If you have Offline Gmail enabled, you'll notice that all your mail now goes through the outbox, regardless of whether you're online or offline. This allows Gmail to capture all attachments, even if you suddenly get disconnected from network. If you're online, your mail will quickly be sent along to its destination.

If you haven't tried offline access yet, visit the Labs tab and follow these instructions to get started:

1. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
2. Click Save Changes.
3. After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline" link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.

Now that you can send attachments while offline, we'd love to see pictures of you using Gmail in unusual places while you're disconnected from the web. Pictures of you using Gmail in an airplane, igloo, or submarine are all welcome. Email your photo to hikingfan@gmail.com and we'll post the most interesting ones here.

Street View gives users a 360-degree view of a road via Google Maps.

Authorities want to know how long the images would be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights.

A similar street mapping service, run by local ISP Kapou, was also suspended for the same reason.

In a statement, Google said that it had not seen the full details of the The Hellenic Data Protection Authority's request, but had taken steps to protect people's privacy.

"Google takes privacy very seriously, and that's why we have put in place a number of features, including the blurring of faces and licence plates, to ensure that Street View will respect local norms when it launches in Greece," the statement read.

"We have already spoken with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority to ensure that they understand the importance we place on protecting user privacy.

"Street View has not been banned in Greece. We have received a request for further information and we are happy to continue discussing these issues with them. We will discuss with them whether it is appropriate for us to continue driving in the meantime.

"Although that dialogue is ongoing, we believe that launching in Greece will offer enormous benefits to both Greek users and the people elsewhere who are interested in taking a virtual tour of some of its many tourist attractions."

First launched in the US two years ago, Street View has now covers nine countries, including the United Kingdom and Google wants to expand the service to cover all of Europe.

Users zoom in to a given location in Google Maps, and then drag the "Pegman" icon above the zoom bar on to a given street.

A picture view of that street appears, which users can control to get a 360-degree view of the area or to progress on street level, throughout the city.

Google says the service shows only imagery already visible from public thoroughfares.

Under fire

However, it has come in for criticism from some quarters, being accused of an invasion of privacy.

While many of these charges have been dismissed, either through the courts or by regional information commissioners, in some cases people have taken a more direct approach.

In April, residents near Milton Keynes blocked the driver of a Google Street View car when he started taking photographs of their homes saying the service was "facilitating crime".

The Pentagon has also banned Google from filming near or inside its military bases, saying it posed a "potential threat" to security.

The director of the UK-based privacy watchdog Privacy International, Simon Davies, said the Greeks' decision would set a precedent for other nations.

"This is fantastic news. The Greek regulators understand the risks of future technology creep. They have watched what has happened in the US and UK very carefully and will be familiar with the arguments on both sides.

"This highlights the difference between regulators - some will allow the public space to be exploited, others acknowledge that people's privacy needs to be protected.

"Now we wait for the domino effect, as the Greek decision sets an example that others may follow - we will see what happens next in Central Europe."

That seems to be bad news for Joost. Youtube enters it's market, but it already has a large userbase.

Read the official announcement:

We are starting to test full-length programming on YouTube, beginning with some fan favorites requested by you. Let's see if you know your full-length TV ...

You asked to be beamed up with Scotty, to devise a world-saving weapon using only gum and paperclips, and to get your grub on at "The Peach Pit". So we're giving you full-length episodes of these shows and many others.

These shows will be available in the new Theater View style we rolled out earlier this week, which provides optimal experience for watching full-length programming on your computer. Our new full-length format, in conjunction with the launch of our new player, marks an exciting milestone for YouTube as we continue our efforts to expand user choice and improve viewer experience.

As we test this new format, we also want to ensure that our partners have more options when it comes to advertising on their full-length TV shows. You may see in-stream video ads (including pre-, mid- and post-rolls) embedded in some of these episodes; this advertising format will only appear on premium content where you are most comfortable seeing such ads. In order to make this clear to you, we've labeled all full-length videos with a Film Strip symbol ( ) so you'll know exactly what kind of content you're choosing to watch and what ads you might see. (To see an example of the badge on search results, click here.)

So if watching the newest installment of "Beverly Hills 90210" has you nostalgic for your favorite Brenda and Brandon moments, or if you're counting the days until the "Star Trek" movie release, you can watch your favorite TV on YouTube.

The YouTube Team

In the official website we read:

YouTube Live! is, first and foremost, a celebration of the site’s vast user communities; everyone from bedroom vloggers to world-famous rock stars, musicians, comedians, athletes, artists and more. Part concert, part variety show and part party, the event will bring to life many of the amazing videos and talent that YouTube viewers have already made popular on the site.

The two-hour event will take place on November 22, 2008, in front of a live audience in San Francisco; an audience of millions will be able to experience a simultaneous live stream on the site.

You can catch all the action here — before, during and after the show. Start by filling out the survey below..

Watch the video

[via]

As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue. You'll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of AdWords team will sell in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and there will also be contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information. In addition, publishers will be able to control their ads using filtering options.

Here's a quick video to give you a better idea of what games are part of our network and how advertisers can use this medium to reach their target audience:

And here's another, less flashy video, to show actual game play and how an ad could appear within the game:

"We were hoping to accomplish three things with it: make it faster, make it more consistent with our siblings (documents and presentations), and give us more room to add features without clutter," explains Google.

The toolbar includes some of the most frequently used features, but I don't think Google did a job at ordering them: for example, the cell formatting options are too prominent, while pasting and sorting have been neglected. It's great that the formulas can be added without switching to a different tab and you can share the spreadsheet without opening a new page. The most stylish UI element is the chat box that can be loaded by clicking on "(name) is viewing...".

A very cool new feature is the full-screen mode: press Ctrl+Shift+F repeatedly to alternate between two full-screen views and the standard view. The same shortcut lets you switch to the full-screen mode in the word processor, but you need to press Esc to return to the normal mode. Where is the consistency?

"We are experimenting with Audio Playback as an option for some knols, starting with a handful of English language featured knols. If this experiment is successful, we may make Audio Playback available to more knols in additional languages, and additional features," mentions a Knol help page.

Hopefully, Google will add support for text-to-speech conversions to other services like Google Docs, Google Reader or Google Book Search.

Google groups the posts based on their content. That means that you can view many opinions about a topic with just a click. It also gives us a nice graph about the topic coverage through time.

The blogs posted on the main page aren't picked by Google, but by an algorythm that calculates what's most popular from it's index. Any blog, even yours, could be in Google Blog Search homepage, the only thing you have to do is to get popular.

There are 11 categories: politics, US, world, business, technology, video games, science, entertainment, movies, television and sports.

The problem we see is that the results are not filtered. You can see spam messages, forum posts or even comments. Also, it doesn't provide an rss feed. Of course we can always expect more improvements. Well done Google!

Check it: Google Blog Search's homepage.