8 posts tagged “gmail”

By now, you may seen the announcement that Gmail is integrating chat functionality directly into the existing browser-based mail client. It’s a nifty idea, and apparently it came from the suggestion that Google Talk needed a way to save chat histories.

I got a chance to play with this functionality this morning and I was pretty impressed. I’d blogged about and used meebo in the past and I’d say Gmail’s chat is a bit more polished…in fact, I don’t see myself needing to use meebo anymore. Anyway, here’s the review:

The Good

The first thing that struck me about it was that it’s fast. Your text pops up in the chat window after you press Enter just as fast as a desktop IM client. In general, the user interface is darned good and full featured considering it’s running entirely within a browser. It’s also integrated into the rest of the interface fairly well, without feeling bolted on.

An example of this is the saved chat histories, which is a great feature on its own. All your chat transcripts are saved just like your old e-mail messages. Well, not exactly the same…they’ve smartened it up a bit so that the display is better suited for a chat history. But, the chat conversations can be starred, labeled, moved to the Inbox, etc. If you do a ton of chatting, but don’t currently use Gmail, you might think about switching just for the ability to save all your chats and search through them.

Another cool thing about the saved chats is that they’re captured even if you’re accessing the GTalk network from a third-party Jabber client (as opposed to the official Google Talk client or the chat feature inside Gmail). I’m a Mac guy, and unfortunately there’s no Google Talk for Mac (yet). So, I use even though I do most of my chatting with Proteus, all the conversations are still stored in Gmail. Nice.

Speaking of third-party clients, they don’t seem to have the ability to display the “Bob is typing” messages that the regular Google Talk client provides. (The same thing goes for the underscores-yield-italics and asterisks-yield-bold pseudomarkup.) Thankfully, the chat feature within Gmail does support these. This is not a big thing, but it’s still nice.

The Bad

In the minus category, there are no little sounds to alert you that someone wants to chat or has just sent you a message. As a result, you won’t be leaving Gmail open all day like you might a regular IM client. Web sites that make noise are almost always annoying, but in this case having the option to enable or disable alert sounds might be nice.

Also, the nifty new chat features don’t work in Safari. This is a bit of a bummer, because Safari has become my main browser ever since Camino started freaking out during simple file downloads.

The Conclusion

Overall, Gmail’s chat feature is very diggable. It functions as well as any browser-based chat I’ve seen and the way that it saves chat histories is great. I’ll definitely be using it when I’m not at my “regular” computer and don’t have access to my favorite chat client.

And, here’s a little something for those who think Gmail is ugly:

Yes, it’s a slightly updated Gmail logo. Note how it’s a little softer and more 3D than the old logo:

That should silence the critics once and for all. :)

John C. Dvorak can be a crazy bastard, but I completely agree with his opinion that people should stop hatin’ on Google. Google is a great company that’s released some amazing products and they’ve done nothing so far to betray our trust.

I’ve actually been thinking about this since the new Yahoo! Mail Beta came out and there was a prevailing opinion that it will clean Gmail’s clock. This makes no sense to me at all. I’d bet cold, hard cash that if you asked these same people what they thought about Outlook, or pretty much any other standard e-mail client, they’d all say it sucks. But so many people are all wowed that Yahoo! was able to emulate this UI in a web browser.

Who cares if they were able to make a web-based version of something that completely sucked in the first place? No one ever said Gmail was pretty, but it’s the first time in a long time anyone released something solid with the ability to change the way people use e-mail.

Right off the bat, I can say that I would never want to go back to an e-mail client which didn’t have such smooth handling of threads (or “conversations”, as Google calls them). Everyone knows how much it sucks to try to jump into the middle of an e-mail thread in which other people have e-mailed back-and-forth ten times already.

It was the unlimited storage that initially made big headlines, but the key to making that useful is the ability to effectively search and organize all that mail. Google knows how to handle searching, and since Folders Suck they gave us labels instead. The initial privacy concerns blew away, and there’s even useful stuff in the sidebar sometimes, like a link to the appropriate Google Map if there’s a street address in the message.

