Forget about Gmail outage a few days ago. You know technology fails us sometimes! I was informed that Gmail was down by a friend via Facebook but I was not that concerned because I wasn’t using it at that time. If I was, that would be a different story and I would be venting already.

Someone asked what happens if Gmail was down and so was Twitter, since so many people utilized Twitter to spread the word about Gmail’s outage and to vent and rant. Well, there’s still Facebook, right?

Anyway, like I said, Gmail is back up already and what does the Gmail team has for us? New Gmail themes, of course! The new themes are called Orcas, Turf and High Score. There’s also one called Random, which is not a theme but it rotates the theme collection that Gmail has so you don’t really know what theme you will be getting when you log in to Gmail, hence the name Random.

While these three themes are new and fresh, I have to say that I am not particularly impressed. I still like Candy the most. I have been using it since the introduction of Gmail themes and I know it is high time I change it but I really do need something better than the current selection of themes!

What about you? What do you think of the new Gmail themes?

A couple of years ago, I told a friend that I should write my PayPal account user ID and password somewhere so that my family could access my PayPal cash and withdraw my balance to my bank account and then withdraw it through the ATM.

Of course, I would also have to include specific instructions on how to go about it since none of my family members here use PayPal, and it is too bad that I do not trust my own family members enough to let them know my log in credentials now while I am alive.

I don’t care what happens to my email accounts as my friendship with the people I correspond with would probably die with me. They would probably be closed at some point due to dormancy. I don’t care about my Facebook profile while my blogs would also die, particularly those that I host myself. Once subscription is not paid, the hosting account would be suspended and then terminated.

My main concern is PayPal and I believe this is the same issue that many of us netizens face. Because of this, a number of netpreneurs have come up with a service which allows us to store our log in details in heavily encrypted sites for a small fee. Hhmm why didn’t I think of that first?

As a blogger and webmistress, many of my friends also share the same interest. One of the many topics that come up each time we meet is the reliability of web hosting companies. Hah… this should keep web hosts on their toes because if their service is poor, you bet bloggers would let the world know about it through their blogs!

I got to know of a UK Web Hosting company, Pick A Web, that is running a promotion where prices for their web hosting packages have been slashed by 50%. The most affordable package known as the Budget Plan that is most suitable for small time webmasters and/or bloggers is only priced at £1.99 per month. There are a total of four UK web hosting plans, with the most expensive Business Plan at £8.67 only. Still affordable, right?

Web hosting offered by this company, Pick A Web, are on UK based servers. Some people think that it is better to host our websites in our own country, probably because of time zone factor, but I personally do not care as long as the service is good. Pick A Web offers phone, email and live chat support 24/7 anyway, so it doesn’t make any difference where we are based!

With the economy still not as robust as it could be, and in fact, Japan’s unemployment rate has hit yet another record high of 5.7% in July 2009, many companies continue to downsize. There are only so many employees that could be given the pink slip. Other cost cutting measures include looking for and migrating to cheap servers, but by that, I mean low in cost but high in reliability.

SingleHop is a company that offers low cost dedicated server hosting. To meet the demands of their clients and their varying budgets, SingleHop has three server packages to choose from, from the most affordable at US$189 per month to the most powerful at US$249 per month. Being able to select from three server packages means that we only pay for what we need.

I told a friend about SingleHop’s cheap servers and he was pretty surprised that SingleHop could go as low as US$189 per month. The good news is that their volume of business drives down the cost of bandwidth and hardware and other associated costs of offering dedicated and managed servers and in turn SingleHop has channeled such savings to their clients so everyone benefits.

For more information on dedicated servers and managed dedicated hosting services by SingleHop, do visit their website at SingleHop.com

I read an article somewhere on the web that according to a recent MX Logic report, approximately 94.9% of email messages received in August 2009 were spam. Meanwhile, Symantec also had a similar spam mail report which found that 89% of all email messages in July 2009 were spam.

These figures are really high. Personally, I too receive quite a lot of spam mail on a daily basis but only on certain email accounts. The email address I list on public domains get the most spam, obviously. I also sign up with various email marketing companies for information that I want, but they have somehow passed (or sold) my email address to third parties and that generates lots of spam mail as well.

My mail email accounts at Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail all have pretty good spam filter sometimes it is too good so I still check my spam folder in case legitimate email messages are sent there by mistake. This means that ultimately, I still have to wade through spam email, except that I don’t do it daily, and only when I am free.

Many of the spam mail are not just harmless spam. They are also phishing attempts that could force malware or virus to be downloaded onto your computer or may cause your use ID, password and sensitive financial information to be compromised, especially when you open these spam mail and click on links in these messages out of curiosity.

The best thing to do when we come across spam mail, or even suspicious email from people we may know, is to delete them. Don’t even bother to unsubscribe from mailing lists because that would cause you even more spam!

The other day, my friend told me that his computer caught a virus and he suspects that it was because he was searching for the website of a political party. I asked him if it was the real website and he says that he believed it was but still he was adamant that his computer only gave trouble after that visit.

I read a report by anti-virus company, McAfee, which gave the top five dangerous celebrities to search for online. As a celebrity blogger with two blogs, I certainly should be more careful.

The top five celebrities currently are:
1. Jessica Biel
2. Beyonce
3. Jennifer Aniston
4. Tom Brady
5. Jessica Simpson

The term “dangerous” used here means that a lot of sites that pop up in search engine results when you search the above key words would lead you to websites that may contain virus or malware that are harmful to your computer. Of course this does not mean that you should look for information or photos of the above people, just stick to well known sites, that’s all.

A few months ago, Gmail rolled out a very important feature that allows Gmail users to import email and contact information from other accounts to Gmail. Other accounts include Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL just to name a few major email service providers.

The bad news was that the feature was only available to new Gmail users. Those of us who had been using Gmail since the beginning were not able to enjoy moving our old email baggage that easily.

The good news is that last week, Gmail has made this feature available to all Gmail accounts. Well, they are rolling it out in stages so some users would get it first, some may experience a delay. Check if you can enjoy this feature already from Settings > Accounts & Import.

Even though I already have this for my Gmail account, I would still prefer to move my old email manually. I would then be able to ensure that each and every mail that matters is moved. Not that I don’t trust Gmail but I like to be safe.