Gmail Podcast

Category: Gmail Podcast

  • Invite Others

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    This past week I found myself trying to use a website that manages meeting invitations and keeps track of recipients. Unfortunately, I found out that the email sent from this site is blocked by many firewall and spam filters meaning my invitation did not reach all the people I had hoped.

    It was about that time that I discovered that Gmail has a way to create an event invitation. You can find it just above the text box for your message body when you compose a new email.

    Begin by composing a message as you normally would by entering names in the “To” field and enter a subject. Next, click on the link just below the subject labeled “Add event notification” – several additional boxes will appear allowing you to provide an event title, location, and starting and ending date and time.

    You can place more details, such as a meeting agenda, in the body of the message. When you’re done, just click Send as you normally would.

    If you did not intend to use the event invitation, use the “remove” link just to the right of the event name.

    If your invitation is received by an Outlook user, for example, they see it like any other meeting invitation and click on the “Accept” or “Decline” button. If another Gmail user gets the invitation, they can click on one of the options “Yes”, “No”, or “Maybe” next to the question if they are going.

    As the meeting coordinator you can easily click on “Calendar” at the top of your Gmail screen, locate the event, and see how many people have responded and what their response was. This is important when you need to know whether to bring one or two plates of cookies.

    I found this much more straight forward to use than the website I had previously tried. There are some things to keep in mind when sending invites. First, if you send an email to 500 or more people, or you send a large number of undeliverable messages, you could find your Gmail account temporarily disabled. For those using a POP or IMAP mail client such as Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Mac Mail, your sending limit is 100 recipients. If this happens, your account should be re-enabled within 24 hours.

    Also, if you need to communicate with a large number of people, you might want to consider a Google Group. Creation and setup of Google Groups is a bit beyond the scope of this podcast. I found that while Google Groups are great for shared discussions it can be tricky to use them to send meeting invites since the responses either go back to the entire group, or appear in the event’s attendees list with the group name instead of the individual who replied.

    Unfortunately, I am in a situation where I want to hand off the meeting invitations to someone else and there doesn’t seem to be a way to share Gmail contacts with a standard or hosted account at this time. The best I can do is export my contacts list and have the new facilitator import it.

    Quick Tip:
    Show pictures from people you know. Gmail will now show pictures in email from people you know. If you have sent that person email at least twice before, the images will automatically be inserted in to the message – this very handy for those family photos, holiday shots, or newborn grandchild. You can also click on the link “Display images below” or “Always display images from (current sender)” if the images are not automatically added. The reason they were not displayed before was done as a security precaution from spammers. Gmail would not display images unless you clicked one of those links and that was annoying. Thank you Google for making image viewing a little simpler.

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  • Password Reset by SMS

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    Let’s face it, sooner or later we all forget a password. There are just so many of them to keep track of. Gmail has made this a little easier by allowing you to recover your password via text message.

    Begin by going to http://www.google.com/accounts. Under the personal settings, you should see a section labeled “Security”. Click on the link that says “Change password recovery options”. You’ll need to provide your Google Account credentials one more time to verify your account.

    Once that is done, you can add email addresses to send a reset link, or set a mobile phone number to send a password reset code via text message. To this, click on the link under the section “SMS” labeled “Add a mobile phone number”. Choose your country and enter the mobile number you wish to send the text message to and make sure to check the checkbox labeled “Use this phone number for password recovery via text message”. Finally, click the “Save” button at the bottom.

    Now if you lose or forget your password, click on the link labeled “Can’t access your account?” in the login box of any Google application. On the right, look for the article labeled “I forgot my password” and click it. This link is also available on the bottom of the page. You will then be taken to the password recovery page where you first need to provide your username. In my case, I entered chuck.tomasi and clicked Submit. You’ll need to enter the text in the captcha page, one of those graphics with squiggly letters. I’ll admit, sometimes these are a little hard to read and I often have to enter more than one.