It’s true that not all their products are such a home run. But how could we possibly expect them to be? Every tech company has had at least one, and usually many, crappy products in their lineup at one time or another. I’d turn that comment around and ask how many have ever had a product with the impact of Google’s core search tool. Maybe five?

This recent dustup between them and the government over privacy issues just makes me like them that much more. For lack of a more technical term, I’d have to say I “trust” them as much as I trust any company.

And so I say, Google, don’t worry about the hatas. I’ve got your back.

Gmail, my e-mail software of choice, recently introduced a feature called Web Clips that displays items from various RSS feeds above your e-mail messages. The new Yahoo! Mail beta has a similar feature.

I think this sucks.

Here’s why: I have way too many distractions in my life as it is. I really need to focus to do anything of even minor importance. If I’m logged into Gmail during the day, there’s a decent change I’m “wasting” my time as it is. I mean, some personal e-mail I receive during the work day can’t wait until I get home, but most of it can.

As I see it, a feature like this will only cause me waste more time. And I really don’t need help in that department. I’ll fire up NetNewsWire and do an initial sweep through my RSS feeds in the morning, but somehow I always leave the program open but hidden. It still has the chance to tempt me to waste time when I Cmd-Tab between programs.

Speaking of using lots of programs, I would love to be able to somehow trade in my 17” PowerBook for a 12” model. I need a smaller screen to force me to attend to one thing at a time, close it, then move on to the next thing. If you want to trade PowerBooks let me know.

If anyone has any suggestions of how I can make myself buckle down and focus better please post a comment. Alternately, if there’s a compelling use for RSS in your e-mail that I’m overlooking, toss in your $0.02 as well.

For now, I’m just glad it’s easy to turn Web Clips off.

No longer are surfers forced to suffer the indignities of a crappy web sites. That is, as long as they can fix it themselves using JavaScript.

Yes, it’s Greasemonkey, the Firefox extension that’s sweeping the nation like the Macarena. For the uninitiated, Greasemonkey is an extension (i.e. piece of add-on software) for the Firefox alternative browser that lets anyone write small scripts to change the behavior of existing web sites.

The example that got me to get off my lazy behind and install it is a little script that adds a Delete button (and keyboard shortcut: d) to Gmail. If you use Gmail and don’t want to save everything, you will like this. I’ve been using it for the past few days and I would have trouble going back to a machine that doesn’t have it.

But it also opens up a wider world of fun possibilities…for example, here’s a script that adds an entirely new navigational scheme to a horrible government web site that features interesting photos from the 1930s and 1940s. See, that’s better.

Now we’ve got no excuse to put up with lousy web sites…get out there and fix that web, you lousy greasemonkeys! :)

Last weekend I spent a lovely couple of days away from it all enjoying the fall colors in Door County. And when I say “away from it all,” I’m not exaggerating…no Internet access and not even a land line where we stayed. Fortunately, I had pretty good cell coverage thanks to Cingular so this was the perfect opportunity to use the Net-enabled features of my RAZR.

Google SMS was the star of the show and didn’t let me down. Getting away from it all is nice but I’ve definitely taken for granted the ability to quickly look up a phone number or the weather forecast. Google SMS lets you do things like this via plain ol’ text messaging…send a message like weather green bay wi to the number GOOGL (46645) and in a minute or so Google will send you the Green Bay weather forecast in the form of a simple message. No “data plan” or fancy smartphone required.

I got the weather each morning and was even able to solve the nagging question of what a gaucho was by sending Google a quick define gaucho. In that example, you may receive more than one answer but it will indicate as much by including “1/3” (one of three), “2/3”, etc.

Gmail’s POP feature was not quite as satisfying. Starting with the good news, it worked great for sending mail, as I sent a few messages to myself to serve as simple reminders. It went downhill from there, unfortunately…when I tried to download my e-mail my phone was “Retrieving messages…” forever and eventually ran out of memory. I took a look at the messages it was able to get and it seems to have POPed off all mail sent or received since I enabled POP in my account (which was about a month ago). And, even worse, it apparently gets the oldest messages first so I had no hope of seeing recent “unread” stuff.

