How many of have experienced a lack of access to your GMAIL account via the app on your Blackberry? As of November 22nd, this function will no longer be available – unless you have had it previously installed.

Those who have a lot of patience can access the web through their Blackberry and visit their Gmail account, but anyone who has ever had to access the web on their BB knows that this is not the best option as the web browser is agonizingly slow.

The following is an exerpt from an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on November 10th.

In a statement, RIM [Research In Motion] played down this development.

“Since 2009, RIM has incorporated native support for Gmail in BlackBerry [operating system] 5.0 and above, which means that a separate Gmail app is not required,” the statement said. “The large majority of users who access Gmail on their BlackBerry smart phone already rely on the native support (provided through BlackBerry Internet Service) rather than the separate Gmail app.”

The development comes as RIM deals with product launch delays, a plunging stock price and a rapidly decreasing share of the key U.S. smartphone market.

RIM’s share of the U.S. smartphone market had fallen to 11.6% as of the end of June, according to research firm IDC, behind Google’s Android-powered phones and the Apple iPhone. Five years ago, RIM had 48% of the U.S. market.

After an embarrassing service outage…left millions of BlackBerry users without access to email, many analysts worried that BlackBerry users would begin migrating to Apple and Android devices at an even faster clip.

RIM said…that it was investigation reports of fresh delays for BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, but did not provide further details.

Google’s decision to end support for Gmail on BlackBerrys comes as the Internet giant increasingly focuses on a key RIM rival: Apple.

Earlier this month, Google unveiled a Gmail app for Apple’s iOS operating system, which powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. But the app was hobbled soon after its release on Nov. 2 by a bug associated with its notifications feature. Google apologized and pulled the app for repairs.

Google’s Gmail ranks among the most popular Web-based email services, and the company has said the service has around 200 million users. According to data from comScore Inc., the number of unique visitors to Gmail rose 31% in October compared with the same month last year, reaching 59.6 million. The number of visitors to Yahoo Inc.’s email service, meanwhile, fell 1% to 93.5 million, while visitors to Microsoft Corp.’s email service fell 3% to 44.5 million, according to the comScore data.

In a statement posted online, Google said that while Gmail users on the BlackBerry will be able to continue consulting Google’s guide for troubleshooting in the app, the guide “will not be maintained or enhanced.”

—Amir Efrati contributed to this article.

Write to Will Connors at will.connors@wsj.com and John Letzing at john.letzing@dowjones.com

China vs. Goole

China is threatening to pull Google off it’s internet feed citing Google’s refusal to censor the online content available to citizens of the country.

According to the New York Post, China said, “Google would be unfriendly and irresponsible if it defies rules to censor online content”. This statement has escalated the already heated dispute between the two giants.

As recently as today, a piece appeared on SevenSidedCube.net, Nicole Wong (Google’s VP) stated, “We are no longer willing to censor our search results in China, and we are currently reviewing our options. If the option is that we’ll shutter our .cn operation and leave the country, we are prepared to do that.”

This is one to watch. Representatives from China have gone on record stating they will give Google the boot for failure to comply.

Example – Dr. Scott Becker was separated from his daughter, April when she was only a few months old. April’s mom left him and took their only daughter with her.

About 10 years later, Becker created a website totally dedicated to finding his daughter AprilBecker.com. Becker spent thousands of dollars and countless hours in hopes of reuniting with his long-lost daughter. Finally, just a few weeks ago, April performed a Google Search and entered the words “Scott Robert Becker looking for April” and the website popped up.

She sent her dad an email and he responded with a question that he thought she would instinctively know the answer to, “Are you a green baby?”. Having been born on St. Patrick’s day, she answered in the affirmative and after 30 years – father and daughter were reunited.

Becker’s website has since been pulled.

Interesting, so take a look and consider how you are getting your information and ask yourself, “Is this the best resource?” Consider the timeliness of data collection and reporting the next time you go looking to “Google”.

Clive Thompson on How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind
By Clive Thompson 09.21.09

When Michael Jackson died on June 25, millions of people flooded onto Google News to find the latest information about what had happened. The spike in traffic was so massive that Google suspected a malware attack and began blocking anyone searching for “Michael Jackson.”

