Listener, and fellow Friends In Tech member, Steve Holden sent in an audio clip comparing Gmail to several other popular online mail services. Listen to find out the results.
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Category: Gmail Blog
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Google Money?
This morning while fueling up my mini-van I was pining for the days when I used to use PocketQuicken on my Palm PDA and sync it to my Windows machine at home. It used to make entering receipts so painless. Time moved on and I find myself with a Windows Mobile device and a Mac at home. I’m not sorry for either, but I do miss the rapid entry from just about anywhere. I have a Windows machine in the basement and run Quicken via remote desktop. That’s right, no Parallels, Bootcamp, or whatever for this old curmudgeon.
While the money was digitally clicking away at the pump, I started thinking about Google (don’t ask.) Since they’ve seen fit to take on the Microsoft Office applications, and quite successfully I might add, why not go after Quicken?
Think about it… A web 2.0 financial management package. No more downloading updates each year for taxes, no more signing on to enter a pile of receipts. Manage your finances from anywhere via a web browser. (I still recall the instance of checking my Gmail from the airport terminal in Hong Kong and chatting with someone in the US and UK at the same time.) Let Google’s servers update your portfolio, do automatic bill pay, and more. How cool would that be? Do you think they’re working on it? money.google.com, wallet.google.com and cash.google.com don’t resolve (yet).
I’d be happy with the ability to just enter my gas receipt in 30 seconds when I got to work – so would my wife.
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IMAP 101
Gmail now supports IMAP. What’s IMAP you say? IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. This is just another way for your Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or even your iPhone, to communicate with Google’s mail server.
So what are the advantages of IMAP? For users with many, or large messages, IMAP can result in faster response times. Unlike POP3, You can have multiple clients connect to the same mailbox. That means you can leave your computer connected at work and any changes you make at home are reflected at work, or any other client that is talking to the server.
IMAP also allows you to access parts of a message independently. This is really done in the background without your knowledge. What this means is that messages with large file attachments don’t retrieve the large attachment unless told to do so. You can retrieve and read a series of messages much quicker with IMAP.In short, IMAP is a more modern and bandwidth-friendly protocol.
You can enable IMAP by logging in to your Gmail account on the web, going to the Settings link in the upper right and select the tab that now reads “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”. A new section has been added labeled “IMAP Access”. Click on the radio button that says “Enable IMAP” and then the button labeled “Save Changes”. It’s that simple. There you will also find a link to help you configure any number of popular applications.
If you haven’t noticed, storage space has increased. After gradually going up from the original 1GB to 2 and then nearly stopping at 2.8GB, a sudden surge starting in October 2007 has seen significant growth in the Gmail mailbox. As of this recording I’m over 4.5GB. Sadly, the storage increase happened right after I archived all my mail to a local Thunderbird application and cleaned out Gmail entirely. It seems funny to only be using 5% of my storage space again.
Keep listening to the Gmail Podcast. News sources have it that more exciting improvements to Gmail are coming out soon.
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IMAP Support
Several Gmail Podcast listeners and readers are reporting that Google is rolling out support for IMAP. The “Forwarding and POP” tab has been renamed to “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”. Although it only appears to be available on some accounts at this point, particularly the hosted domains, I will have a podcast and detailed blog entry on setting up and configuring it as soon as I can.
Technical Tip: IMAP is an alternate protocol to retrieve your email to a computer or portable device. Clients like Thunderbird support it. One major benefit is that IMAP only retrieves the headers of information to display your index, unlike POP that retrieves the entire message every time. This makes it faster for devices like cell phones. The body of the message, and any attachments, are downloaded when you read the message.
Stay tuned for more details.
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Twitter offers import of Gmail Contacts
For those who use Twitter for your social networking, they have added a nice feature under the “Find & Invite” section to allow you to invite people from your Gmail address book quickly and easily. As a quick side note, Twitter is similar to instant messaging on a web page. You login with an account then answer the simple question “What are you doing now?” with a short text phrase such as “listening to the Gmail Podcast”. There two types of people, those you follow, and those who follow you. When you post something, the people who follow you will see it. When someone you follow updates their twitter status, you’ll see that update. It’s a simple concept that is catching on quickly.
To use your Gmail address book, login to Twitter at twitter.com. If you don’t have an account, simply register. It’s free and quick. Next, click on the link near the top that says “”Find & Invite”. There you will see an option to use your Gmail address book. You will be offered a secure login for your Gmail credentials and then the screen will go to your contacts. Once Twitter imports the information you can simply click on names to follow and whether to turn on or off the notifications. It’s that simple.
When you’re done, click “Next” and another page will come up suggesting to invite people you email the most. A pretty neat idea for inviting a lot of your friends to join Twitter without a lot of effort from you.
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Filter Assistant
I don’t know when the Filter Assistant feature first appeared, but I have found it very useful.
You’ll find the link to the filter assistant in the upper right of any message. When you click on this link, an orange section appears that looks a lot like the content when you are creating filters via the Settings screen or the “Create a filter” link near the search box at the top.
