The video announcement highlights many upcoming Gmail design changes and features. This includes a new look and feel that looks very similar to the Google Plus interface, and other new features like Gmail’s ability to adapt automatically to the windows size in which it is displayed. Users who resize their Gmail window will notice that the relevant information, for instance the sender, subject and date of each email in the inbox, are always visible on screen.

The options button at the top right leads to additional display density options. The default comfortable setting uses big margins and whitespace areas between posts which users can reduce by switching to the cozy or compact display density options.

Another new feature is the slider that allows users to increase or decrease the label or chat area on the left sidebar.

Google has uploaded new high resolution themes that users can switch to.

Conversations have been redesigned to improve readability. You will also notice that profile pictures have been added if available.

Google has updated search as well. If you are a Gmail user you know that search consists of just a single form that you can use to search.

The new search comes with filters that include from, to and subjects as well as words, attachments and date filters.

Filters can now also be created right from the search box. You can see the video with all the changes discussed in this news article below.

There is no official word yet on the availability of the new features but it is likely that they will be rolled out soon.

I’m not really affected by the changes as I’m using Thunderbird as my main email client. If you are a Gmail web interface user, what’s your take on the changes announced in the video? (via)

That’s where the Firefox (and Google Chrome and Safari) add-on Rapportive comes into play. Rapportive integrates into the Gmail interface naturally. The extension displays a new sidebar on the right side of any email that you open on the Google Mail website.

The sidebar displays the contact’s name and email address, location, a profile picture if available, the contact’s occupation, recent social media usage (Twitter) and options to connect on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. Another interesting feature added by Rapportive is a note taking module that is displayed in the sidebar. You can jot down notes which are displayed whenever an email of that contact is opened in the Gmail interface.

You see who you are communicating with, and have options to add the person to your social circles. This works best if Rapportive was able to find the user on one of the social networking sites it uses to display the contact information. This does mean that you won’t get any useful information, that is information that go beyond the user’s email address, if Rapportive cannot find or link the user on one of those sites.

Users can hover over any email address in Gmail, for instance in emails with multiple recipients, to see their information on the screen as well.

Rapportive does not need access to your Gmail’s login credentials. The company gets limited access to your Gmail inbox on the other hand, and users with sensitive information may want to pass on this one because of it.

What I really like about Rapportive is the ability to “see” who you are communicating with. You get instant access to information about your Gmail contacts that you would otherwise only have access to if you’d run searches on sites like Google, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Firefox, Chrome and Safari users can download Rapportive from the official website.

Google yesterday announced the availability of a new Labs application called Preview Pane which adds that missing feature to Gmail.

The Gmail layout does not change automatically after Preview Pane has been enabled. A tooltip on the inbox page guides the user to a button that adds another column or row to the window. Below is a screenshot of the vertical split mode of the new preview pane feature.

The preview pane column is added to the right of the Gmail inbox. The area is fully resizable, which is done with a click on the divider between the inbox and the preview pane.

A click on the down arrow icon next to the preview pane’s button opens a menu with options to switch from horizontal previews to vertical previews.

The selection boils down to personal preferences and the resolution of the monitor. Vertical preview mode has the look and feel of desktop email programs.

Email previews are displayed whenever an email gets selected in the inbox or another mail folder.

But the preview pane adds more than just previewing of emails in the Gmail inbox. It can also be used to quickly reply to the selected email. All controls are available right on that screen.

Gmail users can also hide the preview pane again by selecting the No Split option from the down arrow.

Preview Pane adds a feature to Gmail that has been missing since day one. While it won’t entice me to use the Gmail web interface more often, it can surely make a difference for users who work with that interface on a daily basis. (via).

Google has now announced on the official Google blog that they have started to roll out the feature to users from other countries as well. The new feature will be available to 38 new languages, including countries such as Germany, France, The United Kingdom or Canada.

Call Phones from Gmail supports mobile phone and landline calls to over 150 destinations. The service does not charge for connection fees, users pay only for the time they talk and for nothing else.

The rates page can be used to display the international calling rates in a supported currency. Gmail users pay for instance $0.02 per minute to place landline calls to the U.K, France or Germany and $0.10 per minute to call mobile phones in those countries.

The Call Phones From Gmail feature is rolled out in the next days to all supported countries. A green phone icon in the chat area indicates that the feature is available for the account. A click on the phone displays the following informational screen.

The service is plugin driven, which means that users need to install a plugin before they can start using the service. The plugin is alternatively available on the Call phones from Gmail website as well. The voice and video chat plugin supports Windows, Mac and Linux computer systems.

A call menu is displayed in the lower right corner of the screen once the plugin has been installed.

