searching for a solution when I came across this Gmail Help page from Google that solved my problem. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8767. It looks like this is a known issue with Gmail and many people are experiencing the same problem though none of my friends are!

If you are also facing similar Gmail loading issues making you unable to access your Gmail, and I know how frustrating that could be, follow the simple steps provided in this page and hopefully your problem would be solved. .

I received an email from Google Analytics and they are offering Malaysian users RM100 AdWords coupon to try out the service. With Google AdWords, we are told that we could bring in targeted leads which would lead to better sales.

This Google AdWords offer of RM100 is ony valid until 30th November, 2009. Thereafter, the value of the coupon will drop to RM70. This coupon, presumably each Google Analytics user has a unique coupon code, will only be valid until 31st December, 2009.

I haven’t check this out on the website of Google AdWords yet and wonder if I could claim this coupon code first before creating a campaign but I guess that is not possible since Google wants us to spend and try out the service and not claim it and leaving the credit in our Google AdWords account unused. So meanwhile let me think of what ad campaign I would like to create first.

Within a day, my Firefox browser has crashed at least five times and that is way more times than I am happy with. Yesterday, I installed a few items on my computer; two are Firefox add-ons, SpeedyFox and bug489729. One is an upgrade to AVG version 9.0. I also installed Adobe AIR and a Twitter desktop notifier called Snitter. A couple of days ago, I also installed Java Runtime to upload photos to Facebook.

With all these new stuff added, I can hardly pinpoint which is the culprit that keeps causing my Firefox browsers to crash. If there’s one thing I hate, totally hate, it’s TROUBLESHOOTING. Sure, I could roll back but then it would mean rolling everything back.

Oh year, SpeedyFox is supposed to help make Firefox run faster, and start up three times faster, but I don’t feel it at all. In fact, Firefox continues to start up so slowly, I think I have to wait at least three minutes for it to pop up on my screen and with the constant crash, you can imagine how irritated I am right now.

bug489729 works well and I no longer accidentally open my tab in a new Firefox window but I feel that since its installation, switching tabs is a tad slower compared to previously. Again, I cannot be certain if this is the cause. I guess I will just have to disable it and see if there’s an improvement.

Perhaps I’ll just rollback everything, if I am frustrated enough with these multiple Firefox crashes.

I have been facing log in problems with my Windows Live Messenger lately so I decided to upgrade my program this morning. Actually, I have been having the prompt to upgrade for weeks now but didn’t have time to do so. Anyway, I did it this morning but to my dismay, I couldn’t complete my download and neither could I install the program.

I faced the same problem even when I downloaded the Windows Live installer onto my computer and then download Windows Live Messenger, unchecking the other Windows Live Essentials. I don’t need them and I don’t want them. I just want Windows Live Messenger but then I couldn’t even download it, let alone install it.

I would be happy with my older version of Windows Live Messenger, or even with an older MSN instant messenger, if only I could still log in to it but I guess I will have to do without it now since I am too lazy to follow the various solutions found online for people who are facing the same problems as I am with downloading and installing Windows Live Messenger now that it comes in a package deal.

I HATE IT!