Gmail

Add contacts from group mail to address book (not just sender). Gmail allows you to add the sender of an email to your contacts.  But in the case of a group email, what if you want to add all the other people the sender wrote to as well?

Additional fields for contacts. We would love to see birthdays in contacts which optionally integrate into your calendar.

Option to Reply to or Forward email without attachments.

Analytics for Gmail. We aren’t going to hold our breath on this one but an inbuilt analytics function similar to Xobni would be fantastic.

HTML Signatures. This is simply a must for business users.

Google Reader integrated into Gmail. Perhaps as an expandable folder?

Google Email Client. Now don’t get us wrong, we think the Gmail interface is second to none and with  Gmail Offline you are almost there, but lets face it, many people prefer a good old desktop email client.  Rather than letting people go through the misery of trying to properly sync their IMAP folders, contacts and calendar seperately, why not just make a desktop app that does all three automatically from the outset? This might also help out with Google Apps administrators who wish to limit access to employees (See Google Apps below.)

Import Google documents into Gmail email body. Gmail has a great compose editor, but nowhere near the capabilities of Google Documents.  Wouldn’t it be nice to write a flashy newsletter, flier or invitation and then export it straight into the email body of your Gmail?

Gmail Tasks

Keep Tasks integrated with Gmail but also make it accessible as a seperate feature.

Option to integrate with calendar plus receive alerts about deadlines.

Option for a scheduled email summary. Perhaps done vs outstanding with a graph to show productivity over time?

Google Docs

Proper document uploader. From Google.  Drag and drop, perhaps one that automatically syncs too.

Publish to blog functionality. There’s definitely a gap in the market here for non-Windows users who can’t use Live Writer.

Import Google documents into Gmail email body. See above.

Google Maps

Integrate Google Earth with Google Maps accounts. That way saved places, photos, etc on Google Earth appears in Google Maps and vice versa.

A “view your contacts” button which allows you see the location of all of your Gmail contacts that have a valid post address.

Google Latitude track progress. The new Latitude feature on mobile phones is a great idea, but why not allow people to chart your progress over a period of time too?

Picasa

Export to FTP account function. Useful for blogging and web publishing, as well as those who wish to backup their pictures on their own server.

Shared web albums. Where more than one person can add or edit pictures in a single album

Themes for web albums. To add a bit of spice to the neat but increasingly boring look and feel of the page.

Add analytics to web albums.

Reader

Integrate into Gmail. As above

Integrate into Google Apps. As below

Google Apps

Option for Google Apps Administrators to limit user access.  Regardless of the size of the company, one of its most important considerations is the level of access it is prepared to give its employees outside of the office space.  Gmail’s versatility and accessibility in this sense will not sit well with companies who don’t want people working from home.  Ironically, to address this issue, Google would have to give administrators the option to disable web access, the very foundations upon which Google and Gmail is built.  Perhaps administrators could specify which IP addresses were allowed to access Google Apps or access features could be built into a Google Email Client (see above)

Ability to disable forwarding to email addresses outside of your domain. Related to the above and vital if security is a priority for your company.

Assign an automatic footer to all company emails. They might not necessarily be legally binding, but they certainly contribute to an overall professional look and feel. In large firms this would make life much easier for admins if they can implement them company-wide at the touch of a button.

Integrate Picasa into Google Apps and not just Google Accounts.  Businesses have the need to share or send their photos too. Perhaps provide for a hosted address (like albums.yourdomain.com) so that they can show off that launch party in style.

Integrate Google Reader into Google Apps and not just Google Accounts.

Make a Google Apps specific toolbar.

Google Talk

Receive incoming and make outgoing calls to normal phones. Yes, we don’t mind paying for our calls to external telephone networks and receiving calls would certainly be very handy too.  With the latest voice and video chat plugin, users will be able to take their calls with them.  Voicemails and text messages to arrive in the inbox.

Google Talk client for the Mac. Skype can do it – so can Google.

Google Talk clients for Mobile phones. As above.