It displays the current calling credit and a dial pad. The pad accepts keyboard and mouse input. A calling history is available, a click on the clock icon in the main row displays it. A click on the credit displays options to add credit and to display rates or the calling history.

Google notes that calls “to the U.S. or Canada placed within those countries will continue to be free at least for the rest of 2011. Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed from outside these countries will be charged $0.01 per minute”.

Additional information are available at the official Google blog.

Google seems to believe that it is time for all users to review their mail forwarding and delegation settings on Gmail. From today on a message will be displayed asking the user to review the filters set for the Gmail email address.

Users who do not have filters setup won’t get the message, obviously.

The message reads: Your filters are forwarding some of your email to [email address]. Options are to review the settings and a link to information about the notification.

Users who do not get the notification message just yet can verify their filtering settings manually instead. A click on the settings button at the top and the selection of Mail Settings opens the preferences.

A click on Filters opens the filtered mail listing. You can review all filters that are currently configured right there. These filters can be modified or deleted if need be.

You furthermore should click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP to see if the configuration there is correct. Check if mail is forwarded and whether POP or IMAP access are enabled. You may want to disable forwarding or external mail access if you do not need it.

Lastly, you need to click on Accounts and Import to make sure that no one has been granted access to your account who should not have it.

I personally have not seen the filtering notification yet, even though filters are configured in the account. The announcement at the official Google Mail blog suggests that the message will appear for about a week before it will stop appearing. (via)

Google recently announced changes to their email service Gmail that would aid users in determining the real sender of an email message.

Google actually has added a series of improvements to Gmail. Emails from a sender who is not already in a Gmail user’s contacts are now shown prominently in the header. This change makes it easier to identify the sender directly without having to look at all email headers.

But the changes do not stop here. It sometimes happens that someone sends an email for another user or from another website, for instance by using a web form. This is now also reflected in the email header directly. Gmail users now see the name of the sender as well as the sender’s email address and a via link.

Probably the biggest change from an anti-phishing point of view is a new warning that appears if Gmail believes that the email could have been sent by someone else. Gmail shows a “This message may not have been sent by” warning underneath the sender with links to learn more and to report a phishing email.

All three additions are visible directly when an email has been opened on the Gmail website. The new information improve security for all Gmail users, provided that those users pay attention to the notifications and additional information.

Especially the first two additions can be overlooked easily due to their gray font color on white background. The phishing warning on the other hand uses a yellow background so that it can be easily spotted by everyone. (via)

Users may get error messages like “Attachment failed” or “Attachment failed. This may be due to a proxy or firewall” when they try to upload attachments to Gmail.

This guide is a collection of fixes and suggestions that may help resolve attachment failed type of messages in Gmail. Attachment failures have different causes, which means that there is no single fix available that resolves all the issues.

I suggest you try each method on its own by returning to the compose mail window and trying to add the attachment. If it works congratulations, you have resolved the attachment failed message. If it does not try the next option in line.

Attachment Failed Basic Help

You may want to try the following tips first before you try the advanced tips in the next section.

Adobe Flash

Make sure you are running the latest version of Adobe Flash. The default attachment uploader is using Flash for the uploading of files. Old Flash versions may no longer be supported by the uploader or return error messages.

Visit this page to check your Flash version and compare it with the latest version of Flash posted on the same page.

Web Browser

• Make sure you have the latest version of your web browser installed. Depending on your browser you can either check for updates directly in the browser, or need to visit the developer website to see if you are running the latest version.
• You may also want to consider switching browsers to see if that resolves the issue.
• Make sure your browser is not in offline mode, especially so if you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
• Try disabling the web browser proxy if one is configured.

Attachment Uploader

Gmail has an option to switch from the advanced uploader to a basic attachment uploader. This is done with a click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen and the selection of Mail Settings. Locate Attachments under the General tab and switch from Advanced attachment features to Basic attachment features there.

Different Computer

Maybe you have access to a second computer, preferably at a different location. You can try to upload attachments on that computer to see if you experience the attachment failed issue there as well.

If you do not you know that it is not account related, but network or computer related. You may then want to check your firewall and security software settings to make sure that they do not interfere during attachment transfers to Gmail.

Advanced Tips Fixing Attachment Failed Messages

Desktop email

Using Gmail over the web is only one option for users. You can alternative download and install a desktop email client like Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. Configuration is not difficulty, see Setting Up Email Accounts In Thunderbird 3 for help on that.

Disabling HTTPS

Please note that it is usually not recommended to disable HTTPS. You may want to give it a try though if you have tried all other options.

You can disable it under the General tabs of your Gmail settings. Locate Browser Connection near the top and switch from Always use HTTPS to Don’t Always use HTTPs.

Contact Google

While there is no way of telling that Google will respond to your report, it may be better than giving up right away on resolving the issue.

