Google Enables Gmail Featurephone Signup

Google’s Gmail team has been busy quietly rolling out the ability to sign up for a Gmail account directly from Internet-connected feature-phones – i.e., phones that can’t run apps but have a built-in browser. That may not sound very exciting. but it’s good news for Google as it allows potentially hundreds of millions of extra people across the to sign up to the service if they choose.

As Google announces on its Africa Blog today, the move is designed to serve people who rely on a featurephone to access the Internet as they have no regular access to a computer or smartphone. Google says that this is “Hundreds of millions of people.” All these users need to do is visit mail.google.com from their phone to sign up.

Google has long been active in the developing world, encouraging growth in Internet usage. From a range of services unique to Africa, to a bus traveling around India giving people their first taste of life online, the more people Google can get online to more potential customers it has.

Source: The Next Web

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New Look of Gmail Login Page

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13 Gmail Plugins You Should Try Right Now

There is no denying the power of Gmail. And armed with a handful of extensions and add-on services, you can really turn Gmail into the ultimate emailing powerhouse. From enhancing and tidying your contacts list, to implementing an elaborate productivity system in your inbox, almost anything’s possible. You just need to know how.

And because of Gmail’s popularity, the list continues to grow, diversify, giving users countless new ways to make the service even more useful. Here’s a look at some of the tools you can use to enhance your Gmail experience.

FollowUp CC

While Boomerang is a great plugin for reminding yourself about emails you need to reply to, FollowUp CC takes it one step further, and can send your recipient a gentle reminder that you still haven’t heard from them. By simply adding a specific email address to the CC field, you can determine how long to wait before a follow up email is sent to anyone who is copied on the email.

There are a variety of ways you can formulate the address, from specifying the length of time to wait or specifying the actual date and time. For example, if you want the follow up email sent on July 20, you would add the address jul20@followup.cc. If you want the follow up email sent in one week, you’d add 1w@followup.cc. If you want it sent in one week at 2pm, you’d add 1w-2pm@followup.cc. FollowUp CC provides a complete list of examples of how to formulate the address here.

What’s really cool about the service is the different ways in which it can be used. You can even bookmark websites with the handy bookmarklet, setting the exact time and date you want to be reminded of the site, making it an interesting alternative to Instapaper.

FollowUp CC comes with a series of plans. If you want to try it out for free, you get 25 reminders per month. The paid packages range from $5 a month for 100 reminders, to $15 a month for 1,000 reminders.

CloudMagic

Gmail’s search feature is unparalleled, but if you want to make it even more useful the extension CloudMagic adds a few interesting options. Not only does it give you offline search capability, it also lets you simultaneously search several Google services including Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and your contacts.

Because the extension sits in your browser rather than in Gmail itself, you can search your email account without having to log in at all, and preview messages to boot.

Xobni

Xobni for Gmail is still in private beta, but you can use it now on your Blackberry or through Outlook. The extension will automatically create your address book based on emails you receive, and on your phone you can add received phone calls and text messages to that list. The contact information will include a photo, any contact information provided and, like Rapportive, will also include links and updates from social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The extension also enhances the search function, making it easier than ever to find the exact contact you’re looking for.

Find Big Mail

Gmail is pretty generous when it comes to space, but if you’ve been using the service for a while, and are a bit of a hoarder, you could find yourself reaching full capacity. If you want an easy way to find and get rid of the emails hogging space, Find Big Mail couldn’t make it any easier. Simply plug in your email address to the service, and it will create a series of labels and apply them to messages over 100KB and up.

Scrubly

If your Gmail contact list is a little bit unruly, Scrubly can help you get rid of duplicate entries. Compatible both with Gmail and Google Apps accounts, after connecting your accounts, Scrubly will then scan your contact list for exact duplicates, junk contacts (or contacts lacking any significant information), or loosely matching contacts. Once you’re done, Scrubly will generate a report of how many changes it made to your address book.

If you don’t like the changes that Scrubly has made, you can always restore your contacts using the automatically generated backup.

The free version of the service will scan up to 250 contacts, but if your contact list is any bigger than that you’ll have to upgrade to a premium account.

Send Using Gmail

If you’re using Gmail in a web browser, it can get pretty annoying when you click on a contact link only to find Outlook, Mac Mail, or whatever program is set as the default on your computer. With the Chrome extension, Send Using Gmail you can make sure that next time you click such a link, a Compose mail window in Gmail will open up. There’s no set-up process – install the extension and it will set Gmail as your default email client.

You can also right-click selected text or links in Chrome to automatically populate your new email window.

