Early this month, Google offered military families free $10 international call credits. The goal was to help soldiers deployed around the world stay in touch with their loved ones. Now, Google’s also set to make it easier for ordinary U.S. citizens to save money when chatting, as it’s offered free calling in Gmail through the end of next year.
A post on the Official Gmail Blog explained this afternoon, "When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we’re extending free calling for all of 2011."
That may be a generous offer. Google hasn’t shared a lot of stats about how many people place calls through Gmail, but there are definitely more than a few (one million calls were placed in the first 24 hours), and adoption rates are sure to increase over time. Letting folks ring an acquaintance up whenever they please is a bold move.
The two semi-catches: the blog post noted that, as before, "Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users." And calls placed to foreign countries other than Canada should continue to cost a tiny bit (perhaps around $0.02 per minute).
Have fun calling folks for free if you live in America and want to chat with another U.S. citizen, at least.
The HTML5 version of the mobile Gmail app hasn’t exactly been friendly towards non-American users to date; English (and indeed what Google calls "U.S. English") was the only language in which it was available. Now, however, Google’s addressed the problem in a big way.
Today, there are 44 new languages on the figurative table, and that should account for the vast majority of people who are likely to own a smartphone. An Android device or anything running a recent version of iOS, in fact.
So here’s the full list: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK and American), Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian (Bokmal), Polish, Portuguese (for both Portugal and Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish (for both Spain and South America), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
A post on the Official Google Blog also explained, "If your phone’s default language is one of those listed, go to gmail.com in your phone’s browser and the new interface will appear in your language automatically. . . . You’ll get a bunch of new goodies including offline support, smart links (titles will appear in links for Google Maps, YouTube and Google Docs), the ability to add and remove labels, layout improvements and more – in addition to the existing features like starring, better threaded conversations and search."
This development should help Google win quite a few more fans in the international community.
Google announced the launch of Gmail for Android 2.3.2, which brings Gmail’s well-received Priority Inbox feature to mobile.
"While Priority Inbox on your Android phone doesn’t have all the features offered in the desktop version of Gmail, we think this is a good start and plan to add even more functionality moving forward," says Paul Westbrook of Google’s Gmail for Android team.
One advantage the feature has in this mobile version, however, is that you can set it up so your phone will notify, vibrate, or ring only when you get "important mail".
Earlier this week, Google started providing desktop Priority Inbox users with more information about how the feature determines the importance of emails. Users can hover over the "importance marker" to see an explanation.
In addition to that, Google said it has made Priority Inbox more responsive to manual corrections, meaning the system should learn more quickly about your priority preferences as you manually indicate them.
We talked about what the trend of email providers offering advanced filtering could mean for marketers here.
To activate the feature on Android, go to menu > Settings > Priority Inbox while using the Gmail app. The new version of the app requires Android 2.2 (Froyo) or above, and is available in most countries.
It also comes with a couple more updates, such as letting you switch between reply, reply all, and forward while composing a response message, the ability to send mail from addresses from other webmail providers you use and have configured on the desktop version of Gmail, and the ability to respond to messages in-line.
Several months ago, Google launched Gmail Priority Inbox. It was very well received. "Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the ‘spam’ folder," explained Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen upon the product’s release. "But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important…"
The point of the Priority Inbox is to place priority on the "more important" messages. For those who have been using it, it would appear that a lot of time is being saved.
"Since then, we’ve heard from a number of you who’ve found it helpful in combating information overload, and we’ve seen evidence of this in aggregate too," says Engineering Manager Pal Takacsi-Nagy. "Looking at median time in conversation view, we noticed that typical Priority Inbox users spend 43% more time reading important mail compared to unimportant, and 15% less time reading email overall as compared to Gmail users who don’t use Priority Inbox."
Google is now providing users with more information about how it determines the importance of emails in Priority Inbox. Now when users hover over the "importance marker" they’ll see an explanation.
Google says it has also made the feature more responsive to manual corrections. This means the system will supposedly learn more quickly about user priority preferences as the user manually indicates them.