Google Contacts

Automatic details update for specified contacts.  While the world is gripped in a social networking frenzy, we would ask for a far more simple feature.  The ability to connect to a worldwide directory and specify who can see our “live” contact details.  That way, when one changes contact details those changes will automatically update in those respiective address books – no more need for that tedious group email.

Additional fields for contacts. We would love to see birthdays in contacts which optionally integrate into your calendar.

Well Google, that might not be everything but its certainly a lot to be getting on with, and we’d be pretty happy if you could make it all happen.  Have we missed anything?  Help us out in the comments.

And as if it couldn’t get any better, Google have released their own mobile phone contacts synchronisation tool. Bad news for companies like Goosync, great news for Gmail users who now have a reliable sync option between their mobile phone and their online contacts.

Google currently supports a multitude of Nokia phones, the iphone, Windows mobile, Sony Ericsson and the Blackberry and some even cater for calendar synchronisation too.  Because syncing is with Google servers, it is all performed through the air using the data connection on your phone or wi-fi.

The benefits of this new tool are obvious.  For the causal user this a very convenient way of backing up the contacts on a phone should it ever be lost or broken.  For business users this will be a welcome new addition for those who already email from their phones and need their contacts while on the go.

Despite its seamless functioning in our tests so far, there is still room for improvement.  The coherent set up instructions provided by Google does little for the average non tech-savvy user who is likely to find the whole process quite fiddly and even baffling .  Google already do free text messages for Calendar, can’t we get a text which automatically installs the required settings? Added to that, on our test Nokia E71, syncing is “on demand” meaning that one has to manually tell the phone when you want it to sync – not necessarily a serious shortcoming but still a long way off the functionality Blackberry users on Microsoft Exchange have come to enjoy.

Having said all that, contacts sync is a welcomed addition to the Gmail/ Google Apps arsenal and don’t be surprised if Google release their own sync versions for desktop apps such as Outlook or Thunderbird in the near future too.

If you fancy giving synchronisation a whirl head head to http://www.google.com/mobile/default/sync.html and navigate to the instructions that are applicable to your phone model.  As with all syncing undertakings, it is always advisable to backup your precious contacts first.  You never know, this might also be the best excuse yet to give that jungle you call your contacts a good spring clean.

I will briefly attempt to address the issue of informing oneself in the financial blogosphere, an issue I continue to contend with. Through my surfing adventures I have come across a small number of consistently reliable and informative blogs which stimulate and inform my perspectives on the global economy and financial markets. There are probably another 30 blog sites I follow on a regular basis, but these are crucial. Use the blogrolls on these sites to find your own favorites.

The Markets: There is a plethora of easily available information on the very public stock markets, including real time price feeds. Forex content is also quite easy to find, so I will focus more here on fixed income, an opaque but crucial market.

Macro Man – Clear and well reasoned commentary from a big picture perspective, with the occasional gem of a poem or Sherlock Holmes story. It’s just a shame he no longer posts his trading book.

Alea – In reference to Ceasar’s quote “the dice are thrown” on crossing the Rubicon, concise look at the fixed income market, a market which tends to be ignored by mainstream pundits.

Across the Curve – Daily market colour on all US fixed income (ABS to Corporate spreads through swaps and treasuries) from a Treasury trading veteran, valuable.

Dealbreaker – The preeminent Wall Street tabloid, come for the acerbic commentary and refreshing reporting, stay for the insane and often hilarious (if very NYC) comment strings.

Alphaville – FT blog covering relevant news and incisive financial posts, their running commentary on the fed’s money market interventions is without parallel. The UK equivalent of Dealbreaker, so naturally more sober and reserved, but both have their merits and are arguably big enough to not need mentioning.

LSO – Pure banker satire, hilarious.

Economics: Often a personal choice, many well respected academics publicly air their views and open them for debate. Again there is too much commentary for any one person to meaningfully follow but I will pick a few I think add value.

Brad Sester – Used to work with Roubini the sage of doom on his RGE Monitor, now at the CFR continuing to dig below published numbers and look for the real goings on. Especially good on tracking China’s doings.

macroblog – Dave Altig and others from the Atlanta Fed do nuts and bolts analysis of the evolving US economic picture.

