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10 Useful GMail Search Tips

Joshua Price — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:07:18 +0000

Like many of you, I’ve been happily using GMail for years. While there are many things I like about it, one in particular has always impressed me: email search. It’s no surprise that Google would add powerful search features to their email system, but there are many great features that go laregely unnoticed by many GMail users. Today we’ll go over some of GMail’s best search tricks and how to get the most out of this powerful feature.

1. Removing keywords

A common websearch function applied to email. You can filter out items containing certain words. For example, if I want to get a list of all my MakeTechEasier messages, but not those relating to pingbacks, I can remove items containing that word from my results with the minus sign.

2. To: and From:

Probably the simplest and most often used search function is the ability to specify sender or recipient. By specifying a name or email address you can narrow results to items written by (or to) a name or email address. In this example, I’m trying to get all the emails I’ve written about MakeTechEasier to Damien.

3. CC:

Much like To: and From:, you can filter to show messages with a certain person in the cc or bcc fields. Here I am searching for all party-related messages that involve my good friend The Dude.

4. has:attachment

This one’s pretty self-explanatory – you can get only the results that have a file attached. In this example Im looking for all emails from my sister that may have pictures of her kids.

5. filename:

Similar to #4 above, but this time you can specify an exact filename, or even just part of a filename in an attachment. I can improve upon my previous search by specifying that I want only results with pictures attached.

6. OR

No search system is complete without at least a few boolean operators, and GMail is no exception. While AND is implied in most searches, sometimes you need OR to get the results you want. In this example, I’m trying to get messages about Christmas plans from both sisters.

OR, by the way, does have to be in caps.

7. is:

Another very handy one, is: lets you see only messages in a certain state, like read, unread, or starred. Here, I’m trying to get any emails from Damien which I had previously marked as important (starred).

8. label:

Labels are already a very useful GMail feature, and the search function only makes it better. You can tell the search to return only messages with a particular label attached. If I have a Work label for all my work-related emails and I want to find a message relating to last year’s company picnic, I can use label: to avoid getting messages relating to my countless other picnics of 2008.

9. (Parentheses)

I just recently learned about this, and I’m very glad I did. Using parentheses you can group items for use with things like OR. Parentheses can shorten what might otherwise be a long search string. Let’s say I’m searching for the XBox Live names of my friends Adam, Galt and Joe. I could write out three separate from: statements much like #6, or I could use parentheses to group items together.

10. Combinations

A few of these examples have combined the search options into single queries. GMail gives nearly unlimited flexibility when combining complex search options. You can get extremely detailed results by combining the options to return exactly what you want. The following is an attempt to bring up all messages from both of my sisters about all our prior Christmas plans, that also have pictures attached, but not including our trip to Kentucky.

10 Useful GMail Search Tips originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Google Wave – Round 2

Joshua Price — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:22:47 +0000

We here at MakeTechEasier got a lot of positive feedback on our coverage of Google Wave, along with quite a few requests for additional information. So here, by reader request, is the second installment of Wave. Today we’ll be covering some of the more advanced and detailed features that didn’t fit into the original post. In this installment we’ll take a look at Wave’s use of folders, contacts, extensions, and believe it or not, even scroll bars.

Message Management

One of GMail’s strengths is its ability to handle large volumes of email while allowing you to keep things organized. Wave built on GMail’s experience and has also included some useful features for keeping things in order. For starters, you’ve got Folders which work like GMail’s labels and everything else’s… well… folders. You can drag and drop waves into these folders and they will not show up in your inbox. To view that message you can either click the title of the folder or choose All at the top of the Navigation pane.

As you can see in the screenshot, you can also colorize each of the folders individually. I can see how this could be helpful if you have a LOT of folders and want to use colors to group them together, or if there’s a particular folder you want to keep highlighted to catch your eye.

In addition to managing waves through folders, you also have two ways to essentially forget about a message until it’s needed. First, you can Mute a wave, so that it no longer shows up as unread even when it has been modified by others. If you just want a wave out of your inbox but still want to know when it’s been updated, you can Archive that message. You won’t see it until someone makes an update to that wave. Both muted and archived waves will show up in searches and in the All section.

