Offline Attachments and Green Robots

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Beginning November 22, 2009, Gmail has added the ability to add attachments to email while in offline mode. This was not previously possible and frustrated many people who use offline Gmail. Now email attachments will behave just as you would expect whether you are online or offline, with the exception that you cannot do inline images when you are in offline mode.

When Gmail sends your mail, it goes through the outbox whether you are offline or online. This allows Gmail to capture all the attachments. If you are online, your message is sent immediately. If you are offline, it sits in the outbox until you are reconnected. Oddly, I would have expected this behavior already since I am so used to it in Outlook.

To get started with offline access:
1.    Go to Settings and click on the Labs Tab.
2.    Select Enable next to the Offline Gmail option
3.    Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page
4.    Your browser will then restart and you should see an offline link represented as an icon of a white checkmark in a green circle, next to your name in the upper right corner of Gmail. Click the offline icon to start the setup process.

Listen to the Gmail Podcast from March 1st and November 8th 2009 for additional information on setting up Offline Gmail and selecting specific messages to synchronize..

Here’s today’s quick tip. If you have friends with Android phones, enable the labs feature Green Robot to identify in your chat listing which people are online, but perhaps not always available because their Android phone has them automatically logged in. Android users will show up as a green robot indicating they are ready, but not ready-ready.

 

 Offline Attachments and Green Robots [00:04:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Selected Offline Messages and Password Tips

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Back in January 2009, Gmail came out with a labs feature to let you access your Gmail without an Internet connection. The mail was synchronized when you were connected and then you could access it when you were offline. For frequent travelers, this is a terrific feature. You can learn more about it by listenging to the Gmail Podcast episode simply titled Offline from March 1, 2009.

The downside of the standard offline mode is that it took a very long time to download the messages or in some cases, all the messages you wanted were not there due to the way the software chooses which messages to download. You might find yourself with plenty of messages from a year ago that have little value, but not all your inbox was synced.

Gmail Offline now lets you choose which items to download and how far back to get them. This not only saves download time, but also ensures you have relevant information at your fingertips. For example, my Gmail archive is currently around 30,000 messages. It would take a couple hours to download all those messages, and according to the heuristics, I might not get all of the the ones I want.

To setup selected offline messages, you’ll need to enable the “Offline” labs feature from the Labs tab on the Settings screen. Once that is done, you can use the “Offline” tab from the Settings screen. The “Download Options” section of that screen is where you configure how far back you want to sync your conversations and from which labels. The old method would have defaulted to all conversations from all labels. I setup mine to only go back a month and then fine tune it to first, ignore most labels, then chose some like Inbox that I want all conversations, and finally chose a few fairly active labels where I only need the past month. Once I saved those options, I was able to sync my data in a few minutes and take it on the road.

This feature really makes Gmail Offline a lot more convenient, but you will need to remember to check the settings from time to time to ensure you add labels as they are needed and remove those that are not.

Here’s today’s quick tip – Be sure to change your Gmail password at least a couple times a year. There are people on the Internet who make a career out of trying to steal passwords. Some guidelines to follow when choosing a new Gmail password:

• Make it unique. Don’t make it the same as your other Internet accounts. If someone compromises your Gmail account, they could have access to lots of other information on the Internet. If you have lots of different passwords to remember, I recommend a password vault program like KeePass available from keepass.info. I use because I have over 100 different passwords to remember at home and work.
• Use a combination of upper case and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. One common trick is to replace letters with symbols. For example, replace S with a dollar sign, or T with a 7.
• Don’t use simple words found in the dictionary like “house”, “automobile”, and definitely not “password”.
• Don’t use personal information that is easy to find such as your street name, dog’s name, and so on.
• Putting two or more words together with symbols is a good idea. Something like “dino+eggs”, of course replacing some of those letters with numbers or other symbols would make it a much stronger password.
• Finally, make you password something you are likely to remember. “dino+eggs” would be great if you are a paleontologist, but not necessarily if you are a stock trader.

You can change your password by going to google.com/accounts, or if you are starting from Gmail, go to settings, click on the “Accounts and import” tab, then look near the bottom for a link labeled “Google Account Settings”.

 

 Selected Offline Messagess and Password Tips [00:06:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Gmail Notifiers Compared

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Using webmail makes sense. It’s easy to access from any computer, and you don’t need to worry about installing and maintaing software, but the drawback is you have to keep a browser window open to know when you have email. The solution to this is to have a small application installed on your machine that monitors your Gmail account and pops up an alert when you get a message.
For notifiers, I found a few options. Gmail Notifier for Windows from Google, Google Notifier for Mac (same thing for Mac with a slightly different name, also available straight from Google), Gmail Notifier from http://gmailnotifier.com, and Notify for the Mac from Vibealicious (http://vibealicious.com/apps/notify/). I know, the names are all very similar.

