A few days ago, 38 information security experts submitted a public letter to Google, asking it to make Gmail more secure. More specifically, they’ve asked Google “[to] protect users’ communications from theft and snooping by enabling industry standard transport encryption technology (HTTPS) for Google Mail, Docs, and Calendar.”

Google responded saying it is “looking into whether it would make sense to turn on HTTPS as the default for all Gmail users”

If you don’t want to wait for Google to take the decision you can change the connection type to the more secure one (HTTPS) by yourself.

Change the connection type to HTTPS

To use always HTTPS connection in Gmail, do as follow:

1. Click ’Settings‘ at the top of any Gmail page.
2. Set ‘Browser Connection‘ to ‘Always use https‘ (see image below)
3. Click ’Save Changes.’

choose ‘always use https‘

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Upon undertaking a new project it is a good practice to search for related work done in your organization. Asking co-workers if they are aware of such a work is one (good) way to do it. Another way is to search for documents in your file system. The latter can be done using the built-in search feature in windows.

To search for documents related to you project, do the following:

1. Go to the root folder (found it under ‘My Computer’, you can use the keyboard shortcut Winkey + E).
2. Click the “Search” button on the upper toolbar (see image below).
3. A new window will open inside the current one.  Write a keyword related to the new project in the search box and hit search. You can search all or part of file names or a word or a phrase inside files.

The built-in search feature in windows folders

The results of the search you performed are a good base for the new project. It will allow you to continue previous work undertaken in your organization and save you time reinventing the wheel.
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Bit.ly, the great URL shortening services, has just released an upgrade to its Bookmarklet.

Features of the new version

• Tweet without leaving the page - Tweet directly from the bit.ly sidebar without leaving the page you are 
• Easily share on other platforms - use the direct links to share the page via email, Gmail, or Facebook.
• Clicks Summary - see a summary of the clicks the page has received (both created by you and the total number of clicks).
• Real time conversations report - see what people are Tweeting and Friendfeeding (?) about the page (updates in real time).

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Another great find by The Content Economy - “How to use Twitter to Connect with Audiences”. This presentation, by Corinne Weisgerber, discusses Twitter as a tool for Monitoring / broadcasting / responding / building community. It gives examples of crises management and how brands use Twitter. It also explains basic terms such as Retweet and Hashtag.

When people are searching for you on Facebook, the first thing they do is run a search on your name. But what if they only know you by your maiden name or your name is just hard to spell? And what about the nickname you use on Skype, Google talk and AIM, Are they associated with your account?

Facebook has a solution for these situations. In this post, we’ll learn how to add an alternate name and IM screen names to your Facebook account, thus making you easier to find.

Alternate name on Facebook

As Facebook explain, the alternate name in your account “is only used to help people find you in search and will not show up in your profile“. Use it “for a former name or a name in another language.”

Here is how to add an alternate name to your Facebook account:

1. When logged in, choose “Account Settings” under “Settings” (you’ll see it in the top right corner of the screen).
2. Next to “Name,” click “change.“
3. Enter a full name in the “Full Alternate Name” filed, and click the “Change Former Name” button below.

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Numerous Collaboration tools and online storage applications offer a variety of collaboration abilities. Online collaborated editing, synchronization across computers, multiple file sharing , and on-the-spot windows and document sharing are just some of them. The following review will help you know and choose the right collaboration tools for your needs.

This is an excerpt of a guest post I wrote on ReadWriteWeb (by now it got more the 210 tweets). To read the full post visit the online collaboration tools guide.

I’ve just run into a tweet by infusecreative with an interesting Google Insights search. It shows that the number of searches for the term “Twitter” has stopped ascending. Since the beginning of 2009, the search for Twitter has been raising constantly. That was true up until March 22, when it plateaued. Has twitter reached its peak?  

Google Insights results for “Twitter”

Update 04/20/2009: Twitter only had a peak (click the image above to see the current graph). 

More and More new web apps enable us to do things that once required installation, registration, expertise and, of course, payments. The following tools will allow you to instantly video capture your screen, Share files, create a chat room, photo album, web meeting environment, or a MindMap - all within a few mouse clicks.

Instant video capture - ScreenCastle

ScreenCastle is a Video screen capture tool that works directly from your browser. To start recording your screen (and microphone) just enter the site, click the start button, choose the region to capture and press “start recording”. Once done, you will be given a link to view the video or a code to embed it into a website.

ScrennCastle - video screen capture
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Once in a while I’m offered by a web service like Facebook, LinkedIn or Digg to give away my email username and password so that it could offer me new friends based on my contacts list. Being the key to all my other accounts and containing a lot of personal information, I’m not that thrilled to give away these details. The solution to that problem is to export your contacts to a file and then import it into the web services. Here is how to do that:

Example - Synchronizing Gmail with Linkedin

As an example, I will demonstrate how to import your contacts into Linkedin from your Gmail account, but the same apply for other web services and other email applications, including Outlook.

Export contacts from Gmail

1. Go to the “Contacts” sections.
2. Click “Export“.
3. Under “What format would you like to export to?” choose “Outlook’s CSV format“.
4. Click “Export” and save the file to your computer.

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The following map, by iA, display the 333 most influential web domains and 111 most influential Internet people.  

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