    Once you’ve passed that test, you will be given several options to reset your password based on the account options you chose. If you set an alternate email address, you will receive an email to initiate the password reset process. If you setup the SMS option, you’ll get a text message with a recovery code.

    Here’s today’s quick tip. Fight phishing with new labs feature. If you are unfamiliar with the term, Phishing, with a “ph” is a term used for nefarious email that tries to lure you to a website that impersonates another in order to get secure information from you. The most notable of these are eBay and PayPal. For example, some Internet villain will send you a message that looks like it is from PayPal and take you to a site that looks like PayPal, only to get your login and password and exploit your real account. This Labs feature in Gmail verifies that an email that says it’s from eBay or PayPal actually is from one of those sources – making it more trustworthy. To use this, go to the Labs tab in Settings, turn on the feature called “Authentication Icon for verified senders”. Now when you see an email from one of these sources, a little gold key appears next to the sender’s name in the message. This currently only works for eBay and PayPal, but I’m sure Google will be extending this functionality in the future.

    Finally, Google has promoted their first labs feature to a full fledged feature. Tasks is now a permanent fixture on the main page for all Gmail users. This labs feature was so successful that everyone is now able to use it by clicking the Tasks link on the left. While there is still no syncing with other systems, I expect more functionality in Tasks in the future. After all, they already implemented my suggestion to move tasks between different tasks lists. Thank you Google!

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  • No Longer Beta

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    As of July 7, 2009 Gmail is no longer a beta product. After five years, many jokes, and even questions regarding the nature of beta software, Google has dropped the beta tag not only from Gmail, but from the other Google Apps as well, including Calendar, Docs, and Talk.

    I’m not sure what the trigger was, or what, if anything has changed in the beta to non-beta release. Traditionally in a beta release of software, the publisher releases to a small community of people to test the application and provide feedback on bugs or enhancements. If you have been using Gmail before February 7, 2007 you’ll remember that the limited audience part was dealt with by invitations. You could only start using Gmail if an existing user invited you. However this was somewhat of a gray area because nobody ever seemed to run out of invitations, therefore you could invite people as much as you like. So what was the point?

    Once the invitations were dropped and the product was opened to the public, many thought the beta moniker would also be dropped. Not so. After the development of many of the other features and tweaks including labs, offline capabilities, mobile apps, and dozens of others, many thought the beta tag would be wiped away, but it persisted. Even the support channels seem to be the same as they were in the beta world.

    So we are left to wonder what caused Google to finally dump the beta tag. Was it constant harassment and joking from the public? I doubt it. Some say it was reluctance from the corporate world to move their enterprise to products that still carry the beta label. I’m not convinced of that argument either. According to the official Gmail Blog there is no real reason, only a lot of speak about WHAT they have done, not WHY they did it. And now that they’ve left the beta world, what benefit is it to us, the Gmail users?

    What’s more interesting is they created a labs feature called “Back to Beta”. If you to go Settings, then Labs, and enable this you’ll get the “beta” tag back on the Gmail graphic. The IT voice inside my head tells me to be cautious of turning this on. I suspect it will preclude you from recognizing new features that come out in the future because you chose to stay in the beta world with the “back to Beta” plugin.

    We were all scratching our heads why the product remained in beta for so long and without decent feedback from Google, we are confused even further on what the difference is. Had this been Microsoft, Apple, or some other major software company, an announcement and perhaps ceremony would have been made as their beta product makes it to the public release state. What happened Google?

    As a footnote, I use one of the themes found in Gmail. I noticed that I still had the beta tag some 24 hours later. I discovered that I needed to change my theme back to default and then back to my normal theme and the beta tag was gone.

    Here’s today’s quick tip: Actually, it’s more of an FYI. As of late June 2009, Gmail upgraded the maximum size of an attachment from 20MB to 25MB. Be aware that you may not be able to send email attachments that large if the recipient is on another mail system. If your message bounces, you might want to ask them to start using Gmail.

