The final Gmail video

Remember I wrote a post about a new Gmail advertising campaign some time ago?
Look how creative people around the world have been...below there is the final video:

You may want to check out also the official Google Video page or the Gmail Blog.

Google Earth | Sky

Some time ago I've read (I don't remember where) that NASA will cooperate with Google for integrating their large amount of space pictures and celestial maps into Google Earth. Actually the cooperation sounds logic since NASA has the data and Google clearly the infrastructure for storing and displaying it.
I was always fascinated about astronomy and space-related stuff, already when I was in elementary school, then time became shorter in high-school, so I payed less attention to it....however I always kept an eye on news related to it. So it was also when hearing from the news about Google and NASA.
Just take a look at the video below to see Google Sky's capabilities

An alternative product, which I consider at the moment a lot better than the Google Earth | Sky fusion is Stellarium. It is a simple to use open source tool. Everyone can download and use it for free. Moreover there are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The best is the "easiness of use" since I'm not a professional astronomer :) . You can configure your current location and then the sky (depending on the current time) will be displayed on the screen...

Stellarium: day view	Stellarium: night view

Another big difference is also the max. resolution of space-objects. For instance zooming to the Mars with Stellarium and Google gave me the following results:

Google Earth | Sky	Stellarium: night view

There is still quite a difference as I think (on the other side I found very impressive pictures of the "orion nebula"). However one has to keep in mind that "Google Sky" has just been launched and I'm sure there will be a lot of quite nice improvements after some time of ...mainly also because the NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute itself delivers the data.

And by the way (Google)...I think I discovered a little bug ;)
To reproduce it, just start Google Earth, navigate to some location and activate the "Sky view" by clicking on the appropriate button on the toolbar. Make sure you also activated the "Sightseeing" mode in the "Places" planel. Done this you should see little markers on the sky as the following pic shows:

Google Talk JavaScript Client

Today, while scrolling over my Google Reader entries, a headline from the Google Operating System blog (not an official Google blog) got my attention: "JavaScript Google Talk".
Currently Google offers several options to chat:

• Google Talk Client (for Windows, written in C or C++)
• Google Talk Gadget (using Flash, runs on Web Browser, OS indipendent)
• Google Talk Web (integrated in Gmail)

Now, Zhou Renjian has written a JavaScript version of the popular GTalk which is worth for a post. Apparently it has been written in Java by using the Eclipse SWT UI components and Smack (a library for Jabber's XMPP). Afterwards it has been converted to JavaScript using Java2Script. It is really worth to visit and test the client. It almost looks as the real Gtalk desktop client.

Google Talk JavaScript Client

It is interesting to see how Java and even SWT user interfaces can be converted to JavaScript. I've never tested it personally...it sounds fantastically however. The JavaScript client of GTalk communicates using Servlets (as I understood).

Another nice implementation of online messengers is Meebo. It is a page, where you can login and use GTalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AIM. From a developer point of view it is interesting to see the capabilities of webpages...also because Meebo doesn't use Flash (also if it is hardly believable by looking at the UI) but it uses AJAX.

Creative way of making publicity

The Gmail team has found another time a way for publicizing their product. Some months ago I've posted a (crazy :) ) video about advertising Gmail.
Now they've extended their promotion by involving people around the world...a clever way of keeping people on the side...but take a look yourself

http://mail.google.com/mvideo