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Gmail Motion – The Real-Life Version

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Remember Google’s April Fools’ prank? Gmail Motion was – is – so ridiculous that we all knew that it was nothing but a prank. In case you missed it ((Have you been living in a cave???)), Gmail Motion is e-mail which can be controlled using your body. With this innovative Google development, all you need is your body and you can do whatever you need with your mail. As one person put it, be careful when you sneeze, though, as you may end up deleting all of your e-mails! Here’s the video of the Gmail Motion in action.

Anyhow, prank or not, the idea is actually realizable. Consciously or not, the guys behind the prank may have started something. You know how it is with creative minds, don’t you? When a bunch of guys from the Institute for Creative Technologies ((ICT at the University of Southern California)) saw the video above, their minds started working overtime.

I can just imagine them as they were watching the video. Hey, this is actually technically possible! Why don’t we give it a shot and give Google a dose of their own medicine while we’re at it?

Armed with a sensor taken from Microsoft’s Kinect (talk about the irony of it), they started a projected called the Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving, or SLOOW. You don’t have to be slow to use the set up, but you do have to move your butt (and other body parts). Check out the video the guys created to demo their project.

Now this isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill scientific proposal, but it seems to work, doesn’t it? While it is real, I doubt that we’ll be seeing this kind of setup available to the general public any time soon.

Priority Inbox Tips Straight from Google

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Have you used your Priority Inbox yet?  I shall write this post under the assumption that you activated the new Gmail feature the moment you saw that red notification in the upper right corner of your browser.  (I know I did!)

A little over a week since the Priority Inbox was launched, it seems to me that it is not generating a lot of excitement.  I jumped right into the water by activating the feature, and I am still using it.  Yeah, I guess my Inbox does look more manageable now, but somehow, I feel as if I were missing something.  Maybe I am. Maybe you are, too.

Well, the Google team shared five tips to make the most of the Priority Inbox in the Gmail Blog yesterday.  Let’s take a quick look – maybe these tips will fan the flames of enthusiasm again.

  1. Customize your sections. Did you know that you can further tweak the sections so that you will see exactly what you want to see in your Inbox?  You can add sections, indicate labels that you want to be shown, and even control the number of messages to be shown for each section.
  2. Train the system. Truth be told, I have been spending too much time on doing this.  I know I can train the system as I go along, but it’s just a lot of fun going through months’ worth of e-mails and labeling each as important or not.
  3. See the best of your filtered messages.  Okay, this one totally escaped me the first time.  Anyhow, you can override filters so that messages deemed important (but with filters) will still be shown in your Priority Inbox.
  4. Use filters to guarantee certain messages get marked important (or not). More on filters? If ALL the e-mails your boss sends you are important, then simply create a filter that will cause all e-mails from your boss’s address to be marked as important.
  5. Archive unimportant messages quickly.  Too many e-mails in the “Everything Else” section? Just click on the drop down menu and archive shown messages in one fell swoop.

So tell me, do you find any of these tips helpful?

Sort Out “Spam,” “Bologna,” and “Real Meat” with Gmail’s Priority Inbox

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How does your Inbox look right now? If you’re using Gmail, you’re probably already using labels and filters. These features have helped many a user sort out their Inboxes. There are still some who are having problems dealing with the daily influx of e-mails. It is not surprising to see a cluttered Inbox every now and then.

With the announcement at the Gmail Blog yesterday, things might just get much easier for Gmail users. They have released the Priority Inbox Beta, which promises to help users deal with e-mail overload. How is the new feature going to do this?

Well, we all hate spam – message that are totally useless – but we also get loads of message that are not really spam – bologna or bacn. What Priority Inbox does is to sort out this second class. It doesn’t mark the messages as outright spam, but it will also make sure that the bologna doesn’t flood your Inbox and bury the truly important messages.

With the new feature, you’re going to see three sections in your Inbox:

  • Important and unread
  • Starred
  • Everything else

The system will identify which message belongs to which group via an assortment of “signals.” For example, if a certain person e-mails you a lot and you reply to his/her messages often, e-mails originating from that address will be marked important. As you may surmise, the system will deliver better results the more that you use Gmail, as it will “learn” from your behavior. There are also considerations for manual labeling – you can mark a message as important or unimportant yourself. Here’s the video demo.

I just checked my Gmail and I don’t have the feature yet, but the blog says that they will be rolling it out in the next weeks. Look out for the red notice in the upper right of your Inbox that says “New! Priority Inbox.” I’m sure we won’t miss it when it does come out.

Offline Gmail Graduates from Labs

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Screen shot 2009-12-09 at 5.23.19 AM

For those of you who have been trying out the many experimental features in Gmail Labs, you’ve probably activated Offline Gmail browsing before. Well, one year has already passed and it’s now time for Google to take this feature out of the Labs and release it as an official feature of Gmail.

Offline Gmail is a very useful feature especially for those who regularly experience slow Internet speed (like us here in Manila). By activating the feature, you’ll be able to use the normal Gmail interface for reading and writing email, searching and organizing even if your computer is offline. Offline Gmail also has an added feature called Flaky connection, which speeds up Gmail if your connection is slow or unreliable.

