"By installing Offline Gmail, you’re able to use the normal Gmail interface to read and write mail, search, and organize, even when there’s no internet connection," explains Gmail software engineer Aaron Whyte. "And Flaky Connection mode speeds up Gmail when your connection is slow or unreliable."

"Since we first launched in Labs, we’ve heard from a lot of you who tried Offline Gmail, and your feedback helped us make a lot of improvements," adds Whyte.

Google recently added a couple of new features for offline Gmail. These are an option to choose which messages get downloaded for offline use, and the ability to send attachments while offline.

"Offline Gmail has proven particularly useful for business and schools making the switch to Google Apps from traditional desktop mail clients — they’re used to being able to access their mail whether or not they’re online, and Offline Gmail brings this functionality right to the browser," says Whyte.

To utilize the offline feature in Gmail, just turn it on and adjust your offline settings from the "offline" tab in Gmail’s settings.

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The promotion is called "Step Up to the Mic," and is designed to let MySpace users in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, share their thoughts with the public in these cities. The two companies are also encouraging celebrities and music artists to take part to promote their "passion projects" and communicate with fans.

"The convergence of social media and digital out-of-home advertising is actually happening as a result of Titan’s partnership with MySpace." said Bill Apfelbaum, Chairman of Titan. "The ability to create and connect communities through Titan’s digital signs located around the world and the ability for advertisers to interact with and connect with their target audiences on a real-time basis now exists. We are delighted to work with the social media trailblazers, MySpace, in revolutionizing our industry."

"MySpace has continuously provided our users with online and offline capabilities on a global level," said Angela Courtin, SVP of Marketing Entertainment and Content at MySpace. "The project with Titan reaffirms that offering by marrying the world of advertising with socialization and sharing. It enables our users to broadcast themselves in a creative and innovative manner, just as they do on the site."

The promotion certainly provides for an interesting spin on social media marketing. Users can go to the promotion’s MySpace page to participate. There is a 50-character and one image limit.

Yes, this is the official announcement from the Google Team about a maintenance process, this Saturday. The AdWords login console and the API will be offline between 10am and 2pm Pacific Time.

“We’ll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday, January 10 from approximately 10:00am to 2:00pm PST. You won’t be able to access AdWords or the API during this time frame, but your ads will continue to run as normal.” -Jeffrey Posnick, AdWords API Team.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups:

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The study focused on the offline sales impact of online reviews for restaurants, hotels, travel, legal, medical, automotive and home services. About one out of every four Internet users (24 percent) said they used online reviews before paying for a service delivered offline. Out of those that referenced an online review, 41 percent of restaurant reviewers went on to visit a restaurant, while 40 percent of hotel reviewers stayed at a hotel.

Over three-quarters of review users in almost every category reported that the review had a major impact on their purchase with hotels ranking highest (87 percent). Ninety-seven percent of those who said they made a purchase based on an online review said the review was accurate. Review users reported that reviews written by other consumers had more of an influence than those written by professionals.

"This study underscores the importance of providing not just good, but excellent, service if a business hopes to generate positive consumer reviews which will result in greater sales," said Brian Jurutka, senior director, comScore Marketing Solutions.

According to Andy Beal, Google’s calendar application is talking to Google Gears, which specializes in offline functionality.  “I just saw an interesting pop-up message while opening-up Google Calendar,” Beal wrote.  “It said the application wanted to use Google Gears, did I approve?”  Beal did.

But despite that promising start, it turns out the feature still isn’t functional, and Beal’s pop-up isn’t even appearing for most users.  There’s no doubt that this is real, though – others have echoed Beal’s report, and he took a screenshot as proof – and it looks like whatever Google has up its sleeve is much nearer to the company’s hand than its shoulder.

All of this raises an interesting question: if Google Calendar becomes available offline, what else might follow?  The smart money’s on Gmail – even if taking it offline would be considerably more difficult, this represents a sort of logical next step, and is also something that would please a lot of users.

For the time being, though, we’re just waiting to see if Google Calendar can catch up with its paper counterparts.