Krugman – Couldn’t afford to ignore this year’s laureate.

nakedcapitalism – Yves Smith straddles both the markets and the economy, but I put him here because the length and depth of his posts is similar to that of the mainstream economists.

Also worth noting are SSRN and VoxEU which publish free academic papers for those hungry for more punishment, sorry, information.

Happy reading.

Spain is the fifth country to include Google’s Street View images which launched yesterday.  New cities include Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla. While Google’s plan is to eventually provide street views of the entire world, rumour has it that for the time being we should expect Germany, the UK, Italy and the Netherlands to be included in the near future.

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth which provides panoramic ground level views and complements the existing bird’s eye view of the maps, allowing users to virtually ‘drive though’ selected cities.

The images are taken by a fleet of modified cars with 360 degree panoramic cameras mounted on their roof which snap the pictures as they drive through towns.

Since its conception, the Google street view feature has generated a myriad of privacy concerns as it has captured members of the public in ‘compromising positions.’  Concerns were also raised about the showing of license plates and the inadvertent filming of private property. Some security experts have warned that street view can even be advantageous to terrorists or criminals (which allegedly led to the delaying of the Washington DC release).

Google has sought to address such issues by implementing face and license plate blurring technology although this has not yet been fully implemented. European cites are released with such blurring already in place, but some in the US complain that despite such efforts, initial images displayed and discussed all over the internet are now preserved for an eternity.

Google Maps scours the web looking for published addresses to add to its database and many if not most companies are now indexed on their maps.  An interesting feature would be if that data also merged into the street view interface.  A recent and greatly anticipated feature is the inclusion of street view on mobile phones, most notably Google’s Android Operating System, which coupled with GPS or location seeking technology could become a very realistic and novel interface for sat nav display. A version of Street View is already available on Blackberry phones and certain java enabled phones.

If you haven’t already tried Google Street view, it can be accessed in Google Maps. Google currently provides imagery in selected cities in Spain, the US, France, Australia and Japan.

Having already scratched my virtualisation itch I wasn’t that interested when our editor-in-chief asked me to do a review of the new release of VirtualBox, but being the consummate professional that I am I downloaded it (a month later) and set my brain to review mode.

My first impressions were very good, considering this is a free open source piece of software I was not expecting it to be as user friendly as it was. In fact, the process of setting up a virtual computer and installing the guest operating system is almost exactly the same as for Parallels. As you’d expect you can customise the specs of your virtual pc and I decided to have 700 MB of RAM, 128 MB of video RAM and I chose the expanding hard drive option which means it only takes up what is uses (as opposed to pre-defining a chunk of say 5GB).

I’ve been reliably informed that Vista would stalk me in my dreams so I decided to install good old XP on my Macbook. Having installed XP I was pretty impressed with the overall speed and stability of the guest os and OS X, there were a few stutters and I couldn’t get sound to work without getting a bit of delay but I’m sure this could be fixed if I looked into it. The major problem was that I couldn’t get the shared folder to work but after as bit of searching on the internet I found out that setting up a shared folder in both systems isn’t enough, you also have to install the guest additions software which is linked to from the VirtualBox menus. Once I’d done this I not only set up the shared folder without any problems but performance actually improved.

Basically VirtualBox does everything you need it to but forgoes the graphical flashiness of something like Parallels. I should also point out that VirtualBox is also compatible with pretty much all versions of Windows and Linux as guest and host operating systems.

Wisestamp currently supports Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo mail.  Wisestamp is currently Firefox only although the company state that they are working on releasing versions for Internet Explorer, as well as for existing desktop email applications like Outlook Express and Thunderbird.  If you are a heavy webmail user and miss the ability to insert good looking signatures at the end of your messages, Wisestamp is definitely worth a try.

Whilst free wifi seems to be fairly abundant in the center of Zurich, I did not have the luxury of my laptop.  So I set to work to see what I could do with my aging, but wifi enabled, Nokia E61. My first port of call was Skype, a traveler’s natural choice for calling colleagues, friends and family back home.  Skype is testing a new mobile version which looks like it has potential, but costs are starting to creep in.  Once installed on my phone, a call to my Skype online contacts alone would be be the “cost of a local or national call on your mobile.”  There seemed little point, if I had my laptop the same call would be free.

