All your private and confidential emails are stored in your Gmail mailbox but are they secure? Can a Google employee working on the Gmail product read your messages?

In theory, the answer could be yes. Christopher Nguyen, who was earlier responsible for Google Apps operations at Google, shared this on Quora:

A small number of GMail related engineers have access to the servers as a matter of necessity to do their jobs; a very small number of people actually access the contents as a matter of necessity to do their jobs, and even then, almost always only the associated metadata.

The rest have to file a request and justify any access they ever need, which is extremely rare. All have to sign paperwork re users’ privacy at the risk of dismissal & legal action, knowing that whatever they do is discoverable. And ultimately, an internal culture of respecting users’ privacy helps keep one another in check.

Google also serves contextual text ads in Gmail and these ads are triggered based on the content of the email message that your currently reading. Obviously it is the bots that are scanning your Gmail messages for relevant keywords but Microsoft, with a hope that some Gmail users will shift to Hotmail, is using this point to target Google on privacy.

Some email services, like Gmail, actually read the contents of your mail (both sent and received, even if you aren’t a Gmail user but just sending to someone who is) in order to decide what kind of ads to serve up to you. They may call it “scanning” and attempt to equate it with less invasive activities like “checking for spam” but it’s quite different. For you, and the people you send mail to, it’s not spam, it’s personal.

Microsoft has also released a video, titled the Gmail Man, highlighting this Gmail behavior. Microsoft uploaded the video to YouTube, a platform owned by Google, and it isn’t therefore surprising that the video has garnered more dislikes than likes – after all, most YouTube users are also Gmail users and they aren’t buying Microsoft’s argument.

Related: Find if your Email has been Read

This story, Can Google Employees Read your Gmail?, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/02/2012 under GMail.

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The scale at Google is unimaginable. For instance, one of their most popular product Gmail has 200+ million users so any change they make, whether big or small, is instantly made available to all these users.

The updates are silently applied in the backend and the average user is often unaware that the cloud software they use all day has been silently patched but the reception is quite different if something breaks or doesn’t work as expected.

If you are curious to know how testing happens at Google, this upcoming title on Amazon – How Google Tests Software – might be of interest. The Test Engineering team have teamed up to share how Google tests cloud software, the best practices for managing code reviews, tracking bugs and everything else that will help improve your testing process.

The book won’t be available until April (track) but there’s always YouTube.

This story, How Google Tests Software, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 12/12/2011 under Book.

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Twitter has offered in-line previews for photo and video sharing services like YouTube, Flickr and Instagram for some time and, expanding that list, they have now added support for shopping site Amazon.com as well.

If a tweet contains a link to an Amazon product, see sample, Twitter will automatically pull the product’s description, reviews and the price on Amazon.com and will embed this information to the tweet itself and you may save an extra click

Twitter isn’t however adding any Amazon affiliate links to the tweets so this enhancement is unlikely to be a source of revenue for them. Thanks @hunterwalk and @mathewi.

This story, Twitter Embeds Amazon Products In-line, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 07/12/2011 under Amazon, Twitter.

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Like Android on Mobile Phones, you can install new apps to your Google TV, it has notifications and the home screen is customizable.

Here’s a quick video tour of the new Google TV with Honeycomb (Android 3.1) upgrade:

This story, The New Google TV with Honeycomb, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 08/11/2011 under Google TV.

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For instance, you may ask Siri how many calories are in a Pizza and it will bring the answer from Wolfram Alpha. Siri can help you make voice calls, reply to text messages, play songs in your iTunes library, set phone reminder, ask directions or even get weather updates by speaking the command – should I carry an umbrella?

Siri currently works on iPhone 4S only but once the beta period is over, there’s no reason for Apple to not port it to other iOS devices like the iPad and iPod Touch.

iPhone Siri – Apple Video Demos

This story, Siri for the iPhone 4S – Video Ads, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 05/10/2011 under IPhone.

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This gentleman – Mr Vishwabandhu Gupta – a retired income tax commissioner, is trying to explain the concept of “cloud computing” to the reporter and how rains / thunder-storms can disrupt web services that depend on the cloud.

Mr Gupta’s logic is that your computer makes a connection to the cloud (the “physical cloud” that turns into rain) and thus if the cloud is gone, your software won’t work as expected.

Hilarious! Thanks Bhavik Shah for the tip.

This story, How Rains Affect Cloud Computing, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/10/2011 under Hindi.

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A typical day in the life of a modern worker who is always connected to the digital world even in bed. [via]

This story, A Day in the Life of an Always-Connected Worker, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 29/08/2011 under Infographics, Wide.

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An eye tracking study by UseIt suggests that visitors mostly ignore images on web pages that are of “generic people” – that’s what most stock photos are about.

This story, Why You Should Avoid Using Stock Photos in Articles, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 24/08/2011 under Images.

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The Bing Webmaster team has written a detailed guide on what you should do and what you should not do to get your site ranked in Bing. Excerpts:

1. Each <title> should be short, about 65 characters, and unique to the page. Include the keyword you’re targeting for that page near the beginning of the title. The <meta description> tag can be longer and should also contain the keyword or phrase you’re targeting.

2. HTML sitemaps ensure a good user experience and help search engines discover all your pages and content.

3. Plan your approach to social carefully and execute consistently. Build your presence so that followers see you as an authority and a resource.

Both Google and Bing use ‘social’ as a signal in search rankings and it may thus not be a good idea to ignore Twitter, Facebook and Google+ anymore.

This story, An SEO Guide for Bing, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 22/08/2011 under Bing, SEO.

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This story, Indian Politicians and Google, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 15/08/2011 under Politics, Wide.

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