The folks over at Google just love their Google+ social network and more and more Google+ features have been creeping into Gmail lately as well. Today, Google is bringing even more of Google+ to its email client. With today’s update, Google is especially focusing on adding a deeper integration with Google+ circles. You will now, for example, see profile photos from people in your circles when you select a circle in the left sidebar. You can click on those images to search for email from a specific contact. In addition, if you really take your Google+ circles seriously, you’ll be happy to hear that you can now use circles as search filters in Gmail as well. Say you want to just see emails from your “friends” circle, you can just type circle:friends to find them. → Read More
In 2009, Google brought its translation features to Gmail as a Gmail Labs experiment. Today, almost exactly two years after it first launched, this feature is finally graduating from Gmail Labs. Starting in the next few days, you will see an option to “Translate message” in the header at the top of every message that is written in a foreign language. → Read More
Google started rolling out its new user interface for Gmail late last year. Not everybody is in love with it, of course, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that a little cottage industry of Gmail enhancement tools has cropped up over the last few months. Google will soon migrate even those users who have, until now, resisted this change to the new version. Even if you hate the new Gmail design, though, you can reclaim some of your sanity – and screen estate – with a browser extension like Gmelius, which came out of beta today. Among the most useful features that Gmelius offers are the ability to customize Gmail’s navigation icons to show both text and icons, for example, as well as tools to remove Google’s people widget and Google chat from your inbox. Gmelius is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. → Read More
Gmail seems to be suffering from a bit of downtime this morning. Most of us here at TechCrunch haven’t been able to log in to our accounts and the reports on Twitter seem indicate that this issue is affecting users worldwide. On its app status dashboard, Google confirms that it is aware of this issue and that it will provide more information shortly. → Read More
When Google launched Gmail in Germany in 2005, it was quickly barred from using the Gmail name for its email product there. German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, after all, had registered the ‘G-mail’ trademark (short for Giersch mail) for his physical and electronic mail service in Germany in 2000, long before Google had even announced its own service. Instead of ‘Gmail,’ German Internet users who wanted to use Gmail had to go to googlemail.com. Google tried to appeal this decision, but ran out of legal options in 2007, after Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market rejected its appeal. For a long time, it seemed like that was the end of the story, but last week Google quietly settled its dispute with Giersch. According to Germany’s GoogleWatchBlog, the gmail.de domain and the Gmail trademark were transferred to Google on April 13. → Read More
Calling email overload “a crisis in communication”, TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington issued a challenge back in 2008: “Someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages.” The entrepreneurs at SaneBox read this and other articles by Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet, and set out to build a better inbox. After a month of testing, SaneBox has really helped control my inbox and risen to Mike’s challenge. → Read More
So you’re in town to follow up on some weak leads and your boss says you’ve got to stay put for a few more days because there’s an old lady out near Patton Road who is looking to buy and you call back and say you got to get back to HQ for some paperwork and your boss says “Make the most of it.” The only thing that counts in this world, friend, is getting them to sign on the line which is dotted. Am I right?
So you need some new leads, or at least some new people in your Rolodex. That’s where marGenius comes in. You import your Google or Microsoft address book and calendar (don’t worry, nobody else can see it) and it figures out if there are people you need to see and talk to near you, right in town there. Doesn’t matter if the lady near Patton Road’s crumb cake is from the store. You got four more new leads out of marGenius and you can give them a call or even schedule a meeting right from the app and ring a ding ding you’re up on the big board again, at least for a while. → Read More
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
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