DigiMantra » gmail

Choose which mails to download for offline use in gmail

Sachin Khosla — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:05:03 +0000

Most of us use the Google’s offline feature to read emails. This is a life saver when you got no access to network. This feature works when you have Google Gears extension installed for your browser. You can also use applications like Google Reader in the offline mode to read the RSS feeds when you have no internet connection.

It is worth noting that there is no fun of having the complete inbox in offline mode until and unless you plan to intentionally have all of them. You might not require some folders from your Inbox, or chat records. But using the normal Gmail offline labs feature, everything is just made available offline. There is no way to download specific folder or email for offline purpose before today.

Because from today when you have this Offline feature enabled the Labs tab under settings, you will be able to select which mails to download. There is another tab called offline under settings, there you can select which mails to download. Click on change settings and select the mails from particular label or folder to be downloaded. You are not at all required to download the complete mailbox with all the kitchen & sink option. Just download the minimal mails from the required folders and you are good to go.

Its might not be a really good feature for few, but its a life saver for those who need to have certain emails quickly in the offline mode. In that case one cannot wait the whole inbox to get downloaded. Instead choose the appropriate label and enjoy the emails offline.

And yeah you can always change the settings and download the complete inbox if you wish to do so.

Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

How to import/export Gmail filters

Sachin Khosla — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:00:29 +0000

Gmail Happy Users, hey there !

You have been using Gmail since long and now you are addicted to it. The features provided by Gmail Labs add sparkles to your mailbox , right ? Certainly, people are more than happy with their Gmail inbox, but there are some who just do not like the slow loading and have other issues with Gmail. One of the reason for slow loading of your Gmail is discussed on another blogpost.

No, my target here is not to tell you that Gmail is slow etc etc, but to let you know how you can export your Gmail filters from one mailbox to other mailbox. This feature is supported by one of the Lab Features, called Filter import/export (found under the settings > labs tab of your Gmail inbox).

How to do ?

It is pretty straight forward, as discussed you need to enable a Lab feature from the Labs tab under settings. Open the Labs tab and find for feature called “Filter Import/Export” (use ctrl+f). After you enable this lab feature, move to Filters Tab (settings > filters) . There you will see an option to select filters and export them as XML file.

You can save this XML file and can utilize it to :

1) Import same filters into any other Gmail inbox. Or share it with colleague or co-worker.

2) Create more filters if you are comfortable editing XML file(s).

3) If you want to disable filters temporarily, you can export all of them, keep a backup and disable/delete all the filters.

4) When you export emails using POP, you can also export your filters. It might be possible that some email clients start supporting this XML files to create rules from these filters.

Hope you like this another feature of Gmail to give you more flexibility not only within your mailbox, but even when you decide to move.

Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

Now gmail auto-unsubscribes from spam emails

Sachin Khosla — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:28:43 +0000

Another attempt by Google to make your online experience more secure. Keeping in mind that privacy of a user is the prime aspect Google has introduced this new feature in which it is going to try unsubscribing you from an unsolicited mail received by you. So let me tell you how this works. From now on when you report any message as spam, Gmail is going to give an option to report that as spam and as well as send a request to unsubscribe from the sender’s mailing list, as show in the screenshot below.

So how does it work ?

Google has asked senders to support this new auto-unsubscribe, but think not every sender has this configured with their mailers. So for now few senders support this and many more will be added with due course of time. Google decided not to put the unsubscribe notification within the messages as no one including google can trust the senders. Instead Google is going to display unsubscribe notification for the senders whom it trusts and not for everyone else.

So that is just another attempt made by google today to fight against spam and give users more power to enjoy internet. Some new users are often caught by these kind of phishing emails or scams and this is going to help few of them, who at least know what a spam mail looks like and what it actually means. Google recently launched the super-trustworthy key for paypal and ebay , which is again going to help people who are more into online transactions etc.

So lets fight against spam.

Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

Now images to show up by default in your gmail

Sachin Khosla — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:04:03 +0000

Hey People,

When you open an email with images in your google’s mailbox, gmail hide these images and instead show a placeholder for those images. This is done intentionally so as to protect your privacy and is another way to stop spam, will explain later in this post. So for now gmail has changed the way it used to display images. Now gmail is going to display images without having to ask you, if the email is from one of your known contacts. This known contact is going to verify on the basis of your interaction with the person. If you have sent message to sender twice or more than twice in the past, that means he/she is known to you and displaying images may not harm you.