Skype also offers a Windows mobile version as well as a Nokia N800/810 version, sadly I have none of these.  What I needed was something to bridge the gap between my wireless enabled mobile phone and skype.  While there are countless workarounds and hacks listed on the internet, I settled for Fring.

Fring couldn’t be more simple, and it did the job perfectly.  Not only was I up and running on my Skype account in minutes, but I had the option to connect to MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, Twitter, AIM & Yahoo! simultaneously while I was at it.

As an existing SkypeOUT user, I could also make use of SkypeOUT calls through Fring which meant that I could call landline numbers all over the owrld for little more than £0.01 per minute.  As a SkypeIN customer (i.e. Skype provide me with a landline number which I pay for each year) people back home could call it at local rates and it would ring straight on my mobile phone in Zurich.  Price to receive calls? Free.

My prospects of cheap (and even free) calls suddenly seemed much better, and I quickly set about touching base with a miserable and wet London.  Call quality was far from perfect, but this was presumably also dependent on the quality of my wifi connection at the time.  There was also a minor delay, but this did not prove to be too much of a hindrance.

Fring boasts remarkably small bandwidth, and states that a 60 minute VOIP call would consume in the region of 8mb of internet data.  For local users who have an internet package on their mobile phone, Fring might even be an option in the absence of wifi.  At the very least, users would be able to keep in touch over instant messaging and with unlimited internet becoming the rule rather than the exception, instant messaging on mobile phones might even start to replace the text message.

For all of Fring’s miraculous qualities there was only one real show stopper, namely the subsequent reduced battery life.  Fring as a program is not too consuming on a phone, but a constant connection to the internet with multiple accounts, calls and messages can start to take its toll, so make sure you have your charger at the ready if you plan to have it on all day.

It was only when my jubilant celebrations at the prospect of unrestricted communications had slightly subsided that I had my true epiphany.  As the world drifted calmly by and the late afternoon sun began to cast its orange glow on the River Limmat I wondered why on earth I would want to be in contact with colleagues, friends and family back home in the first place?  Fring could certainly wait for the time being.  I put my phone back in my pocket and ordered another cappuccino.

How do you organize and collect your legal research on the web? Thanks to Robert Ambrogi at LegalBlogWatch for this heads-up about the free Zotero tool from George Mason University. The Thomson Reuters litigation cited in the blog post notwithstanding, this add-on to Firefox 3 is a wonderful way to organize and collect the research materials for a project that you come across on-line. Just click and drag them to a folder in the bottom half of the browser screen, and they can be organized and reviewed whenever you need them. Of course, you need to download and use the best browser on the planet, Firefox 3, to use the tool. So, get going, and make your online research faster and easier.

Rick Georges is an occasional guest writer for Bizhack.net.  All of his work can be seen on his blog at www.futurelawyer.com

Setting it all up is relatively painless.  To start with you need to register for a free account and then specify each computer you wish to access. This will require you to be at the computer itself so planning in advance is recommended.  Simply install LogMeIn’s software and you will be able to access it remotely from then on.  Each computer you set up in this way will appear in your account (accessible from your internet browser) and it will tell you which computers are online and offline.

Then comes the clever bit.  You will now be able to access any online computer in your account through your browser (i.e. any computer connected to the internet) and see exactly what you would normally see if you were sitting right in front of it. You also have control over its mouse so you can work on it and find that dreaded document you forgot to send from the office.  If you are helping a colleague who is sitting at the computer, a small notification will appear in the top right hand corner to warn them of your connection and you will be able to work on the same screen at the same time and even communicate over the built in chat feature.

LogMeIn ensures that your connection is securely encrypted and will lookout for any intrusions.  In our tests we were also able to reboot the computer remotely (and still reconnect afterwards) and we even managed to control a Mac from a Windows based PDA.

LogMeIn offers a vast array of extra functionality for a fee, such as file sharing, drive mapping, remote printing, and sound, but unless you are a professional IT consultant we feel that the free version is more than adequate for everyday needs.

