Gmail Podcast

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  • The Bottom Line

    It helps to step back and take a look at the Gmail interface once in a while – you never know what you’ll see that you hadn’t spotted before. This week I took a close look at the bottom center of the screen. While I was familiar with some of the items, I notice something new. I also realized that I hadn’t discussed any of these items with you. So let’s go through them together.

    Just below the blue bar that indicates the end of the conversation index or currently viewed conversation you should see several lines of text. The first is a helpful hint, such as common keyboard shortcuts, the fact that you can forward your mail to one Gmail account, or noting the availability of Gmail in multiple languages. These messages change every few minutes so don’t forget to glance down there from time to time for a bit of new information. You can typically find out more on these items by clicking on the Help link in the upper right corner of the Gmail screen.

    The next line of information, in green, is the amount of space you have available and how much of that is being consumed. This is always handy to know – like looking at the fuel gauge on your car now and then. If I’ve learned anything from using Gmail over the past several years, this amount also changes – it goes up, so don’t forget to take a look.

    I don’t know when Google decided to add the next line of information, but I noticed it only recently – and I like it. It tells you when the latest activity was on your Gmail account. What’s more, if you’re running Gmail from multiple computers, it will tell you when and where it was accessed. This is a great security feature and kind of fascinating too. I was using Gmail at work and noticed it said there was one other connection to this account. I clicked on the Details link and it said it was my home IP address. This made sense because I often leave the web interface running at home. If I had seen something suspicious, I could have clicked a link and sign out all other sessions – leaving my current connection at work still working. Since there are multiple ways to access Gmail, there is a log of other connections from web, mobile, IMAP, or POP. Check these periodically to make sure it coincides with your use habits. If not, I recommend you change your Gmail password as soon as possible.

    Just under the connection information is a line that allows you to change the method in which Gmail is displayed. Most of the time, the software detects what browser you have and the interface is rendered appropriately. The links at the bottom allow you to change between standard view with extended capabilities, basic HTML – which works on older browsers, and even turn off the chat interface on the left hand side. For more information, click the link labeled Learn More on the line second from the bottom.

    And finally, at the very bottom of the screen, is the copyright, a link to the Google Blog – with plenty of articles about Gmail from the developers themselves, a link to be part of the Gmail team – complete with pictures and job descriptions, and finally a link to what else? – the Google home page.

    Whether you have listened to every Gmail Podcast or just getting started, I encourage you to explore every facet of every screen in Gmail and experiment. Like me, you’ll discover that it is so much more than an inbox.

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  • Gmail Labs

    The people at Google have found a creative way to let you try various experimental features of Gmail and provide feedback. They call it Gmail Labs. You can access these new features by clicking on the Settings link in the upper right, and then clicking on the tab labeled “Labs”. Some of these features are cosmetic such as date formats or removing the number of new messages from the various locations where messages are stored; others provide improved capabilities or time saving features like customizable keyboard shortcuts. Have a look in the Labs tab of the settings screen from time to time and see if there is anything of interest that might improve your Gmail experience.

    You can choose to enable or disable any of them by using the appropriate radio button choice to the right of each option. When you’ve chosen which features to turn on or off, click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the screen.

    According to the help page, there are a few things to keep in mind when you try these features out. First, they may break at any time. Remember, this is experimental software. Second, they may be removed from the feature set at any time. And third, they may work so well, that they may be promoted to regular features in Gmail.

    If you use any of the Labs features and suspect you are having problems, you can temporarily disable them by modifying your web address, or URL, to https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0.

    Feel free to provide feedback, report bugs, or suggest new features to Google by joining the Google group gmail-labs. Look under the “More” menu at the top of the screen for Groups, or follow the link in the show notes for this episode on the website.

    Here’s a comment from listener Douglas E. Welch over at Technology IQ. It seems he had a stuck key on his keyboard and as a result, inadvertantly locked out his Gmail account “up to 24 hours” due to invalid access attempts. As Douglas stated in his blog posting, “It is a little distressing that a rather simple computer malfunction can result in a day-long lockout and the fact that there is no appeal process for such a lockout.”. Hopefully Google will remedy the situation and provide some sort of support mechanism for accidental technical difficults such as this in the future.