Head over to the Gmail support contact form and send Google an email, telling them exactly what happens, and what you have tried so far.

Closing Words

There are lots of workarounds available to resolve attachment uploading problems on Gmail. If nothing helps, you may want to consider using a different email service after you have tested that attachment uploading works there.

Have you ever had problems uploading attachments to Gmail? If so, did you resolve those issues?

When I tried to send the email however, I received an error message. It stated: Error. File.exe is an executable file. For security reasons, Google Mail does not allow you to send this type of file.

A click on OK displayed the compose message screen again, with the file still being attached to the email.

What I needed was a workaround. Sure, I could for instance upload the executable file to a file hosting website like Mediafire, and copy and paste the share file url in the email instead. That’s a possibility and not a bad one.

Then again, I prefer a more straightforward approach. I first tried zipping the file to see if that was enough to bypass the file filter on Gmail. It was not. The very same message was displayed and the email failed to send.

Next thing I tried was to zip the executable file and apply a password to the file to see if that would bypass the executable file filter which it did not as well. Both options did not yield the desired result. Gmail was still blocking the email from being send. I did some experiments with different encryption formats, and found out that 7-zip files that contain executable files can be send, while more common extensions like zip or gz are blocked.

Lastly I decided to change the file extension of the executable, from exe to txt. And lo and behold, the email went through the filters. Changing the file extension of the attachment can be problematic in itself, especially so if you are not the recipient of the email. You need to provide instructions, preferably in the message, that the file extension needs to be changed before the file can be run on the target computer.

So, if you want to send an executable as an attachment from your Gmail account, you either need to rename the file extension to bypass the filter, upload the file elsewhere and link to it in the mail body, or use a compression format like 7z. The latter being the most comfortable option if the recipient uses a tool that supports the unpacking of those files.

Is there an option that I have overlooked? Let me know in the comments.

Background Send is a new Google Mail feature that removes that restriction from Google’s web mail interface. Once activated, you can continue working with Gmail while the emails are send in the background.

That may not make a huge difference for users who send an email occasionally, but for users who send hundreds of emails it may be a difference like day and night.

You need to enable the Background Send feature in the Labs section of the Mail preferences. You can get there with a click on your name in the upper right corner and the selection of Mail Settings.

Switch to the Labs tab there and scroll down on that page until you find the Background Send listing.

Let Google Mail send your mail while you move on to more important things. Just be sure to stay logged in until it’s all sent!

Don’t forget to save the change before you leave that page. It becomes available immediately allowing you to navigate away from the Compose Mail screen after you have hit the send button.

Background Send has no effect on the composition part of things. It is for instance not possible to do something else in the Gmail interface while uploading a big file attachment.

Please note that you may not log out of the Gmail account during the sending of emails in the background. The mail will fail to send if you do. Gmail displays a “There was a problem sending your message” notification if problems did occur during sending. Options are provided to fix the issue right now or at a later time.

Send Background is especially handy for users who send out lots of emails throughout the day. (via Gmail Blog)

Roman pointed out that he discovered Find Big Email, a free service that creates a storage report for all Gmail emails.

The service updates statistics during the scan, and an email at the end of the scan lists the top 20 biggest emails in Gmail, as well as emails that are larger than 2 Megabytes, 500 Kilobytes and 100 Kilobytes.

Find Big Email creates labels in the Gmail account that list those matching emails directly. This makes it easy as pie to delete large emails that are no longer needed. It cannot get much easier to find big emails in Gmail. The service revokes all access permissions after the scan has completed, which means that you do not have to manually do that.

The biggest concern that many users may have is that you need to authorize the service to access your Gmail account. While you do not have to enter your password to do that, it still means that the third party service can access all of your emails. If you have trade secrets in your account, other valuable or personal information, or have important accounts linked to your Gmail account, you may prefer a different solution.

One solution is to use an external email program to download all Gmail emails to a local computer to find out which emails use up the biggest amount of space on Google Mail. I recommend Thunderbird for the job but you can basically use any desktop email program, Microsoft Outlook is fine as well for instance.

Thunderbird is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. It is not as easy to use as it requires some initial configuration on your side to link the Gmail account to the desktop email client. Once that is setup though it is more or less automatic.

The account creation screen will be displayed right after installation. You need to enter the account name, email address and password. Thunderbird will handle the rest and look up the Google Mail server information automatically. Make sure you keep the IMAP mail protocol setting and do not switch to POP3.

You still need to make one configuration change though if you want that your deleted emails in Thunderbird are automatically removed from Gmail as well. Click on Tools > Account Settings.

Locate your Gmail account in the listing and select Server Settings. Now switch from When I delete a message > Move it to this folder to Remove it immediately.

