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The Google Apps Connector promises to push Gmail messages within 60 seconds, and sync in-box actions like assigning labels and archiving messages. You’ll also be able to search contacts from the company’s global address list, a huge bonus for mobile workers. Synchronization between the Google Calendar and the BlackBerry calendar is one-way in this release, with Google’s calendar populating your schedule on the phone. Google plans to include bidirectional calendar syncing in the future.

The Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (download) is available for free to corporate Google Apps Premier and Education Editions customers, and must be implemented by an IT administrator.

If your office has given you a BlackBerry for work purposes, you may soon be accessing your Google Apps Gmail, calendar, and contacts via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

While the connector opens up syncing to some of the Google Apps, in this iteration it does not sync with Google Docs, the intranet site-hosting app called Google Site, and Google Video. You’ll still be able to view content through the mobile browser, however.

Check out more details in this Google blog post.

On Friday, Google announced that some functionality in Google Apps, its suite of premium enterprise-level applications, will now give company-issued BlackBerrys some push and sync functionality.

It’s a good idea, but it doesn’t belong in an app (having to sync to save the data is a bad idea). Rather, this is the kind of thing you should be able to get online from your mobile phone carrier. They already have the data anyway, so why can’t they display it for you? Hopefully the Rseven team realizes this and is trying to get their service out to the carriers.

Once you sync your phone to the service, all the data goes onto the Web so you can pick over it later. You get charts and graphs showing you who you communicate with the most. You can easily tag and share your photos. Mostly, you can just see what you’ve been doing with your phone at any time. The CEO calls it a “lifecache” service.

Everything you've done on your phone gets pushed to the Web.

SAN DIEGO–Rseven makes an interesting service that archives everything you do on your mobile phone so you can review and analyze your activities later. With the app on your phone (it was shown on Series 60 phone — the first demo at DemoFall 09 not on an iPhone), everything you do on the phone is stored, including recordings of incoming and outgoing calls. Call logs, text messages, and photos. (Actually, it wasn’t clear if activities in other apps, like e-mail, are also saved.)

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Rafe Needleman/CNET)

“This is yet another example of the way the DMCA harms innovation without doing anything to stop what the studios call piracy,” von Lohmann said. “This enables the studios to take consumers’ fair use rights and sell them back to them one DVD at a time.

Kaleidescape argued there was nothing in the license that banned copying and Judge Leslie C. Nichols agreed in a ruling issued in March 2007. RealNetworks, which makes RealDVD, also argued that there was nothing in the DVD CSS license that prevented them from designing a DVD-copying feature.

Kaleidescape, a company that enables users to copy DVDs and store them on its system, lost an important court decision Wednesday.

For the second time in two days, Hollywood has racked up another major legal victory over DVD-copying devices the studios charge are illegal.

“And if you’re an innovator,” he continued, “where DVDs are concerned, it’s very dangerous to innovate without asking the studios’ permission first.”

“It may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally owned DVD on that individual’s computer,” Patel wrote, “a federal law (the DMCA) has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies.”

Update 4:15 p.m.: To include comments from Kaleidescape.

The film industry has always maintained that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was designed to protect innovation as well as the rights of content creators. A balance was sought and in pursuit of that, provisions were made to protect antipiracy controls, such as DVD CSS, from being circumvented.

Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users and technology firms, said late Tuesday evening that Patel’s decision is a setback for innovators and consumers.

What this says to consumers is that if you want to make a digital backup of a DVD, no problem. Go ahead. But beware if you build a tool that actually helps people make those copies. In that case you’re breaking the law.

“This is yet another example of the way the DMCA harms innovation without doing anything to stop what the studios call piracy. This enables the studios to take consumers’ fair use rights and sell them back to them one DVD at a time.” — Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

The one-two punch in the courts is likely to rock the technology community. Techies had already begun bitterly criticizing the decision by Patel to halt sales of RealDVD and the Kaleidescape-like player from Real, code named Facet.

In 2004, Kaleidescape was accused in a lawsuit by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA), of agreeing to abide by the terms of the Content Scramble System (CSS) license, which it said forbade the copying of DVDs.