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  • Contacts Sync with Mac Address Book

    Before I dig in to this I would like to thank my long time friend, co-worker, and mentor, Scott Reynolds for passing on this wonderful tip for Gmail. Those of you with iPhones, Macs and Gmail will find this very helpful.

    This is based on a recent article at googlemac.blogspot.com showing how you can sync your Mac address book with your Google contacts.

    Before you start, we strongly recommend that you back up your Mac Address Book. You can do that in the File menu by choosing Export, Addressbook Archive. That way if anything goes wrong, you’ll still have your original data.

    The key to syncing your Google contacts is in the Mac Address Book. Go to the Address Book menu, choose Preferences. Under the General heading, at the bottom of the screen check the box that says “Synchronize with Google”. It will ask you for your Google login and password – use the credentials you normally use to get access to your Gmail.

    Now start up iSync under the Mac Applications menu. Click “Sync Devices”. Depending on how many contacts you have, it may take a few minutes to synchronize all the changes. When it’s done, click on the Card menu and select “Look for duplicates”. You can resolve conflicts one at a time by choosing which card you want to take precedence, or you can merge the changes by highlighting one or more cards and click “Merge cards” or using the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Shift-| (that’s a verticle pipe character).

    Click “Sync Devices” one more time and your contacts in your Mac Address Book and Google contacts are now in sync. To keep things in sync in the future, just use iSync periodically. It’s a bit manual, but once setup, it’s only a couple mouse clicks away.

    Here’s today’s quick tip: Fiona King over at collegedegrees.com has posted an article titled “57 tips of highly effective Gmail users“. If you’re a long time listener to the Gmail Podcast you’ll recognize many of these and I encourage you to go over and take a look – there are some great nuggets of information like backing up your messages, cleaning out your contacts, or tricking out your labels.

    If you’ve got a great idea or heard about a new feature in Gmail, or something that works with or enhances Gmail, I’d love to hear from you. Visit the website at chuckchat.com or drop me an email at gpodcast@gmail.com.

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  • Speed Dialing

    Before I get started, I owe you an apology. I have been using this feature of Gmail so long I nearly forgot I was using it. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I was reading my email via a web browser on my cell phone that I thought “I don’t think I told the Gmail Podcast world about speed dialing on the phone.”

    OK, I made that term “speed dialing” up for this feature, but I think it’s a pretty accurate way to represent the ability to use numbers instead of scrolling down and pressing OK or ENTER on the link you want to use.

    Let me explain with an example of what I’m talking about…

    I’ve got a Samsung Blackjack SmartPhone running Windows Mobile 6, but this tip should work fine from any mobile device with a browser. From time to time I use Internet Explorer to read my Gmail when I’m on the go. When reading messages, especially long ones with lots of included text, it can be cumbersome to scroll ot the bottom of the screen to click on “Archive”. Instead, think of those options with numbers 1-7 next to them. If you like, write them down until you’ve got a few key ones memorized. Like:

    1: Reply
    2: Reply to all
    3: Forward
    4: Archive
    5: Mark unread
    6: Add Star
    7: Delete

    So… you’re reading your message and want to archive it. Don’t bother scrolling down past links in the messages, past lots of text, through the options at the bottom until your highlight lands on “Archive”, just press “4”. Done. Next message. You want to delete it, press 7.

    Keep in mind that the numbered options here do not correspond to those on the Java applet, except 7 – by coincidence only.

    Now, go out and read, archive, reply, and delete your email quickly from your phone’s web browser.

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  • Gmail’s Latest Feature

    You have to hand it to the people at Google for getting on the bandwagon with April Fools pranks. They’ve even listed this one as their new feature at the top of the page. Custom time allows you to send mail to the past!

  • Gmail Assistant – and more

    If you use Gmail half as much as I do, then I’ll bet you have more than one Gmail Account. We’ve covered the Gmail Notifier on this podcast in the past as a way to monitor your Gmail, but that only monitors one accountat a time. GmailAssistant is a notifier for multiple Gmail accounts. It accesses your Gmail accounts securely using IMAP over SSL.

    You can choose from different notification options, such as unread mails in your inbox, all mails, or notification on messages with specific labels. Gmail Assistant also lets you choose from different alert methods like popup messages, a chime, and evening a keyboard LED blink.