Let’s start with the one that Google provides at http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html called the Gmail Notifier. It’s pretty basic. It supports Windows and Mac, sits in your system tray or menu bar, monitors your Gmail account and pops up when you get a message. Pretty simple to download, install, and be up and running to monitor your Gmail account.

Let’s say you have more than one Gmail account and you chose not to use the multiple account feature on the server to send and receive all your mail in one place. That’s where you might want to use Notify from Vibealicious. It allows you to monitor multiple Gmail accounts at once. It’s only available for Mac, but looks beautiful. It sits in the menu bar with a little icon and number of unread messages next to it. When you click on it, you get a full interface. Like the other tools, Notify is free.

Finally, there is Gmail Notifier from http://gmailnotifier.com. Like Google’s product, it supports both Windows and Mac. Similar to Vibealicious, it also supports multiple accounts. It runs in the system tray (or Mac menu bar) like Google’s tool, and when you click on it, you can pop up an index of all your accounts and how many unread messages are in each. It has simple controls to let you manage the message index and select messages for deletion, mark them as read, etc. It even supports Google Calendar alerts. I was caught off guard by the default alert which announced in a female voice “Incoming messages” with my laptop volume a little high. And of course, it’s free.

Of the three, Gmail Notifier from gmailnotifier.com is my pick for feature robustness and platform compatibility.

 

 Gmail Notifiers Compared [00:04:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Integrated Gmail

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OK Google users, listen up. If you’re like me and use Gmail, Google Reader, Calendar, and many more apps, you likely find yourself wishing there was one single place to see and manage all that information rather than jumping between many different interfaces and applications.
Even though Google hasn’t come up with a unified interface, there’s a Firefox add-on that can do it for you called Integrated Gmail. It allows you to pull together your Google applications plus third party sites in the Gmail interface.

Listener John writes in that he’s got a netbook and is looking for something to offer him more screen real estate to see his conversation index and messages. I didn’t realize it at first, but Integrated Gmail add-on also offers screen controls to expand the screen usage on the top and left of the screen. Just look for the little green arrows. Whether you are a netbook user or just looking for a page to view all your Google apps, Integrated Gmail is a good choice.
Here’s today’s Quick Tip – Hey Google Voice users, Gmail now has a labs feature that allows you play your voice mail messages right in Gmail. Google Voice is a service that allows people to call one number and ring each of your multiple phones. If you are already a Google Voice user, you are used to getting your voice mail notifications as email. After someone leaves a voice message, you get an email with a transcript of the message (with varying degrees of accuracy) and a link to play the message. Previously, if you used the link it would take you to a different page to play it. By using the labs feature, you can play the message right from within Gmail. To use it, go to Settings, then click on the Labs tab, look for Google Voice player, select enable, and save you changes. Now when you get a message, the player will appear right below the message in Gmail.

 

 Integrated Gmail [00:03:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Password Reset by SMS

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Let’s face it, sooner or later we all forget a password. There are just so many of them to keep track of. Gmail has made this a little easier by allowing you to recover your password via text message.

Begin by going to http://www.google.com/accounts. Under the personal settings, you should see a section labeled “Security”. Click on the link that says “Change password recovery options”. You’ll need to provide your Google Account credentials one more time to verify your account.

Once that is done, you can add email addresses to send a reset link, or set a mobile phone number to send a password reset code via text message. To this, click on the link under the section “SMS” labeled “Add a mobile phone number”. Choose your country and enter the mobile number you wish to send the text message to and make sure to check the checkbox labeled “Use this phone number for password recovery via text message”. Finally, click the “Save” button at the bottom.

Now if you lose or forget your password, click on the link labeled “Can’t access your account?” in the login box of any Google application. On the right, look for the article labeled “I forgot my password” and click it. This link is also available on the bottom of the page. You will then be taken to the password recovery page where you first need to provide your username. In my case, I entered chuck.tomasi and clicked Submit. You’ll need to enter the text in the captcha page, one of those graphics with squiggly letters. I’ll admit, sometimes these are a little hard to read and I often have to enter more than one.

Once you’ve passed that test, you will be given several options to reset your password based on the account options you chose. If you set an alternate email address, you will receive an email to initiate the password reset process. If you setup the SMS option, you’ll get a text message with a recovery code.

