Good bits   http://gmail.com/motion

Motion ^BETA

A new way to communicate

The mouse and keyboard were invented before the Internet even existed. Since then, countless technological advancements have allowed for much more efficient human computer interaction. Why then do we continue to use outdated technology? Introducing Gmail Motion — now you can control Gmail with your body.

• Play video “Overview” Overview
• Play video “Paralanguage expert” Paralanguage expert
• Play video “Movement specialist” Movement specialist

Try Gmail Motion

Don’t have Gmail? Create an account

• Easy to learnSimple and intuitive gestures
• Improved productivityIn and out of your email up to 12% faster
• Increased physical activityGet out of that chair and start moving today

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  How it works

  Gmail Motion uses your computer’s built-in webcam and Google’s patented spatial tracking technology to detect your movements and translate them into meaningful characters and commands. Movements are designed to be simple and intuitive for people of all skill levels.

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  Motion Guide

  Familiarize yourself with some of the basic functionality of Gmail Motion using this printable guide of sample gestures. With it, you’ll be able to start writing and responding to emails – with your body – in no time.

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  Safety precautions

  Using Gmail Motion is not only safe but also healthy and fun. As with any physical activity, certain precautions are recommended. First, make sure to clear the area around you. Second, try to take short breaks every 30-40 minutes, just as you would if you were typing. And finally, take time to stretch after each session to give the muscles you’ll be using some relief.

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  Coming soon to Google Docs

  This new motion detection technology doesn’t stop with Gmail. We’re excited to announce that Google Docs Motion will be coming later this year. Learn more

• “No longer will people be required to bend to the will of technology. Instead, technology will now bend to our will.” Lorraine Klayman, Environmental Movement Specialist, Nevada Polytechnic College
• “It is commonly known that 80% of communication is non-verbal. Gmail Motion not only accepts this fact – it embraces it.” Dennis Tooley, Ph.D, California Center for Kinesis and Paralanguage
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  “Kudos to the Gmail team for bridging the divide. I’m eagerly awaiting the next version with ASL turbo boost!” Ken Harrenstien, Software Engineer, Google Accessibility Team

© Google – Terms & Privacy

(and yes, you ought to check the date of this post here and on Google <grin>)
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Make and receive calls in Gmail

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | 9:40 AM

Google Voice lets you manage all your phone communications and seamlessly make and receive calls on any of your existing phones. But what if you don’t have your phone with you? Or what if you’re in a place with poor cell phone reception, or you’re travelling internationally and don’t want to incur expensive roaming charges? Wouldn’t it be great if you could use your computer to make or receive calls?

Starting today you can use Gmail to receive or place Google Voice calls.

To get started, check the box next to Google Chat in your list of forwarding phones and the next time someone calls your Google Voice number, Gmail will notify you of an incoming call. You can take the call or even listen in as the caller leaves a message, in a single step right from your computer.

Finally, check out this video:

We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly – so stay tuned!

For more information, visit gmail.com/call.

Update (8/26): This has now been rolled out to everyone in the U.S. If you don’t see the feature yet, try logging out of Gmail and signing back in.

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New stuffs

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Gmail Team <mail-noreply@google.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 22:41
Subject: Get through your email faster with Gmail Priority Inbox

Priority Inbox^Beta

Welcome to Priority Inbox! By automatically separating out your most important messages, Priority Inbox makes it easy for you to read and respond to the messages that matter.

Get through your email faster

Try reading and replying to the messages in the “Important and Unread” section first. Mark anything that requires follow-up with a star, then go through the “Everything Else” section. If you leave Priority Inbox, you can return to it by clicking the link next to Inbox on the side navigation of Gmail. How it works Gmail’s servers look at several types of information to identify the email that’s important to you, including who you email and chat with most, how often you email with these people, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read.

Train Priority Inbox

If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, you can use the buttons to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important, and Priority Inbox will quickly learn what you care about most.

And more…

• Customize Priority Inbox: You can change what type of email you see in each section (like switching the “Important and Unread” section to just “Important”). Just click on the section headers or visit the Priority Inbox tab under Settings and choose to “customize inbox groups.”
• Use filters to guarantee importance: If you want to be absolutely sure that some messages are always marked as important (like email from your boss), you can set up a filter and choose “Always mark it as important.”
• Search by importance: If you want to see all the messages that have been marked as important, both read and unread, do a Gmail search for “is:important.”
• Switching back to your old inbox: If Priority Inbox isn’t for you, you can easily switch back to your normal inbox by clicking “Inbox” on the left or hide Priority Inbox altogether from Gmail Settings.

To learn more about managing your email with Priority Inbox, check out the Gmail Help Center.

