New Gmail for the iPhone

Posted by Alex Kennberg, Google mobile team
We've just released a new look and feel for the mobile version of Gmail on your iPhone. Our goal: make Gmail fit nicely as part of the latest Google on your iPhone experience. This means that we had to make Gmail faster and more fluid.
To do that, we decided to use AJAX--a powerful set of web development techniques that make web pages more responsive. We also implemented two of the coolest and most requested features for this release: pre-fetching and auto-complete. Now when you use Google on your iPhone, Gmail will automatically pre-load all your most recent messages for you. So when you decide to read a message it will be on your screen in a snap.

Address auto-complete is my favorite new feature--and one of the most requested. I wanted to be able to type a full email address in under two seconds on the iPhone. With auto-complete you can often get the right email address on your screen within 2-3 key strokes.

Finally, our user experience designer worked hard to develop a very fluid interface that fits the whole Google experience on the iPhone. These changes take into account that you have to tap the virtual buttons with your finger, so we made sure to size everything appropriately.

Via Gmail

Zoho Office Goes Completely Offline with Google Gears

Amajor downside with online Office programs (like Google Docs) is that they require an Internet connection – that means if you are on an airplane, a cab or some remote village that has no Internet, you may not be able to create/ edit or print your documents, spreadsheets and presentations that are stored online.

If this “always on” factor forcing you to stay away from any of these online office suites, some good news - the very impressive online word processor in Zoho Office suite is now available for both online and offline use through Google Gears.

To use Zoho Writer in offline mode, just install Google Gears and restart your web browser. Then login to your Zoho account and click the link at the top that says “Go Offline.”

Google Gears browser extension is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

This will download all the recent documents from your Zoho online account to the hard drive. Now when you unplug the Internet cable and go offline, you will still be able to edit and save your documents inside the web browser just like you could do in online mode.

And the next time you connect to the Internet, all the changes made to documents locally will automatically be synchronized with the online copy so there are no discrepancies and you always have one version to work with.

The offline mode in Zoho Office will also prove useful in places where Wi-Fi is expensive like in the hotel rooms or the airport lounge – just connect to the internet, download the documents locally and then go offline to make those last-minute edits.

The offline feature is currently only available for Zoho Office but one can safely assume that the Google Docs team is also working on adding a similar feature to their product.

[via labnol.org]

Google goes to Africa

Google has done a deal to offer students in Kenya and Rwanda access to Google Apps - its online selection of products including Gmail.

Lecturers and students at Rwanda's National University, the Kigali Institute for Education, and Kigali Institute for Science and Technology will all get access to Google's online applications - Google Docs, calendar and spreadsheets. In Kenya some 50,000 students and staff at the University of Nairobi get a Gmail account

Google is trying to sell its online apps package to small businesses for an annual per seat charge of $50. The company offers an education version of the package free to schools and colleges.

Google Apps does not support local languages like Swahili or Kinyarwanda.