Imagine the following situation. You’ve spent half an hour in your favourite webmail client, meticulously writing an email, making sure that it is completely word-perfect. After reading it over for the third time, you decide it’s ready and you anxiously press the send button. Just as you breath a sigh of relief, “Error: Cannot connect to the server!” What?! Quick click back! The form is EMPTY! Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhh! This is where Lazarus comes to the rescue.

Lazarus: Form Recovery continuously encrypts and stores everything you write as you type it. A simple user interface allows you to quickly bring back any content you lost due to a server error, browser crash, or inadvertently hitting the back button. All it takes is a single click. The current version includes 2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES hybrid encryption, so you can be sure your data stays secure.

Lazarus works on ordinary web forms, WYSIWYG editors, and even AJAXified comment boxes, and will save you from pretty much any given server, browser, or connection problems that might otherwise cause you to lose your work, or that really pithy blog comment you struggled on for over an hour.

It’s not the kind of addon that you use (or even think about) every day, but when you need it, Lazarus will be there. Just don’t forget you installed it, because it won’t be as helpful once you throw your laptop out of the window. Check out the info page, or simply:

Alas, no

Paul Graham may have saved the world from spam back in 2002, but where is he now that my inbox is being bombarded from all of the random websites that I once signed up for?

image: niallkennedy/Flikr

The Problem

Websites all over the internet require you to register if you want to comment on a blog, upload a photo, or super poke your Aunty. Each one of these sites gives you the ability to “opt out”, but only after you search until the end of the internet for the option. I’m usually pretty good at this, but you try unsubscribing from WheresWally.com! And once you do find it, there’s those websites that just choose to ignore you. It’s an all too common problem, but what can a simple guy like me do? After all, I’m just one person…

The Solution

Mailinator is an instant throwaway email inbox that you can use as an alternative to your regular account.

• Simply make up a random email address @mailinator.com when you sign up to those pesky websites.
• Go to www.mailinator.com and use your made up address to check your inbox.
• Open the email you receive and confirm “your account”

The emails will only last for a few hours, and will automatically delete themselves. It’s wise to choose a fairly unique address, because you wouldn’t be the first person to think of using “test”. And obviously you definitely should not use it for personal information, because it’s not secure in the slightest!

There’s lots of bonus features if you check out their FAQ, including address aliases (so that you can prevent the sender knowing the location of your inbox), and the ability to subscribe to your inbox via RSS. Aside from keeping your inbox clean, you could use it in development for testing your email/signup systems.

With over 25 million emails being received per day, Mailinator is standing strong in the wake of its popularity. Next time you need to post a question to a forum, or sign up to order some of those *cough* pills, save your inbox, and let them eat spam!

http://www.findwaldo.com/

What is Google Buzz?

Well I’m glad you asked, otherwise it’d be pointless explaining it!

Built right into Gmail, Google Buzz is a social networking slash near-realtime aggregator. Or for my mother is reading, it’s like a Facebook from Google. Basically, whenever you log into your email account, there’ll be a page that shows you all the recent updates from people you follow. These updates can be in the form of status updates, links, photos or other rich media.

Instead of yet another social network hub that nobody can be bothered using because it’s deserted, Buzz pulls the updates from a number of existing sites. This solves the classic chicken and egg problem, making the service instantly useful. While the concept itself isn’t new (with services like friendfeed on the scene), Buzz has the advantage of building on the existing Gmail user base. According to the Official Gmail Blog, tens of millions of people have tried out the service in the first 48 hours alone!

I’ve heard there are privacy issues?

When you first sign in, you’ll be prompted to choose a list of people to follow based on your most commonly emailed contacts. Only a few days after the release, this prompt replaces the original behaviour of automatically following these contacts. The problem was that the people you follow can be publicly visible, and this was seen as a privacy risk that exposes the people you most commonly email. Google said “Oops!” and have since changed the behaviour, but not before receiving criticism from a number of sources.

Well what can it connect to?

As of today, Buzz is integrated with Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Google Reader shared items, and Google Chat status updates. Or if you like pictures:

You can even add the RSS feed of any content you publish, with updates being posted straight to your feed! Of course there’s also the typical “Share what you’re thinking” box that you can post Buzz specific statuses, links, or media.

As you may have noticed, there’s no Facebook support. In fact, only 6 of the 206,741,990 websites in the world are connected! But fear not young reader, our hero Google is coming to the rescue with this quote:

Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We’re building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API.

Ding ding ding! That’s the “open” bell ringing, which is what we developers love to hear.

What can’t it do?