As it stands right now, users must activate Priority Inbox under Settings within Gmail. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a standard default feature of the service in the future. Facebook recently launched its own new messaging system, which employs similar principles in filtering/prioritizing messages it deems more important.
While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flat out said that his new product wasn’t a Gmail killer, others believe Gmail should indeed be worried. If Google feels threatened enough by Facebook’s service, it could very well implement Priority Inbox as a default feature so more users realize the similarities. Of course that’s not all there is to Facebook’s product, which brings in email, text messages, and Facebook messages into a single inbox.
One question that remains is how this shift to email prioritizing will affect email marketers and those providing legitimate opt-in email messages to users (newsletters, deals, etc.). As far as Facebook’s product, I’ve speculated that we may see a shift in businesses utilizing personal profiles more to actually become "friends" with customers and get into the highest-priority inbox. This would be easier said than done, because it would involve really becoming engaged with customers (which is what social media marketing is supposed to be all about anyway). That means more conversation and less one-way messaging. It also means authenticity.
As far as Gmail’s Priority Inbox goes, news of increased explanation and quick learning of user preferences could actually help legitimate email marketers, newsletter publishers, etc. Users want to receive these messages. That’s why they opted in. If the system better understands this, and users better understand how to make the system realize this, opens could increase. It should be noted that users should still receive the messages regardless, but if they’re not prioritized, they could get buried among other messages, depending on how much email users get.
That said, it’s going to take providing great content to keep users wanting to receive such messages. This has always been the case, but this should be considered a wake up call to email marketers. If the content isn’t quality, why would users wish to prioritize it?
You can likely expect more and more email services to offer similar features as Internet users continue to look for ways to organize an increasing amount of content consumption.
Google said today it is offering a free $10 calling credit during the holidays to military families in an effort to help them keep in touch with their loved ones serving abroad.
The Gmail Blog offers more details. “These international call credits can be used to make calls with Google Voice or from right inside Gmail, and will provide families with roughly 30 minutes of call time to Afghanistan, 60 minutes to Iraq, or hundreds of minutes to many countries in Europe and around the world.”
To make the free calling credit possible, Google partnered with Blue Star Families and Sesame Street Family Connections, two organizations focused on supporting service members and their families.
To be eligible for $10 calling credits, military family members must:
1. Be a member of either Blue Star Families or Sesame Street Family Connections — registration is free for all military families
2. Provide their Gmail address
3. Enable calling in Gmail and accept the terms of service OR have an existing Google Voice account
4. Complete this registration form by December 22, 2010
You’ve no doubt heard or read about Facebook’s new messaging announcement this week. If not, the company announced a new messaging system to combine email, SMS, IM, Chat, and other forms of online communication, bringing them into one inbox. Along with this comes @facebook.com email addresses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the system as "starting from scratch" as opposed to being a Facebook email product.
Pat Matthews, SVP of RackSpace‘s cloud computing business, which includes business email, shared some thoughts with us about the impact Facebook’s new offering will have on the email industry. RackSpace itself powers business email for over 2 million users.
"I don’t think Facebook will encroach on business mail, at least not anytime soon, mostly because of the security and privacy implications," Matthews tells WebProNews. "Facebook is very consumer oriented and I don’t see this crossing into business anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg has specifically stated the company is all about consumers. His focus is leading them to greatness."
"I do think consumer mail is at risk," he adds. "Consumers live in Facebook, not on Google. I think that Gmail and AOL should be worried."
Still, Google has Google Apps going for it, which it has now expanded to encompass most of the company’s offerings. That could play a significant role in keeping businesses using Google, though Gmail has always been a part of Google Apps. I have to wonder if Google’s news wasn’t somehow spurred by Facebook’s.
"Facebook users will use Facebook mail as an extension of their already popular messaging services," says Matthews. "I have no doubt this will be extremely popular."
"Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the planet," he adds. "I think that they will influence all types of applications, business and consumer."
