The following infographic is quite true in most respects. Given the fact that we spend most of our online time interacting with people who we never seem to interact physically, over social networks of different flavours and privacy labels. Do you agree?

via: Stormborn

So GMail has rolled out a brand new feature known as Google Buzz and it intends to integrate a whole bunch of features right into your inbox. Surprisingly enough, when I logged into GMail, I was greeted with the following page.

If you haven’t been invited yet, you can directly opt to try out Buzz by going to Google Buzz.

GMail has always been awesome with rolling out better and newer features and integrating them right into the inbox. First it was just email, and then came chat, video chat, and with Labs features enabled, we could do much more with our plain old GMail inbox.
GMail Buzz intends to take it to the next level with the integration of other Google services such as Reader, Picasa etc. as well as other social networking services such as Twitter, Flickr all in one place – your inbox. And it is indeed very simple to get started, as seen below I integrated my twitter account.

All this means just one thing; Google is trying to bank on its GMail services to get back into the social networking arena [after Orkut having lost the match to twitter/ facebook etc]. Sharing links, content etc is all going to be integrated in your inbox.

It is also available on your mobile phone. For more details visit this link [ Google Mobile Blog post: Introducing Buzz for Mobile ]

For more details watch the video below.

Courtesy: GMail Blog [ Google Buzz in GMail ]

Yes, 5 years after all the magic and spells and labs and offering us 7 gigs of inbox space, GMail has finally shed its beta skin and entered the non-beta zone. GMail’s blog post [Read: Gmail leaves beta, launches "Back to Beta" Labs feature] announces the arrival of the new GMail, although its been hightime since the last 3 years for GMail to come out of the beta-image. The little GMail icon on the left of your Inbox page showed the beta text, but its no longer there.

So, does that really mean anything for you? Not exactly! Since, GMail has been quite frankly, the most stable email service provider for me, and the most functional as well. In terms of sheer inbox size, they are at the top. In terms of different innovations, Labs has taken care of it. The blog post [ linked above] enlists the different changes that GMail has brought into itself since its introduction to us 5 years ago. From being an invite-only service to opening up for sign-ups, to chat, group-chat, and video-chat, the list is endless.
So, have a look at the list.

And well, if you are still fussy about the damn beta-image and can’t still get enough of it, a new labs called “Back to Beta” will restore the Beta-image back to your inbox. Although you know, its no more Beta at heart. Its only the shell !! This Labs feature is available in the Labs list, and follows similar procedure for activation.
Happy GMailin’ folks!

Sometimes things can become worse from being good, just in the name of innovation. A current example of such a thing is the newly introduced change of features in the Labels of GMail inbox.[Read: Labels, drag and drop, hiding and more] Innovation is supposed to bring with it, ease of use and user-friendliness. But with this new feature, what we have is completely the opposite.

GMail has pioneered user-freindliness, and I was overjoyed when I was given the facility to use the GMail Lab – Right side Chat. It allowed to manage my inbox space in a much more organised fashion. I did not bother if my hundreds of labels would mean my Chat Window would get buried down in deep underground. Everything was jolly good.

With the new features though, Label is back to a space above its original position – which is just below the default Inbox Tabs, and above chat. Sure, there is a summarizer which wraps up the Labels, which again questions its utility now.  For one, I am not used to the Left-sidedness of it. Secondly, if the Labels tab is wrapped up, it only means, that when I drag and drop my messages to the left, it is going to unwrap then. The wrapping up of the Labs to show only the most used Labels is also quite questionable. This is because I have lots of Labels which I use frequently, but GMail Inbox now shows only 4 of them. For sure, I can use the “Move to:” feature still, which completely negates the drag and drop feature introduction.

I know GMail introduced the ‘drag and drop’ feature to replicate the Folder scenario as seen in Yahoo and Hotmail. But to do so here, users have to strategically place the mouse between a space so small that it can only fit a hair. This space is at the extreme beginning of the email, and before the checkbox. Yes, can you SEE it even? Talk about user-friendliness.Pffft!

And yes, Right-Side Label Labs is dead. WHYYYY????? I cannot send my Chat to the Right, because the popped up Chat Windows block the Contact list. So it did mean more sense for Right-Side Label to be enabled. I can only request, along with all the other users to bring Sexyback – Imean Right-Side Labels. Puhhhleeeeeeeezz!!!

GMail Ninja Tips and Tricks

GMail has just realeased a list of smart shortcuts to easily manage your day-to-day activities with the GMail Inbox. Most of it is widely known to most users, such as using stars to favorite mails, or labels and even archiving. In the latest blog post from GMail Blog , they have talked about the different levels with which they have distinguished the tips and tricks to use GMail more efficiently. Of course, it is the same inbox, but it is upto the user how well he/she manages it.

For e.g. simple keyboard shortcuts like C for compose, Y for archiving or O for opening a mail can make life a lot easier. [Of course, keyboard shortcuts has to be enabled in the Settings, and for that matter, people who are not very familiar with using Keyboard shortcuts will get so much irritated by unexpected opening of mails or the compose mode.]

The entire list of tips and tricks [ nicknamed Become a GMail Ninja] is available at http://www.gmail.com/tips, and a Printable version as well in pdf. For the first 1024 requesters in the US, GMail would even mail them the laminated printed guide. [ I like the number 1024].

Some of my favourite GMail Jutsus are listed below.