The final change is to enable the size column in the email listing. Click the last icon in the email header listing of the Gmail inbox and enable the Size column.

The column displays the size of every email in that folder, including its attachment size. You can now sort by size by clicking on the Size column in the header.

Deleting messages in Thunderbird will now automatically delete those messages in Gmail as well.

While it takes longer to identify big emails in Gmail this way, it is the safer way of doing it as no one but you gets to access all the emails of the account.

Bonus tip for the impatient. You can display all emails with attachments in Gmail by searching for has:attachment. While you still cannot sort those emails by size, it is usually fair to assume that the emails with attachments take up more space than emails without. Good for some quick cleaning, especially if you can identify messages that you do not longer need to keep.

In Google Mail, this was not possible until now. Until now? Yes, Google finally came to their senses and added an option to switch from the automatic contact creation mode to a manual mode.

You need to change a configuration setting in your Gmail account settings to switch from automatic to manual mode. Open the Google Mail website and log in. Click on the Settings icon in the upper right corner of the screen and select Mail Settings from the options.

Scroll down on the settings page until you see the new entry Create contacts for auto-complete.

Switch from the default mode When I send a message to a new person, add them to Other Contacts so that I can auto-complete to them next time to I’ll add contacts myself. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click the Save Changes button.

Contacts will not be added automatically to your contacts list from that moment on. You are on the other hand still stuck with all the automatic contacts that have been added to the address book in the past.

The Gmail blog has posted a rundown of other features that they have added to the email service.

This, in short, includes better warnings for typos in email addresses, fewer error pop-ups, the transition from a refresh link to a refresh button, an always-on keyboard shortcut help page (Shift-?) and better transitions between certain actions.

Especially the new keyboard shortcut help page can be a productivity booster as it provides quick access and look-up options (what was that shortcut again?). Gmail blog via Caschy.

You need a third party software like Google webMail Filer for Thunderbird then. The free open source application can process Thunderbird mbox (mailbox) files and import them into Gmail.

Users need to supply their gmail username and password so that the application can import the mails into the account. That’s a problem for some. The source code is provided on the developer page which means that it is possible to review the code before the software is used.

I’d still recommend to change the password as soon as the operation has completed successfully. The mail export itself is very simple. It begins by entering the Gmail username and password into the required fields before loading a Thunderbird mail folder using the built-in file browser.

The program scans the selected folder and displays all mbox files in a listing. Each can be selected individually or all by selecting the Tootle Selection option. A click on start filing starts the export of the mails to Gmail. The program monitors the size of the Gmail inbox to block uploading once an 85% fill rate is reached.

Users interested in the portable software can download it and its source from the developer homepage over at Admincraft. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

As of December 2010, the most popular websites used primarily for email (based on US Internet usage) are:

• Yahoo! Mail
• Windows Live Hotmail
• Gmail
• AOL Mail

The same ranking of web-mail providers shows up as the result for 2010 US market share. When counting up unique US users in 2010, Hotmail and Yahoo tie at about a quarter of a billion users each, and Gmail has about 100 million users.

The results of a recent study on the demographics of web-mail users showed that Gmail users, among email users in general, tend to be young (54% between 18 and 34), have a high income (18% have an annual income between $100,000 and $150,000), and are early adopters of technology — for example, a larger percentage of Gmail users use Facebook that users on the other web-mail services.

Gmail History

Gmail was made available to the public in a beta version by Google on the 1st of April, 2004, and was thought by many at the time as another of Google’s infamous April Fool pranks. The project had begun a few years earlier within the company and had been available only to Google employees for internal email.

Known initially as Project Caribou, Gmail was open at that time only to several thousand people who had received an email invitation from Google to join. A market immediately developed for these Gmail invites, with some selling for a thousand US dollars, before Google increased the pool of invitations dramatically, and the price for an invite fell to less then US $5.

In April 2005, Gmail became available in a dozen languages, including British English, Russian, French, Japanese, and Spanish, just to name a few. One of the most intricate language implementations was for traditional and simplified Chinese.

In July 2005, Google began giving away Gmail invitations to anyone searching for the actual word “gmail” on Google.

In August 2005, Google began giving a Gmail invitation to anyone who submitted a US mobile telephone number to Google.

In February 2007, registration for Gmail was open to anyone who wanted to sign up on the Google website.

Officially, Gmail left beta status on the 7th of July, 2009.

HOW TO SIGN UP

Signing up is easy — use the http://www.gmail.com URL. This is also the URL used for your Gmail login once you’ve created an active Gmail account.

Look for the “Create an account” button, and click on it. Fill out the form that appears next, and then click on the “I accept. Create my account” button.

