Those of you who defy reason and stick with good old BT for your internet and email services will soon witness a massive change to its mail system, thanks to a move to dump Yahoo as its email provider.
Currently, BT’s web email interface is branded as being “Yahoo! Mail” product and comes complete with an entire portal full of news stories to accidentally click on.
The plan is for BT to dump all of this in favour of using its own web mail front end, called BT Mail, which ought to filter out to all users by the end of 2013.
According to the Telegraph, one of the reasons for doing this is due to ongoing “hacking” of email accounts that use the BT Yahoo system, although BT’s announcement sounds more like it’ll be using the move to drive traffic to a redesigned BT.com portal that’ll offer a similar collection of news and features to that currently aggregated by Yahoo. As in, a page loads of people get forwarded to that BT can sell adverts around the edges of.
It’s actually a bit of a shame. Majority of the people who still use BT Internet email addresses are of the "more mature" variety. The young 'uns have their hotmail or gmail accounts (they have problems too). There will be changes required to access your BT emails. Hopefully BT will make it as painless as possible, but I somehow doubt that.
In any case if you are worried or want to discuss alternatives, by all means call Optima Computers on 020 8445 6700. We will have the right solution for you.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/btdota/10089355/BT-dumps-Yahoo-email-after-hacking-claims.html
Optima Computers - T: 020 8445 6700
Friday 31 May 2013
Thursday 23 May 2013
Google makes sending cash to a friend as easy as sending an email
Google is bringing Google Wallet support to Gmail, making it incredibly easy to send friends and family payments by just sending an email.
For now this is US only, but only a matter of time before it is here in the UK with us.
“Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and family directly within Gmail — even if they don’t have a Gmail address,” Google writes in a blog post today. “It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card.”
To send money using Gmail, you will be able to just hover over the attachment paperclip in the compose view and then click the “$” icon to add money to your email.
The new feature will compete directly with other online payment solutions like PayPal and Dwolla. It will be rolled out to all Gmail users in the U.S. over the age of 18 “over the coming months.”
Check out this video below for more.
For now this is US only, but only a matter of time before it is here in the UK with us.
“Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and family directly within Gmail — even if they don’t have a Gmail address,” Google writes in a blog post today. “It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card.”
To send money using Gmail, you will be able to just hover over the attachment paperclip in the compose view and then click the “$” icon to add money to your email.
The new feature will compete directly with other online payment solutions like PayPal and Dwolla. It will be rolled out to all Gmail users in the U.S. over the age of 18 “over the coming months.”
Check out this video below for more.
Okay, Google: Voice search goes live with latest version of Chrome
Google is enabling a more naturally spoken question-and-answer interface to its search service for people with a new version of Chrome.
If you are not on the latest version of Chrome (Ver 27), upgrade to it, so you can take advantage of voice search.
Note, Voice search will only work if there is a microphone in or attached to your computer.
Pretty soon you will be able to talk to your browser and it will return back with answers or results.
Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine.
It's all part of the gradual arrival of Google's vision to build a Star Trek-style search engine, in which the computer grasps what people want and answers them. Eventually, expect Google to let people initiate a query by saying, "OK, Google," as with Google Glass voice commands.
It's not clear yet how broadly the service is available. Some reported receiving errors that said "no Internet connection."
Google confirmed the move Wednesday. "Conversational search has started rolling out on Google.com in the latest version of Chrome. You can just click the mic in the search box, ask your question in a natural way, and get spoken answers," the company said in a statement.
Users need to update their Chrome browser to get the new functionality, according to Google.
If you are not on the latest version of Chrome (Ver 27), upgrade to it, so you can take advantage of voice search.
Note, Voice search will only work if there is a microphone in or attached to your computer.
Pretty soon you will be able to talk to your browser and it will return back with answers or results.
Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine.
It's all part of the gradual arrival of Google's vision to build a Star Trek-style search engine, in which the computer grasps what people want and answers them. Eventually, expect Google to let people initiate a query by saying, "OK, Google," as with Google Glass voice commands.
It's not clear yet how broadly the service is available. Some reported receiving errors that said "no Internet connection."
Google confirmed the move Wednesday. "Conversational search has started rolling out on Google.com in the latest version of Chrome. You can just click the mic in the search box, ask your question in a natural way, and get spoken answers," the company said in a statement.