    That’s all for this time… Comments, suggestions, or questions can be sent to gpodcast@gmail.com or check the website for full information and archives of all previous Gmail tips at chuckchat.com. I have no affiliation with Google other than as a satisfied Gmail user. Thanks for listening, and don’t forget to write.

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  • Drag and Drop Labels

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    Gmail has made some significant changes to the way you label and store conversations. They have now made labels work more like folders in more conventional mail applications by adding drag-and-drop actions. Once again, Google has impressed me with their web programming savvy.

    Before getting started on the drag and drop feature, you should be aware that your labels have moved and are displayed a bit differently. Labels are no longer in their own little side window, but are now parked right underneath the standard system folders Inbox, Trash, Spam, and so on. You may also notice that all your labels are not displayed as they once were. Only the most used labels are displayed by default. If you don’t like this, click on the little down arrow just below the first few and click “Settings at the top of the new window. You can also get to this location by going in to Gmail Settings and click “Labels”.

    In this redesigned Labels settings screen, you can show or hide any number of the standard folders or your labels quickly and easily. Go ahead and give it a try. You could save yourself a lot of screen real estate. If you don’t like it, just turn them back on.

    I should point out that if you used the “Right Side Folders” labs feature, that it no longer functions. It is the first of the Gmail Labs features to be retired. A pity, I kind of liked having labels and chat on the right of the screen.

    OK, now that you’ve got your labels and folders displayed the way you like, it’s time to try that drag and drop feature. You can drag any conversation on to a label or any label on to a conversation. To grab the conversation, click on the dotted area just to the left of the checkbox. Your mouse may change to the shape of a hand with all fingers extended, as opposed to the standard link cursor with just the index finger pointed out. Once you have the message, continue to hold the mouse button and drag the message to the desire label. This moves the message to that label and archives it, effectively treating it like an operation of moving a message into a folder.

    If you would rather just apply a label and leave the message in the inbox, place your cursor over the desired label and click, then drag the label to the specific message shown on the conversation index. It’s really that simple. Remember, if the label you are looking for is not in the list, try the down arrow to show them all.

    I have to admit, I’m very impressed with this new way of doings from a developer’s perspective and I’m sure most of you use your mouse a lot to click on that checkbox, conversation, or label. However, I’ve found that I can still process messages many times faster with keyboard shortcuts, so aside from cleaning up my screen by hiding most of the labels and folders, I won’t be using drag and drop too much.

    If you’re not familiar with the keyboard shortcuts, have a listen to one of the first Gmail Podcasts I did in January 2006 to learn things like “l”, then start typing the first few letters of a label, or using “g” and “i” to go to the inbox quickly.

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  • Are You A Gmail Ninja?

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    After three and a half years of doing the Gmail Podcast, the features of this web application are really starting to add up. Some are fairly simple and some are more complex. This past week, Google posted their collection of features to teach you to become a Gmail Ninja. I’ll post a link on the Gmail Podcast web page.

    The tips are organized in to categories according to rank. For example, a Gmail white belt gets a few messages a day and uses stars to indicate special conversations, uses labels to organize messages, perhaps spices up their environment by applying a theme, and archives instead of deleting.

    A green belt might use video chat, use tasks, create filters to further organize email, preview attachments without downloading them, avoid email gaffes with the Undo Send labs feature, use the Google Chat status to tell their friends what they are up to, and use the vacation responder to let people know when they are away.

    A Gmail black belt, uses more advanced features like keyboard shortcuts to navigate quickly through the interface, use more advanced search operators, use the plus sign to create personalized email addresses for later filtering, use Gmail offline, use canned responses, and “EOM” in the subject to avoid the warning message of having no text in the body of a message.

    And finally, the highest level of Gmail Ninja is the Gmail Master. A master does things like bring Google Docs and Calendar in to Gmail using the sidebar widgets, knows how to sign out of another computer remotely, personalizes their own web clips, always uses https to access their email securely, and hosts their own domain email using Gmail.