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Kaleidescape)

“We’re obviously disappointed by the court’s decision”" said Michael Malcolm, Kaleidescape’s CEO. “Our plan is to go to the Supreme Court of California. We’re confident that were not in breach of our contract with the DVDCCA and until then our products remain fully legal and licensed.”

Apparently, the only good news to come out of this for those in favor of fair use is that U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, in her RealDVD decision, did leave open the question of whether consumers have the legal right to make copies of their DVDs for their own personal use.

In a statement, the DVD CCA said: “The Appellate Court recognized what we have maintained all along, Kaleidescape had agreed to a complete contract that mandated certain requirements with which devices must conform in order to be Content Scramble System (CSS) compliant. We look forward to returning to the trial court to obtain an injunction requiring Kaleidescape to comply with its contractual obligations under the CSS License Agreement and Specifications.”

Kaleidescape, which had won a rare court victory over the film industry two years ago, saw a California appeals court overturn the ruling on Wednesday. The decision comes a day after a federal court placed a preliminary injunction on the sale of RealDVD. Both Kaleidescape and RealDVD enable users to make digital copies of movies and store them to a hard drive.

Earlier Wednesday, we brought you live coverage of Apple’s rock ‘n’ roll-themed event, which kicked off in San Francisco just after 10 a.m. Pacific time. The event has concluded, but for more iPod-related coverage, click here.

10:27 a.m.: There’s also something called iTunes Extras. Using the movie “Wall-E,” he shows there are extra features like short videos, and a way to navigate chapters in the movie.

10:25 a.m.: There are also videos that he says are exclusive to iTunes LP. For example, Ray Manzarek is talking about how they decided to name the band The Doors.

Jobs touted brilliant new iPod colors.

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

9:59 a.m.: Now playing “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” by the Rolling Stones, also the title of the event per the invitation. It looks like we’ll be starting momentarily.

10:01 a.m.: Steve Jobs walks out. Standing ovation.

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

10:59 a.m.: “Video has exploded in the last few years,” he says. All those streams are coming from solid-state video cameras. He shows a picture of the Flip Video and its 4GB $149 price point. “We want to get in on this,” he says. There will be a video camera in the back of every iPod Nano. There’s also a mic and a speaker inside.

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Stephen Shankland)

Jobs says the iPhone is popular internationally.

Steve Jobs takes the stage.

10:19 a.m.: He also shows us how Home Sharing works. You can drag a song or series of songs from other authorized computers to your own library. Can sort by songs that others have that you do not, and can set it so that when others buy new content from iTunes it can be automatically transferred to your library.

Album view in iTunes 9.

10:04 a.m.: Today we’re talking about music. Phil Schiller and Jeff Robbin will join him. First, iPhone stuff. “Thrilling to report that in two years we’ve sold 30 million iPhones.”

10:11 a.m.: In iTunes 9: Genius Mixes. Like Genius Playlists, Genius Mixes is like a DJ that plays mixes of songs that go together from your own library. Will make up to 12 mixes at a time.

10:05 a.m.: In the last year, the reason is the App Store, he says. There are 75,000 apps. 1.8 billion apps downloaded by users, he reports. That doesn’t include updates, though.

You can see lyrics with the album view in iTunes 9. Shown here are Dave Matthews lyrics.

10:24 a.m.: Now Jeff is showing us iTunes LP. He picks a Doors album. You can see all the songs, all the lyrics, and lots of photos.

He encourages everyone to be an organ donor, and extends a heartfelt thanks to the Apple community. Also, on Tim Cook: “He ran the company very ably during that time.” “I’m back at Apple, and loving every day of it,” he says.

10:08 a.m.: Now on to iTunes: Steve says iTunes is the No. 1 seller of music in the world. 8.5 billion songs have been purchased and there are 100 million accounts.

11:11 a.m.: Jones says: “Thanks to Steve Jobs for having us. Really happy to see he’s doing well.” Now we get a preview of a song from her upcoming album called “Young Blood.”

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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Stephen Shankland)

Phil Schiller brags about the iPhone as a gaming platform.

10:07 a.m.: Also: as Greg Sandoval previously reported, there will be ringtones for sale for $1.29 each. You can buy them the way you’d buy music.

10:09 a.m.: Today, iTunes 9 is out. A new look. Cleaner-looking, better navigation.