Taskforce

Taskforce is a Gmail add-on that literally turns your emails into tasks. It’s the ultimate productivity tool because not only does it let you get everything done in one window, it’s also collaborative and syncs with Google Tasks and Calendar.

When converting emails into tasks, the subject line becomes the task, which you can edit, add a due date and enable collaboration, or in other words, keep the other party updated of your progress.

Taskforce is not only a fabulous app for keeping you on top of your to-do list, it’s also an easy way to de-clutter your inbox. Rather than keep the email in your inbox until the task is done, simply convert, archive, and get on with your work.

Sanebox

Sanebox is the perfect service for anyone who’s Gmail inbox has gotten out of hand. After installing the extension, you’ll only have to wait a few minutes while Sanebox does its magic. Sanebox works a little like Gmail’s own Priority Inbox, but in a more distraction free method. Using an algorithm, it sorts through your emails, archiving those that are considered unimportant, adding the label @SaneLater. Anything considered important stays in your inbox.

While Priority Inbox does have a few extra options, there is something to be said for Sanebox’s completely distraction free method of getting all of the unimportant emails out of sight.

After letting Sanebox have at it with my Gmail inbox, my 1000+ unread messages were down to 21, and the filtering was pretty accurate. The @SaneLater label was filled with Twitter notices, newsletters that I had unwittingly signed up for, and a bunch of automated messages. Sanebox is free to try for 30 days, after which it’ll cost you at $4.95 a month.

Active Inbox

Active Inbox turns your Gmail inbox into the ultimate ‘Get Things Done’ (GTD) tool. After installing the extension, you can choose which email accounts you want to use it with. This is a useful feature if you have more than one email account and don’t want to apply the system to all of them.

Active Inbox works on a very simple principle but it can be a lifesaver in terms of keeping you organized. It depends entirely on Gmail’s labels, giving you both the system and some handy buttons to get started. Once you’ve installed the extension, Active Inbox will create a series of labels – ‘Action’, ‘Waiting’ and ‘Some Day’ – which you can apply to emails using the specially created menu. It also gives you an easy way to create projects, and assign emails to that project, using nothing more than labels.

To keep you organized, all of the emails with labels can be accessed from a menu on the left hand side of the screen.

The paid version of Active Inbox adds more features, including ‘deadlines’, ‘categories’, and a ‘reply to self’ link, making it easy to save notes and thoughts in your email account.

Active Inbox is compatible with Gmail and Google Apps accounts and can be installed in Firefox and Chrome.

0Boxer

Achieving Inbox Zero is a great feeling, especially if you’re a productivity buff. Nothing feels better than knowing that you’ve archived, answered, deleted, and sorted through all of your emails. 0Boxer is a service which aims to bring a little fun into the mix, making a game out of it.

After authorizing your Gmail account and installing the extension, a new toolbar will be visible at the top of the page. Each time you delete or archive an email, you earn a point, and as you pass certain milestones you’ll earn badges as well. Of course 0Boxer is more fun if your friends are on there as well, and you can keep track of who’s in the lead.
0Boxer is compatible with Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Mailplane.

ToutApp

Do you find yourself having to write the same email over and over again? While Gmail’s own Canned Responses can be useful, The Firefox and Chrome add-on, ToutApp, is like Canned Responses on steroids. Not only can you create and use a series of templates for those repetitive emails, you can also keep track of your email stats. ToutApp comes with an analytics feature which gives you some pretty interesting statistics on how often your emails are opened, and replied to.

While ToutApp does require you to install an extension, the emails aren’t sent from your inbox themselves, but rather from the ToutApp website.

With the free version of ToutApp you can send up to 7 emails a day, and track the statistics of up to two templates. If you need more, paid plans start at $12 a month.

Rapportive

With this handy little extension, Rapportive, your Gmail contact list is enhanced, showing you all kinds of additional information about the people you’re in touch with.

Rapportive adds a sidebar when an email is open, with links to your contacts’ social profiles, a profile image, and any other information they have plugged into their accounts. It also displays a list of recent emails you’ve received from that contact.

As far as your own profile is concerned, you can edit it to your heart’s content, adding or removing accounts, and showing only the information that you want others to see.

Rapportive can also turn your Gmail account into a Twitter client. For that to work, you have to visit this page to activate the service. Once active, you will not only be able to see your contacts’ latest tweets, but also reply and retweet.

Rapportive is compatible with both Gmail and Google Apps accounts, and can be used in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Mailplane.