I’ve found it useful to archive almost everything. When a wave has pretty clearly ended, I’ll set it to Archive and leave only messages I intend to keep alive in my inbox. If anyone happens to update one of those waves, it’ll pop right back up in my inbox like normal. Without this I think it wouldn’t take long for Wave to feel a bit overwhelming, if you use it frequently.

Embedded Replies

One messaging feature I really like is the ability to embed a reply inside the original message. In this example, Tara wrote the original message, and instead of creating a separate reply or copy & pasting her words, I can choose any spot in her message and insert my reply.

Private Branches

Let’s say you’re in a wave with everyone at the office. Your boss is discussing the importance of TPS reports. Suddenly, a witty remark pops into your head, and you have a choice. Do you uphold your status as the office comedian, or bite your tongue to keep your job? Wave provides a third option – create a private branch. Only the people specified in that branch can see those messages. In this example screenshot, there are many people in the wave but only the person I included in my private reply can see what I wrote.

Managing Contacts

The only really notable feature about the contacts is that you can do an incremental search for people in your contact list, as demonstrated below. My only complaint is that Wave does not apparently include GMail type status messages with the contacts. I’ve seen no word so far on whether or not that will be a feature in future Wave revisions.

Extensions

We covered extensions briefly in our first report on Wave, but there’s plently more to be said. Extensions can be installed and removed through the Extensions Gallery, which is a wave itself. For me, the extension gallery showed up in my inbox the day after I activated my Wave account. In it is a list of available extensions you can choose to install.

One of the most notable aspects of Wave in regards to extensions is they Google strongly encourages independent developers to create their own Wave extensions. The recommended language is Java but they also have a Python client library. As a fan of Python I think this is great news.

Bottom Line

With the many clever options Wave provides for message management and extensions, Wave is clearly going to be a contender for online communications. Right now the biggest obstacle is establishing a firm user base, as Wave is only useful if all your friends and associates also use it. Leaving the system open will work to Google’s benefit in that sense, as future users won’t be limited to just the official Wave website and client, but will be able to communicate over any wave-compatible platform. I, for one, look forward to seeing what the future holds for Wave.

Google Wave – Round 2 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Set Up Push Notification For Gmail in iPhone

Damien — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:41:37 +0000

Few days ago, Google announced that they have released the push notification support for Gmail for mobile devices such as iPhone and Windows Mobile. Today, let us show you how you can set up a push Gmail account on your iPhone.

By following this tutorial, you can also configure it to sync your contact and calendar.

Before you start, please note that Google sync only work with iPhone firmware 3.0 and above.

Getting Started

1. Tap on the Settings.app icon on the home page

2. Scroll down and open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.

3. Tap Add Account

4. Select Microsoft Exchange.

5. In the Email field, enter your Gmail address.

Leave the Domain field blank.

Enter your Google’s Username and Password.

Once done, tap Save. You might see the “Unable to verify certificate” error message. Select Accept.

6. A new Server input field will now appear. Enter “m.google.com“. Tap Next to continue.

7. Select the Google services that you want to sync. For me, I activated all the available synchronization services. Tap Done.

Your Google sync Push notification services is now set up.

To activate the push notification, you need to turn the Push feature on in the iPhone Settings section.

At the Mail, Contacts, Calendar section, tap Fetch New Data

Make sure that the Push is turned to ON.

Done.

Few things to note:

1. Google sync requires you to be constantly connected to the Web. You have to keep your 3G or WIFI connection ‘Always ON’ for the best result.

2. The push notification can be very draining on your battery life. If you value your battery life much more than the push technology, turn the Push feature OFF for optimal performance.

How to Set Up Push Notification For Gmail in iPhone originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Top 10 Gmail Labs Add-ons to Increase Your Productivity

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:40:46 +0000

For quite a while, Google has been releasing add-on features for a good number of their web applications. Gmail, Calendar and Reader all have several user selectable features. Links to these experimental add-ons can be found on the Google Labs page. Not all of the add-ons are perfect, but they are kid tested and mother approved.

