The chance is however relatively good that some developers have already created extensions for popular web services. This article will look at five Google Chrome extensions for popular Google web services including Gmail and Google Reader.

Gmail Checker

Gmail Checker is a simple extension that displays a button in the Google Chrome menu bar. This button displays the number of unread email messages in the Gmail account which makes the extension useful as the user will be notified about new Gmail messages without having to visit the Gmail website first. [link]

Google Reader Checker

This is from the same developer who developed the Gmail Checker extension for the Chrome web browser. It is therefor not surprising that it works exactly like that extension. It will display a new button in the Chrome menubar that shows the count of the unread news items in Google Reader. [link]

Google Tasks

The Google Tasks add-on integrates Google Tasks into the web browser by allowing the user to access the tasks directly from within the web browser without having to open the Google Tasks website. [link]

gPDF

This extension allows the user to open pdf documents directly in Google Docs. There are two advantages of this method. First, no pdf reader needs to be installed on the computer system to read pdf documents and second, it will reduce the chance that the document exploits security vulnerabilities in the installed desktop pdf reader. [link]

Google Wave Checker

A basic extension that will display the unread Google Wave messages in the Google Chrome statusbar. [link]

Verdict:

Extensions are finally beginning to appear in greater numbers for the Google Chrome web browser but are hardly a match for the incredible amount of extensions for the Firefox web browser. It is likely that this is not going to change in the near future. The first step to make extensions more popular to both developers and end users would be to add extension capabilities to the public version of the Google browser.

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There are a number of possible applications that can take care of this task. In this article I am going to illustrate a few of those tools for you so you can choose which one is the right one for you.  So, without further adieu, let’s get on with the installation and usage. NOTE: All of these tools can be found and installed using the new Ubuntu Software Center. For more information on that tool, take a look at my article “The new Ubuntu Software Center“.

Gmail Notifier

Figure 1

The Gmail Notify  is a very innocuous panel applet that also pops up warnings when you have calendar event notifications set up . The setup of this applet is simple. When you first run the Gmail Notifier a windows will appear (see Figure 1) where you enter your Gmail username/password and configure any options you want. But ultimately all this little applet does is reside in your panel and checks your Gmail Account for new email and pops up alerts.

Make sure, during the configuration, you set your Browser path or when select “Go To Inbox” from the right click menu, no action will be taken.

This entry in the Gmail Linux desktop apps is one of the less flashy, but also less intrusive as, say, the Prism take on desktop Gmail.

Check Gmail

This entry in the desktop Gmail space is one of my favorites. One of the main reasons why I like this one so much is that it only takes a simple mouse over on the panel applet to see a full listing of your Gmail inbox. Now, before you even try to start this application up there is a problem. Out of the box the Check Gmail applet will not be able to log into your account. You will go batty trying to make sure you type in your password correctly. The problem is the executable file in /usr/bin. I’m not sure why the developer has not fixed this (the error has been known since 2007), but here’s the fix:

wget http://checkgmail.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/checkgmail/checkgmail
sudo mv checkgmail /usr/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/checkgmail

Figure 2

Once you have done that, Check Gmail will be able to log into your account. Once logged in you will see a tiny red and white applet in your panel that you can right click to get a menu of items to select from (see Figure 2) or you can hover your mouse over to see the first few emails in your inbox and the first couple of upcoming events in your calendar (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

If you do a single left click on the icon your browser window will open for you to log into Gmail. If you right click and select Compose Mail you will also be first taken to the sign in page. Even if you configure Check Gmail to save your password you will still have to sign in to your account before you can read or compose. This is a bit of a frustration and should not be a default behavior. This even happens if you already have a Gmail window open that is authenticated to your account.It would also be nice if you could set the background of the pop up to be transparent so it would be a bit less intrusive, but the application is very usable.

Gmail Prism

What would be a listing of Gmail Apps without including an actual web-based app. I mentioned Prism in my article “Install Prism on Linux for easy to use web apps“. You will find the Prism app listed in Synaptic as Google Mail or Prism for Google Mail. Very little needs to be said about the Prism app other than it’s nothing more than a stripped-down browser window that logs you into your Gmail account. There is no applet to remain out of your way – just a window.

Which is best?

From my experience (and for my preference) Check Gmail gets the vote. Although it has some issues that must be overcome before it will work, once it is working it is the usable of the Gmail applications available. If you rely on Gmail, and check it regularly, you would do well to at least give one of the above a try.

