Gmail, I love you!

Everyone uses Gmail. I've been a loyal user since I got an account in 2004. Back then I probably got it just to show people that I've got one and feel important. To be honest, there was nothing new except perhaps the simple looking ajax interface and the conversations view. And yes, there was this big space available which they later started incrementing indefinitely. That was quite a change in email service that followed. It was only later that other competitors began expanding their users' inboxes. A few other things I liked about gmail was starred conversations, labels as opposed to folders, archiving and chat from within the browser. Remember meebo? Gmail labs came out mid-2008. Again, there was lot of excitement around the launch but I chose to ignore the new "cool" features. However, later I started using some of them.

Recently, I've started using gmail as my mail-client-in-the-cloud (Yay, cloud computing FTW!). That is, I use gmail at work (so I can take some time off and check emails from home). After the initial mapping of outlook folders to labels, I thought a lot more needs to be done to get the 'corporate' effect. Labs came to the rescue. Am going to list the ones I liked best and some more you might want.

Default 'Reply to all'; Google Calendar gadget - portable preview of your calendar; Google Docs gadget - access often used Docs; Multiple Inboxes - this one's amazing. I prefer this over their 'priority inbox', do try it; Navbar drag and drop - move around some of the gadgets above plus chat window; Nested Labels; Quote selected text - very useful when you're replying only parts of a long email; Send & Archive - reply to an email and hide the whole convo from your inbox; Sender Time Zone - doesn't seem to work sometimes. Supposed to show the time of sending in the sender's timezone (against the current time there too!); Title Tweaks - Gets the "Inbox (2)" before "Gmail" in the title so you can know from other windows; Undo Send;

I use most of them given above. Additionally, I use Inbox preview which is great while you wait for gmail to load. Especially if you clear out your inbox and organize them elsewhere.  There are a few more like Superstars, Quick links which I might try but I haven't got around to try it.  This is how my inbox looks like (you can't see all of what I've used, though):

I think Labs is a great idea. It makes sense to not confuse users with too many options and yet make them available optionally. I think users to should take time to try everything Labs has to offer and if possible contribute.

Outside of Labs, users with multiple emails, calendar and/or docs should try and integrate everything inside their gmail inbox. Personally, am excited by what Google has done so far and what they're to create in the coming days.

Bye,
LVS

PS: I do wish they remove the "96 invites left" box from my gmail. Really, who needs it anymore? Read more…

Undo sending an email

No. This can't be true. Its too good to be true. But it is now possible! Thanks to gmail I can now not resend an email for forgetting an attachment - not slap my forehead for missing an important line in the mail - not regret sending the mail to the wrong person - and so on and so forth. How many time was it that you've felt any of the above? (yes yes. nod nod. many a times) Trust Google to come up with useful features. They've done it again. Now you can actually 'Undo' sending an email that wasn't supposed to be sent the way it was. Don't believe me? Read Gmail offical blog : Undo Send.

How does google accomplish this? Once an email is sent, you can't do much to it. There's no post(wo)man to bribe. Well its simple. Actually that's the limitation to this feature, but its a very fair trade off. When you hit Send, Gmail actually doesn't send it for 5 seconds. Meanwhile, it shows you the following message:


You don't click it in five seconds or you aren't able to because your net connection suddenly went poof, Gmail will send the mail. Neat. But then here's the catch. You have to be bright enough to realize you've goofed up something - within 5 seconds! :P

This can be a problem actually. Say when you have to send a really really ultra urgent email to someone, you're effectively losing 5 seconds! :D So if you need to do that often, you might as well turn it off. Or you can spend 30* seconds going to Settings and turning off the feature! You get to pick it! Perhaps The Gmail Team can add a 'Send now' button. Easy.


Cool,
LVS

PS: Am going to try sending some hate mail and then hit Undo. Gives some temporary satisfaction doesn't it?


*Dependent on your Internet connection speed and your agility with the mouse.

Update: I tried sending a mail to myself and hit undo. However, just before that the new mail actually reflected in my inbox!! :-o
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Glitch or gibberish?

Here's an interesting case of how iPhone can jeopardize marriages. A friend forwarded this in a mail. Its a case of how a husband took a "raunchy" picture of himself and mailed it to some female. While his 'Sent Items' claims this, the guy claims it is an iPhone bug! So the wife, who doesn't want to believe him, but still is open to it being iPhone's fault, got onto Apple discussion forums and decided to ask people. This is what followed.

I do wonder what happened to the couple and feel sorry for that female. Personally, I don't think this is a real iPhone bug, however, I did notice something very similar can be done with Thunderbird (my favourite mail client). Similar in the sense of getting a mail in your Sent folder or (Inbox itself) that you never sent! See screencast below: Sorry folks, I couldn't embed the screencast here, If you're interested, you can see here (SWF).

Here's what I did. I have two mail accounts set up on TBird, Gmail and my work email. Now, I select some random mail from one of the accounts (say gmail) and drag-drop it inside my work email's inbox. Now, my gmail (webmail) account shows the same mail as if it was sent to the account. Of course, the 'To' address field hasn't been modified, but it looks identical to case of being in 'Bcc' when the mail was sent.

I don't think this feature can affect businesses (though it is quite easy to modify the 'To' etc fields using some software) however, it can be used as jokes on your friends or if you want to cut out someone from your life....

Coming back to the troubled lady's case, I have shown that these things can be made to happen but I do not know what the chances of all these happening on its own are. But its not impossible; improbable but not impossible.

Update: The husband seems to have gone as far as creating a new account on Apple Discussions to reply to his 'wife' that he (ie some 3rd person) has also experienced similar problems :P
Read more…