Google Gmail

SaneBox: A Cure Worse Than the Disease?

I’ve been testing an email management tool from SaneBox for part of the past week. Although a portion of this duplicates functionality present in the Gmail Default Inbox, I found some good parts to the service, particularly the SaneTomorrow and SaneBlackHole. However there are enough hidden “gotchas” that I won’t be subscribing. Here are my observations about the SaneBox service.



Gmail (Finally) Gets One Inbox

Will miracles never cease? Google just announced  their Gmail client now offers a universal inbox experience. Finally! Now instead of flipping between multiple accounts in the native Gmail app, you can click “All Inboxes” and view email from all your Gmail and non-Gmail accounts.


Google Wants You to Pay Your Bills Through Their New Gmail Pony Express

In another experiment from Google that may or may not (but more than likely will) eventually kill off, the search engine is reportedly building a new service for their Gmail Pony Express. The service is being called “Pony Express‘, which will let Gmail users pay bills, as well as split the costs of items with fellow Gmail users.


Google Hangouts Finally Offers Muting for Incoming Voice Calls

I love Google Hangouts. I think Hangouts is the best free group messaging service I’ll never convince most of my family and friends to use. Until today I had one major problem with Google Hangouts when used inside Gmail; because I also use Google Voice, every incoming call would ring in my Gmail Hangouts. A new update has fixed that. 


Inbox Out of Control? Unroll.me Might Be Able to Help

I get such a ridiculous amount of email every day, and much of it I don’t even need or want to read. I use Gmail, so spam is largely kept under control, but subscriptions and email lists seem to constantly pile up; unsubscribing is not always successful. I’ve been trying Unroll.me for the past week, and I think it’s helping.


Spear-Phishing: Is Facebook the Source of Your Spam?

Have you received an email that said it was from someone related to you, but upon closer examination you saw that it was from an unknown email address, and it contained a spam link in the email’s body? If so, you might have thought that either you or your friend had been hacked, but this is something sneakier: spear-phishing.


Evercontact Flashback Mined My Contacts and Found Treasure

Most of your business contacts probably include their contact information in their email signatures. But unless you have an assistant, mining all of that incoming data and inserting it into your address book would be a huge chore; trying to glean that information from past years’ emails would seem incredibly daunting. But not if you use two magical products from Evercontact.


Windows Phone and Gmail Finally Learn to Play Better

Thanks to the latest Windows Phone update, Windows Phone finally syncs properly with Gmail — bringing along all of your shared calendars and properly formatted emails. No more shredded MIME-reformatted emails! One of the common objections to Windows Phone is the lack of Google services integration. There are some obvious areas where there’s a large Google-shaped hole (the drama around the official/not official/official youtube app is an excellent example), but the biggest sticking point for me as a user of both has been the Gmail experience. However, the latest Windows Phone update has completely revamped how Gmail syncs with Windows Phone…



Gmail, Drive and Google+ Storage is Now Unified

One by one, Google added services that all involved storage.  It used to be 10 GB for Gmail, 5 GB for Google Drive and Google+ photos.  Now it’s 15 GB total for free accounts and 30GB total for Google Apps accounts.  Gmail, Drive or Google+ photos all count to the unified pool of storage.  Not a surprise that this has happened, as it just seemed to be the right way to go.  Some people use more for Gmail storage.  Some use more storage for documents.   Some upload a lot of pictures to Google+.  With a unified pool of storage,…


GearFest Gear Chat Part 4, Google Apps – Yay or Nay?

