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Send attachments with Gmail while offline

I am pretty sure that many of you might have heard of Gmail being available in offline mode. This mode which is still in Labs, allows me to use my Gmail account while I am offline. It supports conversation threading, search function along with composing and looking up Emails.

Offline Gmail

  • When Gmail is in offline mode it uses Google gears to store data on your computer for you to access all your mails. It becomes more or less like a desktop application rolled into a web application.
  • This is quite helpful if the internet connection is unstable or keeps dropping. Gmail in offline mode gets notified when the connection is back on and downloads all the new mails to your computer along with sending the ones your have composed.
  • This if truly great when you are travelling and might have trouble with connectivity issues.
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The trouble with Gmail in offline mode was that it did not allow me to send attachments. That has all changed since Google announced that attachments will be available for people using Gmail in offline mode.

If you do not know how to got in offline mode with Gmail, use the following steps.

  • Click on Settings and then select Labs.
  • Select Enable next to Offline Gmail. Click Save Changes.
  • After refreshing or when Gmail reloads you will see a new “Offline” link in the upper righthand corner next to your username on Gmail page.
  • Click on Offline link to start the offline set up process.

Having a feature to allow attachments actually makes the experience of being offline with Gmail a lot more smoother than before and I won’t be surprised if this feature in Gmail graduates out of Labs soon and also becomes a regular part of Chrome OS. 😉

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Tips

Mozilla Firefox add-on for scheduling meetings on Gmail

Meeting Scheduler is a Firefox add-on, which is useful to schedule meetings and let people know about the meeting along with the time it would last through Email. This is only available through Firefox and works only for Gmail.

For someone like me who is using Gmail on Firefox all the time I was interested in what this Firefox add-on brings to the table.

Meeting Scheduler

  • The Meeting Scheduler is a add-on for Firefox browsers only. Download the Meeting Scheduler from Firefox add-on link.
  • Install the add-on and restart Mozilla. Log into Gmail account and start using Meeting Schedule (see image below)

  • To schedule a meeting is very easy, click on New Meeting. It pulls up a calendar which is very similar to Google Calendar. You can select the time frame by highlighting it with the mouse. Enter the time the meeting will last and send it to email addresses you want to notify about the meeting.
  • This can also be a great way to send yourself reminders with Gmail.

I hope you find this interesting, if you have any new information on add-ons or features for Gmail, let me know through your comments. 🙂

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Tips

Turn Android users into robots with Gmail

I must give credit to Google for the quirky additions they make to their layouts and features which often keep changing the way we perceive Google. The latest quirk by Google is that when you are using Android phones and have the chat box open on your phone you might show up as a robot to other users on Gmail.

Green Robot on Gmail

This feature when activated on Gmail, will show up a Android phone user as a green robot instead of the regular green dot. You can also add this feature on your Gmail account through the Labs section.

  • Click on Settings while you are on Gmail and then go to Labs.
  • In Labs you need to enable a feature by the name “Green Robot!” as shown in image below.

  • From then on your Gmail will show your friends who are logged-in with an Android phone as  green robots. 🙂

This is just one of the quirky additions that Google makes to its regular products. Sometimes I wonder if such quirks are gimmicks to create a buzz or just a stage for their developers to push the envelope. All things said and done I feel Google is really good at giving itself that geeky image time and again.

What do you think about it? Let me know with your comments.

Link: Gmail Blog

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Tips

Use Twitter from your Gmail account

A few days ago I wrote about how to share from Google Reader to Twitter. Some more research on the same, I found out that there is a way for me to integrate Gmail and Twitter. That means using Twitter while on my Gmail page. You can do this by using Twitter Gadget.


How to integrate Gmail and Twitter?

  • First click on Labs icon within Gmail. That icon is green in color and to the top right hand corner of your screen while on Gmail. If you cannot see it, click on settings and visit the Labs section.
  • In the labs section you need to enable ‘Add any Gadget by URL‘ option and then click on Save Changes.

  • Now you need to add the Gadget. Click on Settings and it shows a new tab which is Gadgets. I clicked on Gadgets and you will get an option to enter the URL.
  • The URL is from the Twitter Gadget website.

http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

  • Click on Add. This will get the Twitter gadget integrated to your Gmail account.
  • The Twitter Gadget is available below the chat box. It also has a pop-out option for viewing the Gadget separately in a stand alone mode.