Here’s today’s quick tip. Fight phishing with new labs feature. If you are unfamiliar with the term, Phishing, with a “ph” is a term used for nefarious email that tries to lure you to a website that impersonates another in order to get secure information from you. The most notable of these are eBay and PayPal. For example, some Internet villain will send you a message that looks like it is from PayPal and take you to a site that looks like PayPal, only to get your login and password and exploit your real account.  This Labs feature in Gmail verifies that an email that says it’s from eBay or PayPal actually is from one of those sources – making it more trustworthy. To use this, go to the Labs tab in Settings, turn on the feature called “Authentication Icon for verified senders”. Now when you see an email from one of these sources, a little gold key appears next to the sender’s name in the message. This currently only works for eBay and PayPal, but I’m sure Google will be extending this functionality in the future.

Finally, Google has promoted their first labs feature to a full fledged feature. Tasks is now a permanent fixture on the main page for all Gmail users. This labs feature was so successful that everyone is now able to use it by clicking the Tasks link on the left. While there is still no syncing with other systems, I expect more functionality in Tasks in the future. After all, they already implemented my suggestion to move tasks between different tasks lists. Thank you Google!

 

 Password Reset by SMS [00:06:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Improved Search

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Let’s face it, few of us take full advantage of the full power of the Gmail search feature. We look for a keyword or email address and perhaps we add “has:attachment” if we know the message included a picture or something. If done properly, the search would look like “chuck.tomasi@gmail.com filename:(jpg OR png)”. I’m sorry, that’s a little too geeky.

Fortunately, Gmail Labs includes a feature that can speed up and simplify the search process. It’s called “Search Autocomplete”. Turn it on by going to Labs under Gmail settings. Now as you type in the search box, Gmail will provide suggestions as you type. The nice thing about this is Gmail also provides the “geeky” way of doing the search.

Let’s take the example above. I start typing “Chuck Tomasi” and Gmail provides my address. Now I just type “photos” or “pictures”, select “has photos” from the drop down list and the search query automatically inserts (filename:(jpg OR png)). Similarly, you can type in the word “attachment” and Search Autocomplete will list the most common attachment types for you.

Gmail includes the geeky query for you so you can tweak it as necessary. Say you want to include GIF image types to your photo search. Just manually change it to “filename:(jpg OR png OR gif)”.

Personally, I think Search Autocomplete should be on by default because it really cleans up the search process. You’ll save so much time you can send me a note writing a quick review for this podcast on the iTunes Music Store.

 

 Improved Search [00:03:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: attachments, Gmail, improved, Labs, photos, search

Google Searches from within Gmail

Gmail has had a search feature for a while to allow you to search your mail, but until now, there wasn’t a convenient way to search the internet from within Gmail. Many times I’ve been asked in an email or chat for something and had to jump to Google to find the answer. Rather than open a tab, search the web, copy and paste my answer in to a response, Google has made this much easier with the addition of a Labs feature aptly called “Google Search”.

Adam de Boor, Software Engineer, explains, “When you turn this feature on from the Labs tab under Settings, you’ll see a new search box on the left side of your inbox. Type your search in, and a window (like a chat window, but a bit bigger) appears at the bottom of your screen with the first few search results. You can click on a search result and it’ll open up in another window (or another tab) so you can make sure it’s what you’re looking for. Once you’re sure it’s a result you need, moving your mouse over the result back in Gmail reveals a pull-down menu that lets you do stuff with the search result.“

What’s more, it remembers the last three searches you did. You can even launch multiple searches and have more than one pop-up window at a time. This is sure to be one of my more used labs features.

Offline

I have to admit I was excited to hear about the Gmail Labs feature simply called Offline. The offline feature allows you to use Gmail when you are offline or on a flakey internet connection. To get started with Gmail Offline, begin by going to Settings> Labs. You’ll first need to enable the offline feature and save your settings.You should now see the “offline” icon as a little green circle, or the words “offline” in the upper right by the settings link. Click on this link and walk through the steps of installing Google Gears. Once the installation is complete you make need to restart your browser – the installer will tell you if you need to do so.

The process will then begin to synchronize your online folder with a local copy that you can use when you are not online. You can hide the status window at any time by clicking the “X” in the upper right corner of the small window. To see it again, click the little green circle again. The sych process will take a while. In my case it took about 20 minutes.

