January 17th, 2009

Google may still be working on GDrive

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 2:31 pm

Categories: GDrive, Gmail

Tags: Google Inc., Google Gmail, Josh, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Productivity, Internet, Garett Rogers

It’s been a very long time since rumors of GDrive have surfaced, and I all but gave up on the idea. Reports today make it sound like Google is still interested in working on it, but gave no indication if it’s actually currently being worked on, or when it would be launched. This is still interesting to me because it’s the first time I’ve heard anything about this project from someone at Google.

While sitting down with a Gmail project manager, Todd Jackson, cnet’s Josh Lowensohn discussed a couple future features. At the end of his article, he quotes Todd as saying:

“We know people’s file sizes are getting bigger. They want to share their files, keep them in the cloud, and not worry about which computer they’re on. Google wants to be solving these problems,”

If and when it finally launches, GDrive will likely let you store files in the cloud instead of on your local machine. Ideally, interacting with your GDrive would be as simple as using a physical drive on your computer. Josh thinks that when it’s launched, it will also be tightly integrated with Gmail.

December 23rd, 2008

Gmail annoys you? Every other mail client annoys me

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:04 pm

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Google Gmail, Dan Resinger, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Internet, Garett Rogers

I personally use Gmail for everything — including both work and personal email. Once you truely drink the juice, it’s really hard to go back to another mail client.

Dan Resinger offers a list of 5 things that annoy him about Gmail — I’m going to do the opposite, and tell you 5 things that annoy me about every other mail client on the planet, since I’m a true full-time Gmail user.

1. Nobody handles conversations the as well as Gmail does
   True, you can switch to “conversation view” in Outlook — but can you tell me where to find your own responses in a conversation thread? They aren’t there — you will have to browse through your sent items or “search” for them. I need a (smart) unified message thread that represents an entire conversation — not just messages that have come from other people, and are grouped by message subject regardless if they were part of that specific conversation or not.
2. No labels = no good
   If you must, you can think of “labels” as “folders”. The difference, of course, is that you can put many labels on one message — or using “folder” terminology, you can put a single message in multiple folders when it makes sense. Most mail clients insist on making me put messages into an overly complex hierarchy of folders.
3. Every other mail client is either local-only, or has a crappy user experience
   For me, desktop clients feel pretty old-school. Why would I want all my mail stored on my computer — susceptible to hard drive failure, archive corruption or even viruses? Accessing my email from anywhere, on any computer is very important to me. Granted, IMAP does pretty much solve this specific frustration.

   There are several other web-based clients out there, but I personally can’t say that I like any of them. No, it’s not because I blog about Google and have a secret crush on them — it’s because Gmail already has everything I need, and I know features will be added and improved on continuously. Trying to follow Gmail, many other web-based mail clients have taken a more AJAXy approach, but they are trying too hard. In my opinion, drag and drop doesn’t belong in a web application — it doesn’t feel natural.

4. I need more than just an inbox
   Some mail clients, like Outlook, do in fact have a pretty decent collection of “other stuff”, like a task list or calendar, but Gmail offers all of those things, plus stuff that other traditional mail clients don’t. A couple of the things I find very useful in Gmail are Google Talk integration, and of course the “Missing Attachment Detector” — Genius.
5. Downloading and opening attachments just doesn’t feel right
   Gmail lets me preview most attachments, or open in something like Google Docs without downloading the attachment at all. This makes me feel a bit more secure, and as an added benefit, it’s usually a lot quicker than downloading, and waiting for something like Microsoft Word to open.

Which camp are you in?

December 20th, 2008

Google Apps adds shared contacts and a new contact manager

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:26 am

Categories: Gmail, Google Apps

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Google Gmail, Contact, Cloud Computing, E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

Google just made a couple of interesting updates to Google Apps — the ability for administrator to create shared contacts, and a stand-alone contact manager that can be used outside of Gmail.