It’s a funny story, but it illustrates how the Web is changing. People increasingly turn to the Internet for up-to-the-minute information about, well, everything—blog postings about celebrity antics, status updates from friends, and pictures and videos of political events as they unfold, like the protests over the Iranian election. Studies have shown that these types of search requests are on the rise.

Pundits call it the real-time Web. It’s upending the Internet as we’ve known it, and it’s not something that Google can easily dominate.

For more than 10 years, Google has organized the Web by figuring out who has authority. The company measures which sites have the most links pointing to them—crucial votes of confidence—and checks to see whether a site grew to prominence slowly and organically, which tends to be a marker of quality. If a site amasses a zillion links overnight, it’s almost certainly spam.

But the real-time Web behaves in the opposite fashion. It’s all about “trending topics”—zOMG a plane crash!—which by their very nature generate a massive number of links and postings within minutes. And a search engine can’t spend days deciding what is the most crucial site or posting; people want to know immediately.

So a new generation of search engines like Tweetmeme, OneRiot, Topsy, Scoopler, and Collecta are trying to redefine what makes a piece of information important.

Some of these sites offer a Digg-like indexed front page that displays hot topics, while others just include a simple search field. But most of them rely heavily on Twitter. When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject or URL emerges, it’s a “signaling event,” as Rishab Ghosh of Topsy puts it. To make sure they’re not just getting hoodwinked by spammers, these new search engines employ some clever tricks, like crawling tweeted URLs and discarding those that land on sites containing spamlike language. Most disregard Twitter users who behave like spambots—for example, ones that follow thousands of people but have very few followers themselves.

Other ploys abound. OneRiot has a toolbar that lets users flag an interesting post immediately. Collecta actively imports blog posts and tweets so they appear in search results less than a second after they go live, rather than the hours it can take regular search engines to catalog the same info. “We want to be limited only by the speed of light,” Collecta CTO Jack Moffitt jokes.

The result is something curiously different from regular searching. If you hunt for “Michael Jackson” on a traditional engine like Ask.com or Bing, the vast majority of the links remain the same day to day. Authority changes slowly on the “old” Web. But real-time search engines deliver different, updated results almost every time.

The creators of these new engines argue that their goal isn’t to answer questions— à la Google—but to organize experience into a keyhole glimpse of what the world is doing at this very moment. “It’s exactly what your friends are going to be talking about when you get to the bar tonight,” OneRiot executive Tobias Peggs says. “That’s what we’re finding.” Google settles arguments; real-time search starts them.

Edo Segal, a pioneer in real-time search, thinks the field is going to explode as updates become more automatic, with our devices autoreporting where we are, how we’re feeling, and what we’re doing and seeing. Old-school search will never vanish, but real-time news will create a society where we have an omnipresent sense of the moment. “Google organized our memory,” Segal says. “Real-time search organizes our consciousness.”

Ikea changes font from Futura to Verdana

After 50+ years, the furniture store IKEA has changed it’s signature font from Futura to Verdana. For those of you who do not already know this (and why would you?), Verdana is a what we call web-friendly; this means that when you view it on your computer screen, it will appear as the designer intended and further, this will apply to all computer screens, using all browsers and operating systems.

With a font like futura, which was designed way before there was an internet, the words (or logo) will not look the same on the screen as it would in print. Then the designer must make a decision – what font would be a good replacement for the web?

Well, Ikea doesn’t need to worry about that any longer since Verdana is nothing if not consistant. Apparantly, this caused quite a stir on the internet. Google Ikea font change and you will see a host of articles from the Associated Press to Business Week and many assorted blogs.

Of course, I cannot present a piece of tech “news” without a little commentary.

While it seems on it’s face to be a somewhat insignificant news item, Corporate Identity is a really important component of any business. Ikea’s 50-year run with the Futura font has ensured that the logo and associated catalog, advertising and other printed media is instantly recognizable and associated with the Ikea brand.

Some of the online commentary has been in the vein of “who cares?” while others (typofile.com) proclaimed it “a bad day”. Change can be a very good thing, but when it comes to your corporate identity, you’d be surprised at how it can affect your customers and your bottom line.

Case in point – did anyone else notice the huge change in the Tropicana Orange Juice packaging? I did and I can say that it was lost on me. They have gone back since to get closer to their “roots” and it’s better now, but for awhile it was looking like the generic supermarket brand. Tropicana is a premium product and the package redesign simply did not reflect that. Consumers were in an uproar and so the decision was made to pull the plug on the new look.

