Fortunately, I’ve grown wiser with age. And I’ve learned that sometimes the best solution for things are the most simple. Or at least that’s a great starting point anyway. If you’re an organization freak, I’ve got some tips for you as well, but for those simply looking for any way to manage the chaos that is your Gmail account, look no further.

Step 1: Use Gmail

Now, I’m all for experimenting with different online workspaces and such, but the features I get from Gmail are invaluable. I’m sure other email services have similar offers, so here’s what makes email systems like Gmail so useful:

• Conversation Mode – Gmail groups emails together by conversation, meaning that all replies in a long-threaded email are all grouped under the same email and subject. This makes labeling easier because you only need to label one email in the conversation rather than each one.
• Labels – Rather than folders, which are rigid and hierarchal, Gmail uses labels, which offer more fluidity. Say you have an email from Customer A (so it should go in that folder) but it’s regarding Product B (so it should go in that folder); this ultimately requires copying emails to make them fit into different nested folders. Labels, on the other hand, can apply to multiple emails regardless of previous labels; no nesting or hierarchy required (though you can even nest labels if you’d like).
• Search Function – Who needs to organize every single email when you can simply search for what you need when you need it? Of course it’s great to keep emails organized because you can also search within labels to find that email more quickly.
• Plenty of Space – I have never had to delete emails to keep space open. This coupled with the search function really makes Gmail an amazing service. The peace of mind alone is worth it.

Step 2: Archive Everything (clear your inbox)

Gmail has an inbox and an archive space known as “All Mail.” When you archive an email, you can still search for it and organization labels still apply. This sounds like a no-brainer, but if you’re inbox is too flooded with old emails, simply archive the ones that have lost relevancy in your inbox. I usually find an email that has no use anymore and then archive all the ones older than that. If I end up needing an email later, no problem. Just search for it. As for organization, I usually won’t worry about it if my inbox is out of control; you can search through your emails and apply labels to all that match a certain criteria (this is much easier than going through each email to organize). Remember, your inbox should serve as a vessel, not for storage. It is a reminder of what you need to consider immediately.

Step 3: Apply Simple, Functional Labels

I used to be in the habit of labeling emails by category. This email is social, so I’ll label social; this email is about my finances, so I’ll label finance. After a while, I started thinking: Why do I need to sort by category? Sure, it might make it easier to search for an email, but where do you draw the line on what you need to categorize and what you don’t?

I will go as far as saying that you don’t need to categorize your emails in Gmail, at least not by subject. I have two permanent labels that I use in Gmail:

• @action
• @waiting

I use the @ symbol just to make these labels appear at the top of my list of labels. I would also have a label for @reference, but the archive function pretty much takes care of that for me. Any email labeled @action is something that I need to reply to or act upon (make a phone call, register an account, make a payment, etc.). I try to keep my @action folder as empty as my inbox for obvious reasons.

I use the @waiting label for emails in which I’m waiting for a response or some waiting period to expire before I can act. If a @waiting email finds its way to my inbox, it probably means I’ve received the response I needed. I still periodically check my @waiting label just in case I don’t receive a new email once the waiting period is over, and I’m supposed to perform an action.

Step 4: Apply Short-Term Labels For Projects

If I’m working on a temporary project that I know I’ll receive a lot of emails for, I’ll create a temporary label, so that it’s easier to refer to the project. Once the project is completed, I delete the label since I won’t need to access the emails as frequently anymore (or at all possibly).

Step 5: Apply Filters

Some emails are simply not important enough to warrant being in my inbox, particularly advertisements and mailing lists. Since I usually never have to respond or act on these emails anyway, I create a filter to send them straight to the archives. I also apply a label with the filter, so that I can find that add later if I decide I’d like to go shopping.

About Author
This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who regularly writes for top online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.

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Eric Sachs, Senior Product Manager, Google Security wrote –

How many times have you created a new account at a website and seen a message that said: “Thank you for creating an account. To activate your new account, please access your email and click the verification URL provided.”

Even though you just want to start using the website, this lengthy process requires you to manually perform a whole bunch of steps”

To make this process simpler, we’re now using an Internet standard called OpenID which is supported by several email providers, including Yahoo!. Instead of the process above, Yahoo! users who sign up with Google see the page below with a button that sends them to Yahoo! for verification.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more email users than Gmail, so here we know what does this announcement is for. Once you creating a Google account using a Yahoo email, you would have the option of verifying the email address by simply logging into Yahoo.