1. Customizable Inbox addresses:
We tend to sign-up for a lot of services which ask for an email address. Now, you might have a separate email address just for that purpose. But with that, you will never be able to track if the service you signed up, has been sending you any spam or not. The day is saved by customizable email or inbox addresses. The trick is to append a word or identifier at the end of your username.
e.g. If I was signing up for a supermarket store Fubarmart, I’d give them my email ID as: username+fubarmart@gmail.com
Now by creating a filter, indicating all the emails to username+fubarmart@gmail.com to be moved to a label called fubarmart, I can trace if Fubarmart has been sending any spam mails to me or not.

2. Filter Control associated with Labels.
Filters enable users to accommodate similar emails under one roof. This makes the inbox more arranged and easier to search for an email you want to come back to. Hence, filters can arrange the emails on the basis of sender-address, or even to your customizable inbox addresses[ explained below]. By creating filters and associating them with labels, life is much more simple.

3.Vacation responders and Signatures.
The name says it. GMail inbox is as awesome as a mail client. Vacation responders can be configured to take care of auto-reply in case you are out on a long vacation. This can also be used for general auto-reply, if you happen to be a very popular man who receives hundreds of emails per day.

Signatures on the other hand can be used to do away with ‘signing off redundancy’. It can also be used to publicize your website, or your facebook or twitter urls, or even can be a space to show off your witty side with a kick-ass quote. Just be sure of the audience your mail goes to.

4. Search Smart on GMail.
For more on this, read the post ‘Search you Inbox efficiently‘.

5. EOM in Subject Line.
By adding (EOM) in the Subject Line, you can avoid the annoying pop-up asking you to fill in something in the message body. Of course, if you have a signature, you do not need to use this feature.

6.YouTube and Flickr previews.
This is a Google Labs functionality and allows users to view YouTube videos and Flickr pics right from the inbox.

7.Remote sign-off
This is for users like me [ i.e. students] who tend to sign in to check our mails at every possible internet outlet – at the library, the workstation room, Maths building etc. If for some reason, you are worried about not having signed out somewhere, you can sign off those previous sessions from anywhere else. This option is available at the bottom of your inbox, and also lets you know where the previous login sessions were located [ as in the IP addresses].

8. Finally, my favorite. Themes.
Yeah, as simple as that. Decorate your inbox in your own customised way or choose from the number of templates available. The one I have right now is the Zoozimps theme. It is fun, has a bit of an animation going in the chat window and is white.

So, tell me, what are your Jutsus that make you a GMail Ninja? Shout it out in the comments section.

For all GMail users, we often tend to face one big problem which keeps compounding with the ever increasing inbox that GMail offers. Yes, the problem is to retrieve an old email which I might have indexed somehow with a star, a label or something that I can’t remember properly. We know how to get to the labels, but even the labels could be a bit tricky and not so helpful in giving the specific output that we need. And this is when the necessity of the G-Hackman [such a cool name] rises. I am talking of some search keywords to drive away all your Inbox Mail Search worries.

The latest GMail Blog post[Slice and Dice your Email] has some of them listed such as:

• “to:me is:starred” shows all messages sent directly to you that are starred
• “is:chat from:heather” shows all chat conversations you had with Heather
• “is:starred -in:inbox” shows all your starred messages that aren’t in your inbox (a good way to find anything important that you might have accidentally archived)
• “from:elliot filename:pdf” shows all messages from Elliot that have a pdf attachment
• “is:unread in:inbox” to search for all unread mails in the inbox

Other helpful keywords are:

Also, to help people who tend to forget all the search keywords, the Google Search AutoComplete will sort that problem out as well.

And for the frequent Search keywords in use, users can favorite them in a Lab feature called Quicklinks.

To read more about Search Keywords, visit this link [Google Answers]

Yet another addition to the GMail Labs. Google today introduced Inbox Preview feature in GMail Labs. The point to be noted here is though, in a world of high-speed internet, and GMail anyway offering high speed mail service-is this feature going to be useful at all? If you can’t long enough to let your Inbox load, or you are still stuck in the days of not-so-fast Internet connection, this feature might be of some help.

Similar to other features from GMail Labs, you will need to enable this feature from Settings, search for this particular Lab feature, and Enable. Once enabled, this feature will let users preview the 10 most recent messages. This is just a simple, static preview, and hence, saves time for people who might not have time to sit down to check whether they have got any new mails or not.

I certainly don’t understand the argument quite completely. But reading GMail’s verdict on it, here is what Peter Balsiger had to say:

… imagine that you access Gmail on a super slow connection from a remote place in Ethopia where it might take minutes to completely load your inbox. The disappointment is larger when you find out that there is nothing new to read and you could have saved all that time.

Fair enough. For the whole post, visit this link [New in Labs: Inbox Preview].

Related Discussions.

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GMail never stops innovating, does it? The latest addition to the never-ending list of innovations in GMail Labs  is Translation. And what is it? Once enabled in the Labs Settings, this will enable users to translate mails in the inbox to the language of usage. Say e.g. you got a mail from a friend who wrote it in French. Enabling this Lab Setting, will show a link titled: Translate message to: English. This will happen if the users setting is English. The default translation language settings can be changed in the Setting Tab. Google has already rolled out this feature and it works like a charm.

Although, I would like to see features available in the Translate page of Google; i.e. features like translate the message in multiple languages. Just for fun. I know that has not much of a business sense, or does it not?

Further innovations on GMail could very much work on the lines of how Google handles translated web pages.Based upon your default language settings, if a mail is sent to you in a different language, the inbox could automatically translate your message in your default language with a Disclaimer stating: This is an automated translation of your Mail which was written in Language A. For the original message, please click this link. 

For the official announcement post on GMail blog, click here [Automatic Message Translation]