This week’s edition of the Weekly Clicks features some new Google developments, Flickr settings, how to audit your website, and a new way to create favicons.
Offline Gmail is Back!
Offline Gmail is back and offline support for Google Docs and Calendar are both available. Offline Gmail has been rewritten using HTML5 and requires the Google Chrome web browser. In order to get the offline version of Gmail, you will need to install an app, available through the Chrome Web Store. Although a great feature, remember that you do need the app to view emails offline and you will only be given access to the last three to seven days’ worth of email. Unfortunately, you will not be able to download a specific tag or set of messages for offline use. The offline version of Google docs is limited to read-only access.
Flickr’s Geofence Setting
Flickr has introduced a new way to geotag your photos without revealing your location to the entire web, through it new “Geofence” settings. Geofence features are easy to use – all you have to do is draw a circle on a map, choose a geoprivacy setting for that area, and you’re done. If you’re interested in applying this setting, head over to the Flickr Geo privacy page.
Be a Favinconist!
All website needs a favicon. Faviconist, a new favicon generator, can help you do this! It enables you to create a favicon without Photoshop and is easy to use. Once you’re favicon is the way you want it, all you have to do is click the “save favicon” button and the site generates some cut and paste code you can drop into your pages. If you prefer to host the image yourself, just right-click the image and save it.
Audit Your Site’s Content
Page Trawler is a new web service that crawls your site and give you a bird’s eye view of your content. Currently, you are only able to view the first fifty pages of your site and offers a .cvs summary of those pages. If you want to try it out, head over to the site and plug in your URL.
Google’s Most Recent Launch in Canada
Google Inc. is in battle mode with Netflix. On Wednesday, it launched a YouTube-based movie rental service in Canada. Users will be able to rent new and classic movies for about $4 or $5. Users have 30 days from the moment they rent a movie to begin watching it, and 48 hours to finish. Of course the concern is the availability of titles. When YouTube Movies launched in the US in May, there were roughly 3,000 titles available. The Canadian version of YouTube Movies has more Hollywood releases than the Canadian Netflix service. Google has signed deals with Canadian studios such as Mongrel and Alliance, as well as numerous American production companies, in efforts to increase the number of titles available.