Take a look and let me know which you prefer. No matter what your preference, we can all agree that the change was dramatic and the end result was not the desired one. No one wants their well-established brand to mistaken for something else.

A good lesson.

Re-designed Tropicana packaging

The preferred "oldie" version of Tropicana

kamouya1@yahoo.com is the "anonymous" insulting, defaming blogger

Yesterday Liskula Cohen won her court battle to unveil the identity of the offensive Blogger responsible for the “Skanks in NYC” blog in which Cohen was the sole subject.

I, for one, applaud this ruling as I feel strongly that people should not be allowed to hide behind a cloak of anonymity to make negative, offensive and hurtful statements – about anything. Whether you are ranting about an Obama policy, your unfair boss or the hit your stock portfolio just took, I say stand up and, if you can’t (or won’t) take on the responsibility that comes along with your rant – then sit down and shut up.

This may seem like a harsh viewpoint (and maybe it is) but I am not a believer in stirring up the pot and leaving a big old mess for others to deal with. If you feel that you have a valid viewpoint that is worth sharing and you can take the time to say it, then sign your name to it.

It is completely irresponsible and cowardly to throw out your opinions without taking on the fallout they may create. I believe we should all be able to broadcast our opinions – that is what free speech is all about but hiding behind a cloak of anonymity absolutely removes the validity of your viewpoint.

Ok. So preachy portion of today’s blog behind us, I can now comment about what little we know about kamouya1@yahoo.com. She is a woman who was, according to Cohen, nothing more than a passing acquaintence. What then, did the model do to so offend?

Cohen appeared on Good Morning America. So she now knows the identity and claims that she forgives her but will, nevertheless, be filing a civil defamation suit.

I, for one was shocked to find out that this blogger was another woman who would resort to attacking her “friend” by claiming that she was dirty, skanky and sexually promiscuous. Disgusting!

Mutt Media will be following this story as it progresses so stay tuned to see how and if this lawsuit materializes and the eventual outcome.

Google must give up identity of blogger who posted defamatory remarks about model Liskula Cohen

Once upon a (recent) time, there was a blog site on Blogger.com (Google-owned) called “Skanks in NYC”. Isn’t that charming?

According to Timesonline.com, the blogger posted remarks such as the following:

“I would have to say the first-place award for ‘Skankiest in NYC’ would have to go to Liskula Gentile Cohen,” the blogger “Anonymous” wrote in one posting. The blog, since removed, ridiculed the former Australian Vogue covergirl as a “40-something” who “may have been hot 10 years ago”, when she was actually 36.

Justice Joan Madden rejected the blogger’s claim that the blogs “serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting”, and should not be treated as factual assertions.

The model was looking forward last night to discovering the identity of the alleged acquaintance who insulted her. “Everybody is waiting to see who this coward is,” Steven Wagner, her lawyer, said.

Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman, said: “We sympathise with anyone who may be the victim of cyberbullying. We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order.” (author: James Bone)

This is not the first time Cohen has been in the news for something conflict-related. A couple of years back while at the Hudson Hotel, she got into an argument with a guy who took a drink off of her table. After throwing a drink at him, he hit her in the face with a bottle of vodka, causing her to get over 40 stitches and, according to her account at the time, effectively end her modeling career.

How do these scrapes with others keep ending up in the newspaper and why does trouble seem to find her? I haven’t a clue. But I do know this: there is no guarantee of anonymity on the internet!!!!

Very soon this blogger will be forced out from the shadows and his/her identity will be known. Soon after that, no doubt Cohen will file a defamation lawsuit and will hopefully prevail, sending a strong message to anyone who seeks to publicly defame another.

I applaud this ruling, how about you? Post your thoughts!

Google CEO Eric Schmidt steps down from Apple's Board

A FOLLOW-UP!

You may recall a recent blog I did about Apple, Google and conflicts of interest (click here for that blog entry). Back in mid-July there was already much speculation about the Google CEO (Eric Schmidt) who sat on Apple’s Board of Directors.

