How to see icons from email senders on Gmail

There are countless tools that aim to make it easier to manage your email; but if all you're looking for is a way to see who's really sending you an email, then check out this Gmail Sender Icons.

Gmail will stop accepting javascript attachments next month

If you've ever tried send an .EXE file as an attachment in Gmail, you'll know Google won't allow you to do so. Starting next month, the same will happen with javascript files with a ,js file extension.

Gmail for Android gets MS Exchange support

Good news for all MS Exchange users out there, you're about to be able to use Android's Gmail app to access your account's email, contacts and calendar. And this might show that Google is (finally?) worrying about the competition.

Dmail lets you set expiration dates to your emails

Email may be one of the best ways to communicate, but it fails to provide adequate control to time-sensitive information - not to mention the often needed "undo send". Now, there's a new service in town, and it can solve all that: Dmail.

Gmails gets Undo Send from the labs section

Ever watched, in terror, an email being sent just as you realized you were sending it to the wrong person? If so, Google helps save you from it with the recently promoted "undo send" feature.

Google phases out Android email - prompts you to use Gmail

Some may have seen it coming. With the latest Gmail being able to use other email services having two separate email apps on Android was something that wouldn't last long... and it didn't: Google has just pushed the Email app out the door.

Google rethinks email managament with Inbox (by Gmail)

We all know Google like to update their services on a regular basis; but when it comes to "mess" with things like Gmail, it's easy to imagine how people would react (badly) to any major changes. So, Google sidestepped the whole thing by releasing a complete different app to show you how you should handle your email in this new century: with Inbox, by Gmail.

Pin to top and hide contactos in Hangouts on Gmail

When Google replaced the old Google Talk chat system embedded in Gmail with the new Hangouts, some things got better... but other got a lot worse. Most users were particularly annoyed by the fact that you lost the ability to manage how you wanted your contacts and chats to show. And now finally seems to be doing something about it, allowing us to select which users we want to see.

Goldman Sachs makes Google un-send an Email

I believe almost everyone has experienced the despair of clicking the "send" button on an email as they realize it's going to the wrong recipient (or maybe you've wrongfully placed hundreds of emails in the CC field instead of the BCC). Once that email is sent, there's no way to take it back... unless you're Goldman Sachs.

Gmail begins to show images safely by default

Email is still the most popular way for people to "talk" on the internet, but it's also a fertile ground for spammers to try and take advantage of us. As there is no guaranteed way for a sender to know if their email was actually opened and read by the recipient, they soon come across an easy solution to give them that valuable information (a person that opens up spam emails is more likely to "fall for it" and becomes a much likely target for it.)

How do they do it? Simply be inserting images in the emails. When you email program displays the images, it grabs them from the spammer's servers, indicating you've opened the spam email (and also providing your IP address). That caused most email clients to disable the image loading on emails... which gives no indication to spammers, but might also make you miss some content where a image would be worth a thousand words.

Now Google has come up with a way to safely show images in Gmail, and it's actually quite simple as well. Instead of letting your computer talk to the (potential) spammer server to get the images, it acts as a proxy in between them. So, it's Google that grabs the images, and your computer grabs them from Google's own server. So... no way for spammers to know your IP address, or even if you actually opened the email or it was just Google's server checking the image.

So, now the only time you might want to disable images on your Gmail account is if your data plan doesn't allow for that much mobile traffic and you have friends that insist on sending you multi-megabyte photos in each and every email.

Even though I like this safe image system, I think I'll still be leaving my "don't show images by default" and do it for a just a handful of contacts I do want to see images from.

Google finally lets users export Gmail and Calendar data in Take Out

Google has always fought for user's rights to own their own data, and that's why it created Google TakeOut, so anyone could take out their data, either for safe keeping somewhere (though I prefer to trust Google with my data than a cumbersome optical disc or hard drive that may fail without warning). However, there were two of Google services that were missing from that list - and precisely the ones you'd more likely want to take out with you should you decide do migrate to other service: Gmail and Google Calendars.

Well... Google has finally decided to follow through, and you'll soon be able to export your Gmail and Calendar data in Google's TakeOut. In fact, you can do it already for the Calendar data, but for Gmail, it will be rolled out gradually over the next month - I guess not even Google wants to deal with a few hundred million users backing up gigabytes of emails... all at once.

You can select whether you want to export all your calendars or just a subset, and likewise, you can select all your gmail  or just specific label - which I would recommend, as it is highly doubtful you really need all the gigabytes of emails you've gathered over the years. In my case, I would just need to select a few labels to get all my important emails - which would probably weigh just a few megabytes, and download it in seconds instead of hours!

The calendar files are exported as ICAL files, while Gmail is exported to MBOX files - both are formats you'll be able to import into other calendar/email programs and services.