Boomerang

Boomerang is a great Gmail extension that will stop those important emails from falling through the cracks. If you send and receive a lot of emails, it’s easy to forget when you’re waiting for a reply. Once installed, Boomerang can return an email to your inbox, after a certain amount of time if you haven’t received a response. Boomerang also makes it easy to schedule an email to send at a later time.

Boomerang is also a great tool for dealing with email clutter. If you receive an email, but don’t need to deal with it just yet, you can ‘boomerang’ it to return to your inbox after a certain amount of time, and that way it won’t slip into the depths of your email, where you’re bound to forget it.

Source: The Next Web

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Gmail’s got a beautiful new look and you can try it NOW

Only minutes after we posted user mockups of what a redesigned Gmail might look like, Google has released a preview of what the real new Gmail will look like, including themes that you can test out today.

It’s eerie how accurate the earlier mockups were. These screenshots show a Gmail that has adopted the Google+ minimalist, orange and gray aesthetic, though it’s not an identical aesthetic — the buttons for instance are larger.

Simply go to Gmail Settings, click over to the Themes tab and select “Preview” or “Preview (Dense)” as your theme to try this yourself. Google has provided two themes because the end result is an elastic responsive design that shifts its information density to accomodate your screen size, but for now, you need to pick based on the density you prefer.

The Preview theme, which spreads information out over more space and so must be the theme designed for larger screens, spreads things out a little too much. The eye doesn’t naturally scan over emails in the inbox because the whitespace between each message is a little too big for information that is provided in only one-line increments. The spacing works for Google+ because the items are generally a paragraph or more in length.

If you flick over the Preview (Dense) you get something that’s akin to the current layout with a new skin on it, and it works. It’s still easy to scan through your inbox and pleasant to both look at and use. The only complaint I have is that the advertisements seem more prominent than before — but I’m sure ad blindness will kick in soon enough!

I’m hearing some reports that there are little spacing issues with either theme on particularly small screens, and some strangeness occurring when the window is resized from very small to wider.

Of course, this is a preview, and it’s “step one of a monster series of upgrades over the next few months” according to Jason Cornwell, who is a Googler working on the project.

After the limited launch of Google+ and updates to the designs of other Google products, Gmail had started to look rather dated (heck, I’d thought so before the new Google look started popping up), so this is a welcome development — one I’ll be adopting today.

Source: The Next Web

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Gmail To Roll Out Ads That Learn From Your Inbox

Gmail is in the process of rolling out a new ad system that could prove to be quite powerful: ads that learn what you’re interested in based on your email habits. The feature first showed up in my Gmail account earlier this afternoon (there’s a prompt informing users about the new ads), and a Google spokesperson has confirmed that they are indeed in the process of rolling this out worldwide. Here’s the full information page describing the feature, found by clicking the ‘Learn More’ button.

Google says that while this notification will be rolling out to users gradually over the coming days, the personalized ads won’t actually go live for around a month. In the mean time, users can opt-out of the new system through Gmail’s settings panel (the default is that you’re opted-in).

Google says that the system uses signals similar to those utilized by Priority Inbox, the automated system launched last August that attempts to highlight which of your incoming email is most important. These signals include things like who sent the message, whether or not you read it, and keywords that appear in the message.

For example, if you frequently email with your friends about cooking (and you actually read those messages), Gmail might start showing more ads related to cooking classes or a local merchant that specializes in cookware. Google says that by improving its existing ads its reduced the number it shows to users by a third, and it hopes to continue that trend with this new system.

Gmail’s ads have used an automated system similar to AdSense for years — it looks for keywords in your message content and then attempts to place a relevant ad in the sidebar. But now, as Gmail learns your habits, you’ll start seeing ads that aren’t directly related to the email you’re reading (but are hopefully related to your interests).

Of course, this is probably going to spark some privacy concerns. Google is explicitly stating that, just as with the original ad product, this is an automated system, and if you’re really concerned about privacy you can just turn it off. And the interest profile established by Gmail will not be used by any other Google advertising products. It seems like a long time ago now, but Gmail raised waves of privacy issues years ago when it first rolled out its ads in 2004 — and people obviously got over it.

One other interesting thing to note: in the help article about the new feature, Google specifically mentions “Offers and coupons for your local area” as possible ads. A Google spokesperson says that this is part of the company’s local efforts that have yet to roll out, but it sounds like it could be quite powerful — imagine getting Groupon-style offers not just in your inbox, but alongside your other email messages.

Source: Tech Crunch

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Browser-Powered Desktop Notifications Are Coming To Gmail

Now this is nice. If you’re a heavy Gmail user you’ve probably installed some kind of desktop notification system — be it a browser extension, a separate Gmail app like Mailplane and/or Growl. But now, hot on the heels of launching a dynamic unread count in browser tabs, Gmail is launching something that doesn’t require any downloads: built-in desktop notifications.