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Most email users should already be familiar with the tips offered at the Gmail blog. Here are the five tips posted at the website:

• Remember to sign out
• Be careful about sending certain sensitive information via email
• Enable “Always use HTTPS.”
• Be wary of unexpected attachments.
• Make sure your account recovery information is up-to-date

Two of the five tips (being suspicious of attachments and careful about sending out information) are valid for all email accounts no matter where they are hosted and whether they are accessed from a website or desktop email software. These programs on the other hand make the tips one and three unnecessary. The email recovery tip on the other hand makes sense for all Gmail users. Gmail offers an option to add another email address to the account which can be used to retrieve Gmail login information or retake an account after it has been hacked by an attacker.

Do you think those tips are sufficient to protect email accounts or would you add other tips to the list?

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Probably the most popular is the configuration of Gmail in a desktop email software program like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. This gets rid of any problems the user might experience in the Gmail web interface and is usually recommended for users who experience Gmail login problems.

Users who want to configure Gmail in a desktop email program can look at the support page at the Gmail website to find instructions for several email clients.

Gmail login problems can also be related to the account, for instance when the user forgot the Gmail password or username. A Gmail help page is available that can aid the user in retrieving this data so that a Gmail login once again is possible with that account.

Users looking for the main Gmail login page can visit this url to log into Gmail right now.

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Yahoo and Xoopit have now announced that they will discontinue the Xoopit services for Gmail, Facebook and basically any other service except for Yahoo Mail. Xoopit for Gmail and the Xoopit web service will be closing down on November 13. The Xoopit team has created a faq for Gmail and Xoopit users that is trying to address the most common questions.

Xoopit itself has been rebranded as the My Photos application in Yahoo Mail where it allows Yahoo Mail users to quickly look at all pictures that have been send to them. Additional features include photo uploading and sharing capabilities. The following video outlines the features that My Photos is offering to Yahoo Mail users.

The official reason for discontinuing support for Gmail is the following:

We’re sad to say goodbye to our users on Gmail but we know that we will not be able to keep investing in our Xoopit for Gmail product, and don’t want you to end up with a lousy experience.

Many users on the other hand suspect that it has more to do with the competition between Yahoo Mail and Gmail that the service is discontinued.

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At risk are web applications that perform actions based on input from trusted and authenticated users without requiring the user to authorize the specific action. A user who is authenticated by a cookie saved in the user’s web browser could unknowingly send an HTTP request to a site that trusts the user and thereby causes an unwanted action. (source Wikipedia)

Google has (finally) started to implement cross-site request forgery protections to protect Google users and their online services according to an article posted at the Register.

Sometime in the last three days, Google’s login pages began setting a cookie with a unique token on each user’s browser, according to Mike Bailey, a senior researcher for Foreground Security. That same value is also embedded into the login form. If the two don’t match, the user will be unable to log in.

Security experts have criticized Google in the past for not implementing a cross-site request forgery protection. Google engineers were quick to close security vulnerabilities that were caused by this attack type but did not implement a generic protection against these types of attacks.

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The project is run by a Google engineering team which is maintaining the information on the website. The website lists 24 different Google services currently for which information are provided on how to import and export data in and out of them.

The information provided usually concentrate on showcasing the import and export features of Google products without going into to much detail. Below is the informatin provided on the Google Docs page at the project’s website.

The following Google services are currently listed at the website: Google AdWords, Alerts, Analytics, App Engine, Apps for Business, Blogger, Bookmarks, Calendar, Chrome Bookmarks, Contacts, Google Docs, Finance, Gmail, Google Health, iGoogle, Google Maps, Notebook, Orkut, Picasa Web Albums, Reader, Google Voice, Web History, YouTube

The team is taking suggestions from users and seems to update the pages of the project fairly regular. Internet users can visit the Data Liberation Front website for additional information and the import and export guides.

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The developer’s of Lifestream Backup have developed their service for that reason. Lifestream Backup is a solution to backup data that is stored at various popular online services. The list of supported services reads like the who is who of the most popular online services:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Basecamp
• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Delicious
• FriendFeed
• Flickr
• Photobucket
• Zoho Writer
• Wordpress

Youtube and Blogger will soon be added to that portfolio raising the supported online services to 13. The principle is simple. All that user’s need to do is to authorize the Lifestream Backup service. This is either done by authorizing them directly at a service or by providing the username and password to that service. Lifestream Backup will start to backup data on a daily or weekly schedule. Email notifications can be send to inform the user that a backup has been performed (emails can be send after every backup or as digests).