Now I just need to be logged into my Gmail account with a browser and use Twitter from there. 🙂 Hope you find this information useful. Do let me know with your comments.

Follow on Twitter: @devils_workshop | @bombaypirate

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Tips

10 Ways To Give Gmail More Power

The Labs feature of Google offers more incredible useful tools, which makes Gmail even more powerful. These features can be easily enabled by clicking on Settings. Below I mentioned 10 features to give Gmail more power, which gives the real Google experience.

  1. Multiple Inboxes: You can see different sections like starred messages, drafts, unread mails, etc in the Inbox window itself. You can choose which category you want to view. If you want to display starred messages, go to Settings | Multiple Inboxes and in the search query plane type is:starred.
  2. Undo Send: You can recall the email which you have sent by mistake/accident. This feature can stop the messages being sent. It lets the users to abort or stop the delivery of any Gmail message within seconds of sending it. To activate go to Gmail account | Settings | Labs and you will find a feature called Undo Send . Now just click on the “Enable” radio button.
  3. Docs and Calendar Gadgets: You can easily access Google services like Docs and Calendar in Gmail itself by enabling the Google Docs and Calendar gadgets. They are placed in the left column. You can easily view starred docs, add reminders and so on.
  4. Inserting Images: Usually when we want to send images, we’ll send it as an attachment, right ? These attachments are not seen on the email body. Those are old times. You can directly insert the image in the body of the message. To activate, go to your Gmail account, then Settings | Labs | Enable Inserting Images Feature.
  5. Tasks: By enabling this feature you can easily list down reminders and tasks without opening another application. To use this feature, click inside the task window and enter your to-do list. You can also create directly from emails also, select the email you want to add and from the More Actions dropdown button, click on Add to tasks to add it to the list.
  6. Quick Links : You can quickly access frequently search pages or important messages by this tool. It helps you to add links to any page that you have opened up in Gmail. You just need to click on Add Quick link and type in a name for the page being current viewed. By clicking that link you can directly go to that page.
  7. Mouse Gestures : You can quickly navigate Gmail Pages with your mouse using this feature. Right-click and moving to the right will take you to previous pages, moving upwards takes you to the main inbox if you have opened a particular message.
  8. Canned Response: You can use this feature for sending the same content to all of your friends. You need to create a template. To do this, click on the Canned responses link in the compose mail window and select New canned Responses, type in a name and select the template you have created. To insert a response, click on the Canned Responses and select the particular template you want to insert from the Insert section.
  9. Offline: You can now access Gmail even when you are offline. You can do tasks like sending, reading, labeling, searching and so on. It will synchronize your mails from Gmail server to your computer when you are connected to the net. You need to have Google Gears installed if you are using IE or Firefox. Chrome users no need to install.
  10. Search Autocomplete: If you are searching Gmail frequently then this feature will be useful for you. It helps you in searching Gmail faster by providing suggestions as you type. It displays contacts name and also similar phrases.
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Tips

Features to change the way we use Gmail

Many of us who use Gmail do not keep track of what are the new features available in the Labs section. I decided to try out some which has made my Gmail experience a lot better. Here I am sharing with you some of the cool features available in Labs with Gmail. As you can see in the image below I can go work offline, use Google Calendar, have access to Google Documents and also to avoid clutter by having the Chat box moved to the right.

Google Docs Gadget

Google Docs Gadget is a very efficient feature in Gmail. Usually we open Google Docs and then then click on the document we want to open. Here the documents are all shown in the side. This way with one click from your Gmail interface I can open a document or even create a new one.

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Google Calendar Gadget

Access to Google Calendar is great. I can add events, edit them and also lookup dates using the Google Calendar Gadget. This is particularly handy for leaving reminders without actually visiting Google Calendar. Another cool feature of this gadget is I could change the view of the Calendar to have the month’s calendar show up instead of events. See image below.

Right Side Chat

Once I enabled Google Calendar and Google Docs to show up in Gmail, they all showed up to the left hand side of the interface. This seemed to be over-crowding my Gmail interface. There is feature called Right Side Chat in Labs which when enabled pins the Gtalk box to the right side of the interface.

