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Quick poll: Would you think of email as a productivity tool? Most of us use email all the time, from our phones and browsers and anything else imaginable, to stay on top of the loads of messages that bombard us daily. It’s a great communications tool, but hardly something that helps you stay more productive. A full screen writing too, a powerful to-do list app, a big red highlighter and a wall calendar might all count for tools that’ll boost your productivity, but email? Not hardly. It usually feels much more like a distraction.
What if email could instead be a tool that could keep you focused on what you need to do, when you need to do it? Perhaps it could bring you messages right when you want to deal with them, and let you write emails when you’re thinking about them but send them when they actually need to arrive in your colleagues’ inboxes. Maybe it could even automatically send those emails you have to send every so often, freeing up your time a bit.
That’s what Boomerang is. It’s a tool that turns Gmail into a productivity tool that makes email run on your own schedule. (more…)
Ever since Google killed off Google Gears, users were left without any way to access their Gmail accounts without internet. Google said they were ending Gears because they wanted to focus on implementing HTML5 to get a newer, more complete, and less plugin-based system for offline email.
Even though it’s been a long time in the making, Google’s finally kept their word: the Offline Gmail app is now available for free in the Chrome Web Store. Let’s check out what it’s like!
Google’s never been known for the best design. They once lost a designer after one too many tests for the right shade of blue, among other oddities. But any sweeping change to their entire suite of web properties would surely be welcomed with open arms, right?
Not entirely. The design changes that were launched with Google+ have now rolled out to most of Google’s properties, and even less consumer-orientated sites like Adsense have seen a refresh. For the most part, the changes seem nice, but the new style in Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Reader have been the most controversial. Gmail’s new design has been well received for the most part, but the new label-less buttons seem unintuitive and downright un-googley (isn’t Google known for text over icons?). Google Reader sparked the most controversy, with a more confusing interface and less sharing features. Google Docs’ interface seems blander than before, but it’s still hands-down the best online office suite for most purposes.
Our recent article on the changes got a number of comments, with most readers agreeing that the new Gmail was mostly nice, but the new Google Reader was frustrating at best. Across the web, the sentiment has been mostly the same. So we’d love to know what you think. Do you like Google’s new design changes, or do you want the old Gmail and Google Reader back? Should Google try harder with design, or are they best with sticking with spartan text-driven interfaces?
I always want things to stay fresh, be it groceries I buy or the apps I download. So, whenever there is an update to software I use, I dutifully grab it with both hands. When it comes to web apps, I love Google for keeping things fresh and new. They launch new services and update existing ones at breakneck pace.
Recently, Google rolled out a newer look across the board to all its apps. And two of the flagship apps – Gmail and Reader – got the brand new look rolled out universally, last week. One was welcomed with cheers, while the other wasn’t. Turns out, consistant branding and useful UIs are as easy to roll out as pressing a button and giving all of your sites the same color schemes.
Back in the day, you had to have a native email app to send and receive emails. Most of us kept growing offline archives of our emails, and if you ever lost a backup or hard drive, chances are you’d lose all of your emails for good. Syncing was mostly unheard of, and POP3 was state-of-the-art.
When Gmail first came out, its offer of 1Gb of online storage seemed too good to be true. Suddenly, you wouldn’t have to store all of your emails offline to keep from losing them. Plus, with its efficient interface, you could actually be productive in an email web app.
Mobile devices have brought us back to the start. Sure, you can use Gmail or your favorite email service in your mobile browser, but with spotty and slow cell connections, it usually works better to use a native email app. With Exchange ActiveSync and IMAP, you can keep all of your messages synced, so it really doesn’t matter how you access your mail.
That’s why we’re curious how you usually access your account. I personally use a mix of Mail.app in iOS and OS X, and Gmail.com in Chrome. I appreciate the convenience of being able to get the same mail in any app, but if I had to choose just one, I’d stick with Gmail over any one particular app. How about you? Is your email a cloud-powered native app, or do you email with a web app directly?
Google’s always had a minimalist design, one of the simplest designs on the web. And for the most visited website in the world, that’s provided a very user-friendly approach making searching somewhat of a breeze. The problem is, Google is no longer about search since, with the arrival of a plethora of additional services, that part of Google’s business has become so much less significant.
As Google has added new products, services and apps, they’ve featured their own unique interface so, while the main search page became refined, the other sites got left behind. However, Google has recently started a full, unified redesign process across their sites connecting them all up with similar design trends: a modern, minimalist red and white scheme.
I remember when I started using GMail. It was a warm day in April 2004. I couldn’t believe I got an invite, and all because I was using Blogger for my blog at the time. I knew when I first opened it up in my browser that this would be a web app I’d use for a long time. Over the years it has grow, in my opinion, only stronger and I still use it to this day, every day. I have also accumulated over the 7 years of use, a list of tips to make your GMail experience even better- more productive, easier, and even cleaner. Here are some of my favorites.
Unfortunately, for the Apple-consuming public, iCloud won’t be hitting us until the fall. That means we’re going to have to wait several months because all the cloud-based syncing magic becomes a reality for us. However, either for those going crazy in anticipation, or those who oddly despise Apple, there’s a range of online services that offer similar functionality.
In today’s article, we’re going to take a look at some of the apps you can grab right now to help build up an iCloud-esque ecosystem for yourself. (more…)
Gmail is one web app that gets better constantly. Despite being the third largest email service provider, Gmail holds the top spot in pampering its users with cool new features at regular intervals. The past few days have witnessed a couple of interesting additions and one in particular – Gmail People Widget – adds a social twist to your inbox.
The people widget showcases content from friends, family and colleagues who are in touch with you constantly, but are buried somewhere in the contact list. Add to it the all new Importance Markers, there is a very good chance your productivity might go up!
The internet may have come a long way over all these years, but making money from the internet hasn’t. Advertisements still constitute a lion’s share of revenue for a lot of Internet businesses, primarily those engaged in the content and freemium verticals.
It’s easy to pick on Google for slapping ads left, right and center based on our search and browsing habits. But if it wasn’t for Google there may have been no contextual ads. At least now we usually see only those ads that might actually be useful based on the keyword we are searching for, or the content we are reading.
Google has recently announced that it plans to roll out ads in Gmail that are more in line with your tastes and interests. Unlike lot of other companies, they are placing notifications prominently in our inboxes and after the jump, let us take a look at the pros and cons of their latest announcement.