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10:03 a.m.: “I’m very happy to be here today with you all,” he says. “As you may know I had a liver transplant. I have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash. Without that, I wouldn’t be here without that person’s generosity.”

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

10:17 a.m.: Jeff Robbin, vice president of consumer applications and lead software designer for iTunes, is now demonstrating the new iTunes. He shows how to drag and drop apps in iTunes to rearrange how they appear on an iPod Touch or iPhone. You can check and uncheck which games or apps you want on the device.

9:55 a.m. PDT: Good morning. We’re inside and seated, just waiting for the event to begin. There’s quite a crowd in here with some notable names already appearing. Greg Grunberg from TV’s “Heroes” is sitting right behind us, and Herbie Hancock and Google’s Eric Schmidt have also been spotted.

11:04 a.m.: We’re getting a preview of the new ad, which highlights the video feature and colors of the Nano–with a cutesy pop song as backing, of course.

The crowd awaits Apple news inside the Yerba Buena center in San Francisco.

11:02 a.m.: The voice-over feature from the iPod Shuffle will also be in the Nano, as well as Genius Mixes which were discussed earlier. The Nano will also have an FM radio, a voice recorder app, and pedometer. The pedometer will sync online with Nike Plus.

Schiller mocks Dell's non-pocketable small PC.

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

11:15 a.m.: Norah Jones concludes her performance. The lights are back up and Steve’s on stage.

Travis Boatman from Electronic Arts shows the new interface to control the Madden game.

10:53 a.m.: OpenGL ES 2.0 is also on the iPod Touch now, so games are faster–except for the $199 version, which will not have that.

10:54 a.m.: Now Schiller is discussing the iPod Classic. Now it will be 160GB for $249, which is up from 120GB.

10:42 a.m.: Now, Bart Decrem, founder of Tapulous (maker of Tap Tap Revolution) is up. Riddim Ribbon is their new game built “especially for iPhone and iPod Touch.” It’s a DJ game where you race down a rhythm of a song, Guitar Hero-style. You can remix the song by going different directions down the “ribbon.”

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Stephen Shankland/CNET )

10:21 a.m.: There’s a new navigation bar in the iTunes Store: music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audio books, etc.

10:47 a.m.: Only one more game developer, Schiller promises. It’s Travis Boatman from Electronic Arts. He’s talking Madden NFL 10, which is coming to the App Store for the first time.

10:08 a.m.: iPhone OS 3.1 is free for iPhone and iPod Touch users who have 3.0. It will be made available today. Update 2:58 p.m.: Earlier, it was reported that it would cost iPod Touch users $4.95. The update only costs money to those who had not yet upgraded their iPod Touch to 3.0 or higher.

10:13 a.m.: Also something called Home Sharing. With it, you can copy songs, movies, TV shows to up to five authorized computers in your house. Can see what’s in all the other authorized computers right from your iTunes account.

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

People clap, but there seems to be some palpable disappointment for those expecting a Beatle or Coldplay, which were some of the rumors. She starts with “Come Away with Me.”

10:33 a.m.: Now Schiller’s talking up the computing aspect of the iPod Touch, with Wi-Fi, browsing the Internet on Safari, e-mail, etc. “It fits in your pocket. Not everybody can say that,” he says. And he shows a picture on screen of a Dell Netbook. More giggles from the audience.

Steve Jobs announces iPhone OS 3.1.

11:06 a.m.: Now Jobs is talking music. “It’s the primary reason we do this.” Live performance coming up. It’s Norah Jones.

10:22 a.m.: Can also preview songs directly in the Top Charts section. When browsing the store, you can click an “i” button for a preview of the songs on the album which will allow a quick listen without going to the actual artist or album page. You can also Twitter info and post to Facebook about songs you find in the iTunes Store.

10:49 a.m.: You can draw plays right on the screen, which draws lots of applause from the audience. Madden 10 is available today in the App Store, Boatman says.

11:00 a.m.: He says it’s just as thin as before, and shows a quick demo video from the device’s camera. The videos will sync back to your iPhoto or to YouTube, with one click (another feature of the Flip Video camera).

Jobs shows new iPods.

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Stephen Shankland)

Phil Schiller talks new iPod colors.