Here is a quote about the Labs add-ons from the top of the Gmail Labs page:

“Gmail Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change,break or disappear at any time.

If (when) a Labs feature breaks, and you’re having trouble loading your inbox, there’s an escape hatch. Use http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0.”

I apparently have nothing better to do with my time than add fancy features to my Gmail. I’ll go ahead and save you the time of figuring out which of the Gmail Labs add-ons you should head for and give you the top 10 to get you started.

1. Send and Archive

This add on is great if, for example, you send a group email. Even if you have the original message in a folder and labeled, replies will often show up in your inbox. Instead of clicking on the send button when you send a follow up reply, click the Send and Archive button. Doing this will remove the message thread from your inbox making it viewable in the labeled folder.

2. Mark as Read Button

You would think this is a feature that was built in from the start, but it wasn’t. Having this button will let you batch mark all of the selected emails as read. Big time saver if you don’t want to open them all individually.

3. Hide Unread Counts

I don’t use this one anymore because I worked out a good system for automating most of my incoming emails. This feature, however, is a good one for people who leave everything in their inbox, yet hate knowing how many unread messages you are ignoring.

4. Canned Responses

Think of canned responses like a vacation or out of office reply. You can have this pre-thought out reply sent to anyone with selected keyword, email address, in response to an ad you posted or in reply to the contact form on your site. When setting up your filter(s), one of the actions you can select is to send a canned response.

5. Mail Goggles

If you are have poor math skills when you are not tired or haven’t been drinking, this add-on should probably be avoided. Here is how Mail Goggles works. If you try to send an email during a user specified time period, say 10 PM to 4 AM, you will be asked to do a 3 simple math problems. This may seem simple enough. If you get the problems wrong, the email is saved to your Drafts folder instead.

When basic addition and subtraction seem like quantum physics, it may be a good indicator you need to catch a couple hours sleep. Odds are your seemingly well crafted email, is probably not quite ready to be sent.

6. Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat

Sending a quick SMS is a nice little addition to the mini chat gadget in your Gmail navigation bar. When you hover over the contact you wish to SMS, a pop up box appears. In the “More” drop down is an option to send an SMS. If the person signs into to Gtalk, you have an option to toggle to chat. This keeps the previous conversation in the same window.

The SMS feature is currently for USA phones only.

7. Navbar Drag and Drop

Drag all of the widgets in the left sidebar to the order that makes sense to you.

8. Undo Send

How many times have you wanted to unsend an email because you forgot to add a file. Maybe you said something you instantly regret saying. This little gem gives you the chance you to unsend the email for up to 10 seconds after you sent it. You CAN actually take your words back.

9. Offline

If you activate this add-on, Gmail will place an optional shortcut icon on your Desktop. Each time you open up Gmail while you have an active internet connection, Offline will sync your email to your computer. You will have access to the majority of the features you need like composing, reading, searching, moving things into folder, etc. You obviously can’t send or receive new emails if you do not have a network connection. When you reconnect, all of your changes are synced and composed emails are sent.

10. Filter Import/Export

Exporting all of the filters you have worked hard to create is just plain smart. Imagine having to redo all of them over again, one by one. I have about 40 filters so this is a huge time saver if anything were to happen. After you export the XML file, you can email it to yourself for safe keeping.

For those of you who aren’t using any of the additional 50+ add-on features Gmail has to offer… shame on you! Don’t you know there are needy people using Hotmail that would love to have what you have?

How have you personalized your Gmail inbox?

Top 10 Gmail Labs Add-ons to Increase Your Productivity originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Better Manage Your Gmail Inbox With Aliases

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:08:40 +0000

A while ago I was perusing the Google help files and found a cool little tidbit. It didn’t really hit me right away how useful it could be. Once I started to use it, I wondered how I got by not having it before. What I am babbling on about is Gmail’s ability to handle aliases. These are variations of your email address, not totally different email addresses, going to a common inbox.