It’s no secret that businesses are already placing a great deal of emphasis on reaching Facebook users, and it will be very interesting to see the impact the new messaging system has on their strategies. I’ve already speculated that we’ll start seeing more businesses utilizing personal profiles to try and get into Facebook users’ primary inboxes (as the system filters messages that aren’t from "friends" into a secondary inbox).
Social media and email have been getting closer and closer with one another for some time already. "In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner, who predicts 20% of employees will use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014.
"Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles," she said. "However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”"
When asked what Facebook’s new system means for the larger trend of social networking and email converging, Matthews told WebProNews, "Consumers want one view for many things but they also want very different views for their personal and business lives. This is why I really think Gmail should be worried."
It is worth noting that our conversation with Matthews took place before Google’s announcement, so I’ll have to find out if this changes his opinion on that. Update: He says, "They are proving they’re worried by doing this. All of these apps already existed so I doubt this move will make that big of an impact. The main thing Google needs to worry about is the fact that people are living their personal lives inside Facebook. They’re going to want their personal email and apps where they already live."
Rumor has it that Facebook will unveil its webmail product on Monday. That means look out Yahoo Mail. Look out Hotmail, and more interestingly in the grand scheme of things, look out Gmail.
I was going to wait until the official announcement from Facebook on Monday to talk about this, so we can get all the real details about what this will entail, but as long as the cat’s out of the bag, we might as well talk about what this might mean.
What would a Facebook email address mean to you?Comment here.
Should Google Be Worried?
According to unnamed sources cited by TechCrunch, the company will announce what it is referring to internally as its "Gmail killer". It would appear more than obvious who the real target is here, and if Facebook plays it right, Gmail, which reportedly has about 170 million users, may be in a world of hurt up against Facebook’s more than half a billion.
As the tech community still awaits Google’s next social moves (the "social layers" they’re supposedly adding to existing products) Facebook appears to be going straight for what is arguably Google’s greatest social asset. Gmail is the main hub of communication and social activity in the Google universe. If the need for that is eliminated by Facebook, where many of these users are already spending a great deal of their online time anyway (as well as building their real social circles of real world friends), what will they really need Gmail for?
A lot of sites require you to give an email address to sign up for their services. This is one reason that social networks can’t replace email. However, when a social network offers that email, it’s a different story.
Why Facebook Email Could Be Useful
Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz makes some interesting points about what a Facebook webmail service could mean. "Remember that Facebook’s mail is rumored to have external mail client access as well as its dedicated webmail interface," he writes. "It will be easy to have it in every single gadget you own."
"Moreover, it’s not only about separating what is important and what is not," he later adds. "Their tracking data could allow them to do other things, like prioritizing mail from the person who just became your fiance or lowering the priority of that ex who keeps mailing you. They can also let you enable easy filtering options to automatically prioritize your mail and file it into separate boxes. The possibilities of using your social interactions to enhance the mail experience are endless, and I have no doubt that Facebook will exploit all of them to your (and their) advantage."
Facebook Trying to Become Email?
Such a move by Facebook is not entirely unexpected. This has been rumored for the better part of the year, but it is still somewhat curious, considering comments made earlier this year by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who basically called email all but dead (a point we argued with rigorously in this article).
Facebook knows how important email is. Or is the company simply trying to phase email out? If they can get everyone using Facebook email, the way they’ve gotten so many to use its service in general, they can begin to control the way that feature works, and could conceivably just merge it with other features to the point where people just find themselves using "Facebook" to communicate and sign in everywhere. Is Facebook trying to BE email?
This will never happen completely (meaning they will never get EVERYBODY), but if the email feature gets the kind of adoption Facebook in general has, it might be enough to where it doesn’t make much difference. Right now, technically not EVERYONE is on Facebook, but for all intents and purposes, everyone’s on Facebook.
