gmail

Gmail Annoyace Fixed

April 4, 2009 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

gmail_logo We’re happy to report one of the most annoying issues in Gmail, which used to make it, well annoying, to consolidate email mailboxes, is now gone — fini. You could easily pull your email from other mailboxes into Gmail and even send a message so that it more or less looked like your were sending from the original account — the less part being Gmail would insert a line in your email that said something like “From dan@techgolem.com on behalf of danusername@gmail.com”.

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.

Filed Under: gmail, Technology

When you’re getting the hits, better give them something to read

February 26, 2009 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

gamil-blog

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.

Filed Under: gmail, Technology, This Blogging Life

Wonderful Gmail just got more wonderful

February 2, 2009 By Dan Perlman Leave a Comment

No surprise to readers here, I like love Google’s Gmail. I think it is a great way to read email and not only is it the best web-based email system, it’s the best overall mail reader including mail.app on the Mac and Outlook on the PC.

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.

Filed Under: email, gmail, Web 2.0

Gmail Tip of the Day – Consolidate All of Your Email Accounts into Gmail

December 11, 2008 By Dan Perlman 3 Comments

In an orgy of admiration for Gmail and love for its new Task function (and possible an over-rush of endorphins) I declared the week to be Gmail appreciation week around here at Enquiring Mimes Ranch. In that spirit, today we’ll explain another way to increase your productivity due to the general wonderfulness of Gmail.

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

[Read more...]

Filed Under: gmail, How To, Productivity, Websites Tagged With: email

Raving Gmail Fanboy Hails new Feature — To do list

December 8, 2008 By Dan Perlman 1 Comment

gmail-logo

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.

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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.