So next time you receive an email with your family pictures, you do not have to hit that annoying “Always Display Images from” and wait for the page to reload. In some cases, even if you click on that, it may not remember your preferences. Many people have came across this issue lately while receiving mails from twitter.

However Gmail is planning to start this change on the test basis. Their criteria may change based on the usage or other information. If the sender’s email address is not verified, then also it wont display images, no matter even if you send email to him/her everyday. This all is done by gmail and other email service providers to keep you protected.

You can also stop gmail to display images by default. All you have to do is click on Don’t display from now on under show details link.

How can a spammer verify your email address with images ?

A spammer can very easily verify your email address, when you open an email which contains images. When you open an email, the images are requested from the spammer’s server and he may be logging the request. An ideal scenario would be to keep the image name as a unique hash key which is mapped to your email address in his database. As soon as the image is requested from the server with that hash key, the email can be marked verified. So be aware of the fact next time you display images from any unsolicited mail received.

Hope that helps you.

Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

How to : Insert inline images in gmail

Sachin Khosla — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:31:00 +0000

Hey People,

People used to ask me that how could they send an email with images, just like they get in forwarded emails. Yeah the forwarded emails with images of flowers, kids, sunsigns etc are pretty famous. So in urge to start their own such forward-able email people keep on wondering how to insert those images inline. Many bad attempts have even landed into my mailbox in which my friends just attached the photographs and thought the email clients are super intelligent, that they will put the images automatically in the message body.

Earlier I used to tell people to use outlook express for such kind of emails or an email client which supports HTML. However some people are really reluctant to use outlook, or precisely saying they do not what it is. So for them, a Google Lab feature is a lifesaver. Now you can insert images from your mailbox without having to do much. You do not need Outlook express, neither you need to copy-paste from the HTML editor, instead follow the below mentioned instructions :

1) Log into your Gmail Inbox and click on settings.

2) In the settings page, click on the Labs tab and you will see a list of Labs features.

3) Scroll down and look for a feature called “Inserting images“. Click on Enable to start using this feature.

4) Now just click on compose and in your formatting toolbar, you will see a new option to insert images.

So this way you can insert images the way you do with normal HTML editor. You can resize images, insert form computer , or you can insert from the URL as well. So next time you plan to create an innovative mail to be forwarded, please use your Gmail mailbox instead of outlook express.
Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

Gmail goes more secure, adds super-trustworthy,anti-phishing key

Sachin Khosla — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:43:14 +0000

With the increase in number of cyber crimes and that too majorly via E-mail, Gmail took another step in user security. It adds a super-trustworthy key in its labs new feature. With this feature if enabled you will see a “key” which shows the authenticity of the received message. Earlier for the security of such critical emails from the trusted vendors, Gmail used to match sent email’s domain information with the header information and if they both mismatched Gmail never accepted that email. You could not even see those emails in your spam folder, as Gmail never accepted that. A trustworthy sender or we can call it as a verified account would have this kind of key prefixed with its Email address.

How do I Enable this Lab Feature ?
Lab features are simple to implement, just goto the settings page and find Labs tab and there you can enable lab feature called “Authentication icon for verified senders” and save. You should be able to see that Icon then.

At present the verified senders are only two i.e. Ebay and Paypal. However google plans to add more in this list as the time comes. The reason being that the sender need to secure their system such that no fraud emails can be sent by faking their domain names. If that leaks and once it has a super-trustworthy key then no user will doubt it. Well wehnever Google adds new in the list you will be the first one to know, as it will appear in front of your sender list automatically, all you need to do is enable the Lab settings as explained above. This is another brilliant step in reducing phishing , scams etc. over the internet. So next time you get an E-mail claiming that some king sent you money through a paypal account, do not forget to check the Super key.

Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

Google products grow up big, no more beta

Sachin Khosla — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:13:47 +0000

Google has been in questions for putting beta tag in just every product, let it be gmail (to be the first significant one), google calender, gtalk , etc. Just for the readers who are unaware of the term beta, or who never gave attention to that 4 chars word hooked with gmail since last 5 years.