The Los Angeles Times noted ReachLocal picked up $55.2 million in funding, to help it find high-tech customers through a decidedly low-tech approach – salespeople pitching Internet ads in person.

ReachLocal helps these businesses with placing ads on services like Google, Yahoo, and other major Internet presences. A small business likely doesn’t have the ability to dedicate someone to managing online ad campaigns; ReachLocal does that work for them.

Of course, they have competition, namely in Google. The dominant search engine has its own feet on the street seeking local business, through its Business Referral Representative program.

Local search represents a multi-billion dollar piece of the overall online advertising market. The specialized needs of managing online advertising, even if it’s just an issue of time, could make ReachLocal and its competitors a lucrative return as small businesses turn to them for expertise.

But it’s not just revenge fraud, ConfidentialAccess specializes in several types of fraud it claims to be legal. Though their site, operated by Britons from Hong Kong servers, has gone from confidential access to inaccessible access, a copy of the company’s about-page can be found on AboutUs.org.

From that:

Today CA can show you how to build a perfectly legal new credit file, we can give you novelty employment or a pretend job which all checks out; what about a set of fully certified trading accounts. Maybe you need to show proof of funds with a recognised bank we can lodge up to £250 million on paper; last but not least we can produce any legal duplicate document you can think of; we can make the document appear in its original form or we can amend any details you wish including transactional data. We can hear you saying "Are You Legal" The answer is of course. Confidential Access and CA Media Group contracted both UK and US Corporate Lawyers to draft a legal foundation we could trade on. Our given advice was to move our infrastructure offshore to a neutral jurisdiction in order to offer true privacy and protection to our ever growing list of international clients.

They also claim to have "some morals" and do not support international terrorism. However, the Sunday Times in England was able to obtain fake a fake (and convincing) British driver’s license with the picture of one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists.

The cost of a fake terrorist driver’s license? About $600.

They can also forge pay slips or sabotage a PayPal account.

The above AboutUs.org source lists a PO Box in Arizona, as well as a phone number, which is actually a number for an anonymous hosting company in Arizona.

While it hasn?t disclosed exactly what Parakey is doing, previously published reports hint that the company was working on technologies that would allow offline access to web applications. It wouldn?t be a surprise if Facebook made an off-line version of its social service.

Meanwhile both Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang are concerned that Facebook is a black hole of data – it all goes in, but doesn’t come out. Is it a surprise?

If you take a look around at the top internet companies and they’re all black holes. Can you think of a company as successful as Facebook that has a two-way street of data? The only reason we should expect something different from Facebook is that they’re a social network, so you’d expect the “social” would also apply to the sharing of data.

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In some cases the company holds sanctioned events and group networking meetings, but members often take it upon themselves to set up networking events. This is slowly creating more tight knit communities that are great for meeting people for general purposes and for networking.

The value in this lies in the fact that community members get to meet with each other in person, conduct business, swap stories and reviews, and generally have a good time with like-minded people.

For the companies involved, there is another overarching goal that inspires them to organize such events: sticking power. They want to keep members and creating a tight little community is a great way to ensure people stay. Also, taking it offline means more people will talk about it and they may potentially gain a whole new base of consumers.

These communities are fast becoming an integral part of the social web, driving and shaping its course. For example, all you have to do is go to Myspace.com and there are always events, concerts and myraid other possibilities on the outside world hosted by them and joined by thousands and millions of community members.

Yelp has events throughout the US and is growing quickly. Biznik.com holds many events and a weekly happy hour for its community members.

Beyond the socializing theme, the real value in this lies in the myriad business opportunities available to community users. Goods an services can be talked about and discussed, you can get to know the person you’re buying from or selling to, and much more.

This is one of the reasons why Social Media Systems pays so much attention to making our clients part of these communities; if you become an active member and participate in events, you can both meet people and pitch a service or product that one, they need, and two, they’re interested in.

Google has been extremely active in the last year adding services and developing products for users and webmasters alike, however, in some instances they have missed the mark.

Here are some of the news, new and improved products from Google:

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