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iGala Wireless Photo Frame Has Touchscreen, Own Gmail Account
Posted by Kit Eaton at 1:20 AM on November 14, 2008
Normally I'd say digital photo frame, splidgital photo frame...but iGala's one has a couple of features that make it stand out. It's an 8-inch touchscreen, with standard 4:3 ratio 800 x 600 pixels so you get less irritating crops or letterboxing, plus its wireless and has 1GB of internal memory. But it's actually got its own Gmail address so you can email photos to it directly from anywhere. Plus you don't even need a PC to set it up: it has its own interface. Neat stuff, for a not-too expensive $US239. [Digitalpictureframereview]
Google just added voice and video chat capabilities to Gmail, the perennially in beta web mail program. It uses a special web browser plug-in available for PC and Mac, which only requires a camera. Apparently, the separate Google Talk application is not getting yet the video capability and the company is not discussing the subject. For now, you will be able to access it from the web browser, with the capability to tear the video chat into a separate window. According to Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds, the idea is to make it "quicker and easier to communicate with other people by whatever means is best convenient." Which of course really means "easy to access video sex from any computer". [
Those of you who use Gchat through Gmail can now send text messages to mobile phones. The function is experimental, so you have to go to the Labs tab inside of Gmail's settings (or click on that little green flask icon) to turn it on. Your messages will appear as a 406 number--once you've sent a text through gmail, that'll be your specific number. AIM's had this feature for a while, so it's not surprising that Google would implement it as well. Text your friends! See how it goes! [
Over on the T-Mobile forums, there's a 
Gmail has just added a new Labs feature that you can turn on if, like me, you're very lazy: Canned Responses. Find yourself always typing the same message in emails, over and over again? You know, like "Dear Mum, Please send money, I'm still looking for a job, I promise" or "Can't hang out tonight, playing video games and feeling sorry for myself" or something like that. Well, now you can write those once, save them as canned responses, and easily pop them into any message you're writing.
My new favourite Googler Jon Perlow has used his 20% time (that portion of it he doesn't spend hammered, apparently) to write Gmail Goggles, an official Labs add-on that makes sure you really want to send that 3AM email to your ex-girlfriend. Goggles employs five arithmetic problems that appear after pressing send (you choose the difficulty level!) that must be answered correctly in a limited time before your overly passionate and typo-ridden message can be on its way. It can also be scheduled to be active only on your party nights. Thanks big G! [
Android is here, and as to be expected with a Google-made mobile OS, there's a bit of Google App fanciness going on. In fact, it's designed with Google Apps in mind so much that whether or not you're a user of Gmail and other services might determine how useful the phone will be to you.
Apple's iPhone Mail app isn't bad, but for those of us looking to use advanced Gmail functions (like managing multiple accounts or starring items), an app named MailWrangler would fill in the gaps...that is, if Apple hadn't rejected the application from their iTunes store. Here is the message sent from Apple to the developer, six weeks after the program was submitted to iTunes:
