Google Maps Tracks and Stores Location Data – Even When your Location Detection is Turned-off

This is scary.

Apparently, Google Maps has been tracking and storing all my locations over last several months even when my location detection is turn-off and there is a neat little visualization of all your locations provided by Google itself.

All you need to do is log in with the same account you use on your phone, and the record of everywhere you’ve been for the last day to month will erupt across your screen like chicken pox.

Persistent “Bad Request – Error 400” when using Google Apps Mail

Gmail for Google Apps sometimes throws “Bad Request – Error 400” after you have persistent session (chose to “Stay signed in” while logging in). I have 4-5 Gmail accounts which I’m usually logged in at the same time, and I get this “Bad Request – Error 400” error on one of the accounts. I use Firefox as my main browser (because apparently Google Chrome cannot support even the latest CentOS 5.x with official repo and Chromium build is stuck at version 13 for CentOS 5)

Google suggests – “Clear your browser’s cache and cookies” which means I need to kill all my active sessions and sign in all 5 gmail accounts again, which is pretty unproductive.

By trial and error, I found the following solution for Firefox-

1. Install an extension which allows you to view cookie information of a browser tab and selectively delete cookies (I use Web Developer)
2. List all the cookies on “Bad Request – Error 400” page (“View Cookie Information” on Web-developer extension)
3. Delete the cookies which have long string values GMAIL_IMP. If you delete all the cookies, you may have to sign in to that account again, but usually deleting only some cookies works for me without needing to sign in again
4. Refresh the browser tab which was showing  “Bad Request – Error 400” and done.

[update: Rob identified the cookie to be deleted]

Google Chrome Promotion inside Gmail on Firefox

Just noticed that Google web mail interface is showing recommendation to upgrade to Google Chrome on reasonably modern version of Firefox (10.0.5 Extended Support Release)

Not for the first time though.

Google Gears and Linux

“Google Gears” could not be installed because it is not compatible with
your Firefox build type (Linux_x86-gcc3). Please contact the author of this
item about the problem.

Found the fix in this Google group post which says re-installing Gears should fix this issue.

On more digging, it appears that there are several bugs reported with this issue e.g. Bug # 975, 977. Apparently someone uploaded a custom gears xpi to fix versioning issue. Google indeed has moved on to phase out Gears in favour of HTML5.

Tags: google

Google Chrome Promoted on the Most Valuable Online Property

Google’s new browser Google Chrome is being promoted on arguably the most valuable property on the web – Google Homepage.

The browser itself is “google cool” with Javascript applications performing much better. Flash performance seems a bit sluggish. Need a password manager and status bar perhaps, and a Linux version of course.

The open source project behind Chrome is called Chromium. The rendering engine is Webkit, and Javascript “monkey” is a new JS virtual machine V8.

Microsoft gets IT

Microsoft, the object of hatred for a large geek pop (and wannabes), is actually far from over. They are as fierce competitor as one can be. Latest evidence – Microsoft creating a YouTube channel for promotion of Vista and Live brands. Significance of YouTube here is that YouTube belongs to its “enemy” Google. That’s atypical for an “an underdog beats the incumbent” story, so it very well might not be one.

Google Chart API: Simple and Awesome

The Google Chart API looks to be the simplest way of generating high quality dynamic chart images for Line chart, Bar chart, Pie chart, Venn diagram and Scatter Plots. You just have to pass the chart data as URL parameters e.g.


http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=lc&
chs=200x100&
chd=s:ThisIsReallyReallyCool&
chxt=x,y&
chxl=0:|Apr|May|June|1:||666+KB


would produce this chart –

Gmail Updated

Gmail’s new version rolled out for me today, and first thing I noticed that it had reset my gmail chat config (basically I had switched off gmail chat), my greasemonkey scripts were broken and I had a firebug extension warning on top.

While I have no gripe about greasemonkey, resetting gmail chat setting means I’ve to check rest of my settings to be sure anything else is not broken.

New version seems quicker, with additional options in “More Actions” menu and updated “Contacts” section.

Google ditches its SOAP API

I noticed this on the very next day, when I was looking for some documentation on proxy auto configuration scripts support in the SOAP API. The replacement AJAX api not only has limited application (website only), but also it promises to show google ads beside the results.

Not that Google Search API has ever been very stable – it works almost only 80% of the time, so one has to pray and hope that it works with every call. Now even the support has been dropped and usage samples along with FAQ have been removed.

Damn! not good at all.

Need Firefox extension to open xls in Google Spreadsheet

I need one Firefox extension/greasemonkey script to add an option to open xls/doc links directly in Google docs & spreadsheets. This is something Google itself should be providing like they do in Gmail. Perhaps, I’ll write one myself in case I can’t find it.

[Update]– Whooaa! Same day Google releases its Firefox toolbar (beta) with this exact same functionality I’m looking for and have blogged. Now, is it just one wish a day, or – I want to be king 😀 , please.