10:15 a.m.: Another new feature: iTunes LP. “Some of us here are old enough to have bought LPs,” Steve says. You can get album art, videos, liner notes, credits, etc. This is clearly the “Cocktail” we’ve been hearing about. The artists and labels can now have access to adding extras to their albums now.

10:12 a.m.: He says syncing will be better now, too. When syncing playlists you can also sync particular genres or particular artists. Also specific photo albums or specific faces from iPhoto, and specific movies from iTunes. You can also manage your apps syncing in iTunes.

10:14 a.m.: The iTunes Store also gets a new look, along with improved artists, movies, and TV pages–a “cleaner” layout, Jobs says.

10:44 a.m.: Mark Hickey from Gameloft, one of the more prolific App Store game makers, is up. He’s showing a new first-person shooter called Nova, where you have to defend humanity against an alien attack in space.

10:06 a.m.: Today: iPhone OS 3.1. Some bug fixes and new features are coming. The Genius playlist technology is now going to work for apps in the App Store. It will recommend apps to you based on the apps you already own. The recommendations will get better as people say what they like and buy, he says.

10:29 a.m.: First Schiller’s going to talk sales numbers. 220 million iPods sold to date, he says. He says they have 73.8 percent of the market, “with Microsoft pulling up the rear with 1.1 percent.” There are a few giggles.

Phil Schiller shows new prices and memory configurations for the iPod Touch.

11:16 a.m.: He thanks everyone for coming. That’s the end, folks. We’ll have continuing coverage including reviews of the new devices coming later today from CNET’s Donald Bell and plenty of video and further analysis from CNET News. Thanks for joining us!

10:28 a.m.: Jobs is back on stage. He says iTunes 9 is free and ready to download today. Phil Schiller will come up to talk iPods now.

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Stephen Shankland/CNET)

11:04 a.m.: It will come in a variety of colors: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, silver, black. 8GB for $159 and 16GB for $179, both will be available today.

Norah "Not a Beatle" Jones closed the event by performing two songs.

10:35 a.m.: He says the iPod Touch is a better gaming platform than the PSP or Nintendo DS. He points to $30 game titles on those devices and the buying experience as “too expensive” and “not a lot of fun.” He says there are 21,178 “game and entertainment” titles on iPhone OS, compared to 3,600 on Nintendo, and 600 on Sony.

10:37 a.m.: A few developers of those games are going to come up on stage now. Ubisoft is up first. Ben Mattes from Ubisoft is talking about Assassin’s Creed II and how it’s coming to the App Store. It’ll be out November 11.

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Twenty million of those sold are iPod Touch, he says.

10:52 a.m.: “$199 is a magic price point in the iPod market,” Schiller says. As of today, the iPod Touch is $199 for 8GB and $299 for 32GB. It now also comes in a 64GB model for $399.

10:57 a.m.: The iPod Shuffle gets its turn. Now it will come in more colors. Pink, green, and blue in addition to the silver and black. It’s also now $59 for 2GB and $79 for 4GB. There’s also a special edition in stainless steel for $99.

10:02 a.m.: People are still clapping.

10:58 a.m.: Steve’s back up. One more thing…a video camera.

MSN describes My Health Info (requires Silverlight) as a feature designed for busy parents, adults managing aging parents, and anyone managing chronic conditions and multiple medications.

My Health Info comes with some pretty handy tools, including personal page customization (i.e. allergy and blood pressure trackers, a lab results bank, BMI calculators, etc.); personal health devices (heart-rate monitors, pedometers, etc.); and access to multiple family member profiles.

That’s a wide net to cast, and I say it’s about time that those storing data in Microsoft’s HealthVault have online access to their own, well, vaults. For years people have been able to access e-mail, financial, and other accounts online, and even aggregate that data into single management centers; health data and management has been notoriously far behind.

My Health Info includes personal page customization, personal health devices, and access to multiple family member profiles.

MSN this week released its beta version of a new online health information management service, including widgets to upload and organize data stored in HealthVault accounts.

In conjunction with My Health Info, MSN also launched a swine flu info center on its Health & Fitness home page this week, where it has joined with Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic, among others, to track the latest news, assess risk factors, and search for nearby vaccination centers and availabilities.