Google relies on OpenID and OAuth for the verification process, which both Google and Yahoo support. For now, the feature is only restricted to Yahoo, but Google says it will expand it to other sites using OpenID and Microsoft seems the next understandable target.

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Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.

Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time,”

Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?’ Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail,” he added.

However, the new feature is still available only for US users, although Google says that it plans to launch in internationally soon. The most interesting part here is the rates offered by Google, international calls will be billed at low rates, starting at $0.02 per minute. The feature is included with the Gmail Chat app that now comprises a phone dialer enabling users to call any phone. You don’t need a Google Voice account to use the new call feature in Gmail. However, if you do have one your Voice number will be used as your caller ID.

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Benjamin Grol, a Gmail Product Manager wrote –

You’ve asked us to generally make Contacts easier to use, as well as for specific improvements like sorting by last name, keyboard shortcuts, and custom labels for phone numbers. So, by popular request, we’re happy to announce that an overhauled version of Gmail Contacts will be rolling out today.

The interesting features include:

• Keyboard shortcut (go to contacts and hit “?” for full list
• Sort by last name (look under “more actions”)
• Custom labels for phone numbers and other fields
• The ability to undo changes you have made
• Automatic saving
• Structured name fields, so you can adjust titles, suffixes, and other name components
• A bigger, more prominent notes field

Other notable changes include three new links for Mail, Contacts and Tasks at the very top of the left sidebar along with a new Compose Mail button as opposed to a simple link. Gmail also features slightly altered colors. Apps users will have to wait a bit longer to get the new Gmail interface.

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1. First of all, login to your Gmail account and make sure that POP is enabled. To check whether POP is enabled, go to Gmail settings and click on Forwarding and POP tab. Select Enable POP for all mails and Click on save settings.

2. Now, Open Microsoft Outlook 2007. Go to Tools > Account Settings.

3. Under Email tab, click on New.

4. Enter you Gmail account details. And make sure “Manually configure server settings or additional server types” is unchecked.

5. It will start configuring your account and once the process is complete, click Finish.

6. Now, go to Inbox and do Send/Receive by going to Tools > Send/Receive > Send/Receive All. This will download the emails from your inbox to Microsoft Outlook 2007.

7. You account will be shown in the left sidebar.

If you are facing any problem adding your Gmail account, let us know.

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Update: You can also look into ipad 2 specifications for latest features introduced by Apple.

Some of the screenshots and conclusion taken from iPads are as follows:

Composing a mail in Gmail for iPads

Cons: I miss the attachment option in the Gmail for iPads, i need to send the files from external applications and default options available on “Photos”.

Forwarding mails in Gmail for iPads

Online Twitpic website for iPads

Cons: On online site of twitpic the options of uploading file (choose file) is missing and all the applications available on Apple store are paid.

You should also look intoipad 2 specifications for more details about latest apple’s devil.

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Where do you start-up?

There are loads of free email services providers in the web world. It won’t be a great task to spot them. To mention a few, Gmail, Yahoo, MSN are few of the most frequented or the top ranked email service provider from across the globe. To start up with, you need to visit the service providers’ website and click on the registration link.

How to sign up with Gmail:

• The primary work to do, to start your emailing experience is that, you should create an email account. Just log in to the following link, to enter the registration page of Gmail to create an account.
• Fill up all the necessary details & Click “I Accept. Create my Account” button located at the bottom of the page and you are registered.
• Do ensure that you remember your Username & Password to using your mailing services. Password to be kept secure to ensure integrity of your information’s.
• In your Browser Address bar, type www.gmail.com, this will guide you to the log-in page of the Gmail account holders.
• Type in the “Username” & Password at the prompted places.
• Hit the “Sign In” Button, and you will enter the gates of the heaven using which the most parts of the world communicates.
• Click the “Compose Mail” button positioned at the top left corner of the page, and you can start writing mails to your friends email address, and your communication starts.
• There are many official Gmail themes available, so you change the themes as per desire!

How to forward mails?

Whenever you would want to transfer an existing communication or an email that you had received from one person (incoming Mail), the same can be sent to different people by using the feature known as “forward”. You will generally find two buttons at end each email, “Reply”, and “Forward”. You can click on Forward to send that mail any other correspondences. You will be prompt to type the email ID of the person you have to send that mail, click and go!

The advantage of the system is that, it makes it extremely easy to transfer existing data in your email, and the tedious efforts to duplicate the document are completely eradicated. Kick start you mailing experience right away, and meet the world at your desk.

