Inbox by Gmail: Snooze to just the right time

Wouldn’t it be nice if your concert ticket appeared at the top of your inbox just before the event started, or your hotel confirmation came back right before you needed to check in?

Starting today, Snooze in Inbox is getting a bit more convenient—when you snooze an email that has dates and times (like event confirmations or shipping notifications), you’ll get a one-tap option to snooze to exactly the right time, like the day of your concert or the morning your package will arrive.



You'll see these new Snooze options on most of these types of emails:

• Package tracking updates
• Restaurant and event reservations
• Calendar invites
• Flight confirmations
• Hotel reservations
• Rental car reservations

So next time, try snoozing that email to the day before the event. Then sit back and relax, knowing your email will come back at just the right time.

Gmail now supports addresses that contain accented non-Latin characters

Now Google's email service Gmail starts support of addresses that contain non-Latin characters like Urdu, Devanagri, Chinese etc. This means Gmail users can send emails to, and receive emails from, people who have these characters in their email addresses. Gmail also announces that it will make it possible for public to use these characters to create email accounts.

Now 15 GB Free storage from Google

Google offers 15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. Today Google is improving the way you use storage in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. Instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you’ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use as you like between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. Join us for more at +Blogs of urhabib and if you're from Pakistan, join us at http://pring.it/urhabib.

Check Your Gmail Stats using Gmail Meter

One day I was looking at how many messages I have in my sent mail, and realized there are a lot of things I wanted to know about my email habits. How much of my emails do I read, and do I reply fast enough? As luck would have it, Romain Vialard, a Google Apps Script Top Contributor, developed a tool called Gmail Meter powered by Google Apps Script.

Gmail Meter is an Apps Script which runs on the first day of every month and sends you an email containing different statistics about your Inbox. In a similar way to how recently introduced Google Account Activity gives key stats about how you’ve used your Google Account, Gmail Meter gives you different types of statistics that will help you analyze your Gmail habits.

• Volume Statistics show you the number of important and starred messages, the number of people who sent you emails, and more. Volume statistics can be very useful in determining how you are using email efficiency tools like Priority Inbox.

• Daily Traffic gives you an estimate of when you receive messages and when you send them during a given month. For example, in the graph below you can see how the peaks in my “Sent” curve indicates that I write emails in spurts.

• Traffic Pattern lets you get a sense of your overall email activity over the past week.

• Email Categories tells you how you are managing your Inbox. In the pie chart below, you can see that the majority of my emails are labeled. My Inbox is tiny compared to other labels which indicates that I keep a lean and mean Inbox.

• Time Before First Response shows you how long it takes you to reply, and how long it takes others to reply to you. By looking at this chart, I can infer that I reply faster than others I communicate with.

• Word Count tells you whether you are writing long emails. The example below shows that most of my emails are shorter than 200 words.

• Thread Lengths help you understand whether you participate in long conversations resulting in long threads.Top Senders and Top Recipients help you identify who you communicate with more frequently.

How to Setup Gmail Meter

It is easy to set up Gmail Meter. First, go to Google Docs and open a Spreadsheet. Click on Tools > Script Gallery. Search for “Gmail Meter” and click Install. You will now see a new menu item called Gmail Meter on your spreadsheet. Click on Gmail Meter > Get a Report. You can then choose the type of report. Preparing a report may take some time and you will get an email once the report is ready. If you would like to know more about how this script works, be sure to check this tutorial.

Learning about my email habits has helped me become more email efficient. So, before you read that next article on "Writing Effective Emails," be sure to learn more about your own email habits using Gmail Meter.

How to change the display font size in Gmail?

Change the display font size using your browser's keyboard shortcuts. Hold down Ctrl or Cmd, and press + to make the font bigger, - to make it smaller, and 0 to return to normal.

If you've ever accidentally changed your font size, Ctrl/Cmd + 0 is especially useful!

Watch this video guide.

