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Filed under: Business, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Office, Productivity, Web services, Google, Commercial, Freeware, How-Tos

While many people using Google Apps are already happy users of the “new” version of Gmail (apparently Google doesn’t want to call it Gmail 2.0), there are still many users of Google Apps that are stuck on the older version. If you’re frustrated at seeing the cool new things you can do in the new Gmail and you’re still stuck on the old version, there may be something that you can do.

If you’re the administrator for your Google Apps account, or can speak to that person, there is an option under Domain Settings (General tab) in the Control Panel section called “Turn on new application features to my domain before they are rolled out to all Google Apps customers.” A week after we checked that box on our Google Apps account, Gmail magically transformed to the new version. Good luck!

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Deals, H and R Block (HRB)

Shares of U.S.’s largest tax preparer H&R Block Inc. (NYSE: HRB) are surging this day after the company announced last night better-than-expected third-quarter earnings results. H&R also issued encouraging earnings guidance and showed optimism about successful negotiations for its remaining Option One Mortgage sale.

H&R announced its quarterly loss narrowed to $47.4 million, or 14 cents per share, helped by higher sales and smaller losses from its subprime mortgage lending subsidiary, up from its loss of $60.3 million, or 18 cents per share in the same period last year.

Included in the company’s earnings was a $26.3 million pretax charge related to staff reductions expenses and executive departures. Excluding that, H&R Block’s earnings numbers would have come at 8 cents per share. Analysts’ estimates (which typically exclude one time items) was for 6 cents per share in the quarter.

Looking at revenue, the company posted $972.6 million, missing analysts’ forecast for quarterly revenue of $1 billion, according to Thomson Financial. The company stated that retail tax preparation and related fees jumped 12.6% compared with the same period a year ago. The number of retail clients also saw a gain of 6.8% in the month of February.

Looking ahead, H&R stated it expects positive earnings figures for the year. H&R Block believes that subprime mortgage losses will be offset by higher tax revenue and cost cuts. Thus, the company expects 2008 earnings to be toward the low end of its $1.30 to $1.45 per share forecast range, including $26.3 million related to severance charges. Analysts, on average, expected H&R show a profit of $1.29 per share.

In addition, the company expressed its enthusiasm about a possible deal regarding the sale of the remaining pieces of Option One Mortgage Corp. Richard Breeden, H&R’s Chairman, said the company is confident it will get “a signed contract in the near future.”

Traders have expressed their enthusiasm over H&R Block’s outlook, pushing the stock up 6.02% to $11.33 in morning trading.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the on the web investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: International markets, Deals, Law, Economic data, Oil

The Treasury and some members of Congress are concerned that sovereign funds from the Middle East and Asia may use their investments in US banks and corporations to push their global political goals. Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs David McCormick stated the government-controlled funds may raise “legitimate national security concerns,” and might distort markets if not managed properly, according to MarketWatch.

If the big funds walk away from investing in the US, especially when banks and brokerages may need more money to weather the credit crisis, finding massive pools of capital may be difficult.

But, one sovereign fund, Singapore say investor Temasek, appears to be willing to concur to make official its intention to put money into US companies for only “financial” reasons. According to Reuters, “A Temasek Holdings executive told a U.S. Home of Representatives subcommittee that it supports the aim of U.S. lawmakers to maintain the right balance between national security and investment flows.”

But, Singapore is not the problem. It does not have a vast economy like China which could make use of US technology and financial expertise. It is not a massive producer of oil like the Gulf Says who may want to try to influence the way US business sees OPEC’s bias toward high oil prices. The political interests of Asia and the Middle East may indeed conflict with those of the US government.

The Treasury still has to walk a fine line. Some sovereign funds might not be willing to agree to any restrictions at all. That means capital for large, troubled US companies may have to come from the federal government itself. But, who states that is bad?

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Business, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Office, Productivity, Web services, Google, Freeware, How-Tos

While we might have touched on it when we covered the release of the “new” version of Gmail, we thought you (like us) might have forgotten about this great tiny trick.

Gmail now treats every page like a web page. Okay, that might sound a bit too obvious, so we’ll explain. When you open a message, label, or do a search, each of the resulting pages you see will have a dedicated URL. This means that if you bookmark or copy and paste the URL, you can later return to exactly the same view.

Even more useful is the fact that the URL for a search works across different Gmail accounts. So if you have a friend or co-worker that you know has certain information in their email, but can’t seem to find it, you can do a search in your own Gmail account, then send your friend the URL for that search and they’ll have the exact same search criteria applied against their own account.

For example, if you want to search your Gmail account for “Download Squad”, try using the following URL:
https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/%22download+squad%22

Slick!

By the way, if you’re having trouble making this work, try accessing your account using the secure method. To do this, just ensure your Gmail URL begins with “https”. For some reason we can’t seem to make this trick work unless we’re using this method.

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