A few hours ago Yahoo! sent out an announcement that they are closing Briefcase. Frankly, I have forgotten all about Briefcase even though it is a great concept which allows us to store files securely online, much like Windows Live SkyDrive.

I used Yahoo! Briefcase a long time ago and like I said, I forgot all about it. Upon receiving notification from Yahoo!, I decided to check what files I still have, though I figured that the files couldn’t be all that important if I could store and not remember them, but still I wanted to be sure.

It’s funny that what I had in Yahoo! Briefcase are three mp3 files. I don’t know why I stored them there; these aren’t even songs that I particularly like. And get this! The files were uploaded at the end of 2004, which means it was 4.5 years ago, and I never even accessed them since then. Yeah, I know, I’m bad.

So you can imagine, I wouldn’t be missing Yahoo! Briefcase. I’m glad though, that Yahoo! has given ample time to users to download files stored on Yahoo! Briefcase since it will only close on 30th March, 2009. All files will be deleted and no longer retrievable after this date.

Yahoo! Briefcase: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/

A couple of evenings ago, I sent a text message to a friend telling him that there was something wrong with Gmail. I could not access my own Gmail account and after numerous times, checked those of my family members to no avail as well. I wanted my friend to see if he could access Gmail with another internet line but he as not available, too bad.

After quite a few hours, I was able to use Gmail again and thought nothing of it. You know technology, these things happen all the time, right?

Little did I know that after the Gmail outage which happened to all Gmail accounts across the board, many Gmail users received a GTalk message with a link to a video whereby they have to log into their Gmail account to access the video.

Obviously, the video was not from Google and logging into a third party website with one’s Gmail log in details would have compromised our user ID and password, and in turn, other accounts and sensitive information that could be harvested from Gmail messages.

If you have been duped by this link to a video via GTalk yesterday, change your Gmail password pronto, and you should also do it for other websites and online properties that may share the same password.

I finally got around to downloading, installing and setting up Windows Live Writer. I had wanted to do this for the longest time but just kept forgetting, I don’t know why.

And then yesterday, when I remembered, Streamyx was extremely slow due to a problem with its international gateway and you could imagine my frustration trying to download and install the huge file, even when I just wanted Windows Live Writer; it also updates Windows Live Messenger by default, and Windows Live Mail, if you have it on your computer.

I have already used Windows Live Writer to publish one post on my WordPress blog; this is my second post. I am loving it and I can just imagine the speed that I could work at once I have gotten the hang of the application and once the broadband connection here improves and publishing it from Windows Live Writer desktop publishing application to my blogs would be smoother.

I have so far added a total of eight blogs to it only, on two systems. When I have time, I will do the rest of the blogs; they are just passion blogs anyway, but yea, having desktop publishing software really helps.

When I bought my notebook, I was happy with Windows Vista, unlike many of my friends who wanted to downgrade and then got rather pissed off when they were told that they had to pay to downgrade to Windows XP. Ha!

One thing I like about Vista was that it came with Windows Live Mail. I thought that it fetched my Hotmail a whole lot faster than Outlook Express which i still use on my desktop computer so I could compare the speed. Anyway, lately, I noticed that it sometimes could not fetch my Hotmail and I had to close the programme and open it again. That’s not a big deal as long as I remember to do this.

Today, I am talking about another glitch, though. A couple of days ago, I was talking about Hotmail and how I was not able to receive an email and wondered when the “mailbox unavailable” problem will be solved before I decide if I should set up an email account with Gmail.

Well, I did set up a new Gmail account but then I discovered that the reason I was not able to receive the email that was “replied to” was because somehow the email that was sent from my notebook had my Hotmail email address as Hotmail.ocm instead of Hotmail.com. Naturally, when the email was replied it, it was trying to be sent to Hotmail.ocm and not Hotmail.com. So that was why I was not able to receive that email.

Now I remember that this is not the first time it happened. It’s the second time though it didn’t cross my mind that it would happen again. I even kind of forgot about the glitch. Now, when I do send email from Windows Live Mail, I need to remember to check the outgoing email address. That should be fine provided the email address does not get changed between the time it was sent out and the time it was delivered!

I started trading in stocks when I was very young. I don’t proclaim that I am experienced or very good at it. I had my wins and losses but I stopped after realizing that I could not devote time on it as I had to juggle work.

Of course, I would like to take up stock options trading soon and I swear I will be more prudent this time. I was pretty reckless when I was younger! And I believe, now that we could trade online, it will be easier compared to the old days.

Also, there are now so many different investment tools to use to help us in our research that will enable us to make more informed decisions in our investments. Granted, experience may be the best teacher but still, we need to do our homework before plunging in. With everything easily accessible online, trading in stock options is now easier than ever.

I have been a Hotmail user for the longest time. Although my first email box was Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail was my second, my primary email to date is still hotmail and I have been looking for a mobile application that would allow me to check my Hotmail messages on the go.

Anyway, today I am not going to talk about retrieving Hotmail email on my mobile device. The problem I have with Hotmail is that I was sent an email by a family member who is using Gmail. I know that she has sent it because I could access her Gmail.

After a couple of days of not receiving the email in my Hotmail, I noticed that she received an alert about the message being delayed. Fine, this happens sometimes, right? After a couple of days more, she received another email alert informing that the message failed to be delivered.

So I copied her email and sent it to my Hotmail once again and once again, I did not get it instantly in my Hotmail like we normally do. I logged into my Hotmail account, where I normally just retrieve from Outlook Express, and saw the message that my Hotmail service is currently unavailable.

WTH happened and why was I not informed of it? And strangely, even though I did not receive this email, I did occasionally get email from others. Isn’t that strange? I wonder if Microsoft will fix this as soon as possible and how long they will take to fix it. I need to have a timeline, or I might as well set up another account with some other free email services.

Gmail has once again come out with something new. This time it’s the ability for Gmail users to pick a color for their mailboxes. I did not try this because I am using Gmail themes but I guess for Gmail users who do not have Gmail Themes enabled yet, they could try this.

The ability to change the color of our email box is not something new. Microsoft has that for Hotmail for a long time already except that for Gmail, we could blend our own colors and select different colors for different elements on the page.

Don’t worry if you have messed up your colors and decided not to use your new color scheme. Simply click on the RESET button to revert to default Gmail colors. Yes, it’s a tad plain, that’s why I am so glad to use one of their Themes!