Gmail Can Now Tell Which Of Your Contacts Are Awake

Gmail Labs continues to make an awesome product even better. Tonight the site has introduced ‘Sender time zone’, a feature that allows users to quickly tell if their contact is likely awake or sound asleep, based on the time zone their Emails are being sent from.

The feature takes advantage of the time zone data often included in Email headers, showing a green light for contacts that are probably awake and a red one for those that are asleep.

For those of us who live and die by our inboxes, it can be tough to keep track of the contacts that are abroad, which can lead to some awkward phone calls (I’ve accidentally called CEOs of startups located in the UK at around 4 in the morning, their time). The feature is also helpful for determining how quickly you can expect an Emailed response from your contact (again, I’ve sent urgent messages to PR representatives who were based abroad).

As with all Google Labs features (other notables include a Panic Button and Multi-Pane Viewing) users can access the feature by enabling Google Labs through their Gmail settings, then selecting ‘Sender Time Zone’.

Google's Latest Browser CHROME

Google has launched its Web Browser called Chrome. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there.

We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

1. Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project.
   As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based
   on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include
   Google’s Gears project.


2. The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8
   built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other
   browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript
   performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web
   today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say
   means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.”
   When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in
   Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”


3. Google Chrome will use special Tabs.
   Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab
   buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.


4. Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address
   bar and toolbar.
   Mozilla has a project called Prism that aims to do similar (though doing so
   may train users into accepting non-URL windows as safe or into ignoring the
   URL, which could increase the effectiveness of phishing attacks).

Download the latest Google Browser here