Google unveils new Gmail intro page and Unified Login

"Do not adjust your TV sets"... no, we're not rewatching an "Outer Limits" episode, but you might think somethings definitely strange when you see what Google has done with one of the most visited and well known pages on the web: the gmail login page.

[old Gmail intro page]

If you're a Gmail user, you probably have this image burned into your retina - particularly if you have to login a couple of times a day from different computers that you don't want to keep "logged in" all the time. It was a simple page, in the best Google tradition, that only occasionally changed the "ad part" on the left side.

Now compare it with the image on top, the new Gmail intro page, with all the new Google style into action: a big image dominating most of the screen, a feature list below it, explaining everything you have to gain by using Gmail, etc. etc.

It's a much better looking page, but it has also lost one of the thing 99.9% of the visitors go there to do - the actual sign in!

Now you have to click on a sign in link on the top (where even the "Create an Account" option deserves more visibility), and you get thrown into a new unified account sign in page.

A page that reminds you that by signing in to Gmail (or whatever service), you're actually signing in into all of Google's services.


After talking with some friends to see if they had seen this news pages, none of them hadn't. And when I signed out of Google and tried to sign in again, I was once again presented with the old sign in page. So... this might simply be one of the many small scale tests Google continuously does. But by the looks of it, it looks far to polished not to be "the real deal".

So, I guess it's just a matter of time till everyone starts seeing these new pages.

Google Unifies Cloud Storage and Gives you 15GB of Free Space

How would you feel if you paid for 100GB of cloud space on Google, but found your Gmail account was unable to receive any more data once it reached 25GB? You could have 100GB for Google Drive and Google+ Photos, but your Gmail account would be stuck on 25GB. Now, Google is finally cleaning up this fragmented storage system and will unify storage space among all services, giving you 15GB of total storage for free that you can use any way you like - whether you'll use it all on Gmail, or all for G+ Photos, or anything in between.

You can manage it all in the new storage management page, where you can see how you're using up your space, and you'll notice that the old 25GB option is now gone. Now you can either keep the free 15GB account... or will have to go to the 100GB option at $4.99/month. You'll also notice that while this option previously offered 100GB + 25GB for Gmail, you now get "only" 100GB... meaning you'll lose 25% of space for the same amount of money (though I do prefer that these 100GB can be used freely).

If you're a Google Apps user, you get 30GB of free space.

This change is being deployed right now, and might take a few weeks to reach you - but sooner or later you'll see your Gmail account stating you have 15GB of space to use. (And I imagine that this also marks the end of the ever growing space limit we had on Gmail).

Add Events to Google Calendar from Gmail

Scheduling events in Google Calendar will now be easier than ever if you happen to spend most of your time on Gmail. When you receive an email with a date/time reference, Gmail will now detect it's a date (underlining it with a light color) and allow you to quickly add it to your scheduled events.

To ensure you won't be overbooked, it will even show you a preview your schedule for the day, so you can see if there's something already scheduled for that same day/time - and allow you to quickly tweak the time so you can fit it in your schedule.

As a last "nice touch", the newly created event will include a link to the originating email, so you can easily keep track of things and quickly find out relevant information. It's a nice improvement to the "create event" option we already had on Gmail, but that forced us to blindly input the date and time manually. For now this new feature is only available for US english users.

Gmail, Gdocs and Gdrive are Down

Proving that even the mightiest clouds around can leave you "hanging", don't panic when you find you are unable to check your email on Gmail, or access your files and documents on Google Drive and Google Docs.

The only thing you can do is to take a deep breath, do something else (hopefully something productive) and check Google's stauts page to see when things get back to working order. Try to face this as being yet another drill that will prepare us for the inevitable "collapse" that will surely happen someday, when someone finds out a major vulnerability that might compromise and entire system like Google, Faceboor, or others of its kind.

Truth be told, I do depend on Google's service to "work" online (Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, and so on)... But the prospect of all those coming tumbling down is just so horrific that I don't even want to consider what I should should that day happen anytime soon. As they say: we should hope for the best but prepare for the worst. But in such a scenario... I don't think there are really ways to prepare for such eventuality.

... Maybe... turning off all electronic devices and read a good (paper) book?

Gmail Mobile gets "Native" Look and Feel

Good news to web app fans in general and mobile Gmail users in particular. Google has decided to take its new design guidelines that have generated good feedback from the iOS apps, and is now pushing it even further to more and more platforms.

If the iOS Gmail apps became one of the best Gmail implementations in the mobile world (as well as Google+ and Google Maps apps), now it will be available to even more users, as Google revamped their Gmail mobile web version - as well as Gmail offline - both now having the same stylish and modern look.