The main idea behind using aliases in Gmail is to help you automate organizing incoming emails. Most people I know have separate folders for different people or projects. When an email is received, it eventually gets manually moved to the folder in which it belongs. Some who use desktop programs like Mail or Outlook may have rules set up. Few people however, take the time for this with their web based email accounts. This is one of the reasons people spend so much time dealing with email everyday.

By simply giving your client, work, contest entry forms, social media site… an alias to your email address, you can have it automatically sent to a specific folder. This will save immense amounts of time sorting the messages in your inbox.

It is really quite simple to add an alias. All you need to do is add a [+] then your a word or abbreviation to your notmal email address. Here is an example. Let’s say your email address is john.doe@gmail.com. If you wanted to add “jm” for junk mail, your junk mail alias would look like this john.doe+jm@gmail.com

You may want to write down the additional words or abbreviations you use so you can use them more than once. Here are some examples of short additions. There really isn’t a character limit for the alias, but you don’t want to go overboard.

eb = ebay
sc = soccer team
jm = junk mail
bt = beta trial
ja = job applied for or job application

There’s really no limit as to what you can use for the alias. The sky is the limit.

Examples Uses

1. Job Hunting – This can be a super handy feature to use when seeking employment. You could have your john.doe+ja@gmail.com alias on your resume and applications you fill out. This way when you get a reply, it will be aggregated into your “job hunt” folder.

2. Selling Online – Give an alias link such as john.doe+cl@gmail.com for your contact information in an ad on Craigslist.

3. Sports Teams – If you are on or manage a sports team (yes, even a fantasy football team counts).

4. Collaborating on a Project - Have all of the emails for different projects go into different folders.

Setting Up a Filter

Setting up a filter is pretty important. If you don’t do this part, it makes using an alias pointless. For those of you who don’t know how to create a filter and label, here’s how.

1. Click the Settings tab in the top right of your Gmail inbox page.

2. Click on Filters

3. Click on Create a new filter

4. Type your email address with your alias in [To:] field

5. Click Next step

6. Check the boxes for the actions you would like. In this case I chose the following options:

Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
Apply Label – Job Hunt (If you don’t have a label created, click “Create new label” and choose a name.)
Never Send it to Spam

7. Click Create Filter

In the end, you should see something like this.

What are the ways you plan to use aliases?

Image credit – Adria Richards

Better Manage Your Gmail Inbox With Aliases originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Gmail Notifier For Ubuntu 9.04

Sharninder — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:07:56 +0000

Ubuntu 9.04 is the latest major release of Ubuntu. Among it’s many improvements, it brings with it a very cool new notification system to notify the user of events happening on the system using a nice transparent popup window in one corner of the screen.

The notification system has been designed to be non intrusive and as such, does not require user intervention at all. All notifications are on the screen for a pre-defined period of time and after that just disappear without the user having to do anything.

The Ubuntu team has done a very good job of modifying the various system applications to use the new framework but until now I haven’t seen any email notification application using this framework.

The non-intrusive nature of the notifications makes it a natural choice to be used as an email notification method and the first utility to be made for the task is the awesome Gmail Notifier called gm-notify.

gm-notify has still not been included in the main Jaunty repository, so to install it you will have to add its launchpad PPA repository to the package manager.

Start editing the software sources by starting the application from System->Administration->Software Sources, and add the following repository to the list of third party repositories.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/t.vetterlein/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Click on close and reload to let the package manager update it’s repository with the new list of packages. This should be done in a couple of minutes.

Now, you can install the gm-notify utility using the Synaptic Package Manager at System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager.

You might be prompted about a missing apt key and such but you can ignore that for now, since we haven’t installed the PPA key for this particular repository yet. In any case, the repository is safe and I have tested it myself.

Now, to configure gm-notify to work with your account, you will have to press ALT+F2 and type in the “Run” dialogue box which comes up, type “gm-notify-config.py” to run the gm-notify configuration GUI.

Enter your username, password and the mail checking interval and click on Apply.

Now, from the same “Run” dialogue box (Alt+F2), start the gm-notify daemon by type “gm-notify.py”. Press the Enter key and you should see a small mail icon in the Ubuntu Panel.