Looking at it more closely, Gmail seems to have no option to POP only what’s in the Inbox, which seems ridiculous. The best thing I can come up with is to go into my Gmail settings before I leave town the next time and enable the “only POP mail that arrives from now on” setting. This is a moving target, though, and I need to do this before every vacation or else I’m screwed.

Finally, here’s a fun bonus for reading all the way down to the bottom of this post: MC Hammer visits Google. I think I speak for all of us when I say, “Please, Hammer…don’t hurt ‘em.”

Ba dum bum ching!

I’ve made a breakthrough…backing up your files is a waste of time. I’m giving it up.

Perhaps I should rephrase: Anything worth saving should be posted somewhere immediately. Don’t stick to your local disk. I say this as someone who hasn’t even been burned by a hard drive crash…just as someone who wants to be able to get things done anywhere, on any computer.

That’s the driving force behind this epiphany, actually…since I’m careful to store my work online, I noticed that I don’t really have to worry about backing up. (To be fair, I still back up my “digital library”...pics from my digital camera, MP3s, etc. For that I use an external FireWire enclosure.)

The likely next question “how exactly do I put my work online?” has several answers. First, I strongly urge you to reevaluate how many things you’re storing in MS Office documents. Something more collaborative like a wiki may better suit your needs. For things you find on the web, use del.icio.us. And if all else fails, just e-mail it to yourself using Gmail…through a few descriptive terms in the body of the message and it’ll be a snap to search.

Personally, Backpack takes care of most of this for me. But I’ll get into that tomorrow.

The title of today’s post is taken from the episode of King of the Hill in which Bobby takes a women’s self defense course after being picked on by bullies. When he gets into fights at school his strategy is to yell out, “Let go of my purse! I don’t know you!” and kick the would-be assailant in the nards.

This is significantly funnier on TV than it is when I describe it, and certainly violence against women is not humorous at all. What is at least smirk-inducing is the similarities between the attitudes of Windows users and victims of domestic violence. (How about that for a segue.) I didn’t make up this theory, but I’m reminded of it because I feel like I was victimized today.

Most days I sail along without too many problems, actually…my strategy is basically to use my “main” work PC as little as possible. For example, about eighty percent of the time I only have Outlook and Firefox open. It’s when you push the envelope that you run into trouble. You see, myself and another esteemed colleague have taken it upon ourselves to rewrite the intranet applications used by our team on a daily basis. Things have gone pretty well so far and in some cases we’ve actually greatly improved upon the software people used to use.

We are basically stuck with developing this in ASP and so far VBScript has not been that bad. But, recently we got it into our heads that it would be cool to have a file upload option on one of the pages and…you can guess which major software company is making this hard for us. Basically, it worked on one PC but not another, and we tracked it down to Internet Explorer being the culprit. It essentially drops the ball entirely on the whole file uploading part of the file upload feature.

Stepping back from this particular problem, Microsoft just does not make good software. (Check out this crap that’s going to become the next version of Office.) But most people don’t really know that. Like the victims of domestic violence, they’re not really aware that there’s a better world out there. I consulted a clinical psychologist friend of mine who’s also a Mac user and asked him for his thoughts on this phenomenon.

I would be interested to know if the people at Apple responsible for the “switch” campaign have spent time or consulted with behavioral specialists. From a hardware and software perspective Apple has removed many barriers but their are other “psychological barriers” that need to be addressed. Using the treatment of domestic violence victims as a model you could address some of these barriers.

