Gmail

Users of AOL's main instant-messaging service can now chat directly with friends on Facebook.

AOL Inc. said Wednesday that a new version of the AIM software connects with the chat function on Facebook's Web site, letting AIM users communicate with friends who are logged on to the social network.

The AIM user still needs a Facebook account, however, and it's the Facebook persona rather than AIM's that appears to the friend on Facebook.

International journalists in China said Monday that their Google e-mail accounts have been hacked in attacks similar to the ones against human rights activists that the search giant cited as a reason for considering pulling out of the country.

In announcing a possible exit from China last week, Google did not specify how the accounts with its Gmail e-mail service were hacked into or by whom. Information since then has trickled out.

Google's Gmail service suffered its second outage this month Thursday. The problem was unrelated to Tuesday's two-hour outage at Google News, the company said.

A problem with Google Contacts on Thursday caused many Gmail users to experience slow responsiveness and degraded service for about an hour, Google explained in an e-mail.

Gmail went down on Tuesday, taking Twitter search down with it and prompting questions about the reliability of cloud-based services. The 100-minute, widespread outage left Gmail users in the communications dark.

Google apologized and offered a prompt explanation that sounds similar to the culprit for past Gmail outages. Google took some of its Gmail servers offline to perform routine upgrades. This isn't unusual, as Google typically reroutes the traffic to other servers.

In a one-two punch that targets Google and Twitter, Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed and has rolled out new search capabilities. With these moves, Facebook may be positioning itself as a social-media hub.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal is valuing the deal at $50 million.

Yahoo has confirmed that it will acquire San Francisco-based Xoopit, which won the Yahoo Open Hack contest in 2008 and powers Yahoo Mail's My Photos application. The app finds photos in a user's in-box, including both file attachments and URLs that link to photo sites like Flickr or Picasa Web Albums.

Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Yahoo applications, said the acquisition will bring "phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo Mail."

I'm running late. I'm stuck in traffic. I'm stopping by the market for a bottle of wine. I'm circling for a parking space. I'm just down the block. I'm right outside.

Today, people trade these little updates with a string of cell phone calls and text messages. But companies including Google Inc. are betting that will change as more smart phones come with GPS technology built in.

Google Search, Gmail, AdSense and several other Google services, including YouTube, were slow for a while Thursday and, in some instances, completely down. Google acknowledged the outage, said it was working on the matter, and the issue was resolved by midafternoon Eastern time.

Google explained the outage in a blog post comparing it to an airplane flight.

Google on Tuesday updated its Gmail and Calendar offerings for Apple's iPhone and Android-based mobile devices. When users access Gmail and Calendar through mobile browsers, Google promises an improved experience.

In Gmail, Google has improved the mobile user interface to make it easier to "message on the go." The search giant also unveiled what it is calling a Floaty Bar so common actions -- such as archive and delete -- are only a click away. Messages got a face-lift so labels look more like the Gmail labels users see on a desktop.