Now, everytime you recieve a new email, you will see a nice cool looking notification. No need to check your email like every minute.

Since, this is a new facility being provided by Ubuntu 9.04, gm-notify will not work on any version of Ubuntu prior to 9.04 or for that matter any other Linux distribution. To install Ubuntu 9.04 and set it up the way you want to, read our guide on the topic.

What other applications do you guys use for email notifications ? Let us know in the comments.

Gmail Notifier For Ubuntu 9.04 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Microblog From Your Gmail/Jabber

Joshua Price — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:43:08 +0000

XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is a IM system used by all kinds of chat clients, most notably Jabber and GMail. It’s open standard, allowing anyone to create a XMPP compatible chat programs. This gives it a flexibility not found in other chat systems like AIM and MSN Messenger. People have come up with some interesting uses for XMPP, and today we’ll be covering its use as a microblogging system.

Microblogging has because pretty popular recently with Twitter being the best known of these services. I personally haven’t signed up for Twitter specifically, however the basic concept has spread to other services. I’ve never been a big fan of personal blogging, but I’ve found over time that my GMail status messages tend to give a pretty good idea of what I’m up to. I also use the status message as an excuse to share some of my favorite quotes and links. A while back, I decided to try to record all of my status messages so that I could go back later and find an old link I posted, or see what day it was that I had made an announcement. I began looking online for a service that would automatically read my GMail status message and log it for future use.

I never found exactly what I was looking for, but I did find juick.com. Yes, it’s in Russian, but that actually doesn’t really cause a problem for what we’re going to be doing today.

Juick is a web service that takes XMPP messages and creates a microblog using those messages as entries in the blog. There’s no registration, no signup, no hassle. You simply send a XMPP message to “juick@juick.com” and it creates a blog based on the username you sent from and begins recording submissions.

Add “juick@juick.com” to your contact list in your Jabber client or GMail.
Prepare whatever message you want juick to record
Send your message

That’s it. Juick will respond immediately telling you the message has been posted, and will provide you with a web address to view your new entry. To view your blog as a whole, send juick a message with just the word “LOGIN” (all caps) and it will reply with a link to your blog.

Without any hassle, I can now record all my witty remarks and Beastie Boys quotes in one place. Ideally, I’d like something that would automatically read my status messages and update the blog on its own, but with juick there’s just one additional step of pasting my status message into a chat box.

Those who have Twitter accounts may want to take a look at tweet.IM. I haven’t tried it as I don’t have a Twitter account, but it looks to be about the same type of thing as what we’ve talked about today.

How to Microblog From Your Gmail/Jabber originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Manage Multiple Email Accounts With Zoho Mail

fasil — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:42:40 +0000

With Email service providers growing at a rapid pace, it is very common for anyone to have several email accounts. While it is easy to start an account, managing all the accounts can become a chaotic task and at worst, it can take hell a lot of time and effort.

The question is: Is there any application that allows you to manage multiple email accounts? In desktop, Zimbra answers this question. For Web-based application that is independent of any application or platform. Zoho mail seems to be a great choice.

In this tutorial, I would like to demonstrate how you can manage multiple email accounts (in this case, Gmail, Yahoo and Live) with Zoho mail.

Steps to Manage Multiple Email accounts with Zoho Mail

1. Sign up for Zoho mail account or sign in with your Gmail or Yahoo ID.

2. Once you login to your Zoho mail, Go to Settings ->Common Settings -> My Preference and add your other email accounts.

3. After adding your Yahoo or Gmail email addresses, Zoho will sent you a verification ID of which you have to enter to finalize the email settings.

4. Repeat the above step to add as many mail accounts as you want. The following image shows the result after adding all the mail accounts

5. Now sign in to your respective emails individually which are all added in Zoho account to enable Mail forwarding options

Gmail allows you to configure all incoming mails to forward another email address, yet keep a copy of the original in the inbox

For Yahoo, the forwarding option is available only to the old users. New user will have to upgrade to the premium account to enjoy the forwarding service.

Similar to Yahoo mail, Live mail also have limitations in their forwarding options.

