I use my Gmail account to send myself reminders. I use my Gmail to make notes on certain subjects. I had to do this by sending myself an email (very egotistical). However, the days of that are now over!
Google have released a task manager widget for Gmail. This can handle to do lists and notes and appears as a pop-up within the window of your Inbox.
Google desktop has been customising users desktops for years, with the latest widgets enabling XP users to create Vista-esque sidebars, with clocks, docks and apps. However, after countless requests, Google has finally announced the release of a Gmail desktop widget.
Today we reported that Google had released lots of themes for its mail platform, Gmail.
Now we will show you how to set a Google theme such as Ninja or Candy for your inbox. Its simpler than enabling Google Mail Goggles or Remember The Milk as seen in previous just Google It walkthroughs.
Step 1: Log into your Gmail account
Log into your Gmail account by going to gmail.com or googlemail.com, you choose, and enter your username and password.
Google’s Gmail platform is constantly being updated. This is not surprising when you learn that Google has kept the service in Beta since its launch in 2004. Recently we’ve seen bigger changes, mainly through their labs add-ons, such as Google Goggles and Third-Party Widgets, like Remember The Milk.
However, one thing has always stayed the same; The colour scheme.
Gmail has stayed in line with Google’s minimal white background with small splahes of colour here and there, until now. Google have just announced the option to theme your inbox, in a similar way to your iGoogle page.
(ex)Internet giant AOL recently decided enough was enough and produced a blog post accusing Google of stealing their ideas and features for their email platform – only to be brought back down to earth by the comments made on the post!
AOL started off the post by theming it around Halloween, accusing Gmail of having a ‘costume’, disguising the AOL email service as their own:
Happy Halloween Gmail! We knew you would have the best costume at the party, and who can blame you? We think it’s great that you’re using this holiday to pay homage to the one who started it all, who got 35 million people online at once, gave them all email, great content and messaging capabilities.
Now whilst it is true that AOL did have 35 million subscribers at one point, that was around about 2001, when they merged with Time Warner. Since then their subscribers rates have tumbled, as this chart shows (granted its from Wikipedia…), to around about the 8 million mark. They continue, moving on to name the features they accuse Google of copying through Gmail: Read the rest of this entry »
Last week Google announced the release of some Google Labs gadgets for Gmail that integrate with Google Docs and Google Calendar. But what slid under the radar was new support for third-party gadgets to appear in your inbox, enhancing the features that Gmail already offers.
The first to take the challenge of integrating themselves with Gmail are Remember The Milk, a free application that keeps track of your to-do lists, tasks and projects, which was reviewed by TechCrunch back in 2006 and gets numerous mentions on Lifehacker for its integration capabilities.
While Remember The Milk has offered Gmail support in the past, users needed a Firefox extension, cutting out a large chunk of the IE, Safari and Opera users. However, with the help of Google, it can now fully integrate within your inbox view.
It is an exciting move by Google, as it opens up their mail platform to so many applications that are becoming every-day tools to its millions of users. While the process of adding the gadget is clunky and the user-interface isn’t exactly streamlined, Google say:
“We realize this isn’t very user friendly right now; it’s a sandbox mainly aimed at developers who want to play around with gadgets in Gmail.“
Google also hinted that they would be expanding developer access in the future and that gadgets such as Remember The Milk could become independent add-ons rather than integrations through one user interface.
HOW TO ENABLE THIRD-PARTY GADGETS
Just Google It will show you how to enable third party gadgets, using Remember The Milk as the example.
Step 1: Log into your Gmail account
Log into your Gmail account by going to gmail.com or googlemail.com, you choose, and enter your username and password.
It has been reported on the official Gmail blog that changes have been made to the way in which we handle our contacts.
Gmail used to store your contacts if you mailed someone five or more times, automatically creating a contact profile for that address. However, Google have realise that this is not as useful as it sounds as it clutters your address book for syncing with mobile devices.
Contacts will now be transferred to a “Suggested Contacts” category and only the email addresses you care enough to add by hand will be entered into your “My Contacts” section. The Official Gmail Blog says:
As part of this change, we’re moving previously auto-added contacts back into Suggested Contacts. Only contacts that you’ve edited, imported or added to a group will remain in My Contacts. This will provide everyone with a clean slate and, we hope, a better point for syncing contacts with mobile devices (for example with Android). We’ll be rolling this change out to everyone over the next few days.
Hopefully the next upgrade will include a pop-out address book to check and add. As nice as auto-fill is, people sometimes get forgtten and feelings get hurt!
Are there any upgrades you’d like to see? Lets us know, leave a comment!
While looking at my blog stats it would seem that some people are looking to know how to activate Google’s newest attention-grabber Mail Goggles. It then dawned on me that all the stories I have read about it talk about what it does, but not how to turn it on. So I thought I’d help with my step-by-step guide…
Step 1: Log into your Gmail account
Log into your Gmail account by going to gmail.com or googlemail.com, you choose, and enter your username and password.
Beer Googles. Making us all think things are a great idea when, in the cold light of day, they are clearly not. Google agrees.
Deep in the Google Labs, their self-styled “technology playground”, they have taken this concept, applied it to Gmail and come up with Mail Goggles.
Google are releasing an add-on to your Gmail that poses tough math questions past a certain time of night – to stop you sending that email you might regret!
News is that you can customise the level of difficulty and also the time that the goggles come into effect.
“Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?
By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings.“
So Google shows its common sense and humour in one great big, lab-themed swoop. I’m sure i’ll activate it, if not to stop lewd emails leaving my inbox, but to give myself some puzzling maths.
What do you think of Google Goggles? Great idea. Waste of time. Let us know! Leave a comment!
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