ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ), the entity that tightly controls what domain names could be registered just relaxed its rule paving the way for a slew of new names to be introduced to domain names.

At present, there are already 27 TLDs (top level domains) available like the popular .com, .org, .net, etc. Starting second quarter of 2009, ICANN will start accepting applications for new names and will approve or reject based on an independent review process as well as based on thrid party objection.

What does this mean to the web?

We could start seeing domain names ending with industry specific tags like .travel, .food, etc. and city specific tags like .nyc, .paris, .la etc. There is no end to it and ICANN hasn’t limited the words that can be applied for either to see what the industry will come up with.  There will be numerous options for any business to register a domain name with. And I am not sure if it can be structured. If you had a .nyc domain name, could you still have your .com address and if you were a hotel in New York City, could you also have a domain name with .travel? You are still a business, so you could have a .biz domain name as well.

Having said that, not everyone could register a TLD. You have to be serious enough and shell out around half a million dollars and promise to take care of it.

What does this mean to us?

With a habit of visiting multitude of websites daily, sometimes it’s hard enough for me to remember between a .com and a .net these days. With the flood gates for domain names being opened with the possibility or hundres of new TLDs, the advantage is not in our side. We are going to get confused. Period.

I wouldn’t be able to remember if the hotel someone recommended or the review i read pointed to a .com or a .biz or a .travel or a .hotel name in it. Especially if there were different hotels registered with each of these TLDs.

What does this mean to Google?

If I were Google, I would be very happy this morning as all this is good news for a search engine. If you were confused or unable to find the business names anymore by your .coms or .nets or .biz options for a name, you would naturally turn to a search engine. The results shown by Google are going to be even more important down the line when there are a zillion more sites with crazy names attached to them with no apparent structure.

I think this just made the consumer dependence on search engines like Google even stronger. More and more people are going to flock to Google to go anywhere on the web as the directories would be too big and too cluttered to find what you want.

Even now, how many times have you caught yourself going straight to Google before you get to a website? This is just with the few common TLDs like .com, .net and the occasional hypens in the name. Imagine with hundred more options for domain names and my head starts to spin already.

It’s Friday. So, lets push aside the gloom that’s about to descend on us and see if we can come up with some funny domain names? I have a feeling the first TLD that will get registered next year will be .porn.

[via ICANN]

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

It’s no secret GTalk client is for Windows only. Linux and Mac users have so far sought out other IM alternatives thanks to GTalk using Jabber protocol for their IM client. I use openSuSE 10.3 as my primary desktop and have had trouble getting some of the excellent IM clients like Pidgin to work behind a proxy.

Thanks to GChat in Gmail, I have been able to use IM even if it has to be within Gmail. I even used a Greasemonkey script for Gmail 2.0 to alert me with the tab flashing when there is a new IM. However, I did find this a little annoying to keep going back to Gmail to check on IM messages. Because, everytime I go into Gmail to see IM messages, I would also end up checking my Inbox and before I know 20-30 minutes would have vanished. This kind of goes against my goal of trying to increase productivity with all these web apps and hacks.

So, I started to run Google Talk gadget in my browser sidebar with a browser bookmarklet. This freed me up from using GChat in Gmail to GTalk in my browser sidebar.

You’d think I’d be content at this point. Not.

Run Google Talk (GTalk) gadget with Mozilla Prism

Mozilla Prism released their 0.9 version last week and I am smitten by the usefulness of it. If you haven’t heard of it, check out my Mozilla Prism review. In that post, I also show how you can run it from behind a proxy at work or school. Since it’s a beta version and a work in progress, they don’t have a straightforward setting for proxy in it’s options yet.

If you don’t want to click over, Prism is a prototype from Mozilla Labs which lets you split your web applications from the web and run it in your desktop as a standalone application. They even allow separate profiles for each Prism app which means you can have multiple Gmail accounts open in different Prism web apps in your desktop.

I have taken this idea and created a Prism web app for the Google Talk gadget and now I have a GTalk client like app running standalone in my desktop!

Here’s how you do it:

1. Install Mozilla Prism - Windows, Mac & Linux installers (v0.9 at the time of writing)
2. Create a new web app with url https://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client
3. Give it a name and choose to save it on desktop
4. You are done!

If you are a Mac or a Linux user, you can now run GTalk standalone in your computer with Mozilla Prism. If you are already using Firefox 3, with this Prism Firefox extension you can just open this url (or any other web app) in Firefox 3 and then directly create a desktop application for GTalk right from your browser.

I see that Prism has an option to install extensions. It doesn’t look like it’ll accept Firefox extensions as it complains that they are not compatible. I even tried turning off compatibility checking but didn’t have much success. I would love to hear if someone has succeeded installing extensions with Prism as that would open up a whole new world of options to these Prism web apps. I am sure it will be obvious in the coming releases. But, I want to make it work today!