Beta is a phase of software release life cycle. It is a phase when the product is release publically for the usability testing. Yeah you read it right it is release for testing, just before the company launches a final production ready version of the application or software. For all this while you were testing for Gmail or other products and the erros which might have occured were being reported and bugs were getting fixed

According to Gmail’s official blog, they are ready to rip of the term beta from not gmail but other google labs products as well. After the recent change the way labels used to look and the addition drag & drop of emails to bin, spam and other labels plus folders, they claim gmail is all set to be production ready. Jesus, it took complete 5 years

Google denied that fact that they are launching any secret service in the gmail for which they had this beta tag all that long. They are simply ready to make it production ready and strip the beta tag, that is it. Some of the features that were implemented in this beta phase were :

Integrated chat added group chat
Developed new anti-spam technology
Expanded to 53 languages
Mobile app, launched an iPhone UI
pop3, autoresponder, video chat, and what not !!

But some people are so typical that they still want that greying beta logo back in their mailbox, so for that google has an option enabled with which you can get your beta gmail back in just few seconds, it looks something like this ..

Credit goes to google's official gmail blog

Stay Digified !!
Sachin Khosla

Why is my Gmail so slow

Sachin Khosla — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:30:51 +0000

Probably everyone around me is complaining that these days gmail is super slow. Even I felt some hitches while accessing the gmail. The worst is when I deleted few mails from my home and they were back when I reopened my mailbox at office.

So i tried to clear cache, cookies, disable addons but nothing helped. So then I looked around decided to disable the customized theme for my Gmail Inbox and selected the default theme in Gmail Settings as show below.

Steps to change theme

1) Open your gmail Inbox

2) Goto Settings on top right corner of your inbox

3) Now click on the themes tab and you will see the above layout, select the classic theme and not the “Default” one.

Hope this helps.
Cheers!!
Realin !

Google Labs launches A bunch of stuff for gmail

Sachin Khosla — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:41:01 +0000

Just when i opened my mailbox today, i got this shiny red line New! A bunch of stuff

Well hitting this link would take you to so many new features which has been introduced by gmail from its backyard (google labs). There are various new features to facilitate easy accessibility for the gmail users. But one must know that these are under google labs, meaning that all the features are experimental and have certain limitations. But if you’re going to brave the Labs world, it’s important to keep the following things in mind about these features:

They may break at any time
Similarly, they may disappear temporarily or permanently
They may work so well that they graduate and become regular features

Here is the screenshot from my mailbox, go and dig yours

Enable the feature which you like and disable when you think you are getting overwhelmed with it. There are many features, some of them are :

Click on image to enlarge

Cheers !!

Realin !

Gmail now adds SMS chat function

Sachin Khosla — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:12:04 +0000

According to webmonkey gmail has launched a new service, in which users can sent text messages to mobile phones using the web gmail interface.

Yet another step in technology which is definitely different than anyone else could provide. I definitely dont see anyone other than yahoo to provide such feature.

Google is adding the experimental functionality through Gmail Labs. To turn it on, go to the Labs tab within Gmail’s settings. Or, just click on the little green Erlenmeyer flask icon next to your e-mail address at the top of the page in Gmail. If you don’t see the option right away, check back later — Gmail product manager Keith Coleman, who demonstrated the new feature for Webmonkey, says it will be made available in Labs to all Gmail users Thursday evening.

Once the option is turned on, start typing a phone number into Chat’s search box and you’ll see the option to send an SMS.

If you already have your friend’s phone number stored in your Google account’s contacts, try searching for them by name. When your friend’s name appears in the drop-down list of contacts, you’ll see an option to send them an SMS. You can also hover over or click on anyone in your Chat buddy list to send them an SMS.

The first time you send a text message, it will appear on the person’s phone as coming from a number in the 406 area code. Google has made several thousands of these numbers available for Gmail users, and once a number is associated with your account, all of the text messages you send through Gmail will come from that number.

The 406 number works both ways, so your friend can reply to you via text message. Also, your friend can save that number in their phone as belonging to you, and they can even use it to initiate new chats with you.

cheers !!

Realin !