GMail

Most web services like Twitter for example require a unique email address for each account you create. What if you want to create two or more accounts, but only have (or want to use) one Gmail address?

You Gmail address has a unique feature. If you put a dot in between any of the letters within your id the email still arrives to the same mailbox. So for example if you email address is: john.doe@gmail.com all the below addresses are valid and will arrive to the same inbox:

• j.ohndoe@gmail.com
• jo.hndoe@gmail.com
• j.o.hndoe@gmail.com
• j.o.h.n.d.o.e@gmail.com

You can use each to sign up for a different Twitter account and stay organized within one Gmail account.

GMail Labs now offers embedding images into emails. Once you switch it on you will get a small picture icon in your toolbar. The interface is very similar to what you're used to in google sites. You can upload the files which appear as small thumbnails. Once you select the required image you have the option to resize them within your email message to thumbnail, medium, large and original dimensions.

Question is why would one use this option? I personally hate embedded images in emails. Do you like them?

PS. Now that GMail has the feature to embed images, image support in signatures can't be far away. Now, that is something I would use for branding.

If you're one of those who enjoy the gMail themes rolled out last November, but were missing the option to create your own theme, you'll be glad to find out that the new option to choose your own colors.

Just go to Settings / Themes / Choose your own colors (last option in the list) to start tinkering. The interface is a little confusing at first. You need to click the different elements and change the colors by clicking the correct swatch from the drop-down menu. When you're done, just click save in the bottom right corner. Enjoy!

Wonder when themes are coming to Google Apps...

If you're a heavy gMail user you may want to try out Mailplane application. Besides the cool icon the application offers several productivity enhancements listed below in order of importance:

1. It's a dedicated application just for email so, it tends to be much faster than either Safari or Firefox — no more beach-ball or stuck screens
2. It let's you switch between gmail or google app accounts with a double click — saves you a lot of typing
3. Has a menubar status icon that let's you know the number of unread messages at a glance
4. Drag and drop file attachment — feels like an offline app
5. mailto: URL support — opens email links directly in Mailplane
6. Growl integration — you get instant notification about events
7. iPhoto and Mediabrowser integration for easy sending of resized images and other media
8. And several more features

If you gave it a try, let me know your opinion!

If you use GMail or Google Apps email system you can take advantage of a new feature called "Undo Send" available under Settings / Labs.

If enabled, you can stop messages from being sent for 5 seconds after hitting the send button.

Creating Hierarchy by Importance

About Starring Your E-mails

First of all, let’s get cleared what starring is good for. As in several fields of life, in e-mailing as well, people categorize stuff. Eg. you categorize music by genre, album, artist and even by popularity (manual or play count). You categorize files at work, you categorize letters at home, that’s why we have several drawers in our desks. But categorizing sometimes just makes a mess when you have something that could be put to category ‘A’ or category ‘B’. Of course labeling in the digital world offers a solution to that problem. The other problem, which I’m more interested in, is that there is always a category, that is signed by importance.

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So far only the front end is affected, but judging by the twitter comments the problem is widespread. Both payed and free accounts are affected. IMAP for email and docs frontend still works, but Gears isn't. Google's official statement on Gmail Help:

Status Update
2/24/2009
We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a number of users. This problem occurred at approximately 1.30AM Pacific Time. We're working hard to resolve this problem and will post updates as we have them. We apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused.

This reminds me — we should have a local backup of all our mails for such occasions. I simply use Mail.app with IMAP to download my mail regularly and have it as a local backup. What do you use?

If you like conspiracy theories check out how the screenshoot (NSFW) of how the gmail support page looks like. My only hope is that they didn't get to user data and only hacked the frontend.

Thanks to Google you don't need complicated tools to set up two way syncing between iCal and Google Calendar anymore. In a few steps you can set up your online and offline calendars to display the same information.

Here are the 3 steps to take:

1. Open the OS X Address book, find your own name and select the menu Card / Make This My Card. This is needed for the meeting invites.
2. Download the setup tool Calaboration provided by Google and run it.
3. Provide your Gmail username/password and select the calendars you with to sync and done.

It works smooth. I only hope for these features to appear soon:

1. Being able to add an entry to a Synced Google Calendar on an iPhone. Currently you can't do that, you can only add an entry to the default calendar, which doesn't sync up to Google as far as I can tell. Hope you can prove me wrong.
2. Being able to sync iCal to-do-list to Google Calendar. For this of course Google first has to release a to-do-list application. Until than we have the Gmail integrated RTM.
3. Calendar entry with time zone conversion support.

Google has been busy the past few weeks rolling out eye candy for their users. First they launched themes for iGoogle, then video chat for GTalk and now themes for GMail. They look pretty good and there is a good selection of minimalist, high contrast and illustrative themes. They even payed a lot of attention to elaborate footers. See a few more examples below.

Gmail launched many new Labs features to choose from:

1. Right-side chat, so you can make use of your wide-screens.
2. Right-side labels, for the same reason.
3. Hide Unread Counts, to clean up the Gmail interface.
4. Advanced IMAP Controls. Choose which labels show up in IMAP, turn off message auto-expunging, or trash messages when they're deleted from IMAP.
5. Canned Responses. Save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form. Also automatically send emails using filters. This is a very powerful and very useful tool for those who don't already use one of the auto complete features on their OS.
6. Default 'Reply to all'. Very powerful if you collaborate with many people frequently, but can be dangerous if you're not careful.
7. Quote selected text.
8. Navbar drag and drop. Allows you to reorder your sidebar items. Very useful. I wish it allowed me to close some altogether.
9. Mail Goggles. It's a toy to get your thoughts together.
10. Forgotten Attachment Detector. Very useful indeed.
11. Vacation Time! Lets you specify starting and ending dates for the vacation autoresponder.
12. Custom Label Colors.
13. Mark as Read Button. I don't see much use as it's already up there.
14. Go to label. Only useful if you use labels, which I don't.
15. Google Calendar gadget. This is my favorite. It puts a mini customizable calendar in your sideabar. Total time saver!
16. Google Docs gadget. Also a great addition as it allows direct access to your commonly used or starred docs.
17. Add any gadget by URL. Wow, this really opens up the interface to practically anything. Can you guys suggest what gadgets could be useful here?