All along as concerns regarding Anti-Trust laws arose, both entities provided explanations and denied there was any cross-over between them; they claimed that Schmidt would recuse himself from certain segments of meetings to adhere to the guidelines but still, this became problematic as more and more, the two companies share common interests in business.

“Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple‘s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board Member will be significantly diminished, since he will hav eto recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.” (Steve Jobs)

You read here that Google is now rolling out a mobile phone operating system called Android that will compete with the iPhone. Google is also developing Chrome OS, an new operating system for smaller computers that will directly compete with both Apple as well as Microsoft.

The crux of the piece was how leading European newspaper and magazine publishers were calling on the European commission to strengthen their copyright protection so as to generate an income stream from their online counterparts.

The problem from the point of view of the publisher, is that information is so – almost too – readily available and transmitable that it is impeding their ability to control dissemination of the news.

Welcome to the not-so-new world, publishers! This is what makes the internet great, in my opinion. Yes, printed media will experience a loss of revenue. There are some that attempt to make the consumer pay for the online couterpart to the written word, but in my view, this is a futile effort at best. I, for one, view these pay-per-view entities as an impediment to the spirit of the web.

Only a handful of newspapers or magazines have had success in charging readers to use their sites, as the article points out – among them The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

What the European publishers want is greater control over the reproduction of their creative works.

My question is how would this function? If one did a Google search, would the results be the same and would certain articles be free while others offered at a premium.

Not on board with this one only because years of getting information easily and free have spoiled me, and trust me – you too.

So, first off, our friends at Google, in the midst of executing their plan for world domination and data-collection, have announced they will be releasing their own Operating System called Chrome. At first blush, I am excited about this, for a couple of reasons.

Google does seem to get it right. Their services are useful and free – two features I always find pleasing. I like anything that works and doesn’t stress me out, as I am a simple girl. Their analytics and other applications function well and play nice with my MacBook. Life is good. Yay Apple & Google.

My husband is engaged in a brutal war at the moment with his new laptop that is running Windows Vista, an operating system that doesn’t play well with others. He needs to run a certain software for his business and Vista just won’t cooperate. Updates, tech support, patches and lots of nonsensical work-arounds have kept my husband up at night and his staff has logged hours trying to trouble shoot for him to no avail. He’s had to wipe out the hard drive and reinstall programs, download updates that in the end, set his efforts back and just yesterday, his laptop shot off a really low blow: just crapped out. During one of the mind-bending downloads and installs, during step 3 of 3, the screen goes dark but for 3 lines that read, “Running Step 3 of 3. 0% complete. Do not shut down your computer.” And so he waited and waited. Still 0% complete 45 minutes later but the graphics are moving like something is happening. But nothing does.

I used to work off of a Windows PC. You don’t realize how much of a nightmare it is until you switch to a Mac. I swear ONCE YOU GO MAC YOU NEVER GO BACK. (Knock on wood) My Mac & I do not have to battle resistant, mutating viruses, updates go off without a hitch and all of my programs load like butter. Going on 2 years together and so far, it’s a match made in compuer heaven.

So, my point? Let’s take a look behind the scenes to see why my Mac (Apple) and Google apps work so well together. The common denominator here could be that they share a CEO named Eric Schmidt and another Board Member name Arthur D. Levinson, the CEO of Genentech.

Is this a conflict? Does this fly in the face of anti-trust laws, which are in place to safeguard against possible collusion between companies (and world domination).

An article in the Global edition of the New York Times from last Friday by Brad Stone speculates that the “Chrome Operating System is likely to create more questions for regulators”. Yep, this alliance is already on the radar of the Federal Trade Commission with the investigation going on for the last several months.

Under section 8 of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act specific limits are placed on the sharing of information between companies by common board members.

In the case of Schmidt and Levinson, both claim to recuse themselves during portions of the Board Meetings when the discussions turn to tricky topics.

Where is the overlap? Well, Apple makes the IPhone and Google has the Android Software (see YouTube video for info on Android and the “G Phone” below), Apple has ITunes and then there’s YouTube, Apple has the Safari Browser and now here’s Google with Chrome.

In the end, the FTC will decide whether these relationships are problematic. It all comes down to what percentage of the overall business is affected.

I don’t care. I just love my MacBook and my Google. Can’t we all just get along? (hello Microsoft!)

Then maybe my poor husband will get some sleep.