LogMeIn is a truly convenient program to have, but it has two glaring limitations even through no fault of its own. Firstly, the computer you wish to access needs to be switched on.  While this may sound obvious it is not always practical, especially in the case that you need it running non-stop during your two week holiday.  Added to this, Murphy’s Law dictates that despite having installed LogMeIn on your computer you will only ever need to access it on the one occasion you turned it off.

The second limitation is the need for a solid internet connection, both from the remote computer and from the computer you are using to access it.  LogMeIn can run on relatively low bandwidth but don’t expect to get much work done from the GPRS connection on your mobile phone.

It is also worth noting that some security conscious companies may take exception to applications like LogMeIn, so it is certainly advisable to run it past your boss first.

That said, with a wide range practical uses, solid performance on both Windows and Mac and a slew of functionality at no cost at all, LogMeIn is a great application to have at your fingertips.

Speculation has it that the Working Group, and by extension the government, has resorted to illegally physically intervening in the markets to prop them up. We cannot be privy to the internal workings of this group, but when one of them makes a press announcement we do catch a glimpse of them in action: the Secretary of the Treasury, currently Hank “Bazooka” Paulson, the Governor of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, the chairmen of the SEC, Christopher Cox, and CFTC, Walter Lukken.

So far there are a number of operations conducted by the Fed to guarantee liquidity in the monetary system by lending to banks and widening the variety of collateral accepted; this has created the TAF, TSLF and PDCF, the latter two run under the aegis of the New York Fed as they sit closest to the financial markets and are therefore responsible . The Fed has opened swap lines with other central banks to provide USD liquidity globally to help ease the funding situation. Back in March they also took on $29 billion in liabilities from Bear Sterns to facilitate their takeover by J.P. Morgan. They have taken control of and provided a loan facility of up to $80 billion for AIG to ensure the continued solvency of this crucial insurance entity.

Given the performance thus far, why was Lehman allowed to fail you may ask? Firstly, unlike in March, the contagion had spread to other banks, so the fear was that any take over of Lehman would include the bad assets that created their problems in the first place, these bad assets seemed to swell from $30billion to $80 billion on the fateful weekend they were trying to sell themselves to BofA or Barcap, and would therefore contaminate any bank that purchased them. Secondly, the PPT had to show the banks it meant business, arguably this would have been achieved had they let Bear Stern’s go down in the first place.

Hank Paulson has fired his bazooka on Fannie and Freddie and is now taking the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) off his bomber, but now that he has to ask congress for the ammunition of taxpayers money the solution is not such a sure thing. The TARP has been put in place to backstop the vicious circle of writedowns and asset price drops amongst housing and mortgage related products initially (Mortgage Backed Securities, MBS), but ultimately any sensitive, illiquid and systematically risky asset pool (CDOs, ABS). At the same time the SEC has stepped in and banned the shorting of financial stocks in an attempt to stop the self-fulfilling rot in the markets, with a number of countries around the world joining the party. Cue the burning of banker effigies and general outcry against anyone who works in finance. Of course, it is rarely mentioned that it was the SEC which allowed the independent investment banks to lever up in the 90s by expanding what was definable as assets that could be held in the first place.

What conclusions can we come to whilst all this plays out? The most obvious but least acknowledged point is that crises occur with almost cyclical regularity and these should and can to some extent be anticipated and prepared for. The ordinary investor should have or be in the process of rotating their portfolio to more defensive instruments such as government bonds, precious metals, liquid defensive stocks (large, diversified corporations) and cash; as well as minimising debt and spending.

As I’ve touched on previously, one of the biggest worries is that the problems of Wall Street fall out to Main Street. The immediate effect of decreased banker pay will be felt in the wider economy, but it is the monetary transmission mechanism and bank lending that are absolutely crucial. The Eurozone is officially in recession and the UK and US are likely to follow, growth around the world is slowing and some economists have mooted that there could be a global recession. China is likely to slow from >10% GDP growth p.a. to only 8%, so if you’re brave enough there’s plenty of opportunity out there. Perhaps, minds numbed from all the acronyms and wallets thinned from the slowdown, we will start to see a reverse brain drain to the developing markets? Keep your tin hats close whatever you do.