Jeff Bullas had a post up on his blog, Is Twitter About to Terminate Google Buzz, that discussed how Google Buzz is essentially dead. However, I don’t think Twitter killed Google Buzz. I think Google Buzz killed Google Buzz. I had high hopes for it. I really did. I didn’t see it as a Twitter killer or substitution for Twitter, but rather a more social version of the Google Reader Share with Note feature. I thought it might be a nice way to write a few lines about a blog post or news item you stumbled across. And with more blogs disabling comments, I thought it had potential to usher in a new era of blog commenting….

Gmail is rolling out a new feature which will make switching to their free email service even more attractive – import email and accounts from Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL or other POP3 accounts. The feature is obviously intended to draw in users who would be interested in switching but can’t face the hassle of transferring accounts or don’t want to abandon their old email. Google’s email service moves along in leaps and bounds, while Hotmail, now Live Mail sees only occasional updates. Yahoo also today announced some changes to the look and feel of their email service. With Live Mail and Gmail pushing…

Let’s face it, even in a world where spam is a daily occurrence, we still receive a load of email that isn’t spam, but might as well be. For example, thanks a bunch Facebook for introducing a messaging system that functions half as well as email AND sends email notifications to alert me to new messages. Google wants to help, and as usual they’re doing it for no other reward than for the joy it will bring their users. The new feature, dubbed “priority inbox” aims to separate our important communications from the stuff that isn’t spam, but might as well be. When an email reaches your inbox, Gmail decides…

Thanks to a leaked screenshot from a Chromium bug report, we might be seeing an update to Google’s email service look and feel in the near future. The changes are subtle, but they do show some hope for Google’s awful aesthetic approach to designing web apps. As you can see, the ‘compose mail’ button is now a dedicated button rather than a text link. Shocking! Also, the buttons along the top of the email viewer have been simplified, with a drop down option being added for controlling multiple selected items. Scandalous! FInally, and most provocatively, you can see a ‘call phone’ button has been added…

Gist, a social networking tool that works through email, today announced a Google Apps Gadget for Gmail. Email, the very first form of internet communication is ironically the last bastion of privacy in a time when everything you send out into the world wide web suddenly belongs to someone else, but Gist has been working hard to change that. Gist works through an add-on for Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes or through an iPhone app. Gist hopes to reach a much wider audience by adding Gmail support. As the video shows, you can click on people’s names in the ‘To’ or ‘Cc’ field in an email and using Gist’s…

Those of you are fans of both letter-writing and Samuel Beckett-like absurdity are really going to like this: Google Envelopes is a concept that would allow you to send snail mail from within GMail. Designed by Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik, the idea is to put an extra button into GMail that would let you send an actual printed letter from within the email service. What’s more, the envelope will be printed with a route from Google Maps, tracing how the letter got to you, which is charming personalized touch. While the idea is definitely impractical, it does remind one of how much effort used to go…

Fed up with the tireless Gmail access attempts from continental Asia? Well, no longer! Google has implemented a new warning system that will alert you if your Gmail account is suspected of having been accessed from afar. I’m impressed, if only a little. This is the first example I’ve seen of the recent fad of geotagging being put to good use. Okay, okay, so it’s not ‘geotagging’ in the purest sense. Gmail logs the IP address of the accessing computer, and compares its general location and time to the previous IP address. For instance, if you log in in Calgary at noon, and Cairo at noon-thirty,…