By default the From and To boxes are filled in, but you are free to remove that content and filter any other way you like. The bottom part of the orange box is to tell what actions to take on the filters you have created. Again, similar to doing the same thing from the settings tab.
Let’s walk through a quick example… Let’s say you spot a message on your index from a mail list you got on and cannot seem to get removed from. Go ahead and open the conversation from the index by clicking on it. Now locate the Filter Assistant link in the upper right of the conversation – it will be the same distance down the screen as the sender’s name. For this example, you’re really only concerned with who the message is to, not necessarily who it is from. That sender may send you valid information later. It’s your choice, but for this example I’ll remove the information in the From box. Once that is done, I go to the second half and check the box next to “Delete it”. Finally, I click on the “Create Filter” button.
If I ever need to remove or modify that filter, I can do it via the “Settings” link in the upper right of the screen and click on the “Filter” tab the same as any other filter.
Quick Tip: Here’s a quick tip for all you Mac users who are also using Firefox; if you right click (or Ctrl-Click) on a message in the conversation index you will get a pop-up, or call-out, with the message content. Across the top of this you can Close the window, Archive it, Leave the message marked unread, or Trash it. I would love to see a Reply option, but since you cannot reply directly from the index normally, this kind of makes sense. I haven’t found this feature available in IE or FireFox on the Windows machines yet, but I’ll keep looking and let you know.
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Gmail may shut down in Germany
New Launches reports that Gmail is threatening to shut down Gmail in Germany if the Bundestag passes a new Internet surveilllance law scheduled for 2008. If the law is passed, any data connection of any German citizen on the internet will be saved for up to 6 months. This goes against Google’s privacy policy and would force them to shut down services in that country.
Update: June 28, 2007
According to Wired the whole incident was a misunderstanding based on a translation in the policy. Peter Fleischer, from the Global Privacy Counsel was quoted:
“We think that this law is bad for users and bad for privacy on the Internet. Google believes that users should have the right to create an email account without going through the hassle of having to prove exactly who they are. Anonymous email is particularly important for political dissidents, for example.”It’s amazing what a little story like this can generate! Good news for Google, bad news for the German citizens.
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PowerPoint Viewer
Gmail now recognizes Microsoft PowerPoint attachments. When you have a message with a PowerPoint attached, Gmail will present a link labeled “View as slideshow” near the attachment. When you click on that Gmail will open a new window and start displaying the slides. In theory, it’s pretty straight forward, but here’s what I found in reality.
First, Gmail does not yet support PowerPoint 2007 files. Also, when I sent a PowerPoint file from my Mac (one that was originally developed on a PC) it did not recognize the file and said it couldn’t convert it despite the fact that it opened up fine on the Windows and Mac machines.
I also noticed using the Gmail web interface with Firefox on Mac, that the file attachment icons on the right, next to the date on the message index, the icons showed up as file types, for example a little PowerPoint icon when a PPT was attached, not paperclips like on Windows (Firefox or Internet Explorer)
Finally, despite the fact that Google does not currently allow you to edit the PowerPoint file, they claim they will have a way to edit PPTs “this summer”. We can only hope.
Quick Tip: If you haven’t already noticed, Gmail increased the file size limit on attachments. You can now attach up to 20MB files, up from the former 10MB. A word of caution, that’s more storage than the typical ISP mailbox. Be careful who you are sending large attachments to, unless of course they are using Gmail.
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Accessing Another’s Email
This time we take a look at what you need to do if to get access to one of your loved one’s Gmail after they are deceased.
This item has been in the news and fortunately for us, Google has a standard procedure.
You will need to provide Google with the following information in written format. You can send it via fax or postal mail. That information is provided below.
1) Your full name and contact information. Please include a verifiable email address.
2) The Gmail address of the person who passed away.
3) The entire message from the account you are requesting access to. This includes not only the message body, but the full message header. The full header can be obtained by opening the message in Gmail and click on ‘More options,’ then click ‘Show original.’ Copy everything from ‘Delivered- To:’ through the ‘References:’ line.
To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
4. You will also need to provide a copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. and a copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, include a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.The postal address to send this to is:
Google Inc.
Attention: Gmail User Support
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043Or the Fax number in the US is:
650-644-0358
It takes approximately 30 days for the information to be processed, but if the access is needed sooner, “it is Google’s policy to only provide information pursuant to a valid third party court order or other appropriate legal process.”
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Selecting Multiple Conversations
Here’s a quick tip how to select multiple conversations with just two mouse clicks.
To check a range of conversations from the index, click the checkbox next to the first conversation then hold down the shift key while selecting the last conversation. If you are familiar with selecting a range of cells in a spreadsheet, this is very similar. Automatically, Gmail will highlight and select all the conversations from the first one to the last. Again, check the first conversation, hold down the shift key while selecting the last conversation. Instantly you’ll have 3, 12, or 20 conversations selected at once. You can do this repeatedly on the same screen if you have multiple ranges to select. Unfortunately I haven’t found a keyboard shortcut for this yet.
Once the conversations are selected you can label, archive, delete them, or any other regular action that you perform on one or more conversations.
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