Users need to update their Chrome browser to get the new functionality, according to Google.
Friday 3 May 2013
So long, Hotmail: Remaining users migrated to Outlook.com
End of an era for one of the first free webmail services
Hotmail addresses may live on, but the service we once knew as Hotmail is no more, now that Microsoft has transferred all 300 million active Hotmail accounts to its new, modernized Outlook.com webmail offering.
"We want to give a huge 'Thank you' to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that's going back as far as 1996," Microsoft's Dick Craddock eulogized in a blog post on Thursday. "It has been an amazing journey and we've been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years."
Microsoft first began signing up new users for Outlook.com in July 2012, while giving them the option to switch back to Hotmail if they didn't like the new service. In February 2013, it announced that it was officially taking Outlook.com out of preview and boasted that it had already signed up 60 million users. But that still left hundreds of millions of users on the old Hotmail system.
Microsoft had always warned Hotmail users that their accounts would be migrated to Outlook.com eventually; it just didn't say when that would happen. As it turns out, there was good reason for that, because moving all of the Hotmail data over to the new system was no trivial matter.
"This meant communicating with hundreds of millions of people, upgrading all their mailboxes – equaling more than 150 million gigabytes of data – and making sure that every person's mail, calendar, contacts, folders, and personal preferences were preserved in the upgrade," Craddock wrote.
Hotmail users had better like the new Outlook.com UI, because it's all they'll get from now on
What it means for Hotmail users is that although they will be able to keep their @hotmail.com addresses, starting on Thursday they will see the Outlook.com UI rather than the familiar Hotmail one, and unlike before, they will no longer be able to revert their accounts to the old style if they don't like the change.
"Our belief is that as people start using the new experience, they will come to love it even more than they loved Hotmail," Craddock writes.
Obviously, not every Hotmail user will agree, but such is the way of things on the wild, wild web.
Hotmail addresses may live on, but the service we once knew as Hotmail is no more, now that Microsoft has transferred all 300 million active Hotmail accounts to its new, modernized Outlook.com webmail offering.
"We want to give a huge 'Thank you' to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that's going back as far as 1996," Microsoft's Dick Craddock eulogized in a blog post on Thursday. "It has been an amazing journey and we've been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years."
Microsoft first began signing up new users for Outlook.com in July 2012, while giving them the option to switch back to Hotmail if they didn't like the new service. In February 2013, it announced that it was officially taking Outlook.com out of preview and boasted that it had already signed up 60 million users. But that still left hundreds of millions of users on the old Hotmail system.
Microsoft had always warned Hotmail users that their accounts would be migrated to Outlook.com eventually; it just didn't say when that would happen. As it turns out, there was good reason for that, because moving all of the Hotmail data over to the new system was no trivial matter.
"This meant communicating with hundreds of millions of people, upgrading all their mailboxes – equaling more than 150 million gigabytes of data – and making sure that every person's mail, calendar, contacts, folders, and personal preferences were preserved in the upgrade," Craddock wrote.
According to Craddock, once the "go" sign was given, the Outlook.com team was able to complete the full migration in around six weeks.
Mind you, things didn't go quite as smoothly as Craddock suggests. During the upgrade period, both the Hotmail and Outlook.com services were hit with multiple, prolonged outages, and many Hotmail users reported being locked out of their accounts as Microsoft moved them over to Outlook.com. Now that the migration is complete, such headaches will hopefully be things of the past – fingers crossed.
Craddock says that with the Hotmail transition completed, Outlook.com now boasts some 400 million active accounts, including 125 million that are accessing their mail, contacts, and calendars on mobile devices via Exchange ActiveSync.
Hotmail users had better like the new Outlook.com UI, because it's all they'll get from now on
What it means for Hotmail users is that although they will be able to keep their @hotmail.com addresses, starting on Thursday they will see the Outlook.com UI rather than the familiar Hotmail one, and unlike before, they will no longer be able to revert their accounts to the old style if they don't like the change.
"Our belief is that as people start using the new experience, they will come to love it even more than they loved Hotmail," Craddock writes.
Obviously, not every Hotmail user will agree, but such is the way of things on the wild, wild web.
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