This was a sweet thought, a search mega-player committed to doing things in a kind, open and customer-friendly manner. But we all know it isn’t the case. No, Google is just a money-making machine and just as Health Insurance Companies make their money by saying “No” to sick people and reimbursing physicians at a rate of pennies on the dollar, Google makes the bulk of their cash by giving you seemingly free services and then using the personally data they rake in to make money. (Yes, I know, the video below is hosted on YouTube… what are you going to…


Native GMail for iOS Arrives … But Not Quite Fully Baked

If you want to be part of the unofficial beta team for the iOS version of GMail, you can grab it here. Note that it apparently isn’t showing up in iTunes searches, at least from my iPad. Here is the description: Get the official Gmail experience for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. With the Gmail app, you can: ? Receive notification badges for new messages ? Read your mail with threaded conversations ? Organize your mail by archiving, labeling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam ? Keep track of important messages with priority inbox ? Auto-complete contact names as you…


GMail to the Rescue!

I have been a GMail user since their early beta days, but three times this week I was reminded of how dead simple and useful their archiving and saving functions can be! First, a bit of background. My best friend is getting married next week, and so I have been wracking my brain putting together a toast for her and her fiancée. I had some fun anecdotes about her, as well as stories from when the two of them started dating, but I was looking for something more to add. Thinking maybe old emails would help, I typed her name…


Free Your Mac Mail Into Google App’s Cloud!

(photo courtesy lifehacker) If you’re like me, you probably set up the Mail application on your Mac at first. And it’s a perfectly fine email program if you want your mail stored locally. I set mine up when I bought my iBook (the last of the G3 models…what a great little computer!), using my Comcast email address. Then GMail came along and changed everything. I had always hated web-based email, preferring to use Outlook on my PCs and Mail on my Mac. But the Gmail interface was so much better than what the desktop options offered, I immediately jumped ship…


Gboard Review: Gmail at lightening fast speeds

I recently made the move to making G-Mail my full time e-mail client.  In conjunction with the move, I also stopped using the Mac OS Mail application and am strictly reading and writing my e-mail via the G-Mail web based client. The transition has take some getting used to.  Reading and writing via the G-Mail site is a different experience than doing so via a regular mail application.  Simply put, it takes a heck of a lot more mouse movements and clicks when using the web based G-Mail method. When I first spotted the Gboard I immediately knew it was…


Android Users – Back Up Your SMS Messages to Gmail

In talking with people that send text messages (SMS), one of the most frequent things I hear is that they wish they could save some of their SMS messages. Many of them have lost their messages forever if their phone is damaged/replaced/upgraded, or they run out of room and are forced to delete them. There is a very useful application for Android called SMS Backup that helps you save your SMS messages to Gmail so you can keep them forever.


How to enable, discover, and use Gmail keyboard shortcuts

Gmail has enabled increased productivity for those who large amounts of email due to its unique interface (conversations, labels, to name two!). Not everyone uses keyboard shortcuts, but they can be a big time saver in processing email. Read on to learn more about keyboard shortcuts and how to quickly learn them. Keyboard shortcuts are very useful because they quickly allow you to navigate your inbox quickly. You can also do things like select many messages at once and archive them, delete them, and even mark them as spam. Keyboard shortcuts are disabled by default. To enable them, simply go into…


HTC Magic Review Part 2

It’s been  a month now since I posted my first impressions, and it’s time to fess up my thoughts on the HTC Magic. Truth be told, it has truly surprised me! User Interface The Android user interface is simple yet elegant, and was definitely designed with finger actions in mind. Unlike Windows Mobile, Android never makes you wish for a stylus. Icons are nicely sized, menus are large and the flicking motions to advance lists, web pages and menus become second nature as soon as you start using the phone. For some reason Android feels a lot nicer on the…



One simple tweak that made my iPhone Gmail retrieval lightning fast

Dan posted earlier today over at Whatsoniphone about my discovery that if you enable Advanced IMAP controls in GMAIL Labs (look under settings) and remove the check marks from your folders so that only the INBOX is checked – your iPhone will retrieve email at a blistering pace as opposed to the 3 to 5 minutes that it previously took. Almost from the day that I bought the first generation iPhone I have been bothered by slow retrieval of my Gmail. Since I have a large number of folders, it makes perfect sense that this tip to stop synchronizing the…