Google in an email to all developers states following …

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google’s much anticipated Nexus One was finally unveiled at a press conference in Mountain View, California on January 5. It had already been distributed to Google employees in December, before its launch.

Made by HTC, Google has co-branded the phone. Google is retailing this phone in a way that it knows best, on the web. Available through www.google.com/phone, the phone is available for $529 as an unlocked version and $179 with two year contract with T-mobile (with a $79.99 monthly data plan) in the United States. It is also available for delivery in UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. So, yes, you cannot buy it in India yet, nor get it shipped here.

The looks of the phone are pretty similar to the iPhone but have a few more buttons that then Apple device. The bottom of the screen houses four touch sensitive buttons for Back, Home, Menu and Search unlike the iPhone that has just the one button to go back to the home screen. Below the buttons is a tri-color illuminated trackball. The color of the trackball changes depending on the kind of notification being received on the phone.

Read More @ http://www.google.com/phone/

Many things are designed to make our lives easier, but sometimes they seem to make them more complicated. If everything worked like Google Mail, life would be much simpler!

Google launched set of 5 videos which illustrates how life is easier with Google Mail …

Google Mail conversation chains – Email replies are grouped into conversations with the original message
Offline Google Mail – You can access your email even when you are not connected to the internet
Google Mail spam protection – Spam-fighting technology saves you time
Google Mail themes – Customise your inbox with themes to suit your mood
Google Mail voice and video chat – Chat face-to-face with friends using built-in video chat

Watch the videos at http://google.co.uk/googlemailvideos

Google Maps Navigation (Beta) is launched . It is an internet-connected GPS navigation system that provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps on  Android 2.0 phones.

Below are few of the videos demonstrating various features of Google Maps Navigation (Beta)

• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): car dock mode
• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): Street View
• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): satellite view
• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): search along route
• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): traffic view
• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): search by voice
• Google Maps Navigation (Beta): search in plain English

Hmmm, this is interesting. Google had spotty luck trying to push its Chrome browser to users, but now it’s come out with Google Chrome Frame to embed Chrome’s functionality inside Internet Explorer.

The idea of embedding one browser’s functionality inside another browser isn’t new. Firefox users have IE Tab, for example, to run sites that absolutely require IE to run. With IE Tab the user can specify a list of sites and/or file extensions that should always be opened in an IE tab. That approach is problematic at times because the user isn’t always the best person to determine whether the site works correctly with a particular browser. It may take trial and error on the user’s part to determine that the site is breaking because it requires IE.

Google Chrome Frame lets web page developers specify that their page would really prefer to be rendered in Chrome rather than IE. Once the plugin is installed, the author of a web page can specify that IE should use the Chrome Frame plugin by putting a single tag into the top of the document:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”chrome=1″/>

If some other browser is in use, or if the user has IE with the plugin not installed, the page renders just like it normally would. If, however, the Chrome Frame plugin is installed in IE, the page is rendered using the Google Chrome engine even though it’s still within the IE application.

This sort of browser-in-browser solution could be great for developers that want to support IE6 users without having to deal with IE6 quirks. They’d just add the tag to their site and tell IE6 users that they’d be supported only with Google Chrome Frame. (IE7 and IE8 aren’t as problematic, so most developers can build a site that supports them with or without Chrome Frame.) The biggest problem I see is that many IE6 users are dealing with locked-down systems and won’t have the authority or ability to add the plugin. If they could do that, they’d also be able to upgrade their browser!

Read more on Google Chrome Frame @ Google Chrome

Ack : Dave Methvin

I am a big fan of using Gmail for all of my email needs. However, there is one thing that Gmail is missing that I find essential. How do you send an email at a specific time in the future?

For e.g, save an email(with future date defined) in OUTBOX to wish birthday of your loved ones. It automatically gets delivered on the date you want it to be sent on. No hassles, no crying or no need to make any excuses to your loves ones on missing to wish them birthday or anniversary or etc …

Anyone can request features to Google on GMail @ http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest

Above forum have resulted in creation of following wonderful features. Recently Implemented Suggestions
* Multi-person chat
* IMAP access
* Extra paid storage
* Support for more browsers
* Signature options
* New message notifier
* Free POP access
* Free automatic forwarding
* See the number of new spam messages from my inbox
* Automatic email forwards
* Save my message drafts
* Search my Contacts list
* Import addresses into my Contacts list
* Colorful background skins
* Import contacts from other email accounts
* Import messages from my other email accounts
* To-do list

So go ahead and request or suggest features you would like to see in Google’s GMAIL.