Gmail UK becomes Google Mail UK

The BBC are reporting that Google have had to rename Gmail in the UK to Google Mail due to a trademark dispute with Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) (they do not have the nicest of websites but anyhow). This is the second time this has happened, with Gmail not being able to be used by Google in Germany after a ruling in September. Did Google really not think to look beyond their own shores when they came up with a name? Or maybe they just thought that they could pay their way to using gmail elsewhere (surely not). Even with all their money, I cannot see Google choosing to waste time over such matters.

Either way, how long is it going to be before they rename all their mail services Google Mail? Over time, they are not going to want to maintain 2 different brands worldwide - they will surely merge them. Shareholder value and all that. On top of that, as was pointed out on the BBC, people were sending emails to the wrong domain because of this - hardly a benefit if users start to get confused. Better to get the pain over and done with now and change - they are of course still in beta so they could just launch under a new name. Not ideal.. but better than trying to change later.

[update] For those visitors looking for gmail in the UK - you can find it at either www.googlemail.com or www.gmail.com - note if you state you live in the UK you will get an email address @googlemail.com address.

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I’m stuck in bed suffering with this cold that came out of nowhere and hit me today Maybe I didn’t notice, but I am sure I felt fine this morning. Then WHAM! several hundred sneezes later and I am sniffling away. Anyhow am back home now, with a cup of lemsip. Here is to hoping it does its job.

You see, according to here, I should be sniffling on day 1, with sneezes on day 2 to 4. That just hasnt happened. Of course then there is is the question of whether its a cold or the dreaded flu? According to this site well I don’t have either, as it seems to combine the 2..

spped of symptoms: quickly >> flu
Fever: yes >>so either cold or flu
Cough: only slightly >> either - possibly flu
Nasal symptoms: yes but not massive >> either possibly flu
Muscle aches: not really >> cold
sore throat: its just coming on now >> cold
Headache: none >> cold
Malaise: not really >> cold
Fatigue: slight >> cold

So where does that leave me? in bed getting better, hopefully by tomorrow

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Newspapers today come with stories consisting of the facts of the story (hopefuly ;)) and commentary. Sometimes they are intermingled and sometimes they are completely separate.

Today, I can get all the non commentary news on websites with ease (I use news.bbc.co.uk as most people in the UK seem to). This has meant that the factual news content inside newspapers is redundant for me - I invariably skip through it. However, good commentary is much harder to get hold of - and even better for the newspaper involved, often unique to their product. Now if each of these journalists had their own blog which they wrote their commentaries on, I could pick the commentators I like and go subscribe to their rss feed and not have to buy the newspapers anymore.

Of course there are a few problems here - one: I just said I wasn’t going to buy newspapers anymore. Hardly good news for said publisher. But these commentators are valuable - ie you could charge for access to all of the the commentators working for the publisher. This leads to another possible issue..

Commentators become higher profile. Suddenly they are what makes a news publisher - I don’t see this as an issue, I think this exists to a certain extent today already - just mostly offline rather than online - each paper has its own style/vstandpoints and invariably their commentators will be suited to this - so there is the ability to maintain the existing brand umbrella.

Looking at the major news publishers out there..

Financial Times
This one is a bit difficult as I no longer have a FT subscription, but they do list their commentators on their front page which gives a profile of them. I believe you can then see all their stories but there is no mention of RSS feeds anywhere.

Conclusion: Well in my view all the content is useful so maybe these guys are the exception

The Times
They have an rss feed on their front page which links to a page that lists a few categories (Britain, World, Sport, Business). But I cannot see any mention of the commentators anywhere - let alone rss feeds for them.

Conclusion: Useless, unless you want to use them as your main news source..

The Telegraph
Difficult to find anything on their commentators - but then their website is awful. (for some reason it felt like every click I made opened a new window - I ended up closing the entire site). Anyhow, on returning to the site, I found a link to RSS right down the bottom of the page On clicking it, there is a long list of different topics which you can subscribe to - no commentators though.

Conclusion: Slightly better - at least their categories are more tailored to the content..

