Google's Gmail and Personal Knowledge Management: Whatz Up in 2013

Is The New Gmail Better For Users Or Marketers? By Chris Crum WebProNews

Extract:
"You can go to the gear icon, and click “Configure inbox” to set up the new style if Google hasn’t pushed it to you.
The main difference is that the new interface separates your emails into different tabs. There are tabs for: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. You’ll probably get the first four by default, but you can adjust the settings to have whatever combination of these you want, including only Primary, which would make your inbox more like the classic Gmail.
Primary, according to Google, is reserved for messages from friends and family, and other messages that don’t appear in other tabs. Promotions is where deals, offers and other promotional emails reside (like email marketing messages from lists you’re subscribed to). Social is where you will see messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms and other social sites. Updates is where you will find notifications like confirmations, receipts, bills and statements. Forums will include messages from online groups, discussion boards and mailing lists." continue reading Web Pro News.

   See also:

Google's Gmail Promises Personal Knowledge Management Online (2004) http://contentblogger.shore.com/

  How Nonprofits Can Navigate Gmail Tabs, Beaconfire Consulting 

What Do Users Think Of Google’s New Look? webpronews.com 

European Commission (EC) details Google's proposed search concessions

EC details Google's proposed search concessions

CNET, by Stephen Shankland, 25 April, 2013 Google offers to label its own services in search results and give some prominence to rivals. European competitiveness regulators now want feedback, and critics are lodging objections.

On the same shelf:

Do Google's Search Proposals Go Far Enough? Is the EU pushing Google too far?   WebProNews Chris Crum, 25 April, 2013

Extract: "The Commission views Google as dominant in search and search advertising, and says it is abusing its dominant position in four areas: specialized search, content usage, exclusivity agreements with publishers for the provision of online search advertising on their sites, and contractual restrictions on the portability and management of online search advertising campaigns across AdWords and competing platforms." continue reading

Google’s Search Proposal to EU, Networks, February 6th, 2013

Using Google Power Tools for Gathering Competitive Intelligence

"Gathering information about competitors can be relatively easy if you know where to look and what you're looking for, according to competitive-intelligence professionals." David Gibson, co-ordinator of the Toronto chapter of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).

Interestingly, Google search is now the leader in helping you find what you want, when you want. It is no more a simple link finder--if one remembers those days when Yahoo and Hotbot were the market leaders in vertical searching, and Google was no where. Google is no more a competitor with any of those who tried their best to Bing or whatever (let alone its once proposed partner: Yahoo).

Google keeps adding power tools. Other than the general purpose of a search engine, some of these Google's tools are a powerful aid in gathering Web analytics (e.g., search within links, domain, titles, subject, etc.), some for gathering competitive intelligence / market research (see examples, below), so on and so forth. Additionally, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and many more Google applications are a major attraction for techies.

Google as a power search tool helps you in finding facts, figures and data. And the example here is finding competitive intelligence on any given subject. The list of tools Google offers includes (located in Google's vertical sidebars or in the main menu):

Trends on a subject of example Market Research

News on the subject of market research in the last 24 hours (you can change the time, if you like)

Images, that are limited to a subject of your choice, e.g., Market Research--you can change to default results, i.e., relevance

Limiting search to a specific Domain name, e.g., .biz, and market research

Discussions, on Market Research

Finance in relation to market research -- one can limit to related companies

Books (with a free preview option), for example on Market Research

Chel Wolverton - Google Reader - Public - Questions to Ask Competitive Intelligence Software Providers - Cooperative Intelligence

5 Lonely Google Applications For Competitive Intelligence, By Ian Smith

Business Intelligence vs. Competitive Intelligence, Jan Steyl

Culture of secrecy keeping Canadians in the dark, Toronto Star

On the same shelf:

Google: Location a "Hugely Important" Signal

If Location's Not a Big Part of Your Strategy, It Will Be, Tuesday, March 23, 2010, By Chris Crum @ WebProNews

So what next?
I compared the ads that reflect a waterfall (one in North America, another in India)
See Google ads here [not so much matching], but here it is glaring. So also with Yahoo and then the MSN's Bing.

• Hogenakkal: Niagara Falls of India
• Niagara Falls Tourism Official Website Niagara Falls Ontario Canada
• Shivanasamudra [The two waterfalls are Gaganachukki and Bharachukki and together are also known as bluff. One of Bharachukki's sections resembles a 'U', just like the famous Niagara Falls]
• Nirmala Palaniappan's Photos - Sivanasamudra @ Facebook

Research isn’t a Google search

Says, Kathy Lee Berggren (a professor at Cornell University, teaches oral communication with a “heavy research component") in Research Methods ‘Beyond Google’

Burnt Out Adjunct has interesting reflection on this beyond the domain of Google, titled: “Google is not research.”:

"I would counsel against the fallacy of the lazy student. They seem, on the whole, eager to bridge the expectation divide (they expect open, accessible information). They do not expect to have to navigate the Byzantine fiefdoms of disciplined research. Naive and perhaps idealistic? Yes. But really, should research be as hard as it is?
Consider that you are not affiliated with a university/college. How do you go about finding the research/articles/data you need? Same set of steps confound the Freshman. The databases are not intuitive or well advertised? And why aren’t they all aggregated anyway? Why is it easier to order a pizza than to find a set of vetted articles on a given subject? And then we blame the student for not being able to navigate the labyrinth to find the gems?" Listen

RESEARCH: You go to the library and look in a biographical dictionary. Or you call up Google.com and then sort through the 410000+ references to him. ... The Craft of Research, Third Edition...

