Tag: Gmail

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Enable 2-step verification on Gmail [Security]

Google had announced two-step verification for some of its Google Apps accounts back in September 2010. Now it is rolling out this extra security feature for all Gmail users. This is a good step as it means two sets of verification instead of just one which is the password.

The second verification step will be a code sent through a SMS on your phone. It is highly unlike for a hacker to be in possession of both your password and your phone, so this security measure will be almost foolproof.

  • Once you sign-in to your Google Account, just look up Account settings page.
  • Here there is a new link to enable 2-Step verification (as seen in image above).
  • Here you will be prompted to enter your mobile phone number and a verification code sent. From then on you need to use your password and also the verification code.
  • A feature to remember your code for 30 days is also available.

Why is 2-step verification better?

Most people will be happy with just a password as their security. But now a days it’s not just your email that is managed with a google account. We have photos, access to various apps and so many other important services with Google that having 2 step verification is a much desired feature.

What are your views on 2-step verification with Google? Will you opt for it, especially for accounts which are linked to Adsense? Do drop in your comments.

Source: Google Blog

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News

[Gmail] Priority Inbox now for Mobile too!

If you have been always pinning your eyes into that small mobile screen finding the important mails through the long list, the news comes as a pain reliever for you. With Google finally introducing it’s niche feature Priority Inbox, it is expecting more and more users to switch to the service. Till now, only desktop and Android users could use the feature, however now any Mobile browser supporting HTML 5 shall make the feature accessible for you.

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You need to set up the Priority Inbox feature on your desktop version first and then only it will be available to you on your mobile web app. Don’t forget to drop in your comments.

Source: Google Mobile Official Blog

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Tips

Common Keyboard Shortcuts Rarely Used!

No doubt, keyboard shortcuts makes our work easier and importantly “quick”. However there are many of them which are not much used but might help in making your work easy. I am now going to discuss some of the keyboard shortcuts for few software on Windows.

Mozilla Firefox (Windows)

  • F7 – Caret Browsing [enables cursor movement in the page like a Word processing document for easy text copying]
  • Ctrl+W / Ctrl+F4 – Close Tab
  • Ctrl+F5 – Super Refresh [refreshes the page even if no changes were made to the page after it got loaded]
  • Ctrl+L – Select Location (URL) bar
  • Ctrl+K – Select Web Search bar
  • Shift+Enter – Add .net to the URL
  • Ctrl+Shift+Enter – Add .org to the URL

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You can find the complete list here.

Gmail

Many of us are Gmail users and must be knowing about Gmail allowing keyboard shortcuts. By default it is disabled, however you can enable from your Gmail Settings. I tried myself and found Google Chrome is not supported. Few of the shortcuts are:

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  • c – Compose new mail
  • g and i (alternate: u) – Returns you to the Inbox view
  • j – Select an older conversation (email)
  • k – Select a newer conversation (email)
  • o or “Enter” – Opens / expands the conversation (email)
  • x – Select a conversation to apply an action
  • s – Stars the selected conversation(s)

DW keyboardshortcuts2

The above two pictures shows the moving marker towards the older conversation when you press “j”. You can find all other shortcuts for Gmail here.

Internet Explorer 8

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I am covering IE 8 because this is the last stable update you can install.

  • F7 – Start Caret Browsing
  • Tab – Move through all items on your web page and the browser window
  • Ctrl+Shift+P – Start inPrivate window [do not stores any web traces locally]
  • Ctrl+Shift+T – Restore the last tab you closed
  • Ctrl+(n) – Switch between tabs (where ‘n’ can be 1 to 8)
  • Ctrl+9 – Switch to the last tab
  • Alt+D – Selects the Address (URL) bar
  • F4 – Display the list of addresses [in the URL bar]

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For the entire list, click here.

I do hope you will be able to benefit from the above information. Do drop in your comments if keyboard shortcuts have ever helped you to speed up your work.

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News

[Gmail] Two new changes to Contacts groups

Gmail in its yet another update has made two changes to the highly used Contacts section. Using groups in Gmail Contacts can be highly beneficial specially if you often email few people.

In the Compose section, you can insert all the contacts under a particular group by just typing the name of that group.

Now what Google has added to this feature is the ability to add more contacts to a group directly by just typing the Contact in the “Add to ” dropdown when you are viewing that group. And how you can use it is shown below in the Video.

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The second update is that now we can select which “Email Address” is to be used for a Contact under each Group it belongs to. This is possible though only if a contact has 2 or more email addresses associated. I will try to make this clear with the following real example – I have two email addresses, a personal and work related.

Now if you have stored my contact under Two groups say Friends and Co-workers, you can easily select which of my email addresses you want each group to store. The second part in the above video explains this clearly.

Do drop in your comments whether these changes useful for you. I m’ waiting Smile

Link: Official Source

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News

[Gmail Update] Desktop Notifications for new Emails & Chat

Google in its yet another approach to make Gmail more friendly has introduced Desktop Notifications for Chats and any new Email messages. Desktop Notifications are possible under the pretext of HTML5 and available only for Chrome users as of now. This is clearly another attempt to attract users to Google Chrome browser which already has a market segment of more than 10% worldwide. Even I activated the feature to see how this works and found out the following:

  • It did not send me any notification about a new ‘Important’ email even after 10 minutes of its arrival. Probably I need to check how it works exactly.
  • Chat notifications were immediately displayed.

