For awhile the additions were coming hot and heavy, lately we haven’t seen much new — until today.  Gmail added two new ones – “Got the Wrong Bob?” and “Don’t forget Bob” .

• Got the wrong Bob? – Gmail checks to make sure the “Bob” you’re including in your email is the right one based on who you email most often.  When I send to Mark, I mean my brother, not some guy I worked with in a former life.  Addressing email to the wrong person can, of course, be more embarrassing that my example.
• Don’t forget Bob – With “Don’t forget Bob,” you can start composing an email to a group of people, and Gmail will suggest other contacts you might want to include.

To enable either or both,  go to the labs icon in the upper right of your Gmail screen, click it, find the Bob’s and enable them.

Since it is Google, wouldn’t “Got the wrong Sergey” have been catchier?

Old Gmail

New Gmail

What’s new with Google Gmail? Well. after being introduced in 2004, Google finally slashed the Beta designation from Gmail.

Other Google apps that have joined the community are Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Talk, and Google Video for Business.

Now, if that’s what you were waiting for — you can start using them now.

Oh yeah, it’s also a good time to give them a try if you haven’t yet.

Gmail – Our always favorite web mail has made it easier to perform Google searches while you’re reading your email.  Through the Labs technology, you can place a Web Search widget into your sidebar that when searched, does not disrupt emails you might be reading or writing.  Also, new today, Google has made it much easier to import email from older web email services (read Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL).  Now you have no excuse not to move to Google, Jim.

Google Calendar – The Google To-do list function called Tasks which had previously been integrated into Gmail is now also available in Google Calendar.  It’s a good way to create tasks with due dates and be able to see the To-Do items created in Gmail in your calendar.

Zoho – The Zoho office suite continues to develop and evolve, some of the more recent updates include being able to gadgetize (a word?) your Zoho documents and apps and put them in blogs, websites and Facebook.  Zoho is an excellent alternative to Google Docs for a free web office suite plus extras.  It is now spiffily accessible from mobile devices such as the iPhone.

Evernote – The best note-taking, information sharing uber-app around continues to update their product.  Recently they’ve added support for Blackberry mobile devices, the ability to direct your Twitter messages to Evernote account and localization into Russian.  We’re still waiting for Evernote for the Android G1.

MindMeister – This web-based mind mapping tool continues to be spruced up and enhanced.  What’s new includes localizations for German and Japanese, inline images, new formatting and a new widget for embedding your mind maps externally.  Since mind mapping is not a skill that’s in everyone’s repertoire,  playing with Mindmeister is well worth the time.  If you are of us who find it easier to visualize your world rather than just see it as lists, you’ll be surprised to find how intuitive it can be to create a mind map of exactly what’s on your mind.

VLC – While not a web app, VLC, the open source video do-everything is approaching their production 1.0 release with a release candidate.  The RC sports a spiffy new user interface and, as always, VLC is the best and easiest way to view your digital videos.

Inbox Zero being a discipline  to process email as you go along and not keep tons of unread mail that will hold you a guilty hostage to not Getting Things Done.

Anyway, my heart was in the right place, I was about halfway through the message and then zap.  My Gmail web interface goes away and I get this message:

It’s all telling me that they’re locking down my Gmail account for up to 24 hours because of “suspicious” activity.  Now maybe they consider my cleaning up my inbox “suspicious activity”.  They give this list of items that might have caused the lockdown, 4 out of 5 I know I haven’t done.

#5 says your browser can be doing it to you.  Well that would be fine and dandy except I’m using Google’s own browser, Chrome.

They let me back into my email after about 6 hours and I get through another hundred or so.  Today the quest starts again and just as I was down to about 100 messages, zap.  I’m being unusual again.

I’m now waiting them out, again.

What have I learned?

The cursed lockdown only seems to affect the Gmail web interface.  If you already have an email client configured for IMAP you can continue to use your account.

As much as I have bored everyone by tireless pushing Gmail as the only true path for email, Google’s lockdown ability proves that Gmail has a troubling hold over your email that always hangs over your head like a pile of excrement.

As far as Merlin Mann?  I guess it wasn’t really his fault, except Inbox Zero does inject a level of guilt in your dealings with email that’s a pretty strong motivator for a Jewish-guy like me.

Images can be uploaded from your computer or taken from the web.

To use, go to the Labs feature in Gmail and enable Inserting Images which will add an image button to your Compose toolbar.

Read more — Gmail blog.