A small banner on Gmail just prompted me to enable the feature, which works for both inbound chat and email messages (you can opt to receive notifications for all new emails, or just ‘Important’ ones as deemed by your Priority Inbox). Google is probably rolling this out gradually (there’s no blog post yet), but I’m seeing it in both of my accounts.

The ‘Help’ page for the feature is blank (despite the fact that the banner links to it) so details are still pretty scant. This is presumably using HTML5 browser notifications, and is apparently only working in Chrome — I tried testing it in Safari and received this message:

In practice it seems to work fairly well, though I think I’ll be sticking with Growl for now. I’m noticing that the notifications don’t have a minimum time that they’ll apear on screen — if a friend of mine sends multiple IMs in succession, the newest will immediately pop up over the older ones. Even worse, it looks like there’s no timeout for the notification — a friend just IMed me, and her notification has been hanging out in the corner of my screen for a full minute now.

Source: Tech Crunch

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Gmail: Priority Inbox Is Working; Users Spending 15 Percent Less Time Reading Email

Back in August, when Google launched Priority Inbox for Gmail, we praised it. And rightfully so. It took many of our nightmare inboxes and turned them into dreams. Well, okay, let’s not get crazy. But it did make them more manageable. And now Google has so stats to share to prove it.

When looking at the median numbers, Google has found that Gmail Priority Inbox users spend 43 percent more time reading “important” emails versus “unimportant” ones. But even more impressive is the overall stat: Priority Inbox users spend 15 percent less time reading email than Gmail users who don’t have it turned on. That’s actually pretty staggering.
Google also used their post on the matter tonight to showcase a small but interesting new feature. Now, if you hover over the “important” indicator on an email, Gmail will tell you why they think it’s important. It could be because of the people messaging you, or the content of the conversation, among other reasons. This transparency is helpful, for example, in showing exactly why Gmail keeps placing some spam email in my Priority Inbox.
Google also says that Priority Inbox should now respond faster to your manual corrections. Again, that should help with some poor categorization issues.
Priority Inbox still isn’t my dream of a Gmail Lite, but it’s a start.

Source: Tech Crunch

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Between Gmail, Twitter And Now Facebook, There Is No Universal Inbox, Yet.

“Over the next five years every product vertical will be rethought to be social. Get on the bus”
– Mark Zuckerberg

Waking up and opening my laptop on Monday mornings has become a terrifying process. Between Gmail, Twitter, Yammer, Skype and Facebook it seems like hundreds of people known and unknown are trying to contact you at any given time. Information overload and fragmentation has gotten so bad that there was even a The Office episode spoofing the still outstanding need for a Universal Inbox (what they called WUPHF) for all your messages.
Prioritization of the deluge of information thrown at you is a huge problem, and one that currently only has imperfect solutions. Some set up an auto-reply declaring email bankruptcy, some do their best to train (when they can) their messaging system to prioritize and most of us just ignore everything but the most pressing stuff. On Monday, Facebook announced its foray into messaging and took a unique stance on one of the most pressing problems of our time by taking the solution social.
Facebook VP of Product Chris Cox describes the philosophy behind Facebook’s attempt to use their concept of social design, i.e. leveraging your social graph, to get you the messages that matter most, “People have collaboratively built a network of who matters to them. We are living in a world where people are actually online. You’re not scared when you’re on a website and you interact with the people you know mainly.”
Yes there are countless ways to communicate online, but very few with built in restrictions. Adding Facebook’s hat toss to the pile, we’ve recently seen three novel attempts at dealing with information overload, each with advantages and disadvantages:

Gmail Priority Inbox
Gmail Priority Inbox is an example of a White List solution. While the Google Priority Inbox algorithm theoretically sorts your email into only things you want to see, in order for it to work users must tweak a list of  Like and Don’t Like rules, you have to train Priority Inbox to recognize what is “Important” and “Everything Else” for you personally.
The problem with this is there is no one intelligible overarching filter, and the user ends up doing a lot of work. It takes me more time to flag my messages as “Unimportant” than it does to manually avoid junk mail so I get lazy about training which just leads to more junk mail.
Gmail’s greatest strength (openess) is also its downfall i.e. random emails from sexyfreeipod@hotmail.com. But, if your business depends on open communication and receiving messages from people you don’t yet know, then it currently is the most flexible of your message filtering options as it still allows for spontaneity but doesn’t throw you entirely to the spam wolves.