Most of the information on the form is obvious (First name, Last name, Location), but here’s what some of the less obvious fields mean:

• Desired Login Name: This item will be your email address for Gmail. You can type one in and click the “Check availability” button to see if that name has been taken yet.
• Password: There are two boxes to enter your password. The “Password strength” indicator to the right will let you know if your password is easily guessable, or not.
• Stay Signed In: This check-off box enables your Gmail signon to remain active until you sign off, which is a good thing for your home computer, but a bad thing for a public library computer.
• Enable Web History: This check-off box enables entry into your browser’s History of all the web pages you visit within Gmail. Again, it’s good for home use, but bad for public use.
• Security Question/Answer: It’s a standard question/answer for whenever you have to call in to re-set your Gmail account. You can even make up your own question.
• Recovery email: This item is another account recovery feature, but you can leave this field blank if you like.
• Word verification: This item is a standard security feature to make sure a human is submitting the form.

An Introduction page appears next. Click on the “Show me my account” button. Your Gmail INBOX, with an initial storage capacity of 1 GB, will appear with several welcoming emails from the Gmail Team. You can immediately select the Compose command to send out your first Gmail message, to yourself, of course, at another email address, just to prove that Gmail works as promised.

Rather than organizing messages solely by date received, Gmail groups messages by subject name and groups them as Conversations, with the newest messages in the Conversation at the bottom. Also, you can assign one or many Labels to any message, creating cross-connected groups of messages as you please.

Gmail will not send you additional copies of emails that you already have. For example, if you send an email via a distribution list of which you are a member, you will not get a copy in your INBOX because that message already exists in your SENT MAIL folder.

One limitation to keep in mind is that Gmail does not allow the transmission or receipt of attachments that are executable files.

Gmail Account Security

Gmail has a Security Checklist that you can use to ensure the security of your Gmail account.

Here’s a quick summary:

On your computer, is your virus scanner working? Is your OS up to date? Is your software infrastructure (Adobe, Java, etc.) up to date? Are all your software applications up to date?

Concerning your browser, is your browser software up to date? Are the browser add-ons, extensions, and plug-ins that have access to your Gmail the ones you want to have such access?

Within your Google account, when’s the last time you changed your password? Which websites have you authorized to have access to your Google account data? When’s the last time you updated your options for account recovery??

Within your Gmail account, are you always using an HTTPS connection? Have you checked unknown activity on your account lately? Are your mail settings for such things as Vacation Responder, filters, and forwarding working in the way that you think they are?

Gmail Features

The Gmail Labs feature, introduced on June 5, 2008 and available on the Labs tab of Settings, allows you to test out experimental features of Gmail, such as games, bookmarks for messages, and customized keyboard shortcuts. In return, all Google asks for is feedback. Keep in mind that these experiments may fall apart at any time, or simply disappear. Or, the experiment may become a nifty new part of the Google production environment.

Gmail Mobile is the version of Gmail for your Blackberry, Android, Nokia, iPhone, or other smartphone. It may even work on your ordinary cellphone! You won’t know until you try. It’s free, available since December 2005, and offers Gmail features for the smaller screen. You can read email, compose drafts, and mark the messages in your Gmail folders as you please. Look for details at the http://www.google.com/mobile/mail/ URL.

Gmail on the iPad was introduced Spring 2010. Any user signed on to Gmail via the iPad Safari browser can use a special two-pane display viewable only on the iPad, or stay with the traditional IMAP Gmail style. Take a look at the http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-services-on-ipad-and-tablet.html URL.

Google Buzz debuted in February 2010 as a new social networking resource. Integrated with Gmail, Buzz allows you to share media, status updates, and links. Check out the http://www.google.com/buzz URL.

Google Voice in Gmail Chat (which is, yes, definitely a name for which Google needs to find a new one-word replacement) actually lets you make telephone calls to any destination in the US and Canada for free (and other countries for a fee). There’s no guarantee how long the ‘free’ aspect will last. Check the http://www.google.com/chat/voice/ URL.

The Gmail Blog, begun in 2004, is the community center for every Google Gmail user. You’ll read the latest news about Google and Gmail, and continuing discussions on such diverse topics as developer code, advertising information, corporate partners, computing challenges, and hardware with the best renewable energy implementation. Find the blog at the http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/blog-directory.html URL.

Gmail External Access

The standard way to access your Gmail account is, of course, with your browser. And the standard way to access your server-based IMAP4/POP3 email is through the email client on your computer. What if you could mix the two? You can. It’s possible for you to look at your Gmail messages on your email client, or you can have email from your IMAP4/POP3 email server sent to your Gmail account. One reason you might want to do that is if you want to access your IMAP4/POP3 email using a browser, while on vacation away from your computer. Or, you’ve got multiple IMAP4/POP3 accounts you’d like to consolidate into one mailbox.

