When Google finally launched the official Gmail application for iOS earlier this month, the tech world sang with joy… for all of about thirty seconds. Almost immediately, reports spilled in that the app was broken, buggy, and almost entirely unusable. Google pulled the app down within a few hours.
Today, they’re taking a second swing at it. → Read More
By now you’re probably well aware that Google released their long-awaited Gmail iOS app today, only to unceremoniously yank it from the App Store when people pointed out that it didn’t really work. Google offered a mea culpa by stating that they have removed the app while they correct the problem, and that they’re working on a new version to be released soon.
Here’s a thought: just keep it. At least for a little while. → Read More
A video inadvertently posted to Google’s YouTube account has given a sneak peek at some of the changes that will be coming to Gmail in the very near future. It was quickly taken down, but not before a few screenshots were snagged by Google Operating System.
The new UI is obviously based on the Gmail ‘preview’ theme that it began offering back in June, which has more whitespace and options for tweaking how densely you want your conversations listed. The biggest change seen in the video is the conversation/reply view, which looks a lot more like Facebook Messages — each person in the conversation has their photo shown, and it’s easier to read previous messages in the thread. → Read More
Google is advising users in Iran to take specific steps in order to re-secure their Gmail accounts after last week’s reveal of the man-in-the-middle attacks that targeted Iranian users. The attackers used fraudulent SSL certificates issued by a compromised root certificate authority in the Netherlands, DigiNotar. These fake certificates allowed hackers to impersonate Google.com and others.
→ Read More
Yes, you read the headline right, and the screenshots below weren’t doctored in any way. The Gmail feature you’ve been yearning for is here: Gmail now supports three-pane viewing, allowing you to see both your message list and an email’s content at the same time.
Of course, the feature isn’t exactly novel — this is something you’ve been able to do with email clients like Outlook for years. The iPad’s Mail client has offered a preview-pane viewing mode since it launched, and Gmail itself introduced a tablet web app with a similar interface last year. And the native Android version of Gmail offers a preview pane as well.
But even if the Gmail desktop web app is the last one to the party, it’s still the primary way many people access their inboxes, so it’s a big deal. → Read More
“I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it.”
Peter Gibbons line from Office Space also served as the slug for my post from early July explaining why I was quitting email for the rest of the month. I was pretty sure I knew how I would feel once the month was up. And now that it is, guess what? That line describes exactly how I feel. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever missed anything less than email.
The past few weeks have been fantastic. Both my mornings and evenings have been decidedly less stressful due to this one little life alteration. Actually, all day, every day has just felt better, not having to worry about the constant stress of getting and (more importantly) responding to email. → Read More
One of the factors that led me to conclude that I could walk away from email for the month was the emergence of Google+. It’s yet another network where people can now message me if they need to get ahold of me.
Further, Google+ makes Gmail look like even more of a dog. To be clear, Gmail is still the best email service out there — but it’s also still an email service. It’s a service based around technology that is decades old. And while Google has put a better front-end on email and added the killer search functionality, compared to tools like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc, email seems a bit like watching black and white television in a world of 1080p flatscreens. I hate it. I’d like it to die.
And Google may help. → Read More
It’s probably not a good sign that I’m this excited about an email widget, but there you go.
Google has just announced that it’s rolling out a new feature over the next week called the People Widget — a small sidebar to the right of email messages that features contextual information about the people you’re interacting with in Gmail. I don’t have the feature active yet so I’m going by the screenshots provided, but it looks like the widget includes each person’s job title, recent email exchanges you’ve had with them, photo, calendar availability, and shared Google Docs. It also includes Buzz updates (hopefully Twitter integration is coming as well).
If you only exchange a handful of messages a day then this probably isn’t a game changer for you, but if you’re constantly having to deal with a flurry of projects and hundreds of contacts, then it could be a godsend. Of course, Google actually isn’t the first company to offer contextually relevant information within Gmail (strange as that may sound). Startups like Rapportive and Xobni have created browser widgets that offer similar functionality. → Read More
While it hasn’t always been clear just how big of a bet Google was going to make on Chrome OS, after Google I/O today, it seems very clear that they’re very serious. With the launch of Chromebooks, Google is aiming to strike right at the heart of Microsoft and the Windows stronghold. But they know that one big hold up remains before a browser-based OS can be everywhere: offline access.
With that in mind, on stage today, Google’s Sundar Pichai revealed that Google has internally been using offline versions of their three most popular apps for months now: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. And this summer, all users will be able to use these apps offline too. → Read More
Since 2007, you’ve been able to sign in to your AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account to chat with your AIM contacts directly from Gmail. You simply login with your AIM account in Gmail and your contacts will populate your gChat list, allowing you to chat with them just like you would your Google Talk contatcs.
From this notice, it looks like changes may be afoot to this feature. From AIM’s notice, In the next few days, Google and AOL are working together to change the way you connect to AIM buddies within Gmail. After this change, Gmail and AIM users can talk directly to each other without having to log into both services (you will no longer be able to log into AIM within Gmail’s “Chat” section). → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Doc Searls, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — endured technical glitches and a dissection of the disruption formerly known as TV before settling into a debate about privacy. I know, sounds like the usual nonsense, but this show was high quality nonsense. I forget who brought up the famous iPhone/Android hidden recording file crisis, but things quickly got out of hand when one of us suggested that was a feature not a problem.