Backups that have been created are accessible in the archives section of the backup service.Data backups are usually offered as xml files or as multimedia files. Each file can be viewed online or downloaded to the local computer system. An option to download all backed up data of a service would come in handy, especially for services like Flickr where the file count can easily reach a hundred and more.

To give one real life example: A Twitter backup consists of updates, mentions, received and send direct messages, favorites, friends and followers. The backed up data is offered in seven different XML files. No information about the data that gets backed up is available before the first backup. The developer’s should definitely add information about the data that gets backed up by their service. This usually includes the most important data but it is always better to see it in writing before configuring a backup for a specific service.

The Wordpress backup option is different from most other options. A plugin needs to be installed on the blog and a key configured so that the backups can be performed.

Invites:

The developer’s of Lifestream Backup were nice enough to provide Ghacks readers with a free one year account that can store up to 2 Gigabytes of data. These accounts are sold for $29 regularly but free for the next 24 hours if you visit the signup page that has been created for Ghacks.

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The free software program Gmail Notifier is technically a desktop program that can check multiple Gmail accounts for new messages. It uses IMAP over SSL for the connection and can monitor up to five Gmail accounts whenever it is running.

Gmail Notifier furthermore offers the option to read the header and body of new messages unlike many other Gmail notifiers that only notify the user of new emails. The program will display a message count for every Gmail account that has been added and configured in the software program.

Emails can be marked as read or deleted as well and attachments are indicated to the user. Notifications are in place to inform the user when new emails have arrived in one of the accounts that are monitored by Gmail Notifier. It is possible to switch to the Gmail account immediately by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on the account. This will open the Gmail interface of the selected account in the default web browser.

Gmail Notifier should be compatible with most versions of Microsoft Windows. It was tested on a Windows XP SP3 test system.

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Gmail users did receive the notification of missed calls previously with the option to see who called, read the transcript of the message or visit a new page to listen to the message left by the caller.

This has now been changed by the Google developers. It is now possible to directly play the missed messages in Gmail. The new feature needs to be enabled in the labs section of Gmail. Locate the Google Voice player from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings and enable it.

A player to play the recorded message will appear directly under the message in the Gmail interface after activation. The feature will also sync the status with the Google Voice application so that the message will not be played again when checking for new Google Voice messages.

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Google yesterday announced that they have added a new feature to Google Calendar which they call Interesting Calendars. Currently three different types of these calendars are available, namely holidays, sport schedules and misc. Holiday calendars make it easier than ever to add holidays of a specific country automatically to the Google Calendar. Available are a few dozen countries including the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Spain or India. This category includes Christian and Islamic holidays as well.

The sport schedules calendars offer a variety of popular sports that can be added to Google Calendar. Available are baseball, basketball, football (that’s American Football), Hockey, Rugby and Soccer. A click on any of these sports will open a larger list with leagues that are supported by Google Calendar. Soccer for instance contains all major European and South American leagues plus competitions like the European Champions League or the World Cup.

A click on any league will display the sport teams that are part of that league. It is then possible to subscribe to one or multiple teams. The team schedules are then added to Google Calendar. The misc section lastly contains three different options. The first is to add contact birthdays automatically to Google Calendar while the other two add moon phases and star dates to it. Check out Google Calendar to explore the new options for yourself.

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A Yahoo Tech News article added some information about the Gmail outage which according to their information surfaced on Monday “wiping out e-mail to a small subset of users”. The outage that affected the majority of Gmail users started on Tuesday afternoon.

There is no word yet about the cause of the outage and if Google was able to recover the wiped emails of the users that were affected by the problem on Monday. Users who are still affected by the outage should be able to connect to Gmail using POP3 or SMTP connections.

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Yahoo Mail now comes with a redesigned mobile version that is available at http://m.yahoo.com/ that now offers one click access to important functions, attachment downloads like pdf or Microsoft Word documents and access to personal folders. The attachment size was raised from 10 Megabytes to 25 which is the exact same size that Gmail is offering it’s users. The inbox of Yahoo Mail is expanded with an application box that is bringing third party apps like Picnik, ZumoDirve or PayPal to the inbox with more (Evite was mentioned) to come in future updates.