See on the same shelf:

• Making by Stealing of Un-cited (Recycled) in the Wiki Age: Role of Librarians?
• Who's tracking your health? Paging Dr. Internet
• Nine Free Apps Every Writer Should Consider
• "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Who's tracking your health? Paging Dr. Internet

IVOR TOSSELL, The Globe and Mail, May 23, 2008 [posted here with permission of the author]

Google, pursuing its strategy of monetizing omniscience, has launched a product that will track every bit of your health information. Everyone together now: Yikes!

Called Google Health, it seems destined to exacerbate the pent-up fears that underlie our increasing reliance on massive technology corporations. But the scariest thing about Google Health is how useful it looks like it will be. It's an oasis of sanity in the madness of health-care record-keeping that we know and loathe. But will its Googliness be enough to keep people away?

Following in the footsteps of other companies - including Microsoft, which launched a competing product called "HealthVault" - Google Health made its debut this week in the United States, though Canadians weren't barred from signing up.

The site offers a handful of linked services. First and foremost, it wants to be a storehouse for health information, everything from the names of conditions to the nitty-gritty of test results, including blood tests and imaging results. Users can input this information in one of two ways: They can plug it in by hand or by choosing options from Google's exhaustive lists, from "Aarskog syndrome" to "zits." But American users who signed up also discovered that Google Health not only lets them punch in their own test results, but import information directly from the handful of health-care networks and pharmacies that have partnered with them.

The service is simple and elegant, but more to the point, it highlights a glaring need. Too many of us are trapped in a nightmare where our medical records are scattered across the offices of every clinic and surgeon we've ever visited, instead of one central location.

Referrals are accompanied by faxed wads of paper, which may or may not contain all the relevant information, and occasionally get lost in the shuffle. Patients have become used to starting from scratch with every new physician they see, sometimes needlessly duplicating tests.

The ramifications for quality of care are enormous, and in emergency situations, digital record-keeping can go from convenience to life-saver. The upshot of the present systems is that if you want to guarantee that results will be there when they're needed, it's best to keep copies for yourself - which is something the system discourages, too.

That's not to say that things aren't improving. A patchwork of digital-record initiatives have sprung up across the country, though many of them work in isolation. Many clinics and hospital networks, for instance, do keep electronic medical records, but don't freely share them with other providers on account of privacy concerns.

Most promising of all, Alberta and Prince Edward Island already have province-wide electronic record-keeping systems that store records centrally for each patient, giving them the same kind of one-stop access to their records that Google is offering.

According to Richard Alvarez, executive director of Canadian Health Infoway, a non-profit organization that's spearheading the drive for electronic records in Canada, the rest of the country should follow suit over the next couple of years.

Even if government steps up to the plate, however, private services like Microsoft's and Google's will still be around. In fact, Infoway is working with them to see that their products will be able to talk to the systems that are being built in Canada.

The question is whether Canadians - who have never had a huge fondness for privately delivered health care - will entrust their most sensitive secrets to a company that's made a fortune by selling ads on cat videos.

In time, we might. Rather than being rendered obsolete by province-wide electronic systems, the likes of Google Health could remain a useful complement.

As Alvarez suggests, snowbirds might find it useful for keeping their health information together when they travel beyond their province's borders. And Google Health does things that austere government systems might not, like link to extensive reference pages that detail various medical conditions.

By the same token, Google's servers are located in the United States, and as such are subject to the Patriot Act, which can see data handed over to the authorities. (Though the idea that U.S. authorities might actually wait for legal sanction before intercepting data seems increasingly quaint.) And, as American observers have pointed out, Google claims that it isn't subject to the U.S. laws that regulate the handling of health records.

All of which will likely give a lot of people pause before spilling their guts to Google's servers. But in time, others might realize that online privacy has always been a bit of a mirage, especially where Google is involved.

Anyone who's spent a morning searching Google for a health concern has already told that company what they've got - or worse, what they think they've got. And it's been shown that an anonymous user's identity can easily be deduced from what they search for.

Google Health, then, is a test of how comfortable we are confronting the reality of omniscient, inscrutable databases. Odds are, Dr. Internet already has your chart. Will you own up to it?

Google Sites: What's all the fuss?

Before you read the fussy part, can you find the Way: Where is the link to this new tool @ Google??? News stories don't point to the link, either. Google has added a JotSpot, as well!!!

Aha: You need to go an extra mile to find, here is the link:

News story posted by Dan FarberToday on CNET

The launch of Google Sites is like the opening of a movie or play. The critics (including myself) feast on it, churning out copy and opinions as to whether Google Sites is a Microsoft SharePoint killer or merely the McDonald's of wikis, with more nutritional value than the venerable fast food burger and no cost.