From the sync pop-up you can also take some additional actions including:

• “Sync Now” to resynchronize your offline folder immediately,
• pause the sync for the next hour, which is always handy if you are in a limited bandwidth situation
• Disable oflfine Gmail, which allows you a quick way to turn off the offline system
• and Offline settings – this goes directly to the Settings> Offline tab where you can:

• Enable/disable offline mode (yes, this is redundant)
• Set the date range – allowing you to set how far back you want to keep online data locally. By default this is about six months, depending on the number of messages and their size
• Specify the maximum attachment size – which allows you to limit the synchronization of large file attachments. By default this is unlimited.
• Create a desktop shortcut
• and a link to a troubleshooting page to help you out if you have any problems.

I ran this on my Windows machine under Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 and it worked fine in both situations.

Using the offline feature allows you to use Gmail in your browser, read, compose, and even archive messages without an internet connection. When you get back online, the changes you made offline will be available online, and new messages on the server will be downloaded automatically without you doing anything special. This really is a useful feature if you use Gmail a lot like I do.

Here’s today’s quick tip:

Listener Dan Johnson Jr. made me aware of a Phishing attempt via email targeted directly at Gmail users. Phishing, with “ph” is an attempt by someone to gain access to your secured information. In this case, someone is trying to get in to your Gmail account. The message indicates that your Gmail account is scheduled to be deleted. The email asks you for your user name, password, date of birth, and country. If you ever see an email asking for this type of information use the “Report Phishing” option on the “Reply” pulldown on the right side of a message so Gmail can prevent similar messages in the future.

One other little cosmetic change to Gmail that I hadn’t noticed earlier was the status bar when doing file attachments. Now when you specify a file attachment an animated gauge will display showing you how much of the attachment has been uploaded. While not necessary, it is a nice touch.

 

 Offline [00:04:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Contacts Sync with Mac Address Book

Before I dig in to this I would like to thank my long time friend, co-worker, and mentor, Scott Reynolds for passing on this wonderful tip for Gmail. Those of you with iPhones, Macs and Gmail will find this very helpful.

This is based on a recent article at googlemac.blogspot.com showing how you can sync your Mac address book with your Google contacts.

Before you start, we strongly recommend that you back up your Mac Address Book. You can do that in the File menu by choosing Export, Addressbook Archive. That way if anything goes wrong, you’ll still have your original data.

The key to syncing your Google contacts is in the Mac Address Book. Go to the Address Book menu, choose Preferences. Under the General heading, at the bottom of the screen check the box that says “Synchronize with Google”. It will ask you for your Google login and password – use the credentials you normally use to get access to your Gmail.

Now start up iSync under the Mac Applications menu. Click “Sync Devices”. Depending on how many contacts you have, it may take a few minutes to synchronize all the changes. When it’s done, click on the Card menu and select “Look for duplicates”. You can resolve conflicts one at a time by choosing which card you want to take precedence, or you can merge the changes by highlighting one or more cards and click “Merge cards” or using the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Shift-| (that’s a verticle pipe character).

Click “Sync Devices” one more time and your contacts in your Mac Address Book and Google contacts are now in sync. To keep things in sync in the future, just use iSync periodically. It’s a bit manual, but once setup, it’s only a couple mouse clicks away.

Here’s today’s quick tip: Fiona King over at collegedegrees.com has posted an article titled “57 tips of highly effective Gmail users“. If you’re a long time listener to the Gmail Podcast you’ll recognize many of these and I encourage you to go over and take a look – there are some great nuggets of information like backing up your messages, cleaning out your contacts, or tricking out your labels.

If you’ve got a great idea or heard about a new feature in Gmail, or something that works with or enhances Gmail, I’d love to hear from you. Visit the website at chuckchat.com or drop me an email at gpodcast@gmail.com.

 

 Contacts Sync with Mac Address Book [00:03:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Shortcut Keys Help Screen

It’s almost as if Google can read my mind! This is really scary. Just yesterday I was getting frustrated at looking up shortcut keys I rarely use. No, I’m not going to print one and put it next to my monitor – that’s clutter. Fear no more, the shortcut key to end all that has arrived! Just remember “?” and you get a lovely overlay with all the shortcut keys (sample shown below.) Of course, you’ll need to make sure you have keyboard shortcuts enabled in the settings.

There is a link on the bottom to open it in a new window (or tab). After you’ve gotten what you need from the overlay, press “Esc” and it goes away. This one isn’t even in the “What’s New” list yet!

I’m told this does conflict with the same key found in Better Gmail 2, a Greasemonkey add-in, but how bad can it be to have too much help?

Let’s see, what else did I wish for in Gmail?