Category Archives: Web 2.0

Announcements, Reviews, Tools

Gmail Now Import From Other Services #WIWG #5

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gmail3

For more information on the series #WIWG, please .

I have to admit, although I love everything that Gmail have to offer, but personally my Hotmail account is doing just as well and getting better too, so far about 88% of my emails and contacts are on Gmail (Mostly thanks to my G1 Android phone that auto syncs with my Google account and therefore my Gmail account)

Towards the end of May 2009, Gmail did what was inevitable,  aside from every cool new feature from Gmail labs, this one is the coolest, it just made millions of lives much easier 😉

You can now easily migrate existing (email and contacts) from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and other webmail providers into Gmail. Imported emails will be appropriately sorted by date, and existing folders will become labels (Another cool feature in Gmail). And you can have your messages forwarded from your old account for 30 days, giving you time to take Gmail for a test drive, and I guarantee you that you will love it, I know that 70+ of my students at Wahol.com moved to and upgraded to Gmail, and I know that every single one of them loved it for all that it has to offer.

BTW this new feature is available in all newly-created Gmail accounts, and it is slowly being rolled out to all existing accounts. You’ll know it’s available in your account when you see the “Accounts and Import”  tab under Settings.

For more and to get a free account go to:

Gmail.com

Social Media, Tools, Twitter, Video

A Simple Video Chat Room (TinyChat) #WIWG #4

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tinychat

Have you every wanted to see your grandmother online through video?

Unless you live with her, you probably did!

Did you want to setup a video conference call but wasn’t sure which software the other party is using?

I can tell you exactly how long it will take you to setup everything so you can chat using video online with any person. 63 minutes!

That’s how long it took me on the phone (My call duration was 1:03:22) to a friend in another state just to start the video chat, download and setup skype, install the new driver for your cam because it didn’t support MAC computers, setup your mic (Her mic was muted the entire time!) setup your speakers source… ETC.

Sounds familiar?

What if I told you that on June 13th of 2009 while I was waiting patiently to snag my Facebook username (facebook.com/GuruOfSales) Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com along with 2 friends of his (one of which was actually in facebook’s HQ for the event) were all doing a video chat room on mashable, and you know how long it took them to set it up? 22 seconds! Not because they all had their cams already setup, not because they all knew how to use skype, but simply they created the chat room using the service that I heard of that night: TinyChat

At TinyChat.com all you need is just a twitter account, name your room, login to twitter and you have a high quality video audio and text chat, it took me 22 seconds to setup the entire room, didn’t even have to promote it, people just jumped in, how did they know? A tweet and a facebook status update was sent instantly to my friends and followers with the link to the room, even more, I had the option of tweeting every chat line I enter, which I think is a neat feature.

However, the coolness doesn’t stop there, many readers of this blog will love the next option: Screencast your desktop, NICE! With one click you can record or live stream (screencast) your desktop or website tuturial in a very high video quality, but for this option you will have to pay for the pro membership, and you will not believe this, it’s only $14.95 to get pro, Holly Cow! An entire $14.95 (Just being sarcastic), a screen cast or recording software like Camtasia will cost you $100’s of dollars, mean while this cool service will do almost the same job with the addition of live casting chat voice and text, I mean… come on, my Flickr pro Cost the double of that!

Anyways, check it out here: TinyChat.com

P.S. This was not a paid review nor I am an affiliate for the service, I just simply liked it and wanted to share it with you guys. Enjoy 🙂

Announcements, Twitter, Web 2.0

Twitter ‘Updates’ are now officially ‘Tweets’

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tweets

Around this time last year I ‘Updated’ my old twitter account saying the following:

Prediction: “What Are You Doing?” will be the most asked question of the year in Times magazine. Thanks to Twitter!

It did happen, the question is asked millions of times every day on Twitter web, then I listened to a podcast with @EV from Twitter and when he was asked what it’s called to update your twitter feed? is it ‘to tweet’? He said I guess that’s what’s everyone calling it I guess. But secretly and behind the scene he went on and trademarked the verb ‘Tweet’ to be used ‘to tweet’ my status instead of ‘to update my status on twitter’. Cool 🙂

As of today, if you look on the top right corner of your twitter page (Twitter Web) you will see that your ‘updates’ are now your ‘Tweets’ as in the photo above.  I also heard that twitter will be integrating the term ‘tweet’ throughout the site and some API apps.

Also interesting to know is that the AP Stylebook has declared ‘to tweet’ as legitimate grammar.

After today, I no longer have to correct peeps when they say: I will twitter you back! it is now official ;-p