Simple steps would include, helping users develop a simple (no more than 2 or 3 step) plan for escape. Build trust that you will be available (tech support) to help them in this transition. Move them to action. Next time their hardware or software crashes you want to be the first person they call. Help them take what they need (data) and get them to some place safe and affordable (Mac mini). If they have any belongings they can use (peripherals, monitor) help them to bring those things with. Also you need to be prepared to address doubts they will have in the first days, weeks, months. When something goes wrong you need to be there to help them through it and reassure them (support). Ideally I would like to see most support take place in person or by phone from someone at a local Apple store. Someone they can build a relationship with and begin to trust.

Highly interesting stuff, if you ask me. To be sure, Apple products have their flaws. It’s not perfect. But, speaking from personal experience, it’s a helluva lot better. Check out the Mac the next time you’re thinking about getting a new computer.

In the short term, get Firefox (even people who made IE are now switching to it) and use web-based tools as much as you can. Gmail is a good example. You’ll never go back to using e-mail the “old” way. I’m doing my best to make sure the tips/info I post here somehow work on Windows, and I’m noticing that cool web tools often make great cross-platform solutions. The “overall” tip for today is “use web-based tools whenever possible” and in the future I’ll have more specific examples.

So, please, people…learn to be like Bobby Hill and don’t stand for it. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. There’s better computing out there…you deserve it.

Let me start out by saying right up front that I love Gmail...I couldn’t imagine going back to e-mail the “old” way. I just wish it was a bit better on the Mac. Of course in this case Google doesn’t deserve all the blame, since they don’t make the browser (at least not yet) and they have to work within its limitations.

But, they do make at least one thing for Mac now…a Gmail Notifier. As far as I can tell it’s their first foray into native Mac apps. (I say first with a sense of wishful thinking because I’d really like to see Google Talk show up on the Mac.) Unfortunately, I’m a bit underwhelmed. The garish blue “m” that is the application icon put me off, and my experience has been somewhat tainted ever since.

I’m sure Google has a ton of Mac users internally, so you’d think they would do a really kick ass job. But now that I think about it, their Windows apps aren’t drop dead gorgous, so maybe I should have expected that. I guess I have a higher standard for how Mac apps need to look. It’s just part of the whole Mac thing…people want it to be pretty. I’ll admit I feel that way…for as many hours a day as I spend staring at a damn computer it’s nice to have it be nice looking.

Part of the issue is that I’m used to a lovely app called GmailStatus which is currently handling my Gmail notification needs. Here are some screenshots, with the icon for Google’s Gmail Notifier on the left and GmailStatus to the right of it. Which is better looking to you?

They really need to rethink that blue color. It’s similar to the Google blue but somehow less friendly. The red “m” overlaid on the envelope (from the non-Google program) looks straight from the Gmail logo. It’s perfect. Although, to Google’s credit, the “no mail” icon is more in keeping with the look of the ones provided by Apple (AirPort, volume control, etc.) in that it’s just a dark grey see-through outline.

Besides the aesthetics, it’s got some shortcomings in the functionality department. GmailStatus has integration with Growl, which is very diggable. Also, it provides a system-wide hotkey that you can trigger to leap into Gmail using your default browser.

But, the Gmail Notifier has some pluses of it’s own. First, it has a submenu which displays the subject and sender of your unread messages. I’m liking this more and more. Second, it seems to notice new messages more quickly, essentially right away. Finally, Google claims to be working on adding the ability to view unread messages not in your Inbox (Labels, for example). (GmailStatus already has this, but at least then they’d be equal.)

And, there’s a way to fix the ugly icon problem…make the Gmail Notifier use the icons that GmailStatus uses. To do this, right-click the Gmail Notifier application and select “Show Package Contents”, then open the Contents > Resources folder. The PNG images in the folder are the actual icons used, and you can simply replace them with the appropriate PNGs from the GmailStatus application. (Crack open GmailStatus in the same way to get to the pretty PNGs.) This worked for me without any apparent negative consequences.

Since I was able to fix the ugliness issue, I’m gonna try the Gmail Notifier for at least a while. It’ll be my little way of supporting the efforts Google put into making Mac-specific stuff, with the hopes that they’ll continue down that road and give us even better stuff in the future.

Here’s to hope springing eternal.