Yahoo Mail Contacts are improved as well as they can now be automatically updated whenever a contact changes their name, e-mail address or phone number.

Yahoo Messenger 10 Beta is now available for download. It introduces HD video calling and social improvements that keep users informed about their contacts including status updates. Other additions include Flickr uploads, Yahoo! Buzz stories, Tweets and more that are all available from the messenger’s interface.

Yahoo Search was upgraded as well. It does however seem that only search engine users from the United States will be able to access the new functionality that allows them to explore related concepts, filter results by popular websites only or narrow down search results by type.

Yahoo is adding more social elements to their products. They also started to add features that were introduced by Google and Microsoft services like the email attachment size of 25 Megabytes.

via Ycorpblog

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Gmail Tasks users can now easily send a task list by email which might be interesting for some users who want to notify another person of their task schedule. Sending out tasks by email will add all tasks in list format to a new email in Gmail. The email will also list the name of the task list. Notes and due dates on the other hand are not added to the email.

A question about the benefit of this method opposed to simply writing the tasks down in an email will surely come up. It would have made sense if notes and due dates were included in the Gmail tasks export but they are not. It might therefor be faster in some situations at least to write down the tasks manually instead of using the Gmail Tasks menu to export them. Some users who spend most of their day in Gmail might appreciate the new feature on the other hand.

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This will open the general settings window. A click on the Accounts and Import tab will display an Import Mails and Contacts button. Pressing this button will initiate the process. Gmail will ask for the email address and password during configuration.

The following email providers are supported by Gmail:

* aol.com
* aol.fr
* clear.net.nz
* cox.net
* comcast.net
* cs.com
* earthlink.net
* freenet.de
* freeserve.co.uk
* gmx.at
* gmx.ch
* gmx.de
* gmx.net
* hotmail.com
* hotmail.co.uk
* hotmail.de
* hotmail.fr
* Ihug.co.nz
* juno.com
* laposte.net
* live.com
* mail.ru
* msn.com
* netscape.com
* netzero.com
* neuf.fr
* optonline.net
* optusnet.com.au
* orange.fr
* orangehome.co.uk
* orcon.net.nz
* paradise.net.nz
* rr.com
* slingshot.co.nz
* sprint.ca
* sympatico.ca
* tiscali.co.uk
* verizon.net
* voila.fr
* wanadoo.co.uk
* wanadoo.fr
* web.de
* worldnet.att.net
* yahoo.com
* yahoo.co.uk
* yahoo.co.in
* yandex.ru

The import of the data usually takes about a week. It does depend largely on the amount of emails and contacts in the other email account.

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Webmail Notifier is without doubt one of the most popular Firefox email notification add-ons. It supports a wide variety of email services with some already build into the add-on and others available as userscripts.

Webmail services that can be configured right away include Google Mail (Gmail), Yahoo Mail or Live Mail (with msn, live and hotmail). Userscripts are available for GMX, Web.de, Lycos, Fastmail, QQ and Orkut among others.

New email accounts can be added in the options of the add-on after installation. The users only need to add the username and password of the email account.

Some options are available that include the frequency of email checks and if alerts should notify the user if new or unread emails have been received.

Userscripts can also be added in the options. Several userscripts to add new email providers are available at the developer’s homepage.

The Firefox add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

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I’ve written about Claws Mail quite a bit (see “Claws Mail: The unsung powerhouse email client“, “Claws Mail must have plugins“, “Create Message Filters in Claws Mail“,  “Encrypting email in Claws Mail“, and “Make Claws Mail aware when you need top or bottom posting“.) In the business world most people use Exchange. Unfortunately Claws Mail does not communicate with Exchange. Fortunately there is an alternative that a lot of people use – Google Mail. And good news for Claws Mail users, it can communicate with Google Mail!

Of course it’s not terribly cut and dry, how you set up Claws Mail to work with Google Mail, but it’s not so difficult that a newbie can’t configure it. So let’s see just how this is done.

Setting up Google Mail

The first thing you have to do is set up Google Mail to allow IMAP connections. To do this go to your Google Mail account and click on the Settings link near the top. Once in the settings window click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. In this section you will want to check “Enable IMAP” in the IMAP section. Once you have done that click the Save Changes button and you’re ready to move on over to Claws Mail for the real work.

Tag you’re it!