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Activation is easy and you will find the relevant settings under the Gmail Settings page in the General section with the title ‘Desktop Notifications’. You can select what all Desktop notifications you want to receive like Chats, All new emails or only for Important emails. No doubt, you can always Turn off the notifications anytime in case you wish to do so.

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I guess this is a great move and will make Gmail much more favourite among the users. Let me know what you feel about this update and how do you plan to use Desktop notifications further. Don’t hesitate even if you have some queries about this.

LINK: Official Gmail Update

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[Gmail Update] Unread Message Icon with Gmail Labs

I was not much surprised to see this Lab update from Gmail as my expectations from Google has always been high. A new feature called “Unread Message Icon” has been introduced in Gmail Labs. If you have always been that neat and clean with your Gmail inbox, then keeping a close watch on the number of Unread emails must be crucial for you.

This is even easy if you just see the title of your Gmail tab, however just turns difficult when a lot of tabs are already opened simultaneously in your browser window.

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As a solution to this situation, a lab feature Unread Message Icon is introduced which will let you see the number of unread emails in your inbox directly as an icon appearing on your Gmail’s tab title bar. If you see the icon in the above image, it clearly displays the number of unread emails in your Inbox (please don’t peek in a lot as that inbox is mine Winking smile ).

At present, this lab feature shall work only in Chrome (version 6 & above) and Firefox (version 2 & above). However I believe Google should not take much time bringing in the feature of our IE users as well. Do comment on this post and let me know if you feel this lab update is going to be useful for you or not! If you have any questions or suggestions as well, do let me know.

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News

[Gmail Update] Gmail Labs has new search feature

In a recent update, Google has added a Search feature for its Labs section at Google Mail. Till now, users had to either scroll through the Labs page in the Gmail settings or look for  a Lab through Google search but this also is now made easy by adding a small search box at the top of the Gmail Labs page. The search is absolutely real-time and infact there is no “Search” button alongwith the Search text box.

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This feature has been added owing to the growing number of Labs on Gmail and making it more difficult for users to scroll through the entire list. Another great feature from the house of Google!

Do leave your comments on what all Labs you use and what you love about them! Waiting for some nice comments!

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News

Google releases list of changes it will make with Gmail Tasks

Google has conducted a survey for Gmail users. The survey was about one of the most underrated features of Gmail which is “Tasks”. Tasks was highlighted in the latest Gmail layout upgrade. Now Google has revealed a list of the features they will add to Gmail Tasks.

Gmail_logo_updates

Google has announced this list, which has the top five features requested with Gmail Tasks.

  • Create repeating tasks.
  • Reminders and notifications.
  • Sharable task lists.
  • Tasks API and synchronization.
  • Visual distinction for overdue tasks.
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Personally I am quite happy about visual distinction for overdue task being worked on by Gmail. This is critical as looking overdue task on Gmail is not very helpful, as in they are not highlighted well.

These features should be a part of Gmail Tasks soon, you can expect them over the year, and you can keep reading DW to stay up to date with these and other new updates.

What are you views? Do you use Gmail Task or any other service for being productivity? Do drop in your comments.

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Tips

[Gmail] Schedule an email to be sent later with Boomerang

schedule_gmail_BoomerangAt work my email is managed thanks to Google Apps and my personal email account is on Gmail. Gmail has many fantastic features but lacks an email scheduler. Most times we do not need an email to be sent out at a later date but there are special occasions when I wish we could just schedule some emails out to people.

This happens many times during birthday’s and also occasions like Diwali, Christmas and New Year.

Boomerang for Gmail Features

  • Boomerang works as a add-on or extension with Firefox and Chrome browsers. It just adds an extra button which allowed me to schedule email at later times.
  • As you can see in the image below, there are many options along with sending the email after a specified amount of time or even set specific time in the calendar. It can also be set to be sent out at a random time.

Send_later_boomerang

I guess this year I can schedule “Happy New Year” messages to all my friends well in advance thanks to Boomerang!

Video

Hope this helps your out on sending those short yet important emails which need to be schedule. Do drop in your comments and views.

Link: Boomerang

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Enable Email Delegation on your Gmail account

Now a days, almost everyone I know has two email accounts. Most times it is an email for work and another one which is personal. I know many people (that includes me 🙂 ), who have more than a few email addresses. I use some of them only to sign up to different services or social networks.

Gmail now has a new feature called Delegated Email which allows you to delegate a particular Gmail account to another account.

How to enable Email Delegation!

  • Let say you have a particular Gmail account you want to delegate. Just look up under Settings >> Accounts and Imports. Here enter the email address you want to grant access.  We can also specify “Send mail as:” under settings as seen in image below.

  • This will send a conformation to the second email address that you added as a delegate. The account is shown as Delegated Accounts just like Multiple Gmail accounts are shown.

This is a great way for Gmail to make it easy for me to have multiple accounts but actually delegate certain not so important accounts to one single email address. Also if you are running a business with a public email address and want others to have access to that email address then “Email Delegation” feature seems like a great idea.

Do let me know in what circumstances you will find delegated email accounts useful through your comments.