Email Posts: Now you can send a post to friends and family by tapping the familiar “email” link at the bottom of a post. This will open the native email application on your device, with the subject line and post content automatically populated in the body of a new email. After sending the email, you are automatically returned to Reader. When I tried it just now, the Reader screen didn’t even have to refresh, so it looks like you can get right back to where you left off in your feeds. Nice.

Share with Note: While you’ve always been able to add a post to your shared items from your iPhone or Touch, now you can personalize it by adding a note. Tap the “with note” link at the bottom of a post, and a text box slides down for you to add text.

I’ve started using this share feature a lot more lately. I’ve added Reader to my minifeed in Facebook, and there’s also a link to my shared items from the geekstew homepage. If you’re interested in reading the posts where I’ve left comments, there’s even a link for that too.

Sharing is caring. That’s what my mom always taught me.

[homepage photo from JJ*'s photostream on Flicker]

Users can now access Zoho’s slew of web-based productivity applications with their existing Google or Yahoo account. Except for those of you still stuck in Hotmail land…this should just about cover everyone.

I would encourage you to give them a shot if you haven’t before.

Zoho Writer and Zoho Creator are two of my favorites.

(I saw this today at TechCrunch and the Zoho Blogs.)

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll be happy to know you can now take advantage of Google’s mobile interface for your ASU account.

In a post on Thursday, Google made a few exciting announcements:

• Mobile version of Google News is now available for all you news junkies
• Expanded Google for iPhone and iPod Touch to 33 new markets and 16 more languages
• Full mobile integration of Google services with Google Apps accounts

I have a personal Google account in addition to my ASU Google Apps account. I noticed that you can be logged into both at the same time on my iPod Touch. This means I can get my ASU email, and browse my Google Reader account without having to log in/out. Beauty.

Does anyone else use Google on their iPhone or iPod Touch?

I logged into my ASU Google Docs account yesterday morning to a great little surprise. It looks like ASU students now have access to the new offline features of Google Docs.

Google Docs is only the second web application from Google to take advantage of their Gears API (the first was Google Reader back in May). In a nutshell, Gears is “…an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.” If you haven’t seen it already, here is the video announcement that Google published at the beginning of April.

There are a bunch of sites that take advantage of Gears already. There’s even a feed that features companies who have adopted Gears’ technology.

I just checked out a personal finance site called Buxfer that looks pretty cool. It has all the tools you would expect from a finance application - track spending, sync automatically with your existing accounts, add tags to purchases to see where the money’s going. They even have gadgets that you can drop on your Facebook, Netvibes, or myASU homepage. Take a tour of Buxfer’s features and sign up for a free account if you’re interested. I think I will…

Oh yeah - and remember Zoho? That online suite of insanely useful applications? Zoho has been using Google Gears since November 2007 with their Zoho Writer application. If you don’t have a Zoho account, what are you waiting for?

Have fun off line, kids.

Techcrunch reported it just moments ago at IMAP Support Disappears from Gmail.

I really hope this isn’t permanent.

UPDATE: An announcement was just posted in the Gmail Help Discussion group. Looks like it’s a temporary error and they’re working on fixing it.

UPDATE #2: Looks like it’s working again. At least in both of my accounts…that was fast.

Related posts:

• POP Goes the Gmail (part 1)
• POP Goes the Gmail (part 2)

This is one of the main reasons I dislike email: it’s just plain inconvenient to share large files with people. We’ve all experienced it. Friends sending videos, pictures, documents that take forever to load. Space isn’t much of a concern anymore for ASU students now that we all have over 2 Gb of Inbox storage, but with pictures and videos, that 2 Gb can fill up fast. (I like to stick to a self-made rule of keeping attachments to under 1 Mb.)

So what is one to do? Here is a list of solutions you should try before attaching that huge file to your email:

1. Drop.io - create a custom site (called a “drop”), add your files, and share the link to the site. No account setup, no registration. Add files via web, phone, fax (who has a fax machine?), widget, or email. WOW. This is cool. Password-protect a “drop,” if it has stuff you don’t want the world to see. Set time limits for how long a “drop” is available.
2. Box.net - free account allows users to upload files and share them by sending a link. Through their OpenBox services, 3rd party sites are compatible with their services, such as Zoho, Piknik, Facebook, etc. (10 Mb-per-file limit for free accounts. Bigger upload options available for paid accounts.)
3. Eatlime.com - similar to the previous two. Upload your files to your eatlime account, share them via link with friends and family. Offers easy interface for sharing stuff to your friends on popular social networks.
4. Google Docs - use those fancy “share” buttons in your ASU Google Docs account. Share or collaborate on a document with anyone. Making a document “public” will give it a unique web address that you can send to anyone. It even syncs with your ASU Gmail contacts, so you don’t have to worry about remembering an email address.
5. Zoho.com - similar to Google Docs, Zoho offers a wide variety of web-based applications where you can create documents/spreadsheets/presentations and then share them with friends or family. Zoho also has Zoho Viewer - a simple web app that allows you to upload and share a file with people.

In a landmark decision to improve the technology experience for its 60,000+ students, the University Technology Office announced this morning their decision to end its relationship with Google and their Google Apps and start fresh with Microsoft. Many of the details are still unknown, however a reputable source has made it clear that this transition will take place during the Summer 2008 break.

Student Gmail accounts, web-based (and now offline!) document editing and collaboration, calendar, website creation, and myASU accounts will be eliminated at the end of the Spring 2008 semester. They will be replaced with the mildly popular Microsoft Live@edu services. This is a similar set of services that includes an email account, calendars, and document collaboration.

The Microsoft Live@edu services are expected to launch in Spring of 2009.

Students will need to set up temporary services on their own for use during the Fall 2008 semester. According to Microsoft officials:

“This is only temporary until all the bugs can get worked out with the Microsoft Live@edu services. We really don’t anticipate it taking much longer than 1-2 semesters to get everything working properly. Definitely two semesters at the most. We would recommend students set up a new Google account in the meantime until we can get everything running.”

University Technology Officer, Adrian Sannier, is excited for the change. He has been a driving force behind the advancements to how students and faculty communicate. He sees this move to Microsoft as the University

“…heading in the right direction. With these new services, students will be rocking and rolling in cyberspace like never before. They will be able to send electronic messages to each other. Advanced users will quickly learn how to attach electronic files to these messages to share them with classmates and professors.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what Microsoft has in store for us. They have always been at the forefront of Internet-based technologies. I mean - seriously, who doesn’t have a Hotmail account? Did you know you can get like 2 Gb of free storage in a Hotmail account?!? That’s wacky!”

Google representatives could not be reached at the time of publishing. More news will follow as details develop.