While most web mail services have remained largely unchanged over the last ten years or so, Google has been updating GMail on a near constant basis, whether it’s updating the core of the product or releasing new upgrades via the Labs.

Earlier this evening, they announced a new feature I can see myself using quite frequently called “canned responses.”  

Just like it sounds, it’s the ability to offer pre-written responses for commonly written emails:

If you’re sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the “Canned responses” button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.

It couldn’t get any easier unless Gmail automatically pushed the Send button.

I’ve always preferred that people refer to me with the much more politically correct term “convenience enthusiast,” and given that I’m such a convenience enthusiast, I’m pretty glad that they’ve also included the ability to hook these autoresponses in to filters.

Several years ago, when I made the migration from Microsoft Outlook to GMail (due to the fact that my decade-long email archive was taking up a measureable percentage of my hard-drive space), the feature I missed the most was the ability to do custom responses based on what sort of emails I was recieving.

As I pointed out the other day, working for Mashable has swollen the amount of email I get on a daily basis to an almost unmanagable level, so this feature could go a long way towards simplifying this aspect of my life.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:GMail Phasing In IMAPGmail Mobile Gets an UpdateBe Careful if You Access Gmail Through a Public HotspotNew GMail Features Show Up In Some AccountsGmail Storage Is Now 6 GigabytesGmail Mobile Version 1.5 Not Lookin’ So GoodGMail Adding Greasemonkey Support?

Source:Mashable!

Monday morning, the FBI closed in on one of the greatest criminal masterminds of the 21st century - Josh Holly. What was Holly’s great crime? Breaking into pop starlet Miley Cyrus’s email account and distributing risque pictures that were found in the sent items section.

The news comes not long after it was discovered that the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell, David Kernell, hacked into Vice Presidential Republican nominee Sarah Palin’s email in an effort to find incriminating documents and expose them to the world.

The two cases don’t have too much in common other than the fact that they’re two examples of high-profile email hackings… or do they?

Wired’s Threat Level has been covering the story as it developed and summarizes the method that Holly used to gain access to Miley’s GMail account thusly:

Holly told Threat Level he stole about a dozen Cyrus pictures but only published the most provocative ones. He said he got access to Cyrus’s Gmail account after obtaining unauthorized access to a MySpace administrative panel where he found passwords for MySpace accounts stored in cleartext. He found the password Cyrus used for her MySpace account — Loco92 — and tried it on a Gmail account Cyrus was known to use. The password worked on that account as well, but only for a couple of weeks before it was changed.

Conversely, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo mail account was compromised by David Kernell’s “brute force” attempts of simply guessing the challenge questions, and was then served up an interface to reset the password from the web interface.

So far, the similarities are only on the surface. Sure, I suppose there could be an interesting case made that web-based mail products are inherently insecure or some such nonsense, or the need to properly utilize and organize your passwords so they can be less easily hacked.

What’s more interesting is a point I saw brought up by Mike Massnick last week with regard to the Sarah Palin incident, and it could have direct bearing on this case as well:

“…Orrin Kerr suggests the entire indictment is legally flawed. Specifically, the statute used, claims that the intrusion is only a felony if used to further a criminal activity. ”

“As Kerr notes, it’s not clear what criminal activity was “furthered” by hacking into the email — unless you read the whole thing recursively, such that the act itself is illegal, and thus doing it is furthering that illegal act. But, obviously, that’s legally problematic. So once again, it looks like a situation where plenty of people believe that the act was illegal (very reasonably so, I might argue), but the feds are having trouble finding a law that actually makes it illegal. “

The question then becomes whether it’s open season on high profile emails. Generally, I’m against the legislature coming in and making laws against things online, but it seems a fairly simple task to say “Hey, email hacking? Yeah, that’s illegal now.”

There are laws against interfering with the delivery of the US Postal Service, so most of us simply assume that those laws would similarly apply to emails, but it appears that isn’t exactly the case. Beyond the legal assumption, it seems common sense that we should have a reasonable expectation of privacy with our email accounts, doesn’t it?

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Miley Cyrus and Her Social Media Save7 Resources for Learning More About Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin7 More Facts about Sarah PalinT-Pain Launches Online-Only Record LabelNever Mind Swiftboating How About SwiftGooglingMiley’s MySpace: A Wake-Up Call for Parents?PicApp Makes it Easy to Legally Blog the Latest Britney and Lindsay Pictures

Source:Mashable!

Sequoia Capital, the illustrious venture capital firm that has backed companies like Google and Apple but more recently made headlines with its “RIP Good Times” presentation is putting some money to work tonight. The firm is leading a $15.7 million investment in AdMob, a mobile advertising network that includes more than 6,000 publishers and serves in excess of 4.5 billion mobile ad impressions per month.

While growth in online advertising on the whole is expected to decelerate over the next few years, AdMob is seeing success in the mobile space, especially with ads targeted for the iPhone, for which it launched a specialized ad network last year. According to The New York Times, AdMob now serves advertising for 20 of the top 100 applications built for the device.

With Google’s G1 set to debut tomorrow, and the impending launch of the Blackberry Application Center , mobile inventory will likely to continue to grow for AdMob. While the likes of Google and Yahoo have also launched their own mobile ad solutions, for the time being, AdMob is in control of what it says is the biggest network.