There will no doubt be plenty of privacy concerns about this, for the simple fact that Facebook has drawn so many in the past. It doesn’t matter how well they actually do honor privacy with this. Some people will just be too nervous to completely commit all their private email information to Facebook.
It will be very interesting to see how Facebook email affects email marketing, particularly if the type of thing Diaz is talking about comes to fruition – relevance/priority of messages determined by social interaction.
An Unlimited Amount of Useful Features?
One positive thing about having your email right in Facebook is that it would eliminate the problem of having to check both your email and Facebook separately. There are already various integrations where you can do these things from a single place, but having it all compact right in Facebook could be a more attractive experience for a lot of users.
Another potentially positive aspect of Facebook email could be the sheer amount of features that that users could gain access to. If you were able to utilize different apps built by third-party developers to change the functionality of your inbox, that could be very powerful.
Gmail users love Gmail Labs – when Google launches new experimental features – but imagine having the whole Facebook developer community building different features for your inbox that you can turn on and off. It could make for a much more personalized and customized experience, allowing users to make their inbox as useful as possible.
It Makes Sense.
In many ways, Facebook email would make a lot of sense, in the same way Facebook payments make sense. You’re already signing into things all over the web your Facebook account, this is one more thing to add to the mix.
As long as you are able to take your messages with you, should you be want to close your Facebook account, there are a lot of potential advantages. We don’t know if this is the case or not, however, at this point. This is why I initially wanted to wait for the actual announcement.
Either way, here’s some ideas to chew on over the weekend. We’ll no doubt be discussing this more next week.
Would you use a Facebook email service as your primary email account? Let us know.
Google has been rolling out new features for Gmail in mobile Safari for the iPhone. They’ve sped up scrolling to reflect the speed of the swipe gesture, and the toolbars stay on the screen while the user is scrolling, as opposed to moving down into view after each scroll.
Google’s plan was to make Gmail feel more like a native app on the iPhone. "Being able to access your toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage your email and move around the app," says user experience designer Brett Lider. "f you use Gmail in your mobile browser a lot, you may have noticed that we recently tried several different variations of these buttons."
The changes are visible when going to Gmail.com from the browser on the iPhone or iPod Touch devices running Apple’s iOS 4. Right now, it’s only available in English.
Gmail is one of the clear ways (besides search), where Google can stay in front of users who prefer Apple’s devices to Google’s Android devices, and this will be particularly important as Google ramps up its social strategy. Google wants to keep iPhone users happy, even if they’re going to their competitor for the mobile operating system.
So why not make its apps as iPhone-friendly as possible? Google is also encouraging users to add Gmail to their Home Screens. They’re also reaching out to users, encouraging feedback on their forum or on Twitter with the hashtag #gmailmobile.
Making the product as appealing as possible across as many devices as possible is just common sense. It will be interesting, however, to see if Gmail for Android-based tablets gets any special treatment, compared to the iPad version.
Airline Virgin America said today it is moving its operating systems into the cloud with Google Apps and will use Gmail as its email provider.
Virgin America said the move to Gmail will improve its productivity for its more than 1,700 employees and it will help to streamline its IT infrastructure.
“Google answers our data, connectivity and security needs better than any other system. Our business model is based on staying ahead of the competition by remaining flexible and efficient, said said Ravi Simhambhatla, Chief Information Officer for Virgin America.
“Google Apps allow us to do just that, so we can upgrade based on the latest technology, and not be confined by budget or staffing to out-of-date systems. Once you have Google Apps, you have the most recent version."
Virgin said it is transitioning all of its employees across North America to Gmail. The airline said all of its employees will have made the sift to Gmail by November 10.
"With Google Apps and on-board WiFi, Virgin America teammates now have their office in the clouds wherever their final destination may be,” said said Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise product management director.
Google is launching a new option in Gmail that lets users turn of conversation threads. This is a feature that was innovative when Google released its popular email service years ago, but not everyone has been a fan of this style of email communication.
I’m not sure why it’s taken Google so long to offer a setting to turn the feature off, but better late than never, I suppose, for those who aren’t fans.
