Gmail is looking more and more formidable as Google piles on the functionality. The latest addition is tasks which is added from the Labs functionality. This follows on the heels of video functionality for Google Talk and the integration of widgets including Google Calendar from within Gmail itself.

There have been recent moves by WH Smith and now Asda to launch online “newsagents” – online stores offering digital editions of magazines on subscription. Is this a way for the b2b magazines which been squeezed out of retail outlets in recent years, to get back onto a general retail platform? Or is the digital magazine itself only an irrelevant way-station on the road from paper to the web? What do you think?

Technorati Tags: magazines, online, digital editions

Will Hutton  in The Observer raised the (taboo) question over the weekend of Britain’s adoption of the euro. The debate seems to have dropped right off the political radar, but Hutton thinks now is the time to refocus on the issue:

It might be politically toxic – but we must join the euro now.

He argues that there are only three fully convertible currencies in the world right now – the dollar, euro and yen – and that joining the Euro now is right thing to do.

The best time to begin negotiations is now, rather than in the middle of an economic rout.

Computer Weekly reports that Google has quietly dropped Sun’s Star Office productivity app from Google Pack – its suite of bundled software. Does this presage a marketing push for its own rapidly developing Google Apps? Time will tell…

LinkedIn, the hyperactive social network for business, has just added a feature targeting journalists.

Get the “in” side scoop. Find and research the people and information that will make the story.

says the strap-line; the site then goes on to explain how journalists can overcome some familiar "pain-points".

McKinsey Quarterly has an insightful multi-media interview with Google’s Eric Schmidt where he talks about changing competition, the long tail, making money, evolving management, the nature of innovation and the political challenges to the global internet. Well worth a watch.

My favourite photo-sharing site Flickr just reached another milestone – according to Techcrunch they just passed the three billion photo mark! Not bad for a site that launched in 2004. Still, they trail Facebook which now has an incredible 10 billion.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Flickr, photos, record

According to a piece in Mobile Industry Review 5,000 people have downloaded the Telegraph’s new Android app. I was up at the Telegraph as a guest of CIO Paul Cheesbrough last month and he told me that the Telegraph was going to be the first content provider to produce an such an app. Great to see the innovation rewarded by so many downloads.

Technorati Tags: android, Google, Telegraph

Techcrunch has managed to get hold of the PowerPoint pep talk Sequoia Capital gave the start-ups it had invested in. You can flick through the doom-laden deck here. The main thing seems to be: cut costs; get more capital if you can; sell out to anyone who will buy you quickly.

Technorati Tags: presentation, puppy, startups

(Via Techcrunch) Legendary internet analyst Mary Meeker used her slot at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit to whizz through her views on the outlook for the tech industry in the impending downturn. Not too many answers but a hell of a lot of data, which I’m sure will make it’s way into many presentations over the coming gloomy months.

Technorati Tags: economy, internet, web2