Twitter DMs
Many people say that Twitter DMs have become their most efficient mode of messaging thus far due to their size restrictions and incorporation of the Twitter follow social graph into who has or doesn’t have access to you. In fact, as a messaging service it currently is my favorite one to use — I consider my Direct Messages my inbox and my @replies a form of everything else/junk mail.
But anyone who’s ever tried to DM someone who is not following them will point out that Twitter is not without its flaws. In terms of a communication tool, Twitter fails in some ways because someone shouldn’t gave to subscribe to all your inane ramblings and mediocre Instagrams just so they can send you a private message. And at 175 million users it still doesn’t necessarily cover a wide enough segment of the population that it can be used by itself.

Facebook Messages
Facebook announced three new elements in their messaging system revamp on Monday: Seamless Messaging, Interoperable Messaging and Social Inbox. As it is currently in slow roll out, most users won’t understand the ins and outs of the first two features (and maybe even the third) until the product reaches critical mass (Imagine trying to explain the Facebook Newsfeed to someone who had not yet seen it).
While I don’t really care much for all my messages showing up in a thread and the idea receiving an email as a text sounds too much like WUPHF for my taste, I am psyched about Social Inbox’s potential.
Why? Well I almost never receive messages from humans, and that’s all I want to receive messages from, at least when I’m on Facebook. Affirming this, Cox says that the social design strategy behind Social Inbox’s creation it is an attempt to combine the algorithmic and White List filtering solutions with the knowledge inherent in your social graph, “It really is about the people.”
Social Inbox is split into three parts, Messages, Other and Junk. The two main parts Messages and Other are filtered by of whether people are Friends or Friends of Friends and everything else like pitches and newsletters. Think about it, you can give your @facebook.com email address to stuff like Groupon and only have to deal with those emails when you’re good and ready, no algorithmic training involved.
Like Gmail, the social graph that gives Social Inbox value also limits it, but there is something amazing about receiving an email from a friend sent from outside Facebook that shows up front and center in Facebook Messages prioritized by the fact that they’re your friend. If anything this cleans up the Facebook messaging system (Win). Now if only there was an easier way to cull your Friends list.

The revolution in social messaging will be specialized
None of the above options will necessarily kill each other, just like the existence of Yoga doesn’t kill the existence of Pilates as a form of exercise. No matter what the Contacts wars lead us to believe, I won’t be trading in my Gmail for Facebook Messages anytime soon and I don’t think anyone expects me too. Besides, Mark Zuckerberg himself referred to Gmail Priority Inbox as “pretty cool.” Not exactly fighting words.
I’m pretty sure the 350 million active Facebook Messages users (most without the revamp), 363 million Hotmail users, 303 million Yahoo Mail users, 175 million Twitter users and 171 million Gmail users all have some overlap, each using whatever service is most efficient in each particular use case.
Right now I wouldn’t Facebook message a potential client just like I wouldn’t @reply a relative with the details of what we’re doing for Thanksgiving. But this, like anything else in the volatile realm of human communication, is subject to change.

Reference:  Between Gmail, Twitter And Now Facebook, There Is No Universal Inbox, Yet.

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Gmail Call Recording Appears To Be Rolling Out Widely

Back in August, Gmail launched what is perhaps my favorite new feature ever: integration with Google Voice, which lets you make and receive calls directly from your computer.

Earlier this month, there were some initial reports that Google had improved on this feature with a nifty addition: the ability to record inbound Google Voice calls directly from Gmail. Now it looks like Google is rolling out the feature more broadly — we’ve polled a few people and they’re all seeing it, and there are plenty of reports on Twitter of people noticing it for the first time.

Now, Google Voice has let users record some phone calls for a long time, but it’s not exactly intuitive — you have to hit the number ’4′ on your keypad (most people probably don’t even realize they can do this). The feature is only available on inbound calls, and there’s a verbal notification given to both parties on the call that recording has been activated.

The Gmail implementation seems identical in terms of functionality — you can still only record inbound calls, and there’s the same notification when you activate it. But it’s a heck of a lot more convenient.  A new ‘record’ button sits just above the dialpad, and it’ll probably introduce a lot of people to the handy feature for the first time.

There do seem to be a couple caveats: first, as mentioned earlier, this is only available on inbound calls. Second, it looks like this doesn’t work on voice calls that are routed directly from one Gmail contact to another (without using Google Voice).

We’ve reached out to Google to see if the feature has been activated for everyone.

Reference:

Gmail Call Recording Appears To Be Rolling Out Widely

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