Technology to make you Google
The question is not motivated just by a vociferous appetite for new gadgets, but by a genuine interest in where technology is going.
A fair number of those asking are investors, hoping to tap into the next Google or Thawte before it becomes a listed company.
My best bet this year is on online services and the cloud computing I talked about last week.
I’ve been looking at the technology I use and that used by other net-savvy friends of mine.
There was a time when Hotmail was the thing we all used.
When we ran the Mail & Guardian Online news facility back at the turn of the millennium, we used a new-fangled thing called instant messaging (IM) — specifically an early network called ICQ, long since bought by AOL.
I’ve watched the evolution of new forms of communication and productivity software over the years.
I was given a version of the Opera browser when it still fitted on a stiffie disk (making it less than 1.4MB) in the days when) Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) was 10 times that size.
The tabbed browsing and other useful features were adopted by Firefox, an open-source browser that has managed the seemingly impossible by capturing about 20percent of global market share away from IE, a product which is bundled with every version of Windows.
Google’s Chrome browser reportedly took 1percent of the market in its first day alone.
I watched OpenOffice grow from a pet project of Sun Microsystems into a viable alternative to Microsoft Office. (It called it Star Office before making the software open source.) Office, by the way, is Microsoft’s second largest revenue generator after Windows. Open Office.org could completely outdo MS Office in terms of functionality — and it’s free.
I’ve been looking at the applications and services that the technorati, for want of a better way to describe these web-savvy folk, are using, notwithstanding Facebook, Flickr and Picasa.
The most important is Gmail, more specifically, web-based, searchable e-mail.
Sure, there are other services, but all the discerning geeks I know use Gmail as their primary e-mail application.
Because of the volume, I seldom have time to filter my e-mail into various folders. I leave most of it in my inbox and rely on Apple’s built in search (called Spotlight) to find what I’m looking for. It’s even easier with Gmail, which I use to back up my primary account. Google, laughably, calls it a beta (text) version and continues to improve it.
Then when Google Apps (google.com/a) was launched, you could host your own domain using a Gmail-like interface for mail, as well as Docs, Calendar, Gtalk for IM and so on. All for free for less than 50 users. It’s a revolutionary interface.
Gmail has introduced a remarkable way of storing your messages, organising them into threads combining incoming mail and your replies. When a new message comes in, it floats to the top, no matter when the thread first started. There are no folders (beyond the basic inbox, drafts, sent, junk and trash), so the mail remains in one large, searchable inbox, but you can now “label” e-mail with your own keywords, effectively grouping those mails into a clickable “folder”.
When it launched, Gmail had 1GB of storage, an order of magnitude greater than its competitors, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, and it quickly doubled it, now offering 7GB or more than you’re likely to need.
All in all, this is an unbeatable proposition and a no-brainer. Who can argue against free hosting, almost infinite storage and an easily searchable interface?
I’ve run out of space, so I’ll have to discuss the best things about Gmail itself next week.
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