7 Things I Want from Google - NOW!

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. What I want is for Google to stop photographing street corners in Manhattan and give me a few much-needed tools! Here's a list of 7 things I want from Google for Christmas (or better yet, July 4th).

1. Search my Google Reader - Hello!? Google, your main thing is, um, Search. Well, someone had to say it. Listen, all I want to do is search my feeds. Is it too much to ask? Why are you making me star everything I might want to go back and look at? Punks.

2. Blogger. Where do I even START?

a. Customizable title and meta tags right there on the post interface.
b. More templates and easier to customize!
c. Accepting the templates I've found elsewhere. There are some super-nice and super-talented people who've created super-great templates but I can't get them to work.
d. Google Analytics right there in the Blogger Dashboard. I know, I know, that's just CRAZY TALK!
e. Let me transfer my blog to another Google account. I changed my name when I got married but you insist on referring to my maiden name.
f. RSS feeds. Now that Feedburner is being added to your harem, let's have all of their options right there in the Blogger dashboard. Including stats.
g. Basically become everything I love in Wordpress, but go one step further and don't make me upload a bunch of plugins. Oh and drag-n-drop EVERYTHING would be icing on the cake.

3. Gmail - I want to be able to reply to emails sent to certain filters automatically using the email address it was sent to. Right now I have to manually change it.

4. Google Talk - Support AIM so my husband doesn't have to download AIM (doesn't that just screw with your computer!) or Trellian. I like it when he uses plain old G-talk b/c it tells me when he's typing :) Otherwise, sometimes I think he's not responding to me.

5. Break up with Wikipedia - So many instances of inaccuracies have been documented, it's a wonder you guys still think this is what the users should find on the first page of results.

6. Index Wordpress better. Too many Wordpress sites are having pages fall into the Supplemental Index. Vanessa Fox is all like "Don't use nofollow" but Google doesn't offer many alternatives. But she's right. I don't want to nofollow my category pages b/c I'm trying to optimize them for the long tail. Figure out what a sidebar is, already!

7. Calendar. Maybe it's just me, but I've never once received a reminder for the events I set up on my calendar.

Technorati: seo, google, gmail, wordpress, blogger

Yahoo Mail to Offer Users Unlimited Email Storage Space

Since the introduction of Gmail in April of 2004, the competition for email users between Google and Yahoo has been on-going. Upon its inception, Gmail users could take advantage of a whopping 1GB of storage space, which was a huge step up from the 4MB of storage space that accompanied a new Yahoo Mail account at the time it was introduced. Yahoo is now up to the 1GB limit that Gmail started with. Gmail currently allows users 2.8GB of storage space.

Now, as part of their 10-year anniversary celebration, Yahoo is proposing giving its email users an unlimited amount of storage space. This would in part be to thank loyal Yahoo Mail users for their business, but I would guess that it’s also a bold initiative on Yahoo’s part to help persuade some Gmail users along way to make the switch to Yahoo Mail.

For the average email user this change will probably go unnoticed, since most of us don’t ever reach the storage capacity as it is. But for those Gmail users that rely on email on a daily basis for business or personal use, unlimited storage space from Yahoo Mail will be a tempting offer. This will certainly put a great deal of pressure on Google to match the idea.

Though storage space with the new Yahoo Mail will be unlimited, Yahoo is also careful to point out that it will have anti-abuse limits in place to protect users and help to prevent misuse of the program. Yahoo plans to gradually roll out the new email plan over the next several months.