How to add signature in Gmail

A signature is a bit of personalized text (such as your contact information or a favorite quote) that is automatically inserted at the bottom of every message you send. Here's a sample signature:

--
"If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now, quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers..."
- Habib Ullah Manjotha

To create a signature:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Enter your new signature text in the box at the bottom of the page next to the Signature option. As you type, the radio button will shift from No Signature to the text box.
4. Click Save Changes.

Signatures are separated from the rest of your message by two dashes.
If you don't want your signature to appear on a specific message, you can delete it manually before sending the message. Just highlight the text and delete it before sending.Please note:

• If you notice extra characters (such as * or >) being added to your signature after you send mail, it's because some versions of Gmail don't support rich text and we've converted some of your formatting. For example, when you send from Gmail using Safari on iPhone, any text you bolded in your signature will be marked with asterisks (i.e., example will show as *example*).
• For rich text signatures, the maximum amount of characters you can use is 10,000 (including HTML markup).
• If you send mail "from" multiple addresses in Gmail, you can set a different signature for each address in the General tab of your settings. Choose the second radio button in the "Signature:" section, use the drop-down menu to choose the appropriate address and set the signature you want.

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How to creat contact groups in Gmail

To create a contact group:

1. Click Contacts along the side of any page.
2. Click the New Group link on the left side of the Contact Manager, or select Create new from the Groups drop-down menu.
3. Enter the name of the group.
4. Click OK.

To add contacts to a contact group:

1. Select the contacts in the Contacts list.
2. Open the Groups drop-down menu.
3. Select the group you'd like to add the contact to, or select Create new to create a new group.
4. If you have multiple addresses saved for a contact, you can choose which address should belong to the contact group by opening the contact and clicking the small arrow next to the group you'd like to modify.

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Gmail for mobile, now sharper and smoother

On the mobile team, we strive to produce web apps which look and feel just like installed apps. In the past few weeks, we’ve released a number of features which make Gmail for mobile look sharper and feel smoother.

Pull down to refresh
You can now pull down to refresh your message list and conversation on all iOS and Playbook devices. To refresh, simply touch the message list, drag downwards and release.



High resolution icons
For those of you using Gmail for mobile on an iPhone 4 Retina display, the icons and graphics are now at a higher resolution, making Gmail for mobile sharper.


Transitions
When you tap on a conversation, tap back to the inbox, go to the menu or go back, the view will slide left or right. This new transition animation is a quick, small indication that makes the view change feel smoother.

Curious web designers often ask us how we implement certain features. In this case, we used a combination of up to eight different CSS3 transitions and Javascript to get things to look just right.

As always, go to mail.google.com on your mobile browser to check out the latest updates to Gmail for mobile and Follow @pakgoogl

Make multiple calls in Gmail

Over the years, we've expanded Gmail's communication abilities by allowing you to make voice and video calls to other computers and more recently call phones. Until now, though, you were limited to making one call at a time. Today we're excited to relax that restriction and allow you to make or receive multiple calls in Gmail.

If you’re in a call and make a second one, your first call will be put on hold while you talk on your new call. You can switch between calls by pressing the “Resume” button on the call you want to talk on, which will automatically put the previous call on hold.

A new and improved Gmail gadget for iGoogle

With iGoogle, you can personalize your homepage with the information on the web that’s most useful and relevant to you. You can check email, watch videos, catch up on the latest news, check the weather, and more. One of the most common iGoogle requests we’ve been hearing is to update the iGoogle Gmail gadget. Because the Gmail gadget has to share space with other gadgets on the screen, the Gmail experience can be limited to an area not much larger than the size of a business card. Since we’ve already built an experience optimized for small screens with Gmail for mobile, we decided to adapt the mobile web version for iGoogle and are now rolling out an updated gadget.

A preview of Gmail’s new look

We get a lot of great feedback about how Gmail helps you be more efficient, keep in touch with family and friends, and get work done. We’ve saved you from forgetting attachments and made sure that you got the right Bob. Over the years, adding countless features to Gmail has made it an increasingly powerful communication hub, but along the way the interface has also become more cluttered and complex.