    Which level of Gmail Ninja are you? If you’ve been listening to the Gmail Podcast for a while, my guess is you are a black belt or master. If not, keep listening or go back in the archives to get specific instructions on these, and other, great tips.

    Tip:

    Here’s today’s quick tip. Use the Gmail Labs feature “Send and Archive” to add a button to the bottom of the message compose screen that lets you send your response, and archive the conversation in one step. You can add this feature from the Labs tab in the Settings screen – use this and you’ll be one step closer to being a black belt Gmail Ninja.

    Finally, I have one commentary on a recent feature added to Gmail. I love the features that Google has provided in the Gmail application, both desktop and mobile. This past week, they tweaked the mobile application, as I said they were likely to do in the last Gmail Podcast, to include a finger swipe motion from left to right or right to left at the conversation index that brings up an archive button. I tried this a couple times, but realized it was one of those features that just isn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod Touch and use finger motions all the time. In fact, I can’t live without them. This particular addtion to the Gmail interface seems like it was done just to see if they could do it. You see, if you use the checkbox for a message, the floating button bar comes up immediately allowing you to archive, delete, or other actions. Is a finger swipe and a button push any faster than two finger taps? I’m not sure. What I am sure is that I often operate on multiple messages, in which case, the finger swipe to archive five messages is much slower (a total of 10 finger motions) than tapping the checkbox five times and hitting the archive button (6 finger motions). Am I being picky? Perhaps. Use what you feel is more comfortable. I’m just offering my opinion about a feature that doesn’t add any value to me. Maybe this is a sign that Google will be adding more finger motions to the interface in the future.

    Link to the Gmail Ninja page: http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html#master

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  • iPhone and Android Enhancements

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    If you’re an iPhone or Android user, you’ll definitely want to look at the recent changes to the mobile web Gmail interface for those devices. Google has made some major improvements to the UI.

    First, Gmail mobile now supports labels for your email conversations very much like the desktop version. Now you can add color coded tags to respective emails for managing your inbox while you’re on the go. You can find the Label feature in the new “floating menu bar”, as I call it, that also has buttons labeled “Archive”, “Delete”, and “More”. Click on “More” and select “Label As” just below “Mute”.

    Another new addition is address auto completion of recipients’ names. Now you can simply start typing a name and Gmail will start filling in the name for you.

    Finally, my favorite – keyboard shortcuts. Yes, now you can use keyboard shortcuts if you own an Android phone. Most of the same keyboard shortcuts map the same way they do on the desktop. From the official Gmail blog at Google, “if you’re reading an e-mail you can press ‘u’ to return to the inbox or ‘n’ to move to the next conversation.”

    Interestingly, these changes to the iPhone and Adroid platform came at the same time in April 2009 when they completely redesigned their mobile application. This is a change from previous enhancements which came out on the larger target audience of the iPhone first.
    This new Gmail interface is available for iPhone/iPod Touch with OS 2.2.1 versions and Android-powered devices in U.S. English language only.

    Look for more nice tweaks to the mobile version of Gmail in the future and keep listening to the Gmail Podcast to stay up to date on them.

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  • Import Mail and Contacts

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    Gmail is rolling out a feature that will allow you to migrate your email and contacts from other email providers including Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and many others.

    For years, you’ve heard me – and probably dozens of other people – preaching the virtues of Gmail. To some of us, it practically IS a religion. We want people to convert and Google understood the downfalls of changing from one email service to another. It can be painful to switch all your contacts using some clumsy export and import using a CSV file. No only that, what do you do with all your legacy email?

    Now Gmail makes it much easier to make the transition. This feature is enabled for all new accounts and is being slowly deployed to all existing accounts. Unfortunately, businesses and schools using Google Apps won’t have this feature available to them any time soon.You’ll know you have it if you go in to Settings and you find a tab labeled “Accounts and Imports”, formerly just labeled “Accounts”.