You'd be hard pressed to notice any difference from the native iOS app and this mobile web app. But although this web version may not be of much use for those that have iOS and Android devices (and the Gmail native app), it will sure be extremely appreciated by all those that are using other mobile devices, like Blackberrys and Kindle Fires - and maybe even Windows Phones?

Be sure to give it a try, and see just how web apps can really be on par with native apps, at least for this sort of applications.

Dots in Gmail Email Addresses

If you use Gmail you might already know (or are about to find out) that dots in a gmail email address are completely ignored. This means that you login or share your email as being:

• myemail@gmail.com
• my.email@gmail.com
• or even:
• m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com

All will give access and send email to the exact same account.

For some users this might be a pain - if someone else shares an email address thinking they've registered a "dotted" email address that is different from your non-dotted one (and you'll receive email intended for them); but for other this is a godsend.

You see... you can put these dots to good use. For instance, you can use your personal email without dots, for your friends, but use different dotted versions to register to different sites - that way you'll know which one is leaking your email should you begin to receive extra spam email in the future.

But the best part is probably allowing you to register multiple times in the same service without having to create a secondary email account or use a temporary email service.

If you try to register multiple times in the same service using the same email, you'll be notified that you're already registered. But if you enter your email with some dots in it... it will be regarded as a different email, and you'll be able to register again, without having to create a new email.

Of course, these service might check for it in the future, so... I don't really recommend it if you want to use it seriously (though I imagine no service would want to risk deleting users accounts without any notice.)

Be sure to use your dots wisely. :)

New Gmail App for iOS - What a Waste... of Space

After the recent Gmail App for Android update (sadly just for Androids 4.0+), it's time for a complete revamp of the Gmail iOS App.

There's a lot of changes, with a new look, new animations, and - perhaps best of all - support for multiple accounts (limited to 5 - who knows why!). You can now accept or decline Google Calendar and G+ invites without leaving the App, as well as "+1" and reply to G+ posts from the app itself.

However... not everything is an improvement - as this App follows the annoying trend of white spacing everything, meaning you now get less actual content. Precisely the opposite of what you'd expect!

Let's compare the old Gmail for iOS with the new Gmail:

For starters, where you could before see 8 messages at a glace, you can now only see 6.

And there's also an annoying change that I just can't believe why it was made: in the previous version the search function was always at hand, on the top menu bar. Now, it has moved to a line beneath it - that not only wastes space that could/should be user for showing content - but that also scrolls out of sight when you flick down. Meaning... if you're two or three screens down (trying to find a message) and decide you want to use the search function, you need to scroll back to the top in order to be able to use it.

I really can't think how the mobile Gmail team can do this kind of "improvements" without realizing it's making it worse. Don't they actually try these things out before pushing it out to the world?

(For reference, that's on an iPhone 5 screen - you can imagine that in the majority of iPhones out there, with the shorter screens, you'll be seeing even less emails.)

Instant Quoting in Gmail

Seems there's a little known - but extremely useful - feature in Gmail that can help you lots when you want to to quote something when answering to an email.

You just need to select the text you want to quote on the email you received before pressing reply, and when you do Gmail will automatically quote just that excerpt for you, instead of adding it all to the reply.

This way, an email conversation can become a lot more readable, instead of piling up everything - wasting space and making it a lot more messy to track down (though Gmail also does a great job of hiding out most of the useless stuff.)

[via gizmodo]

How to Search for File Sizes in Gmail

If you're an avid Gmail user, you're probably already aware of the powerful search features Google's Gmail has to offer. Not only you can use the expanded search input box to access lots of different search fields, including searching for date and attachments; but you can also use special search codes as well, such as "from:", "to:", "has:attachment" or the "l:shopping" (to search for emails with the "shopping" label, for instance).

However, one annoying flaw that drove users crazy was that although you can search for emails having attachments... you couldn't search for attachments based on their size!

If you had a gmail account nearing its size limit, you can understand just how useful such a feature would be to quickly find the bigger culprits.

Well... now you can search for email file sizes... using the "size:" search code.

Meaning, if you want to search for emails larger than 5MB, just enter the following in the search box (without quotes:

• "size:5000000" - (or 5242880, if you want to be exact)

To find emails bigger than 50MB, just add a zero... or enter any other size of your choosing, in bytes.

I starter with emails larger than 100MB, and then dropped down to 50 and 25MB, and last but not least, to 5MB. In just a few minutes I reclaimed nearly an extra gigabyte of Gmail space, just by deleting year old emails that had no purpose whatsoever. And don't forget you can easily search for file types, so you can easily find large avi, mov, pdf, ppt, jpg, and so on - using "filename:pdf" for instance.