That’s one of the reasons we’re embarking on a series of interface updates to help strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful. This is part of a Google-wide effort to bring you an experience that’s more focused, elastic, and effortless across all of our products. The changes are not going to happen all at once. We know that you love and care about Gmail as much as we do, and we’ll be working on these upgrades gradually over the next few months to allow plenty of time to understand and incorporate your feedback into the evolving design.

Gmail - Protect yourself from scams by knowing who really emailed you

I recently received an email from what looked like my bank saying I should update my account, but it looked a little weird. I clicked on the “show details” link and quickly learned it wasn’t from my bank after all; instead of being sent from First National Bank’s real email address, this message originated from a random South African domain. If I hadn’t viewed these details, I could have been tricked — it wasn’t entirely obvious that this email was a fake.



Phishing messages are a form of spam that attempt to deceive recipients in order to gain access to their personal information. Starting today, Gmail will automatically display more information about the origin of certain messages you receive so you can be better informed and protect yourself from getting tricked. If someone fakes a message from a sender that you trust, like your bank, you can more easily see that the message is not really from where it says it’s from.

Google Apps for Education mailbox sizes are growing

We’re increasing Gmail storage for our Google Apps for Education users from 7 GB to 25 GB.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Education

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
Starting next week, new schools that migrate to Google Apps for Education will receive 25 GB mailboxes. Existing accounts will see their storage size increase over the next few weeks.

10 Gmail gadgets to try

There is a powerful but little known Gmail feature that lives in Labs called “Add any gadget by URL.” Once you turn it on, you can add iGoogle gadgets (or any gadget specified by an .xml file) to the side of your Gmail account. While most of these gadgets are built by third-parties and not owned or maintained by Google, they can be super handy.

To install any of these gadgets, follow those steps:
1) From your Gmail account, go to the Labs tab of Gmail Settings.
2) Look for the Lab “Add any gadget by URL.” Enable it, then click “Save changes.”
3) Go to the new “Gadgets” tab under “Settings” and add the relevant .xml address.

Here’s a list of a ten I’ve found worth trying out:

Pasting images into messages just got easier - Gmail

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and people certainly like to spice up their emails with images. A while back, Gmail started making this easier by letting you drop images from your desktop right into the compose window.

Now, when you’re running the latest version of Google Chrome, you can paste images right from your clipboard too. So if you copy an image from the web or another email, you can paste it right into your message. This is especially handy for passing around screenshots — you don’t have to save the files any more (I’ve been using Command-Control-Shift-4 on my Mac to save screenshots directly to the clipboard). While this currently only works in Chrome, we hope to enable it on other browsers soon.

3 Labs graduations, 1 retirement in Gmail

Today we’re excited to graduate three more features from the experimental testing ground of Gmail Labs. Superstars, Nested Labels, and Advanced IMAP Controls are now first-class citizens in the Gmail world, thanks largely to your feedback. We’re also retiring theGoogle Search box lab which was redundant with the “Search the Web” button that’s already in Gmail.

Superstars
Superstars, one of the most popular Labs features, provides different types of stars in addition to Gmail’s basic one. You can assign a certain star to special conversations and use another as a visual reminder that you need to follow-up on a message later. You can now choose your own set of stars from Settings:

Once you’ve done that, the stars will rotate with each consecutive click on the star icon.


Nested Labels
Labels are a great way of organizing your email; nested labels give you the ability to organize labels hierarchically. Starting today, nested labels are enabled for everyone along with a couple of small improvements such as a sticky collapse/expand state and better editing options.


To start using them, you can either create a new sub-label from the dropdown menu on the left hand side or just move an existing label under another one using the edit option:


Advanced IMAP Controls
This Labs feature provided a very useful set of advanced controls for those of you who access Gmail through IMAP clients (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, or your iPhone’s native mail app). Now it’s easier to take advantage of features like syncing only selected labels or limiting the folder size limit to improve your IMAP experience.


True to the original spirit of Gmail Labs, we’ll continue to add new features, graduate some, and retire others, so keep trying them out and sending us your feedback and follow us on twitter.