In order to set up your Gmail account to receive POP3 email, you’ll have to set up Gmail to use the POP3 protocols, and provide Gmail with the access to your POP3 email account. In Gmail:

• under “Settings… Forwarding and POP/IMAP,” enable POP3.
• under “Settings… Accounts and Import,” look in the “Check Mail using POP3″ section to find the button to add or edit a POP3 account.
• enter the name of the POP3 server, the port it uses for email, and your username and password for that POP3 account.

The result will be that Gmail will periodically check your POP3 account, and retrieve any email. You have the option to have a copy of the email remain on the POP3 server.

Replies to any such POP3 email received in Gmail is a bit more complicated. You have to configure the Gmail smtp server as the sender in the “Settings… Accounts and Import” tab. In the “Send mail as ” section, click on the “Edit info” link on the right side. In the dialog box that appears, enter your POP3 email address.

If you want Gmail to go the other way (that is, email received in Gmail also goes to your POP3 or IMAP4 mail client), you must enable your Gmail mailbox for POP3 (and IMAP4) on the “Settings… Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, and then configure your POP/IMAP client to check your Gmail account.

Setting up an IMAP4/POP3 email client to check Gmail is the same as setup for access to other email accounts. When you add the Gmail account to your email client, you must pay attention to the different port numbers for POP3 (995), IMAP4 (993), and SMTP (465) authentication.

The procedures to add an account for the many existing types of email client will all be slightly different from each other, but the entries to define a Gmail account will always be the same:

• Your Gmail address and Gmail password
• The name of the POP3 Incoming Mail Server: pop.gmail.com
• The name of the IMAP4 Incoming Mail Server: imap.gmail.com
• The name of the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: smtp.gmail.com

Make sure to set this Gmail account to use a secure connection (SSL), which will usually be set by checking off an indicator in the “Outgoing Mail (SMTP)” section. Make sure the indicators for ‘My server requires authentication’ and ‘Use same settings as incoming server’ are enabled.

Add-ons, Plugins And Extensions

There are thousands of software additions for Google Gmail, some provided by Google and many developed by other companies. Use Google, of course, to search out whatever you need. Following is a list of several samples:

Gspace

This add-on lets you use Gmail as a virtual online drive.

GTDInbox
This add-on lets you build task lists and manage projects.

Gmail Todo
This add-on gives you a script to modify Gmail into a To Do list.

Dragdropupload

This add-on lets you drag your files into the attachment box of your drafts.

Folders4Gmail
This script helps you to create folders in Gmail.

GMail Attachment Icons
This add-on gives you a little icon in your INBOX to show you types of file attached to each message.

Gmail Lite
This script cleans up Gmail, taking away chats, footers, ads, and stars.

Gmail Notifier
This add-on to your Task Bar notifies you of incoming Gmail. A version is also available directly from Google.

Gmail Multiple Signatures, plus Float
This script will automatically change your signature based on what return address you have entered.

Boomerang
This plugin adds a dropdown menu to the Gmail interface for sending all emails out at the same (later) time.

Symtica Google Chrome Toolbar
This extension adds a toolbar containing icons for new Gmail messages, new Google Docs, access to your contacts, management of your task lists, RSS feeds, and much more.

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts help you by keeping your hands off the mouse and on the keyboard. To be able to use these shortcuts, you must have a Standard 101/102-Key or a Natural PS/2 Keyboard. To enable these keyboard shortcuts, you have to go to the Gmail Settings tab and pick one of the options for Keyboard shortcuts. Here’s a few of the more useful case-sensitive shortcuts.

• ‘c’ stands for ‘compose’ and sets up a new message.
• ‘n’ is for Next message.
• ‘p’ is for Previous message.
• ‘!’ is the shortcut to report a message as spam.
• ‘z’ means Undo.
• ‘?’ shows the help page for keyboard shortcuts.

There are several combination-key shortcuts too. The combo will send the message on which you are working. The key for ‘g’ means Go; when combined with various other letters, the combo will take you to various areas of Gmail: ‘a’ for All Mail, ‘c’ for Contacts, ‘d’ for Drafts, etc. The ‘*’ can be combined with a letter in the same way to perform a selection: ‘a’ for All Mail, ‘u’ for Unread Mail, etc.

Gmail Access To Other Google Services And Sites

A Gmail account is a Google account that gives you access to many other Google services:

- Calendar (integrated with Gmail)
- Docs (editor for many standard types of documents)
- YouTube (videos from everyone and everywhere)
- Sites (creation of your own wikis and websites)
- Earth (zoom-in photographic views of our planet, down to street-level)
- Map (roads, locations, and directions)
- Picasa (photo sharing)
- Piknik (photo editing)
- SketchUp (build 3D models)
- Translate (from one language to another)
- Talk (Instant Messaging through the Internet)
… and many more.