It turns out that not that many people are aware that when we are on the Internet, everything is recorded. For those who seem surprised by this, all those free apps are actually there to harvest our clicks, searches, and other gestures of our intent. As Doc Searls pointed out, how else does Google make money except by random clicks on Adsense adding up to billions. It’s only when we can’t figure out how to delete our wanderings that people get upset. Me — I count on being surreptitiously tracked so I can go back and figure out where I was last week. → Read More
Yesterday, I noticed my Gmail account was insanely slow for no apparent reason. Nothing new here really, so I decided to wait it out. A few hours later, same deal. So I began phase two of my normal routine these days: publicly bitching about Gmail on Twitter. Normally, this works like a charm. Google reaches out and says they’re investigating (yes, fear my TechCrunch power and all that). Within a day, I’m zooming away seemingly faster than ever before.
Except today it’s actually even worse.
Emails are taking upwards of 30 seconds to load. Archiving is taking at least 15 seconds. Search is completely unusable. All the same is true on the mobile site as well. It’s so bad there, in fact, that the app believes it’s actually offline when it’s not. → Read More
Google’s about to step up its use of “interest-based advertising.” The company has announced that it will change the way it uses the information that it gathers from your scanned Gmail messages. (Or did you forget that Gmail scans every single one of your messages in order to show relevant advertising?) The big change is this: rather than scanning your email on a per-message basis, Google will now begin building a profile about you based on all of your emails. It’s this profile that will then be used to deliver advertising to you. → Read More
Gmail is in the process of rolling out a new ad system that could prove to be quite powerful: ads that learn what you’re interested in based on your email habits. The feature first showed up in my Gmail account earlier this afternoon (there’s a prompt informing users about the new ads), and a Google spokesperson has confirmed that they are indeed in the process of rolling this out worldwide. Here’s the full information page describing the feature, found by clicking the ‘Learn More’ button.
Google says that while this notification will be rolling out to users gradually over the coming days, the personalized ads won’t actually go live for around a month. In the mean time, users can opt-out of the new system through Gmail’s settings panel (the default is that you’re opted-in). → Read More
When Sparrow first launched in October of last year, I raved about its design and simplicity, but noted a few downsides. One was that it was Gmail-only. And even though it was Gmail-only, it lacked some of Gmail’s power features, such asPriority Inbox. With version 1.1, both of those issues have been addressed. And a whole slew of new features more has been added.
First and foremost, Sparrow now has general IMAP support. This means that on top of Gmail, you can use the client for all of your email. This means Yahoo, AOL, Mobile Me, anything. It even supports custom IMAP from services like Rackspace, Fastmail, Zimbra and others. → Read More
Ever since Xobni launched at the first TechCrunch 40, it’s been about Outlook and then Blackberry. But those of us who use Gmail also want to make our inboxes smarter. Today, Xobni is launching aprivate beta for Gmail, and will soon also launch iPhone and Android apps. The first 100 readers to sign up for the Gmail beta will get in (use the code XOBNI-TC100).
The Gmail app comes in the form of a browser extension for either Chrome or Firefox (Safari and IE will come later). Once you install it, a Xobni sidebar appears in your Gmail Inbox. Once you allow it to index your contacts and hook it up to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, it starts to show you all sorts of relationship data. Contact search in the Xobni box is hella fast, much faster than searching in the Gmail search box (but only for contacts, it does not index the entire text of your messages). → Read More
Back in August, Gmail launched a new feature that’s proven to be one of its most effective tools in the fight against email overload: the Priority Inbox. The feature attempts to automatically sort your incoming email based on importance, and while it’s far from perfect, it has led to a 15% reduction in the amount of time people spend staring at their inboxes.
It’s a solid feature, but the Gmail team knows that the battle against email overload is still far from over. So today it’s launching its next weapon: Smart Labels. Activate it, and Gmail will begin to automatically tag certain inbound messages as ‘Bulk’, ‘Notifications’, or ‘Forums’ and handle them accordingly. → Read More
Yesterday, the tips started flowing in. “Google has deleted all my email.” “Check Twitter, massive Gmail failure.” “Gmail just melted down.” Users were freaking out. And that’s understandable. Many were apparently opening up Gmail to find that all of their emails had vanished. Had it happened to me, I would have been on Twitter swearing at the top of my digital lungs and promising to do something crazy — like switch to Hotmail. Of course, the reality of the situation wasn’t quite so dramatic.
While the initial reports had around .29 percent of Gmail users affected by the bug (about 600,000 users), those estimates were quickly revised to .08 percent (about 150,000 users). And today, those numbers were further revised to .02 percent. This means that only around 40,000 of Gmail’s 200 million (or so) users were affected. → Read More
Surely by now you’ve heard of the problems people have been having with their Gmail accounts. E-mails have been deleted, accounts have been disabled, and while Google has been hard at work trying to make everything right, it’s just another example of why moving your entire life to the cloud may not always be the best idea. → Read More
If you’re a TechCrunch reader — or, really, if you live in the 21st century — you probably get more than one or two emails in the course of a day. In fact, you probably get a lot more. For some of us, emails have a way of accumulating faster than trolls in a comment section, and it can become an arduous task to keep track of which emails are top priority and which are your ex-girlfriend telling you to come and pick up your stuff.
Thanks to Taskforce, a member of Y Combinator’s latest class of startups, organizing your inbox just got a lot easier. Taskforce, simply put, is an inbox extension that integrates with Gmail to convert your emails into tasks and makes it simple to create reminders.
To begin using the plug-in, you simply download the extension, and sign in to your email account. Taskforce will pop up (it looks like a tall-ish Google toolbar) and prompt you to begin creating tasks. You can then set due dates, add collaborators, delay the date, and make comments on your tasks. It also adds buttons to the top of each of your emails, allowing you to convert the email into a new task, or add it to an existing task. (And don’t worry, Taskforce doesn’t access your inbox, all actions take place through the extension.) → Read More