    Gmail Assistant runs on any OS with the Java Runtime Environment 6 or greater. You can get the JRE at http://java.sun.com/j2se. It’s free and open source, written in Java and released under GNU Public License version 2.

    —-

    Just a couple things for you iPhone users of Gmail via the Mail app. Apple recently changed thew ay the “delete” key works. If you tap the delete key, messages will be moved to the Trash folder and removed after 30 days. Also, after upgrading to version 1.1.3, your Gmail access will convert from POP access to IMAP, meaning actions you take on your iPhone will sync with actions taken on the Gmail web interface – for example, messages you read on your iPhone will show up as read in the web interface.

    —-

    Here’s a handy little tip I picked up in the past few weeks, the GoogleTalk instant messenger supports a status labeled “invisible”. It allows you to remain logged in to GTalk, but appear to others as if you are not online. This is often handy if you are having a private chat or voice conversation and don’t want to be interrupted. I have used this when conducting voice interviews for one of my other podcasts, Technorama.

    —-

    There has been some buzz around the net recently about the domain googlemail.com and it’s comparison to gmail.com. For all intents and purposes, you can use your same address @gmail.com with the domain @googlemail.com as a second account with the same delivery destination. Some people have chosen to give out their “@googlemail.com” to sites they suspect may pass it on to spam lists, thus they have a way of identifying where their email address went. Another way to do this is to add a plus sign (+) and some word after your name. For example: chuck.tomasi+pizza@gmail.com to indicate that you gave your Gmail address to a pizza place to enter a contest. You will still get your email, but the “+pizza” affords you the opportunity to filter it and label it. It’s worth noting that some sites will reject an email address with a plus sign as a valid email address, so be aware that this tip may not always work.

    And since we’re on the topic of Gmail address modifiers, you can add dots anywhere in your email address. I usually tell people my address is chuck.tomasi@gmail.com, however chucktomasi (no dots) is also valid, as is c.h.u.c.k.t.o.m.a.s.i@gmail.com, but who wants to say that every time?

    Updated: March 11, 2008: I thought I had a link to the Gmail Assistant. Sorry. Here it is: http://gmailassistant.sourceforge.net/

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  • Hosted Mail (updated)

    A while back I did an episode of the Gmail Podcast where I showed you how to switch your internet domain to be hosted by Google’s mail servers. This gives you the freedom of managing your own mail accounts, distribution lists, and other aspects of your mail environment, while providing all the benefits of Gmail like unmatched spam filtering, a large mailbox, and all the other wonderful features Gmail has to offer.

    Consider this show an update to the previous one. I noticed that the procedure has changed a bit since the last show and rather than have you frustrated at icons and links that weren’t where they were supposed to be, I figured it was time to provide you with some updated information in case you’ve been thinking of making the switch.

    A little warning, of all the things I’ve covered on the Gmail Podcast, this is probably one of the more complex. Not to worry, I’ll walk you through every step. Where specialized steps are needed, depending on your configuration, I will defer to Google’s excellent step-by-step documentation.

    Let me first start by explaining the basics. First, we’re going to setup a hosting account on Google for your mail. Next, we’ll tell the Internet that mail for your domain is no longer with your old hosting system, but rather, all your email should now be sent to Google’s servers where it can be transparently delivered and received by you, or anyone in your domain.

    • Start by going to http://www.google.com/a
    • Click “Get Started”
    • Next, click on “Standard Edition” (Sign Up button)
    • If you already have a domain, choose “I want to use an existing domain”, otherwise choose “Create a domain”. For this example, we’ll assume you already have a domain.
    • Enter your domain name – then click “Use my domain”
    • Fill in the fields for your name, a current valid email address, and other required information to sign up
    • When you’ve completed the necessary fields, click “Continue” button
    • On the next page, enter the email address on your domain (ex: chuck@chuckchat.com)
    • Review the terms and conditions, then click “I accept, continue with sign up”
    • Note the message at the top of the screen that reads: To activate Google Apps services you must verify that you own your domain – “yourdomain”, click on the link that says “Verify domain ownership”
    • You can either upload an HTML file or change the CNAME record. I chose to upload the HTML file. Simply follow the instructions on the page. That takes care of part of setting up the email hosting.
    • Next, you need to update your MX, or mail exchange records to have the internet know that mail to your domain should be directed to Google’s servers. After setting up the mail hosting, you should be at the dashboard. If not, go to http://www.google.com/a/yourdomainname and login. From the Dashboard, click on “Activate Email” in the Email section. Select the hosting plan you have and follow the instructions.
    • Replication of your changes may take up to 48 hours to be sent around the internet so be patient.
    • Once that is done, your email to your new domain will be delivered to a nice big, managed, Gmail mailbox.
    • If you already have one or more mailboxes hosted by Google, I might recommend your review the instructions to either get mail from your other mailbox via POP or IMAP, or Forward your domain to a central Gmail account using forwarding and Send Mail As, all of which are explained in other episodes of the Gmail Podcast.
    • I’m guilty of always assuming people use the Gmail web interface, and for that I apologize. If you are using a third party client like Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail on the Mac, or something else, you may need to go back to the DNS servers and update the POP and SMTP records as well.


