Gas Pumps with Google Maps

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These new gas pumps with access to Google maps are pretty much the coolest thing I've seen in a while. I wonder if you can use Google Maps without buying gas.

Image from Engadget.com

Attach Pages Documents in Gmail

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Every time I try to e-mail a document created in Apple's Pages using Gmail, it gets stuck in this this endless "Loading" loop.  It seems that Gmail can't send Pages documents, and perhaps even other documents created in iWork.  And I thought Google and Apple were all buddy-buddy lately.  Anyways, they should really do something about this.  So far the only work-around I've found is to change the extension before e-mailing it, and then restoring the extension when you download the file.

Google Briefcase and Google Gears

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Every few weeks I dive into my site reports and check out how my hits are doing and what searches land visitors here.  Much to my surprise among the top search terms is "Google Briefcase."  My basic idea with Google Briefcase was for a desktop application that automatically saves your recent e-mails, documents, spreadsheets, and calendar events to your computer so you can access them when you're not online.  Originally I thought Google Briefcase could be a bit like Outlook or Palm Desktop, with different functions that correspond to the different Google services it interfaces with.  Or perhaps, it could manage synchronization and there would be full client side versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Docs & Spreadsheets.  But that all changed when I found out about Google Gears.  Google Gears is a browser extension (for Firefox and IE) that enables web apps to run offline in the browser.  Presumably this method would be a much more minimal development effort than creating full blown client-side versions of web applications.  Google Reader already works with Gears and they should totally develop Gmail, Docs & Spreadsheets, and Calendar to work with Google Gears next.  I can't wait to edit my Google Documents without a web connection, or look up an address or phone number I conveniently only have in my Gmail...

Multiple Signatures in Gmail

I love Gmail's ability to send from and check multiple e-mail addresses, it lets me keep all my e-mails at my fingertips in the Gmail interface I've love so much. However, Gmail only allows users to have one signature which gets appended to all outgoing e-mails. Gmail really should have the ability to set up different signatures for each outgoing e-mail address. That way folks like me, who use Gmail to check several e-mail addresses (including a few for various jobs), won't be stuck with the same signature on everything.

Google Briefcase: Access to your Google Apps when you're not online

The great thing about web based applications is all your data is stored on a server instead of on your computer and the worst thing about web based applications is all your data is stored on a server instead of on your computer.  As much as I love Gmail, Google Calendar, Documents and Spreadsheets and all the other Google applications I've been burned more than once by not having an important e-mail or document on my computer when I couldn't get to an internet connection.  Google should really create a desktop application that automatically saves recent e-mails and active documents to your computer so you can get to your stuff when you can't get to an Internet connection, sort of like a briefcase that automatically grabs all your important stuff.

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YouTube for Audio

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I've seen a couple major blogs use YouTube just to stream audio, which really begs the question why can't you just upload an audio file to YouTube? Read on for what such a web app could be like.

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Gmail Unread Messages Menu Item

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I love Google Gmail, but sometimes it's hard for me to find all the unread messages in my inbox when they're not in the first page of messages. They should totally just add an "Unread" menu item, which would quickly display all unread messages in the inbox. Currently the only way to view all the unread messages in your inbox is to search for "in:inbox is:unread" (which isn't that hard, but the menu option would sure be easier).

Browse Gmail Attachments

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E-mail attachments are a funny thing, everyone e-mails files to themselves, so at some point inboxes start to serve as file storage. Given that Gmail offers over 2.5 gigs of storage, I’d imagine Gmail users do this way more than most e-mail users. I don’t know of any e-mail application that deals with this use of e-mail very well. Usually searching for attachments is a clunky function, and searching inside attachments…forget about it. So if Gmail provided an interface which made searching and browsing e-mail attachments significantly easier, they’d really be going into uncharted territory.

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Google Bookmarks: Adding Easier, Gunning for del.icio.us

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Google recently added this "Add Bookmark" pop-up window, which makes bookmarking a site much easier. The window is launched by a bookmarklet that can be added to your browser links toolbar, so it's very quick and easy. Obviously the window bares a pretty close near identical resemblence in both form and function to del.icio.us's tag window.

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Wind Powered Google Server Farm

I've often wondered how much it costs to send an e-mail. Of course it's not so easy to measure, sure given a specific company or institution you can add up annual equipment costs and salaries, and divide that by the number of e-mails sent in a year and get a rough estimate. But at what point does energy and rent factor in to the equation? If you live in a major city such as New York, square footage isn't cheap. I've often thought that some enterprising company could offer huge cost savings on hosted e-mail by locating e-mail servers in a remote area and powering the server farm with wind turbines. Now that Google is slowly venturing into hosted e-mail, there's finally a pretty good candidate to try something like this.

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Integrate Google Bookmarks with Search

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It seems that Google has expanded the Search History feature to include Bookmarks. I wish I knew exactly when this happened, but typical Google they rolled this out totally silently. Currently the way you add items to your Bookmarks is by "starring" items in your Search History. Then after you star a URL you can "label" it just like in GMail. Bookmarks can also be added from Google's Personalized Homepage, but if you do it this way you don't have the option of labeling it. However, you can't add a new bookmark directly from Google search results, which really seems like the most obvious way to add bookmarks, or just importing them from your web browser or from...

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