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“The feature is useful for navigational searches, when the top result is usually the best answer and it’s not necessary to click on the result. Gmail should extend the dialog for creating links with the option to pick from search results. Maybe a future iteration of the Gmail Labs mod will include results from specialized search engines: images, videos, local businesses, maps, products etc. The samples that are available for Google AJAX Search API illustrate some other potential uses for clipping search results” – says Alex. If you wants to enable this new labs, you have to settings and Labs tab and search “Google search”, enable it and finally save it. It will be visible in action within a few minutes.

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Google says, “Gmail runs faster in Google Chrome“. I’m not sure how fast actually? Even I tried but it’s truly not appreciate but I’m getting faster experiences through mozilla firefox. You can see some discussions about slow gmail on google groups. See the Google’s promotional video.

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Before to move forward, don’t install all files at a time — try those extensions which may help you or it may help you to handle your works perfectly.

GTDInbox – Do you wants some organizational tools? GTDInbox will make your gmail account Organizational tools friendly which is really awesome. You can do lots of tasks inside, use as personal information database and so on.

Gmail Manager — Do you need to main multiple email accounts? You like to use two email accounts for privacy? One for family and one for professionally? This gmail manager can help you and for every new email you will get a visual alerts plus audio notifications at the same times.

Gmail Notifier – It’s working greatly when you have multiple gmail accounts and a small icon will lived in status bar’s right hand corner.

Gmail RTL – It will secure your totally gmail system from any types of unexpected problems. It will allow to send and receive encrypted messages throw gmail system.

Gmail RTL — Always righting from left to right side. Alternatively, you can change this mode. Write from right to left in Gmail, it’s available only in the Hebrew and Arabic gmail version’s service.

Xoopit — Gmail has built in search engine which will help you search any information based on your data. But this add-ons will make your photos, videos more collaborative. Easier to get any attachment files — because it will show in one place plus with attachments you will see the icons in right hand.

WiseStamp — WiseStamp brings more functionality in signatures. You can attach your ready mate social icons integrations with your every email and also IM info and so on. Differentiation of business signatures and personal signatures features already in gmail’s lab.

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Gmail officially confirmed and enabled this new labs “sender time zone” for everyone. How Gmail Sender Time Zone actually works? Marcin says, “you’ll see green phone icons next to people who are probably awake and readily reachable (if it’s between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm in the sender’s local time zone) and red ones next to those who could be sleeping or out of the office. Click “show details” and you can see when a message was sent in the sender’s time zone as well as what time it is for them now. Message headers always include the time sent and often include time zone info too. We use that information to show you these icons. If the time zone isn’t included for a given message, this Labs feature won’t display anything.” — On this way you can manage your girlfriend too but you shouldn’t aware about her local area’s time — gmail will handle it perfectly.

Before to try, you have to enable this features from settings to gmail’s labs options. When you will active — don’t forget to save lastly. It will refresh your gmail inbox and will active automatically and you will see it’s in action.

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top 10 mistakes of Google.

1. Google Finance is so US centered, you cannot find good information about other countries. There are competitions that are far better like Yahoo Finance.Felix Salmon questioned “Is Google Too Big To Fail?”.According to a blogpost “Minor disadvantages of Google Finance are that it doesn’t show all the popular ratios that Yahoo does, such as the PEG. For foreign stocks, it shows profit margin and operating margin information, but not the P/E or P/S”
2. Google Checkout is yet another mistake from Google. It is half-baked and it is so limited. Why should people use this when you have Paypal which offers more options.You check some advantages and disadvantages of Google Checkout vs Paypal.
3. Picasa is a good photo manager but Picasa Web album is definitely a bad idea. The user interface is confusing.I personally like to spend $25 on Flickr Pro rather than using Picasa.
4. Google Web Accelerator is another bad product from Google. It has many privacy issues. It also causes problems with some websites not loading properly.37signals reports in fact that the Google Web Accelerator “Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like “delete this” or “cancel that.” And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations“.Moreover checkout some “Hard facts about Google’s Web Accelerator”.
5. Google Video is also a bad idea. It did not feature popular TV shows. And it is so slow.Have a look on Why Google Video Will Fail and
6. Google Desktop is posing security threats among users. The software pulls personal data from your PC.
7. There are too many instant messaging software out there. Google Talk is too late.More over foxnews recently discloses that ‘ViddyHo’ Virus Spreads Through Google Chat”.In case you have the time ,look over the some interesting facts about Google Talk.
8. Gmail is recently experiencing outage and account inaccessibility. Is happens from time to time and Google has not yet addressed it until now. This will definitely tarnish the image of Google.You may check about the latest problem of gmail here. Stan Schroeder of Mashable published an article stating “gmail down panic mode on”.
9. Google Maps is another brilliant concept but it can also help terrorists with bad intentions do their strategic planning.May be you should know that “Terrorist Use of Google Earth Raises Security Fears” and “Google Maps aids terrorists”.Every technology have its own flaws but it can also be recovered.Their are so many severe questions on national securities.For example latest mumbai bomb blast terrorist “Kasab” is in arthur road jail so will google remove arthur road from its map?
10. The Chrome is yet another web browser. Who needs another one? Google already partnered with Mozilla for the Firefox so there’s no point in adding another web browser.John Brandon says that “Is Chrome the first epic fail at Google?”You should also read the chrome fail discussion on the reddit.More over this is the comment from a user in a Google groups
    