Gmail does not handle mail with folders. Instead it uses tags. So in order to be able to use Gmail you have to have, at least, the bare minimum of tags created in order for your Gmail mail to have a place to live. In order to create tags you need to click on the Configuration menu and then click on the Tags entry to open up the Tags Window.

Figure 1

When the Tags Window opens (see Figure 1) you simply have to type the new tag in the text area and then click the Add button. The tags you need to add are the following:

[Gmail]/Archived
[Gmail]/Drafts
[Gmail]/Queue
[Gmail]/Trash

You can add as many tags as you want depending upon how many folders you need (or have) on your Gmail account.

Configure your Gmail on Claws Mail

Now you need to go to the Configuration menu and select Create New Account. In this window you need to configure the following options.

Basic section

Personal information: Fill this out as you need it.

Server section

• Server for receiving: imap.gmail.com
• SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com
• User ID: Your gmail address
• Password: Your gmail password

Receive section

Authentication method: LOGIN

Send section

• SMTP Authentication: Enable this
• User ID: Your gmail address
• Password: Your gmail password

SSL section

• Use SSL for IMAP4 connection: Enable this
• Don’t use SSL (under SMTP section): Enable this

Advanced section

• SMTP Port: 465
• IMAP Port: 993

The final step

Go back to the main Claws Mail window. If you right click on the Gmail main folder you will see an entry for Subscriptions. Under that entry there are three sub entries. You want to click the Subscribe entry to subscribe to your Gmail mail. Once you have done that you can click Get Mail to download all of your Gmail mail. You are ready to go.

Final thoughts

Gmail is becoming a standard email service for many people, and with good reason. And now, if you use Gmail you can connect everyone’s favorite Claws Mail client.

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Another new service was introduced only a few days later. This new service allows Gmail users to automatically unsubscribe from email newsletters. All that needs to be done is to either report the email as spam which will bring up the unsubscription option or to click on the Show Details link in the top right corner and to click on the appearing Unsubscribe from this sender link (if it does not appear it means the newsletter cannot be unsubscribed from automatically).

This sounds – in theory – like a good new feature but there are a few limitations currently in place.

The unsubscribing option is only available for some legit newsletter providers. This is understandable as it would not make sense to unsubscribe a user from a spam newsletter as it is likely that the user did not signup for that newsletter in first place and that the cancellation request would result in more spam than in less because of the verification of the email address.

Not all legit newsletter providers are supported as well at this point. The Gmail blog gives some information on how to prepare a newsletter for the automatic unsubscription. It is definitely a welcome feature that needs broader support to become effective for the majority of users.

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Another interesting new feature is the quick message preview if multiple email messages have been selected. It basically displays about three lines and the subject of each email in the email window which is a very comfortable way of quickly glancing over multiple emails.

The smart folder mode is another new feature which basically combines folders from multiple email accounts. Instead of having to access multiple email inbox folders or sent folders they can now be accessed combined in the smart folder mode. Other notable changes are better Gmail integration for special folders and foreign languages, the ability to notice properly configured mailing lists and offering ways to respond to these emails and column headings which are can now be configured on a per-folder basis.

The changelog lists 592 new features, changes or bug fixes that the developers had made or added to the new release of Thunderbird.

Interested users should keep in mind that the email client is still a beta version. Caution and regular backups are advised. Users who need email for work should make sure that they have a backup in place in case somethings goes wrong.

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You will notice quite a few changes if you open the old and new Yahoo homepage side by side.

The header area has been redone and is now much smaller than the standard Yahoo header. That makes it possible to display more items above the fold which is the most precious area of every website.

Probably the biggest change is the possibility to add custom websites and services to the Yahoo homepage. It is for example possible to add a blog like Ghacks to the left menu on the Yahoo homepage. Hovering the mouse over the link will display a description, link, search form and latest feed entries.

Popular services like Facebook or MySpace have been added to the page with the option to add additional services such as AOL Mail, eBay, Flickr, Gmail or the New York Times to the menu as well. It is also possible to remove most of the default links that are displayed in the menu.

This gives Yahoo users a comfortable way of checking out other web services without leaving the Yahoo page.

Several changes have been made to the elements on the page. Some have been moved up (today’s top searches for example are now displayed prominently in the top right corner while others have been moved down into a new footer area. All in all a pretty decent redesign of the homepage to provide users with more functionality (and them with even more pageviews).

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