6. Once you have set up the mail forward options in all the Email accounts, you can now use the Filters and Folders options in Zoho mail to segregate the mails when they arrive at the inbox.

In the home page of Zoho mail, add folders like Yahoo, Gmail or any other name that you fancy.

Once you have added the folders, go to Settings ->Personalize mail options -> Filters. Add filters separately for Yahoo, Gmail and Live mail. Enter the Filter name and fill the criteria as “to” contains “yourname@yahoo.com” and perform move to the specific folder.

7. When composing/replying a mail, you can easily switch between the various accounts so other won’t know that you are sending from Zoho mail.

Conclusion

You might have plenty of email accounts, each set up for different purposes: personal, groups, newsletter, work and so on. What Zoho mail does and allows you to do is to become a hub for you to maintain all the email accounts. Other benefits include the offline mail option with Google Gears and the eye catching cool Zoho mail experience with a short mail alias name@zoho.com.

For those who are using Gmail to micromanage their multiple emails, you can try out Zoho mail and feel the differences. Tell us about your experience in the comments.

How To Manage Multiple Email Accounts With Zoho Mail originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Access Gmail on your Desktop

fasil — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:31:15 +0000

Gmail is one of the most preferred web mail service among many Internet users. Apart from accessing Gmail using POP client in your desktop, there are other ways that you can access your Gmail on desktop. In this tutorial, we shall discuss two other ways to access Gmail on your desktop.

1. GMDesk

GMDesk is a Adobe Air application which runs on your desktop. With GMDesk, you can access most of the Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Picasa and Maps. A good thing about this software is that it is cross-platform compatible and you can access your Google services under your own domain name. The only issue you might face with GMDesk is that some of the fonts in Gmail are smaller than the original one and could be straining to your eyes.

Screen shots illustrating the use of GMDesk

Preferences and setting for GMDesk Application

GMDesk preferences and setting

Access to other Google services using GMDesk

Installing GMDesk

If you have not installed Adobe Air on your system, download the installer and install it. Ubuntu users can follow this guide to install Adobe Air in Ubuntu Intrepid.
Either go to the GMDesk home page and click on the GMDesk Flash Installer to install, or if you prefer a manual method, download the AIR application from Google code.

2. Google Gmail Desktop Gadget

Google Desktop is an application that enables the user to search the desktop like how you search in the browser. It also allows you to install little widget-like gadgets such as calendar, clock, games and weather information on your desktop. The Gmail gadget is one of the thing that you can install on your desktop for easy access to your Gmail account.

You don’t really get the full-fledged Gmail, but it will enable you to read your emails and star it without logging on in the browser. In the event that you need to write a new mail, there is a shortcut link to Compose that you can click to access your Gmail account (in browser) quickly and easily. Other shortcuts include Search and Signout.

The Gmail gadget is only available for Windows platform with Google Desktop 5 or above.

Installing Gmail Gadget

Install Google Desktop
Download the Gmail gadget and install it on your Google Desktop

How To Access Gmail on your Desktop originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Backup Gmail In Ubuntu Intrepid

Damien — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:35:03 +0000

It is a misconception to think that all the emails in your Gmail account are safe and will be there forever. In the events that Gmail is down, or for some reasons, you were banned by Google, you won’t be able to access all your emails and all of them will be gone forever. To prevent such incident from happening, you might want to backup your mail in your Gmail account to your system. Come to think of it, you backup your system regularly because all the data and files in your computer are important to you. If your emails are important to you, shouldn’t you do a backup too?

Gmail-backup is an application that allows you to backup/restore your Gmail. It has an easy to use interface and few configurations are needed to get it to work. Other than backing up your emails, you can also use it to migrate your mails from one Gmail account to another. This tutorial will teach you how to backup your Gmail account in Ubuntu Intrepid.

Download Gmail-backup for Linux here

Extract the folder to your Home folder. You should see a folder with the name gmail-backup-0.105-linux (the folder name will change according to the version). For simplicity sake, rename the folder to gmail-backup.

Install the dependencies

sudo apt-get install python2.5 python-wxversion

In your Gmail account, go to Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP

Check the Enable IMAP and Save Changes.

