Chicken Soup and Search Engines

Speaking of search engines, which we were. The big G has announced a whole new range of feature for its GMail service, including the ability to add external email accounts to your GMail account and so download emails direct into the GMail interface. You can still invite friends to join but no one needs an invite any more to get a Google Mail account; and to think there was a time when the privileged few could actually sell account invites on ebay.

Also new is GMail on your cell phone. You just point your WAP phone to googlemail.com/app

Of more wider interest for the blogging community is the ability to add RSS feeds to your Google Mail account.

Google Mail has gone truly international and now suports 40 different languages from العربية,and עברית to Bahasa Indonesia and Català. Moreover, because the service now incorporates chatting you can talk instantly with your contacts from inside GMail.

There are a few other features (if you’re in the US you will see one set and if you’re elsewhere you’ll get another), but the one that caught my eye is that the system now includes virus scanning with a simple recommendation - They tell you that you can get “an automatic check-up every time that you open or send a message with an attachment.” Google claims to “try our best to remove viruses so that we can protect you against all those that we find.” But, then they really let you down by pointing out that you are “on your own with the common cold” but thankfully offer some tried and tested advice for even those offline infections “try chicken soup” they say (but only in the GB version of the whatsnew page).

So, is there any truth in the chicken soup and colds legend? Well, an item by Alan Parsons in the medical journal Nurse Practitioner (2003 Jun;28(6):16) seemed to hint that it is more than a myth and that there really might be some truth in it. “Chicken soup may provide relief from the symptoms of the cold season through neutrophilic action,” he says, neutrophilic action being the stimulation of disease-fighting white blood cells. So, next time you catch a cold, take GMail’s advice and opt for chicken soup, unless you’re a vegetarian, of course.