Sequoia was joined in the round by existing AdMob investor Accel Partners. AdMob, who reports being cash flow positive, will use the funding primarily to expand internationally.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:AdMob Signs AccuWeather to Mobile Ad NetworkAdMob Mobile Analytics. How’s Your Performance?AdMob Launching Unit Just for iPhone CampaignsAdMob and LandRover, Changing the Game for Mobile Ads?AdMob: 249 Million Ads Served on iPhone, But Here Comes GPSRockYou Hits Bumpy Ground?TokBox Secures $4 Million from Sequoia

The third quarter saw the number of U.S. venture funds raising new cash decline by 29 percent to 55 funds, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. That compares to 78 new funds a year ago and 76 new funds in the second quarter of 2008. And 45 of that 55 were follow-on funds rather than new funds.

Each of those funds, though, raised a lot more money on average. The total raised for the third quarter was $8.1 billion, down only 6 percent from the third quarter of 2007 (but down 12 percent from the $9.2 billion raised in the previous quarter of this year).

And remember, all of this was before the financial meltdown of the past two weeks that had alarm bells ringing at every VC firm.

Browser-based fantasy game startup Challenge Games has raised a $10 million B round just a couple months after raising its $4.5 million A round. Globespan led the round. Sequoia Capital, which led the last round, also participated (Sequoia partner Roelof Botha is on the board).

Challenge is behind the online role-playing games Duels and Baseball Boss. Both are addictive, and are designed to encourage the trading of virtual goods (better swords, better short stops) to help players improve their chances of scoring higher in the game.

Still, many people must attend product […]

Along with having excellent food and guests, the All Things Digital party at the Venetian in Las Vegas had very nice throw pillows. Jason Calacanis may have twittered about stealing one, but I actually did it. Score one for the bullycub!

Source:Valleywag

A tipster spotted the female half of Gawker’s favorite ex-couple, Julia Allison, leaving a CES party in Las Vegas with venture capitalist Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital. Kvamme, who was a frequent target of Valleywag emeritus Nick Denton, is responsible for Sequoia’s investments in a number of promising companies including LinkedIn and AdBrite.

It’s curious that rumors of a Plaxo sale exploded at the same time that Robert Scoble got his Facebook account suspended using a secret, unreleased tool for extracting data from Facebook. Curious, too, that Plaxo is so eager to milk the incident for good PR. While a battle of words takes place in public, we hear that quieter talks are happening behind the scenes: A sale of Plaxo to Facebook. A clash between the company’s backers, though, could sink any deal.

Technically, the sale makes sense. Plaxo CTO Joseph Smarr is an engineering rock star, with many fans among the Valley’s brainiac collectors. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is said to admire other members of Plaxo’s engineering team. The process of synching multiple address books, Plaxo’s specialty, is more complex than it sounds, and would save Facebook some trouble as it tries to become more of a hub for its users’ online activities on and off the Facebook site.

Bringing the investors to terms, however, would prove troublesome. Michael Moritz at Sequoia Capital is said to be eager to get a stake in Facebook, however small, so it can claim to have had a hand in its success. It’s a move he played skillfully in the first bubble when he merged a failing online bank, X.com, into Peter Thiel’s PayPal.

Thiel, now a Facebook board member and venture capitalist in his own right, remembers that maneuver all too keenly, and believes Moritz got the better of him in the deal. Then, too, Moritz forced Sean Parker, now a partner in Thiel’s Founders Fund, out of Plaxo; he next joined Facebook, and while he didn’t stay long, he still owns a substantial stake in the company. Any deal that reunites Sequoia, Thiel, and Parker would produce a moment of boardroom drama the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long while.

The talks aren’t advanced, and haven’t even reached the point of naming numbers. But Facebook’s lofty $15 billion valuation gives it a currency for acquisitions. Will Plaxo take Facebook’s paper? The decision, if it ever comes to that, will rest in part with Thiel. How delicious it would be to have Moritz at a disadvantage.

Cartoonist Hugh Macleod’s Blue Monster — the beast urging Microsofties to “change the world or go home” — will get its own bus for the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas on January 5. The blue guy with the big teeth is more cute than frightening, but there’s another reason to run for safety if you see this sucker turn the corner. Guess who’s driving it? Hint: the answer is NSFH — not safe for highways.

Source:Valleywag

Travel search engines Kayak and Sidestep will merge to form a new company, according to reports. As part of the deal, Kayak raised another $196 million from current investors Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners as well as from Sidestep investors Norwest Venture Partners and Trident Capital and new investors Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. The merger will create the fifth largest online travel destination. That sad boast might make you wonder, how’d they get so many VCs on board?

The same way flatlining startups always do: the promise of an imminent IPO. Or at least that’s what Trident Capital’s Woody Marshall told VentureBeat.

Between the second and third quarters of this year, the average DSL connection speed in […]Source:GigaOM
The buzz on Sand Hill Road these days is all about online advertising plays. Never mind the fact that most of the “online ad” business is living on scraps compared with the Godzilla-like Google (GOOG). The latest testimony to this craze: $23 million in new funding for AdBrite, a company started by Phil “Pud” Kaplan, […]

Facebook CFO Gideon Yu never, ever sleeps. He’s helped the social network raise another $500 million, on top of Microsoft&#