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MSN)

As CNET’s Ina Fried reported two years ago, Microsoft launched HailStorm to manage consumers’ information online. The project eventually buckled under the weight of concerns over data security and privacy, not to mention difficulty in finding partnerships. HealthVault is off to a better start, with partners like the Social Security Administration already lined up. But competitors such as Google and the open-source Dossia will presumably keep MSN on its toes.

“People care deeply about credible, timely, and comprehensive information about health topics,” said Scott Moore, U.S. executive producer at MSN (who bounced back to Microsoft after a stint at Yahoo). “We are committed to delighting our customers with information, services, and tools that keep them informed and simplify their lives.”

But Flip is the de facto leader in minicams, and its Ultra and Mino models have several things going for them that the much more compact Nano doesn’t, like the Flip’s flip-out USB port that allows the camera to be plugged directly into a computer without need for a connector cable. The Flip also has user-replaceable batteries. Though the Nano overall has a smaller footprint, it was a bit unfair that when comparing the Flip to the Nano during its presentation Apple used the chunkiest model of Flip available (the Ultra), when the Mino is much slimmer and more compact.

Flip of course isn’t the only minicamcorder maker that could be worried about Apple’s attempts to enter this market. The Flip begot several imitators, like the Sony Webby, the Kodak Zi8, and devices from RCA, Sanyo, and Creative.

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“Video has exploded in the last few years,” he said. A lot of people are posting videos to sites like YouTube and much of them are coming from solid-state video cameras like the Flip, he said, showing the Flip Ultra model, which comes with 4GB of storage for $149.

A weigh-in between Cisco's Flip Video camera and Apple's new iPod Nano with video camera.

With user-created video exploding, Apple CEO Steve Jobs uttered what is probably one of the more frightening things rival electronics industry execs can hear: “We want to get in on this.”

Apple is attempting to one-up the Flip by inserting a video camera inside the iPod Nano, along with a microphone and internal speaker for video playback. Like the Flip, the Nano is supposed to have easy video uploading right to YouTube. Comparing them head to head, since the base model Nano now comes with 8GB of storage and costs $159, the value of the Nano with all the additions (media player, FM tuner, pedometer) certainly seems attractive. Of course until we actually use it, it’s hard to say how much of a threat the Nano’s new camera will be.

Already having decimated the MP3 player market with the iPod, and putting pressure on fellow smartphone makers, Apple now hopes to take on the Flip in its own backyard: short, user-generated video clips. Cisco purchased Pure Digital, the maker of the popular flash-based camera, earlier this year for almost $600 million because it was clearly the leader in its field. The Flip Video set itself apart by making the process of creating, editing, and uploading short videos to sites like YouTube very uncomplicated. In two years the company said it sold 2 million devices.

Still, the fact that Apple wants to be in this market puts a lot of pressure on Cisco and its Flip camera. For its part, Cisco responded publicly using Twitter, posting a message after the Apple event that said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

One of the biggest revelations at Apple’s music event Wednesday wasn’t just that the iPod Nano now has a video camera, but that Apple has the popular Flip Video camera squarely in its sights.

Cisco wasn’t the only major technology company that noticed. At Wednesday event, Jobs specifically referenced the Flip’s success.

The NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for Sustainability Base, a research center that will be a net zero energy building.

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James Martin/CNET)

The building will be powered by ground-source heat pumps from 72 geothermal wells, considered the most efficient way to heat and cool buildings.

NASA expects that the “high-performance building” will cut water usage by 90 percent compared to an equivalent-size building. NASA also hopes to significantly reduce maintenance costs. The structure itself will be built on top of steel frames and use natural daylighting extensively.

NASA had contracted the architecture firms of famed “cradle to cradle” William McDonough and Swinerton Builders was hired to complete construction on the project.

Updated at 4:00 a.m. PT to clarify roles of architecture firms.

The $20.6 million building is expected to be completed by the end of 2011. NASA expects to get the Platinum level LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the highest level.

After decades of developing technology to explore space, NASA is bringing its expertise in self-sustaining systems back to Earth.

Project managers, architects, NASA officials, and Lt. Governor John Garamendi break ground Tuesday on Sustainability Base, a new building at NASA Ames Research Center, which will showcase sustainable technologies.