Google Apps Premier Edition administrators can now create contacts which aren’t employees — these contacts are accessible by employees within the company through any Google Apps service that uses a contact list. In order to create these “shared contacts”, one must use the Shared Contacts API that was announced in conjunction with the feature.

In addition to this new API, administrators can enable a new stand-alone contact manager feature that gives users access to their contacts outside of Gmail. This feature is available to both Google Apps Premier Edition and Standard Edition — however, shared contacts are only available to premier accounts. That said, the contact manager isn’t anything particularily special — it appears to be simply the contact manager from Gmail, without the Gmail shell.

To install the new stand-alone contact manager for your Google Apps account:

1. Log into your control panel
2. Click “Add more services”
3. Enable the “Contacts” service

According to Google, a new “Contacts” link will start appearing for your users in the link bar at the top of each application, however after adding the contacts service, I have yet to see a Contacts link at the top of any service.

December 10th, 2008

Gmail SMS feature is back!

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:01 pm

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Google Gmail, SMS, Gmail SMS Feature, E-mail Providers, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Cloud Computing, Telephony, Internet, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics

This is a quick note to everyone that Google finally brought back SMS feature in Gmail after what seemed like forever. The feature works exactly as it did before, minus the “bug” they spent a while fixing.

Currently, Gmail only supports carriers that are found in the United States, but hopefully they are able to expand this to other countries soon!

December 9th, 2008

Gmail gets task feature!

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 3:43 pm

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Google Gmail, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Internet, Garett Rogers

Plugins like Remember The Milk were extremely useful for people looking to add tasks to their Gmail and Google Calendar. Unfortunately, the problem with creating plugins for products like this is that it’s inevitable they become obsolete when the feature becomes natively supported. Thankfully, for RTM, Google Calendar still doesn’t support task lists of any kind.

Gmail, however, just launched a new feature in “labs” which adds Task functionality. It’s quite a bit different from the Remember the Milk addon, but it serves pretty much the same purpose. A problem that still exists is that it doesn’t sync with anything yet — that means any tasks you enter are only accessible in Gmail, nowhere else. That said, synchronization is sure to happen sooner or later.

Enabling and using the new task featur is very simple:

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you’re signed in). Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

What do you think of the new feature?

December 4th, 2008

Where is Google's SMS feature?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 11:15 am

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Google Inc., Google SMS, SMS, Feature, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, E-mail Providers, Telephony, Cloud Computing, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics

About three weeks ago, Google pulled the plug on a brand new Gmail feature due to a bug. The SMS feature was initially launched with much buzz — it was designed to allow you to send and receive responses to text messages.

After pulling the feature, they said it would be back in two weeks — I guess it was a more serious issue than first thought. Since the feature was pulled, Google has released more features that people really like in Gmail, including themes.

Perhaps the feature is only available in the United States, and that’s why I don’t see it here in Canada? Let me know if you have it in your account, and some theories on where it went if you don’t.

November 23rd, 2008

Google adds contact syncing for your Blackberry

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 1:04 pm

Categories: Gmail, Google, Google Apps, Google Calendar

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, RIM BlackBerry, Handhelds, Cloud Computing, Hardware, Garett Rogers

A piece of news that somehow didn’t get a lot of attention is that the Google Sync utility for Blackberry now does contacts too. This is a huge leap forward for Google Apps — users now have the ability to do true two-way syncing with their Blackberry for mail, calendar appointments, and contacts.

This means that now you don’t have to worry about maintaining two contact lists — something that you’ve never previously had to worry about with Microsoft Exchange. Each time Google adds a feature that strikes a chord with business users, they are scoring points that could one day turn the tables on Microsoft’s dominance in the enterprise.

On a related note, if your business still uses Microsoft Exchange, I’d be interested to know what is stopping you from switching to Google Apps. My biggest problem is the lack of technical support and the feeling of helplessness when something does go wrong, or some user accounts stop working. Let’s hear what you think in the TalkBack!