    There you will find a section with a button labeled “Import Mail and Contacts”. Click that and you’ll see choices to import contacts and mail immediately, continue importing email for the next 30 days, allowing you to take Gmail for a test drive, and even apply a Gmail label to all imported mail to quickly identify it as information from your other account.

    If you don’t have the option, or prefer doing things the more traditional way, you can still use POP3 mail fetching or CSV export and import to retrieve your old information.

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  • Undo Send

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    You’ve just worked a 40 hour day and your brain isn’t functioning at 100%. You’re tired and stressed that the project is behind schedule because of someone not ordering the right part. You write up a quick email and think you’ve got the attachment for the correct order, only to find you forgot the attachment right after you hit the send key.

    How about this one; you’ve spent hours setting up a surprise party for your co-worker. You’ve got everyone in the recipient list and click the Send key only to discover in your haste that you included the birthday boy in the list. Yes, a similar situation has happened to me. Don’t you wish you could undo that send?

    It is for situations like this that I highly recommend you try the Gmail Labs feature Undo Send. This feature can save you from embarassment, incomplete thoughts, or even a career ending email.

    Just turn on Undo Send like you do any other Labs feature under the Settings link and click the “Gmail Labs” feature. Locate “Undo Send”, click enable to the right, scroll to the bottom, and click “Save Changes”.

    Now when you send an email, you’ll have an Undo link appear allowing you to grab that message before it gets sent and take you back to the compose screen.

    Sadly, the feature cannot pull back an email once it has already been sent, it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the proverbial panic button. For some reason, if you close Gmail or your browser crashes, the message will still get sent.

    I have it turned on and used it several times. If I ever put together a top 10 list of Labs features to enable, this one is definitely on that list.

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  • Improved Search

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    Let’s face it, few of us take full advantage of the full power of the Gmail search feature. We look for a keyword or email address and perhaps we add “has:attachment” if we know the message included a picture or something. If done properly, the search would look like “chuck.tomasi@gmail.com filename:(jpg OR png)”. I’m sorry, that’s a little too geeky.

    Fortunately, Gmail Labs includes a feature that can speed up and simplify the search process. It’s called “Search Autocomplete”. Turn it on by going to Labs under Gmail settings. Now as you type in the search box, Gmail will provide suggestions as you type. The nice thing about this is Gmail also provides the “geeky” way of doing the search.

    Let’s take the example above. I start typing “Chuck Tomasi” and Gmail provides my address. Now I just type “photos” or “pictures”, select “has photos” from the drop down list and the search query automatically inserts (filename:(jpg OR png)). Similarly, you can type in the word “attachment” and Search Autocomplete will list the most common attachment types for you.

    Gmail includes the geeky query for you so you can tweak it as necessary. Say you want to include GIF image types to your photo search. Just manually change it to “filename:(jpg OR png OR gif)”.

    Personally, I think Search Autocomplete should be on by default because it really cleans up the search process. You’ll save so much time you can send me a note writing a quick review for this podcast on the iTunes Music Store.

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  • Sender’s Time Zone

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    OK, here’s a situation. You sit down to read your email from a friend who lives in England. The email has a few questions that really need to be responded to over a phone call. Unfortunately, you cannot remember what time it is in England and you don’t want to wake them up at an unreasonable hour.

    That’s where the Gmail Labs feature called “Sender Time Zone” comes in handy. To use the feature, click on the Gmail Settings link in the upper right corner of the screen, then locate and click on the Labs tab. Locate “Sender Time Zone” and click “Enable” next to it then scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes”.

    Now Gmail takes a peek at the sender’s timezone in the message header and conveniently places a green phone icon next to the people if their local time is between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM and a red icon if the person is outside that time range. If there is no timezone in the message header, no icon is displayed.

    If you click on the “Show Details” link, Gmail will display the time zone information that it uses as well as the current time of the sender.

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