The project aims to be a proof-of-concept for sustainable design and a number of green technologies developed at NASA.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

Three of the people who spoke at Tuesday's event: June Grant, architect at AECOM Design, left; Simon P. "Pete" Worden, NASA Ames Center director, center; and Lt. Governor John Garamendi, right.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

A dedication plaque, written on a solar panel, at the site of Tuesday's Sustainability Base groundbreaking.

There will be solar hot water collectors and a network of sensors to react to changing conditions, such as sunlight, temperature, wind, and energy usage. Data on the building’s mechanical systems can be monitored via a Web-based console.

You know that picture of you and your cat that features so prominently on your Facebook page? Well, play your cards right and you and Buttons could show up on the 7,400-square-foot Reuters Billboard in New York’s Times Square. Fortunately for the rest of us cynical travelers, the pic will only tower 23 stories above the city for 15 seconds.

Services like Artistic Photo Canvas and Canvas Press already print photos onto canvas. But CanvasPop–which just came out of beta–claims to be the only one to turn low-res images from social-media sites and phones into high-quality canvas prints.

No word on whether CanvasPop will screen images before they show up in Times Square or if you’ll be able to humiliate yourself and your friends at will.

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It’s all part of a promotion by a new company called CanvasPop that lets you print any image at any size on canvas, including pics from Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and iPhones. CanvasPop’s first 100 customers will get to beam shots from their personal collections above New York starting next month. Then, for $40, they can get a time-stamped photograph as a memento.

That pic of you with a laptop on your head at the office party could soon replace this scenic shot above Times Square.

Some commuters will see billboards such as these touting Google Apps for a solid month.

Traditionally Google hasn’t been big on ads, but it has produced TV spots for its Chrome browser and posted a cryptic series of job ads on Silicon Valley billboards years ago.

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Google)

Google has steadily increased the drumbeat behind Google Apps over the past several months, openly touting it as an alternative to Microsoft’s suite of office productivity and e-mail software with customer testimonials and applications designed to make the switch easier. The company said 1.75 million organizations are now using Google’s online services for word processing and e-mail, which is still a drop in the overall bucket but growing.

Google is taking its marketing strategy for Google Apps to the next level by renting prominent billboards in major U.S. cities.

Commuters in New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco will be greeted by a progressive series of ads for Google Apps starting Monday and running for a month. The idea is to catch IT managers stuck in horrific traffic spots like New York’s West Side Highway or San Francisco’s U.S. 101 and press them on the benefits of switching to Google Apps with a different ad for each day of the week.

Update 4:35 p.m. PDT:The bank did not take any action against the worker who sent the e-mail, the bank’s lawyer said.

The e-mail, sent by an employee of Jackson, Wyo.-based Rocky Mountain Bank on August 12, contained names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and loan information of more than 1,300 bank customers.

Asked for comment, a Google spokesman said: “To protect the privacy of our users, we do not comment on their use of Google services.”

A sensitive e-mail mistakenly sent by a bank to a Gmail address that prompted a court to order Google to deactivate the account was not viewed by the recipient and has been deleted, the bank said on Tuesday.

“As a result, no customer data of any sort has been viewed or used by any inappropriate user during this data lapse,” Martinez wrote. “Rocky Mountain Bank acted to protect its customer’s confidential information. That objective was accomplished. The matter is now closed and the TRO (temporary restraining order) entered on September 23, 2009 is now vacated.”

“Rocky Mountain Bank, working with Google (through court order), confirmed on Thursday of last week that the e-mail containing client information was never opened and has now been permanently destroyed by Google’s system,” Tina Martinez, general counsel for Rocky Mountain Capital, wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

And what recourse would the bank have if the data had been sent via regular mail to the wrong address? The U.S. Postal Office certainly doesn’t have the ability to see the envelope sitting on the recipient’s desk and vaporize it.

The bank sent another e-mail asking that the data be destroyed and went to court to get Google to intervene on its behalf. Last week, a judge in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., ordered Google to deactivate the Gmail account and Google complied. Google and the bank quickly resolved the matter and the court granted their motion to dismiss the case and allowed Google to reactivate the Gmail account.

The case poses some interesting questions. For instance, should the person who registered the e-mail address lose access to the account or have items deleted without his or her permission, particularly through no fault of their own?