November 23rd, 2008

Gmail exploit lets attackers forward your email to them

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 12:37 pm

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Google Gmail, Attacker, E-mail, Cookie, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Internet, Garett Rogers

Philipp Lenssen spotted a post by Brandon at GeekCondition that explains the general idea behind an attack that can be used to set up filters in your Gmail account without your knowledge. It’s important to be aware of these kind of things so you can better protect yourself.

In order for this to work, someone has to first steal your Gmail cookie — bad guys are always looking for new ways to do this, and according to Brandon, there is at least one (but probably several) outstanding methods that can be used to get your cookie.

As long as you practice safe browsing techniques, the risk of your Gmail account being compromised is significantly lower. Here are some things you can do to protect yourself.

1. When you aren’t using your Gmail, log out. Staying logged in is handy, but it makes these kind of attacks possible.
2. Don’t visit websites you don’t trust. That sounds pretty obvious, but it’s just as important as making sure your Gmail account is logged out when you’re not using it.
3. Use NoScript if your browser is Firefox. This adds an additional (and very powerful) layer of security between you and the bad guys. There’s nothing similar for Internet Explorer or Google Chrome that I’m aware of.

It’s important to note that these problems aren’t limited to Gmail — any website that uses cookies to authenticate requests can be taken advantage of the same way. Taking the security measures above will help protect all your online accounts too.

November 19th, 2008

Official Gmail Themes are beautiful

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:06 pm

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Google Gmail, Theme, Official Gmail Theme, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Internet, Garett Rogers

Google just rolled out a new feature in Gmail — Themes. This has been talked about for quite some time, and you can tell they have been working hard on it. The themes available to be installed on your account are truly beautiful, and I’m positive this have a significant impact on both user retention and even new users.

There are tons of themes to choose from — they range from a theme that looks like you are using a terminal application to ones that change throughout the day like some available for iGoogle.

There is currently no way to create your own themes (without using something like Greasemonkey), but since they are allowing people to create iGoogle themes now, I don’t see any reason why they can’t do the same with Gmail.

To add themes to your Gmail, click on “settings” in the top right corner, then select the “Themes” tab. From there, you can simply click the themes you want to try out, and you’re done.

What do you think of the new themes?

November 11th, 2008

Gmail launching voice and video chat!

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 12:39 pm

Categories: Gmail

Tags: Video Chat, Google Gmail, Voice, Video, Camera, Vydeo, Corporate Communications, E-mail Providers, Marketing, Internet

Google just updated their “What’s New” page for Gmail with information about a new feature called “Voice and Video Chat“. The voice and video chat plugin that you must download in order to use the feature incorporates a technology called Vidyo.

Vidyo provides for high-quality, low-latency, highly resilient, broad-based deployments over general-purpose networks with the introduction of the first multi-point video conferencing solution designed to work like the Internet itself. — vidyo.com

Google Talk has let people do voice conversations for a long time, but the web version of the service in Gmail has always been media-free. This new feature lets you do both voice and video, taking it one step past Google Talk’s voice-only feature. That said, the feature still isn’t enabled in my Gmail, but it must be extremely close to coming online.

[image from Google]

The “learn more” page for this new feature shows a video of the new feature in action. Click here to watch the video.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

• Download the Gmail voice and video chat plug-in, quit all open browser windows, and install the plug-in.
• Sign in to Gmail.
• In the Chat section of your Gmail, select the contact you want to call. If they have a camera icon next to their name, you can make a voice or video call to them; just click Video & more.

If your friend doesn’t have a camera next to their name in your chat list, you can invite them to download the Gmail voice and video chat plug-in from the Video & more menu in a chat window. Even if your friend doesn’t have a video camera, you can still make a voice call or a 1-way video call.

The new feature is very simple to install, and easy to use. This feature is a long time coming for Google Talk, and I’m excited to see it finally arrive.

Updated: I originally attributed the wrong company behind Google’s new feature. It’s actually Vidyo (as see in the article right now).