GTalk makes it the fourth web app I run in my Linux desktop with Prism after Gmail, Google Reader and Remember the Milk.

What other web application do you see yourself running on your desktop with Mozilla Prism?

I love the GrandCentral idea and have been kind of waiting to see what kind of integration Google is going to bring to the table after they acquired them. After a long wait, we are starting to see some activity in this front.

GrandCentral has been in private beta and new account sign-ups were only done via invitations. In fact, I gave out the 10 invitations that came with my account to my readers here. We have reviewed GrandCentral here and are really taken by the idea. In short, GrandCentral gives you a telephone number than you can link to your home/work/mobile phone numbers. When someone calls your GrandCentral number, you can have it set to ring your cell/home/work phone numbers or any combination of those. You can set rules for certain numbers to go direct to voicemail and even listen to see who is calling and transfer it to voicemail if you don’t want to answer at the moment. Plus, you get the convenince of checking your voicemail via a web interface or email even when you are away from home/work.

Google is now offering GrandCentral account to their Blogger users. They are offering the WebCall feature that Blogger users can now use to add a ‘Call Me’ button to their blogs and have their readers call them. This feature has been avaialble to GrandCentral users but I think Google is trying to widen its user base by announcing it to their Blogger blogging platform users.

Even though the announcement is for Blogger users, it looks like anyone can sign for an account immediately using this link. Will you grab one?

Last week, I wrote about how you can run Google Calendar in your browser sidebar. Now, you can get your Google Docs in the browser sidebar as well.

Sometimes it is more productive to have some of the stuff we access often (like Google Calendar) to be in the sidebar. This will work out the best especially if you have the newer widescreen monitor or a bigger monitor with a high resolution, where real estate won’t be an issue.

Google Docs in a Sidebar

You can get Google Docs run in a sidebar with a Firefox extension called gDocsBar. I love the way this Firefox Extension has been implemented. It looks so good and Google couldn’t have done it better.

gDocsBar Quick Facts

• Easy to install extension and no configuration needed
• Opens in sidebar with login and password screen
• Easy tabbed interface to view all documents types or just specific type like document, spreadsheet or presentation.
• You could also sort the items by title, date or author as well as ascending or descending.
• The filter box works flawlessly filtering documents as you type and I love it.
• Or you could search for a document by name, author or even content.
• You can upload documents to Google Docs directly by dragging and dropping it in the bottom area. It shows completed and failed uploads visually for easy troubleshooting.

I usually don’t feature a single extension alone and talk about them in the weekly Firefox Extension Picks of the Week series. But, this extension definitely warrants this extra attention as I am sure I am not the only one who finds this extremely useful.

gDocsBar

gDocsBar Download

GmailThis! has to be one of the most useful bookmarklet’s I have in my browser toolbar. It let’s me open a Gmail compose window with the Subject line and the email body with the URL of the website I am currently at, already filled in.This makes it so easy to email anyone an email with just the link or send an email with the link in context already pre-filled for you. If you do this a lot, you can imagine how much time this will save you from not having to open up Gmail, compose an email, go back to the site you were at and copy the url, fill in the subject line and then paste the link to the website. All this happens with a click on this bookmarklet.

How do I use this?

1. Drag to your browser bookmarks toolbar.
2. Make sure you are logged in to Gmail already
3. Click on ‘GmailThis!’ bookmarklet you just created to send this post to someone you know.

Here is a video showing how to use this:
How to use GmailThis!

Tips & Tweaks

I have to thank Daniel Mertens for asking this question in the comments in my post on Top Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail 2.0. He asked me if there was a way to have separate buttons with the ‘to’ address filled in with frequently used email addresses. I didn’t know of a Greasemonkey Script that did this but figured I could tweak the GmailThis! script to do just that.

It is a very simple tweak and those who are familiar with tweaking javascript would have no trouble following this. And you probably already know how to do this.

For those who are new to it, I will try to make it as straight forward as possible and if you break it you can always start over with a fresh copy and try again.

A Look inside GmailThis!

Let’s take a look at the javascript code that makes up the bookmarklet. You can get this code by right-clicking on the bookmark and choose Properties. You will find this code in the ‘Location’ field.

Does it make your head spin? No worries. You can see in the picture where to grab this code.

Let’s look at the part that we are interested in changing.

that’s the part that adds the Url of the webpage you are in to the body of the email.

A few parameters you can add to autofill are ‘to’, ‘cc’, & ‘bcc’. For eg: if you want to create a bookmarklet to email your wife with the link and subject autofilled, you would add this string to the above bookmarklet:

‘&to=’ + escape(’yourwifesemail@web.com’) +

This is what the whole script will look like with the above code inserted:

That’s it!