Use the http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ URL, or go through the Google Dashboard to access any of these services.

Google recently has created the Gmail Security Checklist to aid users in tightening the security of their Gmail account.

The checklist lists a total of 18 different items that are divided into five groups.

• Your Computer: Check for viruses and malware, Make sure your operating system is up to date, Make sure to perform regular software updates.
• Your browser: Check your browser for plug-ins, extensions, and third-party programs/tools that require access to your Google Account credentials, Make sure your browser is up to date
• Your Google Account: Change your password, Check the list of websites that are authorized to access your Google Account data, Update your account recovery options
• Your Gmail settings: Confirm the accuracy of your mail settings to ensure that your mail stays and goes where you want it to, Check for any strange recent activity on your account, Use a secure connection to sign in.
• Final Reminders: Watch out for messages that ask for your username and/or password. Gmail will never ask for this information, Never give out your password after following a link sent to you in a message, even if it looks like Gmail’s sign-in page. Access Gmail directly by typing https://mail.google.com in your browser’s address bar, Don’t share your password with other websites – Google can’t guarantee the security of other websites and your Gmail password could be compromised, Keep secrets! Never tell anyone your password, or your secret question and answer; if you do tell someone, change it as soon as possible, Clear forms, passwords, cache and cookies in your browser on a regular basis – especially on a public computer, Only select ‘Stay signed in’ if you’re signing in from a personal computer, Always sign out when you’ve finished reading your mail.

Those short reminders alone won’t help a lot of users protect their account login and data. A read more button is displayed next to each item that contains further explanations and links to related services, software and information. The check for viruses and malware link for instance links to a page that lists antivirus software to perform those checks.

It will take more than a minute to go through all the items, but it can be very well worth it. Experienced users may be able to complete it just by looking at the titles of each suggestion, while inexperienced users may need to click on the read more link for additional instructions and links.

Gmail Checklist in 30 seconds or less:

Make sure your operating system, software and web browsers are up to date. Make also sure you run an up to date antivirus software.

Check Google account and Gmail settings to make sure that only authorized websites and services are able to access them.

Update your account recovery options and regularly check for recent account activities.

Finally, make sure you always use a secure connection to sign in, and make sure to log out whenever you are finished using the service.

Keeping those basic rules in mind goes a long way to keep any account on the Internet secure.

Check out the Gmail Checklist at Google.

Legal disputes in those two jurisdictions forced Google to change the default email address from gmail.com to googlemail.com with the rule that an already registered gmail.com username would not allow the registration of the googlemail.com username and vice verse.

It is also interesting to note that the two Google mail domains are interchangeable. Mails send to username@gmail.com will reach username@googlemail.com users and vice verse.

The administrative email address for users from those two countries has been the googlemail.com address ever since. Users from the United Kingdom have seen a recent change as Google announced that it would phase out googlemail.com addresses. New registrations from the UK will now get a gmail.com email address while old users have the choice to convert their googlemail.com address to gmail.com.

Only users from Germany are left with googlemail.com email addresses while the rest of the world enjoys gmail.com addresses.

Access to this feature is provided at the bottom of every Gmail page by clicking on the Details link there. But that option is a passive one as it requires the user to access it. Users who do not check the account activity there might miss unauthorized access to their Gmail account.

To improve that Google has implemented a new automatic option that warns the Gmail user whenever suspicious account activity was detected.

The message “Warning: We believe your account was recently accessed from: Country. Show details and preferences. Ignore” will be displayed if Gmail believes that it discovered unauthorized access to the Gmail account.

The warning message is for instance triggered if the account is accessed from multiple countries in short succession, for instance first i the United States and then two hours later from China. This could be unauthorized or legit use if the account is shared with another person.

A click on the Show details and preferences link will display pretty much the same information that are displayed when clicking on the Details link at the bottom of every Gmail page with the difference that it is also showing information about concurrent sessions.

The concurrent session information table lists all access types, locations and IP addresses that are currently accessing the Gmail account with an option to sign out of all other sessions immediately.

The recent activity table lists the date and time, access type, location and IP address of the last log ins to the account. An option to change the password immediately is provided if the activity contains logins that have not been done by the user.

The new warning is an important step in informing Gmail users of suspicious account behavior. Google will implement the feature into Google Apps as well. (via Gmail Blog)

Netbook users who access Gmail on the web face the same problem. Many of the elements on the Gmail website take up valuable space that should be reserved for more important elements like the emails and messages that the Gmail users wants to read.