Back to your terminal, run the command:

cd ~/gmail-backup && ./gmail-backup-gui.sh

Enter the login credential, backup destination and the range of date to backup. Click Backup to start the backing up process.

That’s it. All your mails in your Gmail account is now backed up in your system.

Creating an entry in the menu

It can be a troublesome task to go to the terminal and type a bunch of command just to activate the Gmail-backup application. An easier way is to create an entry in the menu.

In your terminal,

gedit ~/gmail-backup/gmail-backup-gui.sh

Change the following command

exec python2.5 -O gmail-backup-gui.pyo $@

exec python2.5 -O `dirname $0`/gmail-backup-gui.pyo $@

Save and exit.

On the top panel, right click on Applications and select Edit menus

On the left pane, Select the Internet. On the right, click New Item. Enter the following information. Remember to change the USERNAME to your own user ID.

Click Close. You can now access Gmail-backup via Applications -> Internet -> Gmail backup now.

How To Backup Gmail In Ubuntu Intrepid originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Gmail: Create Custom Signature For Different Accounts

Damien — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:27:13 +0000

While Gmail allows you to set up and manage multiple email accounts within itself, the Gmail team seems to have overlooked the fact that each email account is meant for different purpose and you will need a different signature for each account. For sure, I don’t want to include all my business contacts when I send an email to my family members, and vice versa. Currently, Gmail allows you to set only one signature and expect you to stick with it for all your email accounts.

Luckily for Firefox users, there is a Firefox extension – Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures that enables you to insert custom html signature into your mails based on which email address you are sending form.

At the moment, Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures is still an experimental add-ons and is not yet available for the general use. However, if you sign up an account with Mozilla and log in to your account, you will be able to install it just like any other Firefox extensions.

Blank Canvas Gmail signatures allows you to create up to 4 different signatures for each email address.

When you compose a new message, or reply/forward a current message, you will find a new dropdown field beside the “From: ” field.

To create a new signature for a particular email address, first select the email adress on the From dropdown field. Next, click on the Edit Signature.

Two large text boxes will appear. You can now create your custom signature on the first text box and see the preview on the second box. It only accept html codes, which means if you want to insert a line break, you have to use the code

To insert an image signature, you have to first upload your signature image file to a Web server that can be accessed at any time with any computer. In the create signature field, place the following html image code to insert an image signature.

In the option field, you can configure whether the signature should appear before/after the quoted text. You can also change the label for each signature for easy identification.

I found this Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures extension to be extremely useful as it eases all my frustration of having to edit the signature everytime I compose a message. Hopefully, it can get out of the experimental stage and become available for the mass public. Do you find this extension useful? What other ways do you use to create custom signature on your Gmail?

Gmail: Create Custom Signature For Different Accounts originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Control Your Gmail With Simple Mouse Gestures

Damien — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:02:34 +0000

Some people prefers the keyboard shortcuts, while some prefer to do everything with the mouse. If you belong to the latter, you will find the new mouse gestures features in Gmail extremely useful.

Mouse gestures is one of the 13 new features in the newly launched Gmail Lab. It allows you to use your mouse to navigate through your mails.

To activate the mouse gestures feature, go to Settings->Labs. Scroll down to the mouse gestures section and check “Enabled“. Save the changes and you are set to go.

To navigate through the mails, simply right-click and do the following:

Mouse Gestures	Action
Right-click and move the mouse right	In conversation view, go to the next mail. In Inbox, load the next 100 mails.
Right-click and move the mouse left	In conversation view, go to the previous mail. In Inbox, load the previous 100 mails.
Right-click and move the mouse up	Return to inbox, only applicable in conversation view

Control Your Gmail With Simple Mouse Gestures originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Useful Gmail Shortcut Keys to Improve Your Email Checking Experience

Damien — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:54:31 +0000

While most of us are used to moving mouse and clicking around the screen, sometime things can be done faster if you use the preset shortcut keys. Similarly, for those who spent a lot of time in your Gmail, the following shortcut keys will definitely be of great use to you.