- The Gmail Team

Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA
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Tip: 5 things you may not know you can do with attachments in Gmail

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 | 4:40 PM

Permalink

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Google has announced this recently. As shown below, it’s already in effect for one of my Google Apps domains.

click picture to enlarge

Zoom

Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager for Google Docs yesterday announced that Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size (larger than the attachment limit on most email applications), which means Google Docs users can now store backups of large graphic files, RAW photos and ZIP archives on the cloud.

The news comes at a time when Google is trying to instill in users a confidence regarding cloud storage. A lot of people are wary of trusting the cloud as their sole storage solution. It’s this kind of thinking that Google will need to overcome if its Chrome OS, which stores everything in the cloud, is to be successful.

Upload your files and access them anywhere with Google Docs

Over the next few weeks, we’re rolling out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online. Because Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications, you’ll be able to backup large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud. More importantly, instead of carrying a USB drive, you can now use Google Docs as a more convenient option for accessing your files on different computers.

This feature can also help you work with teams to organize and collaborate on information online. For example, an architect can share large schematic files with her construction firm, while a P.T.A. member can share large graphic files for posters with other members. You can even add these files to the same shared project folder your team has already been using to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets.

In addition to uploading any file into Google Docs, our Google Apps Premier Edition customers will be able to seamlessly upload many files at once and sync them with their desktop in real time using third party applications. You can read more about how the ability to upload any file will help businesses on the Google Enterprise blog.

This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs. For more information, check out our post on the Google Docs blog.

http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50092

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Google-Docs-File-Types-Size,9435.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=29470

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Fairly handy, for those that have “more than a few” contacts . . .

One button to merge all duplicate contacts

(via Permalink @ gmail’s blog)

This is nice since I prefer one of the non-defaults . . .

New in Gmail Labs: Default text styling

(via http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-in-labs-default-text-styling.html )

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An alternative to moving from Google Apps Standard edition up to Google Apps Premier edition :

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-extra-storage-for-less.html

This makes great financial sense for personal / family use, if you don’t need some of the extras from Premier. Case in point personally, as a family who uses Standard :

You have one person who may go significantly over their 7+ gig allotment : easy, add 20 gigs of space to that (for 27+g total; it’s in addition to the current level of “free” storage) for USD $5 per year (currently), for that user only. Problem solved, pretty cheaply

This is significantly different cost-wise than moving the entire family / organization to 25 gig total space per year at a cost of $50 per user, and with the requirement of moving all users to this Premier plan. The math is fairly compelling, if you don’t need the service level agreement of 99.9% guaranteed uptime, and the Postini services, etc.

Happy gmailing, etc. and keep it secure!

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(via http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-apps-highlights-1162009.html

I am really hoping to get some dedicated import / export tools for all things (especially email); this would certainly aid portability, and probably bring more people into the Google Apps fold, if they felt they could also back out if need be.

Personally, I’ve had a devil of a time with a full-featured (i.e. multi-labelled, using colors, with rules, etc.) populated Gmail account going over to an Apps email, or vice versa, or even Apps email –> Apps email. Exportability to some standard format would greatly help; I wish there were an XML format for this, that could handle all of the possibilities; by definition, it should be extensible, but with at least most functionality supported by all of the major players.

• Customizable options for Gmail offline
• Google Docs bulk export
• Visual indicators for edited and all-new items in Google Docs
• Administrator controls for Chat

These are certainly positive steps for Google however; I am continuing to hope for further expansion in what I think is pretty much the best-of-breed out there, for “free cost” environments. It may not rival all of the features I was used to in Microsoft Exchange 2010, but it also is not hosted internally, and Google is soaking up the hardware and software costs associated, in exchange for the advertising, etc.

I am looking forward to further integration via Google Voice and Google Wave as well.

Have a great day!

Ref : http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/choose-which-messages-get-downloaded.html

While this is also a useful feature for those on the go, I think that many folks would find a ton of time savings via Gmail Filters.

In Gmail, one common use of these filters as a way to allow custom, automatic processing of messages as they arrive. I put each mailing list into into own “label” (folder) automatically, to keep my Inbox tidy. For some of the lists that I don’t read very often, I even set the message status as “has been read” for those, to keep the number indicator low in my folder list. (different colors per label / folder make things easier to distinguish, even after many hours per day at the monitors)

There are numerous advanced filter possibilities, as well as some undocumented features that work well, in my limited experience.

I find Gmail (via their Google Apps / Standard Edition) to be of quite a bit of value for myself and the family. However, many folks simply don’t know what the service is capable of, and it’s painful to see them struggle with their email.

As a friend, a few quick Filters can really help them out for a long time to come. There are numerous other tweaks that can help them via the Gmail Labs, as well as the standard Settings page (force https mode, etc.)

If you have an especially helpful tip or set of tips for filtering or Gmail, please forward and I will give due credit, thanks!