    I just updated Google Chrome to the latest version, RC 1 i.e. non-
    beta. And now my Gtalk within Orkut states that it doesn’t work with
    this browser. Come on, both are Google products… They should work
    better together, not fail on such an epic scale.

    Update: Google is continuously working on project “chrome” and come up with some new features. I wish to remove this point after extensions updates in the Chrome final release. (on beta and developer versions it have extensions features and we also developed Google Chrome Extensions for Gtalk , checking IP and Speed Test )

Last but not least newowin.net say’s that “Google to kill 6 of its failed projects” these are listed as follows:

• Google Video
• Google Catalog Search
• Google Notebook
• Dodgeball
• Jaiku
• Google Mashup Editor

The top 10 mistakes of Google are easy to correct. With the way the company works these can be done within months.I just remember this quote (find in a webmaster  forum )

Google seem to want to be the next Yahoo and Yahoo seem to want to be the next Google

Note:Help and suggestions to improve this articles are always invited.

Update on 18 march,2009:

Google Lively is addition in the list of Google fails.
About Google Lively : Lively was a network of avatars and virtual rooms created and decorated by its users. Google launched Lively on July 8, 2008 as an experiment in providing people with more ways to express themselves on the Web.

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In an official post on Google blog it says
“We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There’s even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers — it’s not exactly practical, but it’s great for testing out your geek cred. We’ve also done a minor facelift to Gmail’s default look to make it crisper and cleaner — you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.”

How to activate Gmail Themes?

In order to activate these theme you have to  go to the Themes tab under Settings. (Settings>Themes>).

Some of the coolest themes are as follows:

I would like to develop some themes for the Gmail incase i’ll get the chance for serving.If anyone else is interested in this i can also make a portals for some unofficial themes.

Note:I haven’t study on the CSS and theme code of the gmail but it won’t be too hard to understand.

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1. Might be your address is similar but has more or fewer dots (.) or different capitalization.

Their is possibility that you may receive a message intended for someone whose address resembles yours but has a different number or placement of dots

Examples

Your Main ID yourusername@gmail.com but you get mail as your.username@gmail.com or Your.user.name@gmail.com

Note: Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com, your.username@gmail.com, andy.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your inbox, and only yours. [source google Help center

2. Might be your address isn’t listed in the mail you received.

Their is possibility that you may get a blank id mail ie the sender has mailed you a ‘blind carbon copy,’ or Bcc:. If it happened with you then this means that you won’t see your email address at the top of any message and probably you receive as a blind carbon copy.

3. Might be you’re receiving spam that’s not addressed to you and you are a victim of dictionary spamming.

Their is probability of getting victim of spam mail (every one of us are victim of spam’s,may be once at least).The is common practice of spammers to send mails with the help of software’s and applications that uses different algorithms to randomly guess email addresses based on words in the dictionary.These types of spam’s are known as Dictionary spamming and hence spammers know as Dictionary spammers.

 

 

 

 

 

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What is the benefit of Account Activity feature?

You may saw your activity logs regularly or occasionally and with the information of time and IP used you may easily traced if someone else uses your account.For example from the info of Access Type column if it show any unusual access? or shows use by any mobile device,pop which you haven’t use, So with out wasting any time you can easily change your password and security question.Moreover If your mail is currently being accessed from another location, we’ll list the other session(s) in the Concurrent session information table.If you want you can easily sign out all sessions other than your current session by clicking Sign out all other sessions

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