As an added feature of Offline Gmail, you can now select which messages from your Gmail Inbox that you want to be downloaded as well as send attachments even when your computer is offline.

If you’ve activated this feature before, you’re all set to use offline Gmail. But if you haven’t done so, you may tweak your Gmail settings and activate the Offline feature.

25 Incredible Skins, Resources & Tools for the Gmail Power User

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Gmail is one of those rare things unanimously loved by everyday web users and tech-heads alike. The possibilities are endless. It can be anything from a simple email client to your central nervous system on the web. How far you take it is up to you.

Each day seems to produce a new hack, tool or tip for better Gmail use. In this post, I want to highlight only the very best, hand-picked from hundreds of resources. This is not another resource list you’ll bookmark and never look at again. These tips, monster resources and tools will change the way you use Gmail.

Best Gmail skins

1. Super Clean skin — probably the most popular Gmail skin, Super Clean replaces the standard interface with a minimalist white and sky-blue version. Perfect for the budding Zen-master.

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2. Air skin — makes subtle changes to the visual interface, adding clean lines, a cloudy color combo and changes the primary font. The perfect solution for users looking for a fresh look without any radical changes.

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3. Mac skin — a Mac-inspired Gmail skin to match the Mac you’re checking your mail on! Adds a Mac-style menu and color-scheme to your Gmail account.

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4. Fe Mail skin — a well-crafted and very pink Gmail skin.

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5. Dark Gmail skin — almost the complete opposite to the last link, this skin is one for the dark and brooding Gmail user.

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6. Silverstar skin — a popular minimalist gray theme.

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7. Brushed skin — a gray and maroon theme with nifty gradients thrown into the mix.

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Best Gmail resources

8. The Gmail Shortcuts Cheat Sheet — a comprehensive printable cheat sheet of useful shortcuts for Gmail. Print it and stick it to your desk: these shortcuts are worth memorizing. Did you know pressing ‘Tab’ and ‘Enter’ will send the email you’ve composed?

9. Gmail Craze: 40+ Tools and Hacks for Gmail — a frequently updated post from MakeUseOf featuring essential Firefox extensions, Greasemonkey Scripts, Desktop Apps, Web Tools, tips and hacks.

10. 55 Gmail tips — this website is dedicated to providing detailed Gmail tips. It covers everything from excluding chat from search results to importing Hotmail contacts.

11. Hack Attack: Become a Gmail Master — this fantastic guide from Lifehacker introduces Gmail’s most powerful capabilities in a way that’s easy to follow. It will help take anyone only familiar with Gmail’s basic functions to the next level.

12. Use Gmail as Your Universal Email Account — got too many email addresses to keep track of? Forward them all to Gmail and deal with your incoming mail from one central location.

13. Ultimate Gmail Collection: Over 80 Tools and Tips — a monster list of extensions, scripts, apps, notifiers, how-tos and shortcuts for the serious Gmail user.

14. Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center — influential technology blogger Steve Rubel shares his essential Gmail life hacks, including:

  • How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database
  • How to get real-time news updates in Gmail
  • How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail
  • How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail
  • How to blog from Gmail

15. 1 Awesome Gmail Tip You Didn’t Know About. Seriously. — this easy tutorial explains how you can customize your Gmail address to serve different purposes.

16. Gmail Toolbox: 60+ Tools for Gmail — Mashable.com works its magic with a huge compendium of Gmail tools. It includes all the extensions you know and love in addition to some (previously) undiscovered gems.

17. Access Gmail When It’s Blocked at Work or School — Engtech provides five strategies you can use to check your Gmail anywhere, even when the I.T. department doesn’t want you to.

18. Mark Spam Messages as Read — this simple filters hack allows you to prevent your unread spam count showing in the main display. Best of all, it will still alert you to items that have been incorrectly marked as spam.

19. Gmail Tips and Tricks: Monster Roundup — Lifehacker’s big roundup of its favorite Gmail downloads, hacks and articles.

Best Gmail tools

20. Gmail Drive — this tool puts Gmail’s extensive storage capacity to use, adding a new drive to your computer which can be accessed via Windows Explorer. You can create folders and drag and drop files within the drive. If you’ve got unused space in your Gmail account, why not add some more space to your hard drive?

21. GTD Inbox — the email solution for productivity nuts, GTD Inbox is a Firefox extension designed to merge the “Getting Things Done” productivity method with Gmail. It transforms Gmail into a productivity hub you can use to set and manage tasks or to-dos. The interface is very subtle and won’t interrupt the look and feel of Gmail as you know it.

22. Better Gmail 2 — this simple and elegant Firefox extension, authored by Gina Trapani, makes several improvements to Gmail’s core functionality, allowing you to hide the ever-annoying Spam count, compose Mailto links in Gmail and view your storage quota as a useful graph. If you’re still using the old version of Gmail, you’ll need to download the original Better Gmail extension.

23. Gmail Music — this nifty little web-based GUI app allows you to store MP3 files in your Gmail account and play them on any computer.

24. Dragdropupload — a Firefox extension that does away with the pesky ‘Browse’ interface. It enables drag and drop email attachments to make the process quick and painless.

25. Gmail Skins — a Firefox extension to customize the color of your Gmail inbox.

Suggest your favorite skins, resources and tools in the comments section!