Internet

Gmail went down yesterday affecting  not only Gmail users on the web but also those paying Google apps users in businesses and goverment agencies. The time was exactly around 9:30 am GMT and lasted for almost 2.5 hours according to the Official Google Blog.  Fortunately, during the outage most of the U.S.-based users are probably still asleep by then. But for the rest of the Gmail users worldwide, this has certainly cause too much trouble and inconveniences. Luckily, I didn’t notice as I was still on the road when the outage happened.

Anyway, Google is still investigating what caused the Gmail outage.  Google’s Site Reliability Manager admitted that this was certainly a rare occurence. 

For users of the Gmail web interface who are not paying anything to use Gmail and who were inconvenienced by the outage,  they could only sigh in relief now that the service is now back to normal. But for the two hours of productivity that they’ve  lost, they can only blame Google but get nothing in return.

While Google Apps users who pays Google to have the Gmail feature, Google is giving you 15-day free access to Google Apps.  Not bad for a 2.5-hour service breakdown, right?

So, how were you affected by the Gmail outage? Were you so dependent on Gmail that you almost went on rage when you could not access it yesterday morning?

Bloomberg is running a very good piece on the long standing industry prediction that Google will be the next Microsoft. The article delves deeply into the pending confirmation of the Obama-nominated Anti-Trust chief Christine A. Barney. Ms. Barney was personally handpicked by Pres. Obama a couple of months ago.

But before Pres. Obama asked Ms. Barney to lead the controversial Anti-Trust agency, Varney was known to have a strong conviction that Google is out to replace Microsoft. Especially since the Internet trend is leaning towards “cloud computing.” And we all know that Google has already establish a good foundation for its “cloud computing service”, thanks to Google Docs, and its seamless integration of various online products such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Friend Connect, among other services.

For Ms. Barney however, this is all well and good if only Google has not “acquired a monopoly” in the Internet online advertising.  Ms. Barney wants to tackle this issue once her confirmation becomes final. She also promised to strictly implement the anti-trust law.

So, it would seem that Google should expect harder times up ahead  which shall start once Ms. Barney gets the anti-trust chief position.

Is there are reason for Google to be afraid?  Looking into Google’s previous behavior when confronted with monopoly and anti-trust issues, I don’t think that anyone in Google’s camp are a bit worried about Ms. Barney’s appointment, I still think that Google can survive her probing once she become the official Ant-Trust chief.

I find it amazing the extent that people’s creativity can go, especially on the Internet. There is a new Firefox extension called Pirates of The Amazon that will let anyone using it to browse the Amazon website and see whether the books, CDs and movies can be found for free via The Pirate Bay website.

Basically you would visit Amazon normally, and if the extension managed to find a free torrent for a specific product you would see a “Download For Free” link right on the screen.

Here is a video with a screencast of the extension in action:

Crazy stuff huh?

The recent news around opening up of White Space spectrum was significant because it allowed introduction of devices that could provide broadband internet access over fairly large distances. These would bring the internet to rural and less accessible areas.

A similar technology that promises to increase access to internet is Broadband over power line. The appeal of broadband over power lines is that rural areas are not commercially attractive areas for companies to create dedicated internet infrastructure. But power companies already have established stretches of power lines. At its core Broadband over Power lines is about sending data over the power lines on a frequency that does not interfere with the frequency of electric current. A modem plugged into the socket at the receiver end decodes the signal and routes the packets to computers.

An excerpt from News.com:

In recent years, new modulation techniques supported by other technological advances have helped BPL evolve. Most services today are capable of delivering between 512Kbps and 3Mbps of throughput, which is comparable to most DSL offerings.

In rural areas in particular, BPL technology could finally bring high-speed Internet access to people who otherwise couldn’t get it. Traditional phone and cable companies often find it too expensive to deploy new infrastructure to provide service to the far reaches of rural America.

The impediments in adoption of Broadband over power lines has been the limited speed as compared to cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and interference with other radio frequencies. Recently IBM bagged a $9 million worth project from International Broadband Electric Communications Inc to install equipment that could potentially provide internet access to 340,000 homes in Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Latest developments in this field also include technology to detect presence of other signals in a frequency before transmission. Many projects in past years have failed to provide complete implementation of this, but that is no reason to lose hope in a technology that could potentially provide access to a wide majority excluded from Internet as we know it.

Using a plugin, now users of Gmail can have video and voice chat with their contacts over Gmail. Techcrunch reports that this latest enhancement comes from the acquisition of a Swedish company called Marratech.

An excerpt from InformationWeek:

To install the plug-in, click on the “Options” menu in Gmail’s left-hand navigation bar chat pane. There you’ll find an “Add voice/video chat” menu option that will initiate a one-time installation download, assuming the service has been activated on your account. Once the download is complete, reload the Gmail page and you should see that the “Options” link has changed to become a “Video & more” link.

The feature added is a simple interface and does not support calls to phones networks and voice recording (yet). Its great to have all the features of email, voice, video and SMS also available from the same place. Marratech specializes in web meeting software, hence the expectation that very soon there will be some kind of virtual meeting place available via Gmail as well.

The plug-in used for Video chat is proprietary and supports FireFox, IE and Chrome on PC and Firefox on mac. Support for linux is slated for a later date.