    There you go. Mail for your domain is now being sent to Google’s servers. Now that you’ve got the framework setup out of the way, you can use the management console on Google’s hosted site to create more users and mail lists in your new domain.

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  • My Gmail Story

    I couldn’t resist a chance to share my unique story with the rest of the Gmail community.

  • Odds and Ends

    Google has been very busy lately adding some very nice features to their version 2.0 interface. As a reminder, the ver 2.0 interface requires IE 6 or later or FireFox 2.0 or later.

    if you haven’t been following the blog on the Gmail Podcast website I’ll bring you up to date on a few announcements from Gmail in the past few weeks.

    At first glance, the feature of colored labels doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the most I use it, the more I like it. If you look at your labels on the left, you should see very light squares next to each of the labels. By clicking one of these squares you can set a color for that label. Now when you glance at your conversation index, the colors really stand out to help identify groupings of messages.

    As a side note, I also noticed while reading a conversation, the labels at the top of the message have a little “x” next to them. If you click on the “x” you remove that label from the conversation. If you click on the “x” next to the Inbox label, you archive the message. That’s a lot quicker than pulling down the “More Actions” list and going to the bottom to remove a label.

    Another new feature that will make you GoogleTalk users happy is that Gmail now allows you to import your AOL IM buddies directly in to GTalk. And yes, the chat transcripts from AIM conversations are saved to your email archive like the native GTalk conversations.

    The final addition in the past few weeks is the use of a very useful keyboard shortcuts help screen. Besides the cool factor of transparency, being able to reference the help screen at any point. There is a lot of information on that screen so I suggest picking one or two keyboard shortcuts, get used to using them and then go get a couple more. One of my recent favorites is the “.” key that triggers the “More Actions” drop list. Now I can label messages with just a few keystrokes.

    Something tells me we can look for plenty more new little features like this in the future. Google has proven that it continues to innovate and add to their product. Keep your eyes on the Gmail Podcast website and listening to the Gmail Podcast for more information.

    Quick Tip: How to unmute a conversation. If you mute a conversation and then later decide you want to unmute it, you can use the “Unmute” link at the top. However, you may decide days or weeks later that you want to follow that subject again. This is a simple matter of finding the conversation and moving it back to the inbox. You can find all muted messages by searching using the keyword “is:muted”. Click on the conversation you want, then use the “More Actions” pull down – the first option is “Move to inbox”. This effectively, un-archives the message and continues to present it in your inbox and track it like any other conversation.

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  • Shortcut Keys Help Screen

    It’s almost as if Google can read my mind! This is really scary. Just yesterday I was getting frustrated at looking up shortcut keys I rarely use. No, I’m not going to print one and put it next to my monitor – that’s clutter. Fear no more, the shortcut key to end all that has arrived! Just remember “?” and you get a lovely overlay with all the shortcut keys (sample shown below.) Of course, you’ll need to make sure you have keyboard shortcuts enabled in the settings.

    Help Screen

    There is a link on the bottom to open it in a new window (or tab). After you’ve gotten what you need from the overlay, press “Esc” and it goes away. This one isn’t even in the “What’s New” list yet!

    I’m told this does conflict with the same key found in Better Gmail 2, a Greasemonkey add-in, but how bad can it be to have too much help?

    Let’s see, what else did I wish for in Gmail?