The Independent
Commentators get their own section on the site and they have a huge number of rss feeds. On top of that, you can get the commentators as an rss feed. The one problem is they are grouped together (so Commentators A-L for example). It is also the cleanest layout I have found. Nicely done..

Conclusion: Almost there Just need blogs for each of their commentators.

The Guardian
They have blogs based on topic ares (technology, news, business etc) and they have a list of their commentators on their front page - but no access to rss feeds. They only have an rss feed for their overall site.

Conclusion: They call their areas blogs and they do work like blogs.. but rss implementation is weak to non-existent..

The Sun
No commentators, no rss - not really their audience though.

Conclusion: Useless

Daily Mail
They have rss feeds - but only by topic. They charge for access to the commentators - so there may be rss feeds inside. Layout of the commentators areas needs work though - a blog layout is the way forward

Conclusion: Not there yet.

Daily Mirror
Commentators have their own areas - but no ability for interaction/blog layout. RSS feeds are difficult to find - turns out they are available within each subsection (not a bad idea in itself - but there should be a centralised area as well).

Conclusion: Not there yet.

The Independent is the best but all in all, none of the papers in the UK online at the moment do what I want. It is no use anyhow if only a few papers do it (though it would be a start). I want to be able to pick and choose the commentators I subscribe to. Does this mean I may not want to subscribe to a specific newspaper - damned right it does. Maybe its time to set up a central point for freelance commentators to congregate and sell their wares - a new form of news publisher? 

As of this moment, I will have am subscribing to the people I think are experts in the industry I am interested in - these are mostly in the online space but that will change. - As a result I am still buying one of the sunday papers

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I have been planning on writing this post ever since I first got access to the beta of pandora (thanks guys). That was a little over a month ago now and the beta has now ended and the service live. It has been created by the Music Genome Project who (to quote from the website) "came up with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever".

So what is Pandora? Well it is in effect an internet radio station with a twist. You can create your own stations from a particular track that you like and then as you play tracks, you can rate what you think of the song. This constantly updates your preferences for that particular station. If you dont like a song you can skip to the next track. It actually reminds me of Spinner (bought by AOL in 1999) which had predefined stations you could choose and listen to. With Pandora of course, you can define the stations yourself.

It is a very easy to use - the interface is clean and friendly. There is one downside and as usual it comes from the music licensing side. Currently:

• You can only skip a certain number of songs per hour (I do not remember the precise number, and the website does not tell me  it was not that low a number though I did come across the limit every now and again)
• You cannot choose a specific song - this means Pandora is not going to be a replacement for your music collection - it was my single biggest gripe as it felt i could never quite communicate the exact style I wanted - though maybe this would not have been the case even if I could select the right track
• You cannot go back/rewind

All in all, pandora is a great service for discovering new tracks - even with licensing restrictions - it is meant to be a service to introduce you to new tracks and I found new tracks I liked, so it does what it says on the box I just wish it was integrated into something like Napster’s To Go service - then I could have all the flexibility and find new music in one place :) 

Saying that - it is only $36 a year or $12 a quarter.. Napster To Go is $15 a month - or for us UK people £15 a month (thats a whopping $315 a year!).

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Well it’s live..

As you can see, www.razorshine.com is now using wordpress instead of forwarding to my msn spaces blog. I am not sure what to do about that blog right now - how do you move all your users across automatically without making them go to the old one first and then on to the other?

I am quite happy with pretty much everything I think - things are certain to come but right now I have all the major things covered

The big addition was the gallery plugin - that was hard work to get working but integrates well now I think. It really isnt a patch on the MSN photo plugin but maybe one day someone will come up with a theme which is at least as good. The book list plug in (Amazon Media Manager) is really cool - I initially used connect via books but it looks awful when you add it to your blog. I was intent on trying to put one together myself but AMM meets the requirements and it would have taken me months to even get started The one thing that’s really missing is blog statistics - I have not yet found one that I am really happy with, though I can track everything that any other blog site gave me using StatTraq - but this has not been updated since June :( Mind you, I was not happy with other blog site’s statistics either

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