Today Google added new features to its web mail system, Gmail.
Gmail announcement is

Some features we know you’ve wanted (and one we should have had all along):

* Gmail Notifier
Want to know if you’ve got new mail? Let us do the checking so you don’t have to. Find out when new messages arrive, and even see their subjects, senders and snippets, all without having to open a web browser.

* Search your contacts
With the new and improved Contacts list, search for a contact as easily as you would a message in Gmail. Add notes and phone numbers. View messages directly from the Contacts list. Stay in touch with the people in your life more easily than ever before.

* Automatic forwarding to another email account
We’re testing a new feature that lets you forward new incoming messages to any email account you want. It’s free during the test and you can set it up in seconds. Even set up filters to forward only some of your messages. It’s your mail. Get it the way you want it.

* And finally… Save Drafts!
For when you can’t find the right words, save drafts and find them later.

Google Inc. today announced the 50 finalists in the second annual Google Code Jam, Google’s online coding competition consisting of a series of problem-solving challenges that invite participants to select a programming language and use their programming skills to code solutions to the problems. The following finalists will be flown to Google headquarters to compete in the Championship Round on October 15:

This year’s Championship Round will be held at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on October 15, 2004. Finalists will compete for $50,000 in prize money, including $10,000 for the first place winner, $7,000 for the second place winner, and $5,000 for the third place winner.

The Google Code Jam is powered by TopCoder, the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development. Registration for the competition began Sept. 1, and attracted more than 7,500 participants from more than 100 countries.

This is the second year of the Google Code Jam. In 2003, Jimmy Mardell of Stockholm, Sweden, took home the grand prize. Prior to the first Google Code Jam, Google held a smaller programming contest and hired the winner, who is now part of Google’s New York-based engineering team.

Sony is abandoning its CDs that use built-in technology that limits copying them, after pushing the program for two years.

Such CDs let users copy their music once for free onto a personal computer, but use the Internet to charge a fee for subsequent copying of the same disk.

However, Sony Music Entertainment has announced it will stop publishing them, mainly because its message against illegally copying CDs for uses such as in file-sharing over the Internet has widely sunk in, the company said.

Sony Music has learned that only a small part of the population illegally copy CDs, company spokeswoman Kimiko Ohashi said Monday.

The music giant recently started adapting its strategy due to the proliferation of MP3 computer files, used to store music in audio players such as Apple’s iPod, which are rapidly becoming a global music industry phenomenon.

Yahoo Inc. is adding new search engine tools that will enable users to create personal folders and share their favorite links with others.
With the new tools, Yahoo’s search engine users will be able to sort, share and save their search results and bookmark the sites into categories. Visitors also will be able to record personal notes about the saved sites.

Yahoo’s upgrade is similar to features recently introduced by two other Internet search engines, Ask Jeeves Inc. and A9.com, which is owned by Amazon.com.

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