The Greasemonkey userscript Better Gmail: Mini Wide adds a special netbook mode to Google’s mail service that removes a lot of clutter from the service on demand. The w key has been assigned by the developer to optimize the display of Gmail for netbook users. It removes the Gmail sidebar and header area so that only the main message area remains.

The search form, all navigational elements, ads, sidebar links and widgets are removed from the display upon pressing the w key after installing the Greasemonkey script which basically makes the message area use the whole width of the computer screen. Another key press displays all the elements again which makes the script a comfortable option on netbooks.

Better Gmail: Mini Wide can be installed directly from the Userscripts website. It worked fine in the latest version of Firefox and might also work in other browsers that support userscripts. Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey add-on before they can install the userscript.

The Google Calendar features can easily be activated in the labs section and Google just announced the addition of three new Calendar Labs applications that users can activate in their account.

Event Flair is the first Google Calendar Labs app. It can be used to add specific icons to individual Calendar events, like a cake for a birthday or a plane for traveling. Users who are invited to the events do see the icons as well.

The second addition, Gentle Reminders, is currently only available if the Google Chrome web browser is used as the Internet browser. It changes the way event reminders are shown to the user. Instead of browser alerts, which can interrupt the users workflow tab and title reminders are shown. They will start blinking.

It is furthermore possible to configure the reminders as floating desktop notifications instead. An option that can be configured in the extension’s settings.

The third and final Calendar lab application is Automatically Declining Events which can be used to define periods in time when all event invitations will automatically be declined. This can be very useful during holidays or work related travels so that other users are informed immediately about a person’s absence.

Google Calendar users find the new features in their Calendar application.

Changes have been announced to the way http and https connections are handled in Gmail in light of recent events. Google decided to roll out https for everyone which will redirect any request to connect to Gmail to https.

Users who are confident in their network security can change this behavior in the Gmail options which basically have been swapped. Now it is possible to enable the http protocol in the options.

We are currently rolling out default https for everyone. If you’ve previously set your own https preference from Gmail Settings, nothing will change for your account. If you trust the security of your network and don’t want default https turned on for performance reasons, you can turn it off at any time by choosing “Don’t always use https” from the Settings menu. Gmail will still always encrypt the login page to protect your password. Google Apps users whose admins have not already defaulted their entire domains to https will have the same option.

Gmail users who are using the service offline will likely experience some problems, namely that the mail does not sync anymore and that shortcuts and bookmarks might behave differently. Google has provided a solution for this:

The quickest way to fix this is to disable the ‘Always use https’ option, so you’re accessing Gmail through an HTTP connection.

But, because using https is a more secure way of signing in to Gmail, we recommend that you switch your Offline Gmail so that it syncs with the https URL rather than http. To do so, follow these steps:

1) Make sure you’re online. You won’t be able to follow these steps while offline. You can always start over later, if you get disconnected.

2) Switch to http, not https. This is a temporary step. You’ll switch back to https in step 5.
a) Go to Settings.
b) In the “Browser Connection” section, choose “Don’t always use https”, and hit Save.
c) Go to http://mail.google.com.

3) Your mail will sync automatically. Wait until your Outbox is empty, and the sync icon is a check-mark.

4) Uninstall http Offline Gmail:
a) Click the sync icon.
b) Click Show Actions
c) Click Disable Offline Mail
d) When asked it you want to remove all mail, select Remove.
5) Switch back to https:
a) Go to Settings/Browser Connection.
b) Select “Always use https”, and hit Save.
c) You’ll automatically be directed to https://mail.google.com. 6) Install Offline Gmail on https. (If you’ve already done this, you can skip this step.)
a) Click Settings.
b) Click the Offline tab.
c) Click Enable Offline Mail for this computer and hit Save Changes. 7) (optional) Delete any old bookmarks or desktop shortcuts that go to http. Consider making new bookmarks that point to https. The http URL will still work while you’re online, but not while you’re offline, so it’s best to replace them, if you normally access Gmail using bookmarks or shortcuts.

The new additions to Gmail change that. Gmaul users who want to automatically merge duplicate contacts in the webmail service can do so now by following these steps:

• Logging into their Gmail account
• Clicking on the Contact link in the left sidebar after the Gmail login
• This opens the Contact menu on the website

• A click on the Find duplicates button under the got duplicate contacts heading will initiate the process.
• Gmail will display a list of contacts with duplicate contact information.

All of the contacts are selected by default. It is possible to expand any contact to take a look at the different contact profiles that are supposedly of the same contact. It is possible to uncheck contacts if that is necessary.

A click on the merge button will merge the contact information and remove the selected duplicate contacts from the list of contacts in Gmail.

This process can be very handy for users with lots of contacts and users who sync Gmail contacts with other contacts databases regularly. (via Gmail Blog)