Tacky? Yes.

One friend has always resisted using Gmail because he hated that line.  The more annoying part was that Gmail exposed your Gmail address which you probably wanted to keep private.

I described the process of consolidating mailboxes here, and got back this comment from a user:

This is a bad idea. Other people who get your e-mails sent from gmail will see the e-mail coming from John Doe (johndoe@gmail.com) SENT ON BEHALF OFaltemail@mydomain.com. The other person will always be able to see your gmail address. Google for domains would be a better solution, or if you don’t mind sharing your gmail address with everyone, your suggestion will work.

Anyway, fixed — hopefully never to annoy again.

In a hurry today to check my gmail, I mis-typed the Google mail address and found myself on an interesting-looking blog. I apparently was not the the first person to fat-finger the Gmail address — I had arrived at gamil.com, the site for a Raleigh, NC product design firm that gets zillions of hits everyday from people trying to check their mail. Once they realized it was happening (they had gamil.com way before gmail was created), they went ahead and put a blog on the front page of their site to give visitors something interesting to read.

Gamil.com turns out to be an interesting site with a couple of cute features including a list of links to other product design sites worth browsing.

Next time you get to gamil.com by mistake, stop to take a look.  Or, better yet, go there directly — gamil.com.

Below, a local news story about Gamil.

My gushing fanboy support for Gmail always had one caveat — it couldn’t be used offline. What to do in planes and locations without wi-fi?

Problem solved.

Gmail now uses the open source Gears technology which allows websites to be used offline by storing necessary information while online.

You can now read your already received email and compose new messages while offline. When you’re back online the messages will be sent.

If you’re a Gmail users, and why wouldn’t you be, go to the Labs menu in settings and enable Offline. This one put a menu entry in of Offline (1.0) in the upper right corner of the screen. Choose that option and you will be guided through installing Gears, if necessary, and storing information on your computer.

There is even a “Flaky Connection Mode” that can be used to stay safe when you can’t trust your connection, as is often the case with public wi-fi spots like coffee shops.

More info from the source.

Do you have a few old email address that you rarely check and when you do, you find they are chocked full of spam and maybe one halfway-important message that you’ve missed and you’re going to have to write one of those crow-eating messages that say something like “sorry I missed your message, I don’t read email in that account very often?” Gmail to the rescue.

You can have Gmail get the mail from other accounts, pull the messages into your Gmail account and throw away the spam. If you do find a treasure you can answer the message directly from Gmail so that it will look like you send the reply from your other account.

Tutorial after the jump

Here’s how:

Within Gmail select Settings – Account – Get Mail from Other Accounts – Add an account, enter your email address and press next step.

Enter your username and password, Gmail will probably guess your pop server name. Your choice as to whether to leave the retrieved messages on the server, but if you really don’t use the account very often — don’t leave them there.

Let Gmail create a label for that mailbox. This is very handy for viewing all messages from the retrieved account. Press Add Account, you’re halfway there.

Now lets set it up so we can send mail using Gmail from that account.

From Gmail choose Settings – Accounts – Send Mail As – Add email address

You can change the name that is displayed when you send email messages, by default you’re shown the same name as is used for your Gmail. Then add the new email address for the account that Gmail is now going to retrieve and hit Next Step.

You’ll then be asked to send an email to the old account to verify that it is yours. Since Gmail will retrieve the message, press Send Verification and just wait until it appears in your Gmail account and press the link in the message to verify your address. You’re almost there.

Okay, one last detail and we’re done. One more time, go to Settings – Accounts and check the bottom of the page to see that “Reply from the same address” is select as below, and you’re finished.

As if my favorite email service could get better, but there it goes again.  After already singing its praise today, I discovered the newest function added to Gmail – to do lists.

You could long keep you to do list directly in messages in Gmail or by using a Firefox plug-in associate your Remember the Milk list with your Gmail.  Now through the Labs interface (where they include the new stuff) you can turn on Tasks.  That allow you a new action of Add to Tasks after selecting a message, or better yet just use the keyboard shortcut  Shift-T and that message will be added to your to do list.

You can also add non-messages to your to do list.  To do items can be indented and moved up and down in the list to prioritize them.

If you don’t use Gmail, you should.  Sign-up for it here.  Read about this in the Gmail blog.

And since I’ve already outted myself as a raving Gmail fanboy, I’m declaring the rest of the week Gmail appreciation week and will post hints and features for the rest of the week.