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Updated 4:25 p.m. PST with additional Google comment.

Spammers have cracked the captcha mechanism Gmail uses to make sure you are a human before you can open an e-mail account, leading to a huge increase in the amount of spam sent from Gmail last month, security firm MessageLabs says.

We've all been subjected to captcha programs when signing up for Web services. They typically consist of a box with some characters, either distorted or displayed against some noisy background, and you have to type the letters and numerals in exactly as you see them before the system … Read more

Bill Gates may misunderstand open source, but he's fairly accurate in his portrayal of Google's attempts to get into the enterprise. Whatever one wants to say about the quality of Microsoft's software, one can't dispute its reach. Google, on the other hand, has been king in consumer search...and that's about it.

It's a big "it" but it tends to mask Google's continual failures in just about everything else (Used many of these lately?), including enterprise applications, as Gates points out:

In terms of Google, not to overstate it, but they really don't understand the special needs of business. Today, their economic model is based on consumer search. They have done an incredible job there and obviously we're investing in challenging them in that space ...… Read more

While I've never seen an actual Gmail commercial on TV, Google continues its grassroots style advertising for the Web service. I'm still surprised when I meet people who don't have a Google account, so clearly these ads might be necessary.

This one, put together by the Russian branch of marketing company Saatchi & Saatchi shows two men putting together a massive reproduction of Gmail's in-box, chat, and mobile features made out of various materials including modeling clay, Lego bricks, paint, and fabrics. Other parts were put together with printed paper and some elbow grease. Keep on … Read more

Updated February 21 with further comments from the Gmail customer in Kuwait, plus comments from eBay and a reader from Sri Lanka.

A glitch with an Internet service provider in Kuwait has enabled at least one Gmail user to access others' Gmail accounts, Google said Wednesday.

A Gmail user in Kuwait reported to CNET News.com over the weekend that he had been having trouble for most of the day logging into his account. More troubling, though, was the fact that he was able to see other people's private information, including scores of personal e-mail messages, "keycodes for … Read more

There are lots of things to like about Google's Gmail service: It's free (unless you count the text ads at the top of each window; it is available on any device with Internet access, and it's easy to use as a central repository for multiple e-mail accounts.

Unfortunately, there are also many useful features of Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and other standalone e-mail programs that Gmail lacks. One of the features I miss most is the ability to sort messages by sender. I used to have to page through old mail 50 messages at a time to … Read more

Better GReader is a young, but not exactly robust, Firefox extension. However, like its sibling Better Gmail, it has a lot of potential. Designed to improve the look, as well as the functionality, of Google Reader, GReader has four skins and four features to get your RSS going.

… Read more

If you're away from your home computer and need to open a file on a foreign computer that doesn't have the program installed, there are a few options. For one, Gmail converts several file types so they can be viewed right in the browser, including PDF, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Office documents. However, it's not nearly as helpful for music files, as its only able to make a few listenable. Enter Koolwire, a simple no-frills service that converts several popular file formats under 10MB through e-mail.

Besides taking any Word, PowerPoint, or Excel document and turning it into … Read more

If you're the type of person who communicates with friends, co-workers, relatives, and such via several different IM services, e-mail, and Facebook--and you know you are--software could soon offer you one of the cleanest ways ever to link them all together.

The software, called Digsby, went into private beta Tuesday, and its goal is to give people a way to organize their contacts from Yahoo Messenger, AOL IM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Windows Live Messenger, as well as e-mail, Facebook, and MySpace.com into a single client.

According to Jeff Hester, who runs instant message community site BigBlueBall.… Read more

Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security, who last year found that it's possible to capture someone's session cookie via wireless eavesdropping, now says that even encrypted services such as Google's Gmail can sometimes provide him with a session cookie. This is a departure from his advice last August when he said SSL HTTPS sessions of Gmail should be immune.

Graham, working with David Maynor, created two tools (Ferret and Hamster), which together help him grab session cookies out of thin air, say, at a local hot spot, like an Internet cafe. Session cookies allow you to shop … Read more