You create copies of this bookmarklet, rename it and then change the code with the new email updated for every script to create multiple bookmarklets, each for your frequent contact.

GmailThis! for hosted Google Apps

While looking around to see if someone has already posted about this, I came across a thread in Google Groups which showed how you can change the above script so it works with Gmail for your hosted Google Apps.

If you replace the [MYDOMAIN.COM] with your own website url, this bookmarklet should work for your Google Apps Gmail. I haven’t tested this bit but the thread seems to suggest it should work.

If there is any better way of doing this, I would love to hear it in the comments.

GmailThis! Script Credit: Doug

GmailThis! for hosted Google Apps Credit: Google Groups thread

Update: Apparently, I can’t add javascript code displayed in posts just with the <code> tag. I have resorted to doing screenshots instead and I have to find a way to display actual code in the future. If you know how,  I would love to learn how from you. In fact, I am going to ask Doug as he is displaying it right now in his post. Not sure if he uses WordPress though.

Google Calendar has to be the second popular Google’s suite of offerings after Gmail when it comes to productivity. You can now run Google Calendar right from your sidebar if you are using Firefox (could possibly work for other browsers as well).

Mitch of Firefox Facts has gotten the url from the iGoogle - Google Calendar widget and made a bookmarklet out of it. Now adding that to your bookmarks with the ‘Open in sidebar’ option selected, you can open a stripped down version of GCalendar in your sidebar.

Here are the steps to get this done:

1. RIght click on this link and bookmark it or drag and drop to your bookmark toolbar
   Mini Google Calendar
2. Right click on the bookmark and select ‘Properties’
3. Check the ‘Load this bookmark in the sidebar’ option
4. That’s it! There is no step 4.

The same steps should work in other browsers such as Flock, Opera, Safari, etc which have the option of opening any bookmark in a sidebar.

The calendar looks like this with the calendar showing the dates and the agenda below. You can ‘Create Event’ or do a ‘Quick Add’ from the sidebar. You can also turn on/off the calendars you want to see if you have multiple calendars.

I am now addicted to Remember the Milk’s Gmail extension that gives me a collapsible sidebar integrated right within Gmail. It works for me as I am logged in most of the day in Gmail and I can manage my tasks from right there.

But, I am sure this will be really appreciated by those using Google Calendar regularly! if you are curious about Remember the Milk, it integrates into Google Calendar very well as well if you’d like some advanced task management capabilities not found in GCalendar.

I know what you are thinking. No, I don’t work for Remember the Milk. I just love it to death!

[via Firefox Facts & CyberNet News]

Google Docs & Spreadsheets have started to make me think different about I use and organize documents. I keep track of some of my spreadsheets online at Google Docs just because I can access it from anywhere with a browser and update it.

I still missed at times when I found it easier to work from my desktop with OpenOffice that using Google Docs web application.

DocSyncer (beta) is here to take care of that missing piece for me and you if you have ever felt that way. DocSyncer works by automatically finding and syncing your documents to Google Docs and your DocSyncer account.

Quick Facts about DocSyncer

• DocSyncer monitors changes to documents and sync the updated files as well
• Install DocSyncer in as many computers as you want and have them synced at Google Docs
• Log in to DocSyncer from any computer to continue your work you left at half way in another computer.
• You can see all previous versions of a document as well
• Uses 128-bit SSL & AES encryption while syncing your docs for security
• With Google Docs Mobile Edition, you can even get to your documents in your computer from your cell phone.
• Launch Google Docs from your computer just like you open them in Microsoft Office
• You can open files in your My Account tab in your browser locally in your computer
• Custom folders work a little bit where you can turn off which folders inside Desktop or My Documents you don’t want to sync.
• You can also change your Google Docs account from inside DocSyncer.

Should I Use It

It sure looks like a promising way to streamline my personal document management. One thing that I don’t like right now is that if I update a document, it uploads it to Google Docs as a new document. But, they say a fix is coming soon to make it a version of an existing document. And I think it is a very important one at that before people start using it widely.

I am also looking forward to the promised features like the ability to email documents from anywhere to your DocSyncer account and have it in your desktop when you come home. Plus, the only folders they sync right now is My Documents and the Desktop folder and more control is in the offing.

Private Beta

I had signed up for a private beta and at first look the service looks very promising. Although, I am going tohold my horses until the service matures with the upcoming features before using it mainstream. You can sign up to get notifed of the launch or even an invite to the private beta.

I have been meaning to test drive a service such as FolderShare for a while and I will post about my experience with it compared to this and their differences in a future post.

Until then, I would like to hear from you what you think about this service and if you think it is something that you would like to use.