Gmail in Offline Mode

This feature allows me to access my current emails even when there is no internet connection. The feature downloads all the email messages on my computer for later reference. This is ideal if you have a laptop but no wireless router. 🙂

Do keep in mind that all these features are still in Labs sections under Settings for Gmail. This means it still being tested. In case you cannot access your Gmail account because of the features which have be discontinued or broken you can always access Gmail in a ‘No Labs’ mode.

Just type in the following URL and you can access Gmail without any ‘Labs features’ being active.

http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0

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News

Gmail adds a tweak to avoid sending emails to wrong recipients

Gmail has a new feature still in beta or in Labs which attempts to stop us from sending emails to the wrong person. They call it ‘Got the wrong Bob?’

Many a times we share emails with a group of recipients, and sometimes what happens is you might end up sending an email to the wrong person. For instance I know a lot people who have the first name Rahul and my boss also has his first name as Rahul. Imagine I was sending a joke about my boss to some friends along with a friend called Rahul but ended up sending it to my boss.

‘Got the Wrong Bob?’ tends to help us out here by analyzing how we send group emails and prompting if we have the wrong email id. (see image below)

I often back up some emails and files on different email addresses I have. Above you can see I added an incorrect email address and I was prompted with the words “Did you mean”

Being a beta product I am sure this is in need of many tweaks. This feature works only when sending emails to multiple addresses. It also looks up the groups that you usually send emails to and then compare it with the present group of email ids you are typing in and checks if someone is incorrectly added.

So this actually starts working better with time. If you plan to add Got the right Bob? to your Gmail settings, just click on ‘settings’ and once in the settings section click on ‘Labs’

Within labs you will find a host of features that can be added to your Gmail. Select the “Got the right Bob?” feature and it will be activated. 🙂

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A simple trick in Gmail to see all unread messages together

It is always a good idea to read and respond to all your incoming mails as soon as possible. However more often than not we do not manage to read all the messages due to time constraint. When you get the time to go through the messages the read and unread messages get mixed up and it becomes quite cumbersome to browse through the pages looking for the unread messages. Even then you run the risk of missing some important message.

As usual the engineers at Google have provided a really simple trick to get all the unread messages together so that you can go through them without any problem. Type one of the following search strings into gmail search box and hit enter.

  1. label:unread in:inbox
  2. label:unread label:inbox

Alternatively you may use the advanced search feature of gmail to see all the unread messages together.

gmail advanced search trick to find unread gmail messages
  1. Go to the gmail advanced search screen.
  2. There is a drop down on the search box. Select the option ‘unread mail’ from the dropdown (see the dropdown)
  3. Hit search and you shall have all the unread messages at one place.

[Editor’s Note: This post is a first post submitted by our guest blogger binaryday. He likes to write about technology and computers.

If you, too would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Tips

How To Set Yahoo Mail/Gmail As Default Email Client In Firefox

It happens a lot of times when we click on mailto: link and Outlook Express opens automatically. So below is a simple tutorial that will help you in changing the default Email Client from Outlook Express to your desired email client like Yahoo or Gmail. Lets start

1. Open Mozilla Firefox and at the top click on Tools >> Options

2. Now go to Applications tab and search for mailto

3. On the right hand side of Mailto you will see a drop down list that contains Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook Express. Select you desired option and click Ok.

4. If you want to set any other client, click on Use Other.. and browse the application and click Ok.

Also visit Technoholic for latest updates on spy gadgets, laptops, mobiles & digital cameras reviews

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News

Yet again Gmail Users Face Downtime and Problems Accessing Contacts

Suddenly, a couple of minutes ago while having chat with one of my friend, Gmail started giving some errors and after refreshing the page for a few times I got a “Temporary Error (503)” message as seen on the screenshot below.

After waiting for few minutes, when again I started refreshing the page, another strange error was witnessed reading “Gmail is temporarily unable to access your contacts. You may experience issues while this persists” with a “learn more” link directing to this page. And since then, each time I refresh the Gmail page, I get either 503 error page or errors reading – “unable to access contacts.

As seen from the Twitter search results, Gmail users not only in some specific parts are facing such errors but people across the globe are panicking about the issue and discussing continuous Gmail downtime. For those who are unaware, Gmail went down for the second time this month. Earlier, Gmail was down on 1st September for about one hour and fifteen minutes.