Shortcut Key	Definition	Action
c	Compose	Allows you to compose a new message. + c allows you to compose a message in a new window.
/	Search	Puts your cursor in the search box.
k	Move to newer conversation	Opens or moves your cursor to a more recent conversation. You can hit to expand a conversation.
j	Move to older conversation	Opens or moves your cursor to the next oldest conversation. You can hit to expand a conversation.
n	Next message	Moves your cursor to the next message. You can hit to expand or collapse a message. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
p	Previous message	Moves your cursor to the previous message. You can hit to expand or collapse a message. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
o or	Open	Opens your conversation. Also expands or collapses a message if you are in ‘Conversation View.’
u	Return to conversation list	Refreshes your page and returns you to the inbox, or list of conversations.
e	Archive	Archive your conversation from any view.
m	Mute	Archives the conversation, and all future messages skip the Inbox unless sent or cc’d directly to you.
x	Select conversation	Automatically checks and selects a conversation so that you can archive, apply a label, or choose an action from the drop-down menu to apply to that conversation.
s	Star a message or conversation	Adds or removes a star to a message or conversation. Stars allow you to give a message or conversation a special status.
!	Report spam	Marks a message as spam and removes it from your conversation list.
r	Reply	Reply to the message sender. + r allows you to reply to a message in a new window. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
a	Reply all	Reply to all message recipients. + a allows you to reply to all message recipients in a new window. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
f	Forward	Forward a message. + f allows you to forward a message in a new window. (Only applicable in ‘Conversation View.’)
	Escape from input field	Removes the cursor from your current input field.
+ s	Save draft	Holding the key while pressing s when composing a message will save the current text as a draft. Make sure your cursor is in one of the text fields — either the composition pane, or any of the To, CC, BCC, or Subject fields — when using this shortcut.
#	Delete	Moves the conversation to Trash.
+ i	Mark as read	Mark your message as ‘read’ and skip to the next message.
+ u	Mark as unread	Mark your message as ‘unread’ so you can go back to it later.
[	Archive and Previous	Archive your conversation and move to the previous one.
]	Archive and next	Archive your conversation and move to the next one.
z	Undo	Undo your previous action if possible (for actions with an ‘undo’ link).
+ n	Update current conversation	Update your current conversation when there are new messages.
q	Move cursor to chat search	Move your cursor directly to the chat search box.
y	Remove from Current view*	Automatically removes the message or conversation from your current view. From ‘Inbox,’ ‘y’ means Archive From ‘Starred’, ‘y’ means Unstar From ‘Trash,’ ‘y’ means Move to inbox From any label, ‘y’ means Remove the label * ‘y’ has no effect if you’re in ‘Spam,’ ‘Sent’, or ‘All Mail.’
.	Show more actions	Displays the ‘More Actions’ drop-down menu.
?	Show keyboard shortcuts help	Displays the keyboard shortcuts help menu within any page you’re on.

Combo-keys – Use the following combinations of keys to navigate through Gmail.

Shortcut Key	Definition	Action
then	Send message	After composing your message, use this combination to send it automatically. (Supported in Internet Explorer and Firefox, on Windows.)
y then o	Archive and next	Archive your conversation and move to the next one.
g then a	Go to ‘All Mail’	Takes you to ‘All Mail,’ the storage site for all mail you’ve ever sent or received (and have not deleted).
g then s	Go to ‘Starred’	Takes you to all conversations you have starred.
g then c	Go to ‘Contacts’	Takes you to your Contacts list.
g then d	Go to ‘Drafts’	Takes you to all drafts you have saved.
g then i	Go to ‘Inbox’	Returns you to the inbox.
g then t	Go to ‘Sent Mail’	Takes you to all mail you’ve sent.
* then a	Select all	Selects all mail.
* then n	Select none	Deselects all mail.
* then r	Select read	Selects all mail you’ve read.
* then u	Select unread	Selects all unread mail.
* then s	Select starred	Selects all starred mail.
* then t	Select unstarred	Selects all unstarred mail.

Useful Gmail Shortcut Keys to Improve Your Email Checking Experience originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)