Introducing the people widget in Gmail

Email is just as much about the people you communicate with as it is what you communicate about. We think it can be helpful to view relevant information in context, which is why over the next two weeks we’re rolling out a new people widget located on the right hand side of your messages. The people widget surfaces content from friends, family and colleagues that is already available to you but may be hard to find and makes it easier to connect with them. 




Next to every email message you can now see contextual information about the people in that conversation including recent emails you received from them, relevant Buzz posts, shared documents and calendar events. You also have quick access to a variety of ways to communicate with individuals, start a group chat or schedule a meeting with groups of people.


We hope the people widget will improve your Gmail experience and we’re eager for you to try it out.

SMS Chat in Gmail

How it works

• From Gmail, click on Settings, and go to the Labs tab
• Scroll down until you see “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat” and select Enable
• Also enable the “SMS in Chat gadget” and then Save Changes
• You can send free texts to your friends in the US and many countries around the world

How to send a SMS from Gmail

1. Log into your Gmail account. In theSend SMS box above Chat, enter the phone number you want to send a SMS to.
2. In the dialog box, enter Contact name of the SMS recipient and check that country and phone number are correct. Then, clickSave.
3. Type your message in the chat window and hit Enter.
4. Your message will be sent to the phone number you entered.

If your contact replies, the text message response will appear as a reply in Chat. These conversations are stored in your Chat history just like regular chats. Learn more about Gmail SMS.

Note: Sending and receiving a message from Gmail to any phone is free. When replying with an SMS from phone to Gmail, you will be charged a regular SMS rate by your mobile provider.

Supported Mobile Operators

• Ghana
  Airtel
  MTN
  Tigo
• Indonesia
  Indosat
  Telkomsel
• Israel
  orange
  Pelephone
• Kenya
  Airtel
  orange
  Safaricom
• Malawi
  Airtel
  TNM
• Nigeria
  Glo
  Starcomms
• Palestinian Territories
  Jawwal
  Wataniya Mobile
• Philippines
  SMART
  Sun Cellular
• Saudi Arabia
  STC
• Senegal
  orange
  Tigo
• Tanzania
  Vodacom
• Uganda
  Orange
  MTN
  Uganda Telecom
• United States
  All operators
• Zambia
  Airtel
  MTN

Gmail: Changes and improvements to AIM interoperability

From the beginning, we designed Google Talk using open standards so that you could connect to your friends and family using any chat product, making communication as easy as possible. A few years ago, we announced our partnership with AOL which made it possible for people to chat with AIM users right from inside Gmail. Today, we’re happy to report that AOL has now made it possible to chat with AOL contacts across a variety of Google services: not just Gmail, but also iGoogle, Orkut, and Google Talk on Android phones.



If you chat with AIM buddies in Gmail, you’ll notice a few changes. First, you’ll no longer need an AIM account to connect to your friends using AIM. Instead you’ll be able to add your AIM buddies just like you add Gmail contacts to your chat list: using their AOL screennames (for example, username@aol.com). AIM users will now also be able to add Google contacts to their AIM chat clients.


Second, you’ll no longer be able to sign into your AIM account from within Gmail chat since you can now add AIM contacts directly. And lastly, if you previously had a lot of AIM contacts and don’t want to re-add them to your chat list one by one, AOL has created a tool to import your AIM buddies into your Gmail account. See their blog post for more info and follow us on twitter.

[Source]

Store up to 25,000 contacts in Gmail

Gmail used to have a limit of 10,000 contacts. For most of us, this was way more than enough, but we heard from some of you who use Gmail to communicate with more than 10,000 people. We want you to be able to store all of your contacts in a single place, so starting today, we’ve increased the limit for all Gmail users, including all those of you who use Google Apps, to 25,000 contacts.


Also, previously an individual contact could be no larger than 32KB — big enough for most people, but not always sufficient for those who like to keep a lot of notes on individual contacts. Now, each contact may be up to 128KB in size, allowing you to store more information in the notes field.