Buzz is great at aggregating your content in one convenient place, creating a conversation of comments and likes between followers. Just like other aggregators (such as Google Reader), this conversation doesn’t get back to the publishers, effectively breaking the feedback loop. This deprives publishers of useful feedback or motivation (in the case of small time bloggers like me). It’s a core problem with web 2.0.x, and Matt Haughey’s blog is an excellent discussion on the topic.

How do I get started?

This is as easy as a nice slice of cherry pie!

1. Log into your Gmail account, and click the Buzz logo on the left (under the inbox link).
2. Next choose the people you want to follow.
3. Connect to the sites you want to access.
4. Start Buzzing! (I think I’ve just coined a new verb!)

For those inclined, there’s plenty to read over at the Buzz homepage, and don’t forget to check out Buzz on your phone. Time will be the ultimate test, but I expect Buzz to common place in conversations of the future. What do you think about all the Buzz?

Cloud computing is Internet- (“cloud-”) based development and use of computer technology (“computing”). In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer have need of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.

Understand?.. No?.. Neither did I. I see the cloud as a magical room up in the sky, filled with an infinite number of computers that can store as much data as you like, and do a zillion calculations a second. The best part is you can access it from almost anywhere because it’s always up above you. It’s considered the future of computing, with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, all competing in the race to become the cloud king.

So now that I’ve written an intro around the fluffy photo above, I’ll get onto the real post. What I love most about keeping my data in the cloud, is that it allows me to keep my data backed up in once place, and synchronized with all of my devices including my iPhone. Google have a number of services that help you do this, which I use to sync all of my email, contacts, and calendar entries “over the air” (another fancy term). If you’re nice, I’ll show you how to do it.

Doesn’t iTunes already do this for me?

Well kinda, but you have to plug your phone in for it to update your contacts, and it will only synchronize your calendar with Outlook (or the Mac equivalent)! If you follow these instructions, you’ll be constantly up to date without having to think about it.

1. You must have a Google account

If you haven’t already, head over to mail.google.com and sign up for a new account. Please please please use a sensible username, and save fluffy_bunny_69 or imdahottest for your Hotmail account. Have a play around and get a feel of your new home, then check out calendar.google.com to activate the calendar. You use the same username and password for every Google application, but you have to log in at least once to activate them.

2. Turn off iTunes sync

Next, we want to completely disable iTunes controlling the synchronization of your data. If we leave this enabled, it will mess with the data you store in the cloud.

• Open iTunes
• Connect your iPhone
• Go to the “Info” tab
• Ensure that synching of contacts, calendar and mail are all disabled.

3. Connect to Gmail via IMAP

The IMAP protocol allows you to keep your email messages synchronized between all of your clients and the server. You can use the standard Gmail option in your iPhone settings, but Google recommend that you use the custom account configuration:

What if I tap ‘Gmail’ instead?
Archiving and deleting messages will work differently. Our instructions ensure Gmail works as designed.

In particular this deals with the way Gmail archives emails instead of deleting them directly. Although not completely necessary, it’s probably best to follow their instructions.

4. Setup Google as an Exchange account

The Microsoft Exchange system is the market leader in the enterprise communication market, and for good reason. The wise folks at Google realised this and have emulated an Exchange server, which your iPhone can connect to. Now Google suggests that you enable synchronization of all of your data this way, but I recommend that you do not enable Mail synchronization via Exchange. I find the iPhone has trouble receiving notifications of incoming mail, especially when you have a large number of emails.

With the above caveat, follow these instructions on configuring an Exchange account.

5. Choose which calendars to sync

Whenever I add a new Google calendar, I always forget this step and wonder why it’s not working. It’s such a simple step that I bet you’ll do the same. Just head on over to m.google.com/sync, log in with your Google account, and pick which calendars you want configured. Bookmark the page so you can update your options in the future.

6. Play in the clouds

Now you’re set up with your data in the cloud! When you put new people in your phone book they’ll instantly be transferred to your Google contacts, and events you add to your calendar will always stay in sync between devices. Fiddle with the options, and suss out how to make it best work for you. Just remember if you’re going to play in the clouds, don’t forget to bring your umbrella!

Bonus!

For those of you who’ve made it past the corny images, here’s a bonus Facebook tip. With the latest version of the Facebook iPhone app, you can enable automatic synchronization of your contact’s profile pictures. Enable this using the “sync” button at the top right of the “Friends” page (choose both options). If you followed the above instructions, the pictures will also float up into the cloud and be added to your Google contacts!

In the future I’ll show you how to add Facebook events to your calendar, and how to share calendars with family and friends, but are there any other ways that you synchronize your data and live in the cloud?