It’s a smart move, because it could entice some people to use Gmail, who have resisted the service based on conversation threads. I’m guessing some have, and this is another reason the move seems pretty overdue.
Gmail is one of Google’s most powerful weapons in the realm of social, which the company is putting an increased emphasis on now. It is in Google’s best interest for as many people to like Gmail as possible. I suspect Gmail will play an increasingly central role across Google’s whole universe as it adds social layers to more of its products, and places more emphasis on Google accounts/profiles.
This is a seemingly minor change that could have significant ramifications.
To adjust the setting, simply go to settings, find "Conversation view" and turn it on/off. Google will be rolling out the feature over the next several days.
Google has released a new version of the Gmail app for in the Android Market. The company says Gmail updates are no longer tied to Android version releases, though the update does require Froyo (Android 2.2).
Now you can get new Gmail stuff faster without having to wait for system updates. To start you off, we’ve improved message replies, access to quoted text, and more," says the Gmail for Android team. "As you scroll through a conversation, your most important message actions will now stick to the top of the screen, one click away, no matter how long the email is."
For long threads, users can now view previous message content more easily, similar to the desktop version of Gmail. You can tap "show quoted text" to see the previous message.
Users who have enabled Priority Inbox from the desktop version will see an "Important" label that shows all messages flagged as important. An "Important" shortcut can be added to the homescreen as well.
Google introduced a new feature in Gmail Labs today for video chat enhancement. If you turn the feature on, your video chat experience will come with higher resolution.
Chances are, the feature will be automatic in the future. Google says by using it, you’ll be getting a preview before its turned on for everyone.
"The higher resolution video uses a new playback mechanism which enables widescreen VGA and frees up valuable resources on your computer," says product manager Serge Lachapelle. "For it to work, both you and the person you’re chatting with will need to have the lab turned on. Remember that you can always revert to standard video chat by disabling the lab."
Google says it plans to add additional video chat enhancements to the lab in the future. Having the lab turned on will mean getting those features first as well.
The lab is simply called "Video chat enhancements". You can turn it on in the labs tab under settings in Gmail.
Last week, the New York Times reported that Bit.ly lead scientist Hilary Mason had created a customized email classification system for Gmail that prioritizes her email by which she should read first. She said that she hoped to release the code for it this fall, so others could take advantage.
Now, Google has released its own new Gmail feature called Priority Inbox, also with the goal of prioritizing your email. This is in beta.
"Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the ‘spam’ folder," says Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen. "But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important—bologna, or ‘bacn.’ So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this ‘bologna’ from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules."
With Priority Inbox, the inbox is split into three sections: "Important and unread," "Starred" and "Everything".
"As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important," explains Aberdeen. "Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)"
This all sounds very similar to Mason’s own system. Actually, MG Siegler notes that a reference to "Magic Inbox" in Gmail’s code was discovered back in May 2009, which seemed to hint at such a feature.
Google says Priority Inbox will roll out to all Gmail users over the next week or so. You’ll see a message about it in the top-right corner of Gmail when you have it.
Google announced (via Twitter) that over 1,000,000 people placed calls from Gmail within just 24 hours. This feature began rolling out yesterday (and as far as I can tell isn’t even finished yet).
"Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers," says Google software engineer Robin Schriebman. "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?’"
Google tested the feature internally before releasing it to the public (in the U.S. so far). When users with Google Voice numbers call people, that number will display as the caller ID.
Along with the launch, the company showed off some phone booths it will be setting up in universities and airports. Danny Sullivan got to peek inside one:
The phone booths should go a long way in showing off this feature and familiarizing people with Google Voice in general, which seems to be the company’s real goal.
Clearly there is an interest in making phone calls from Gmail, as the numbers from the first day indicate.
Earlier, it was reported that Google was testing a feature that would let you make and receive phone calls from within Gmail. It turns out, this wasn’t just a test.
Google has now officially announced that this is indeed a feature of Gmail. It is being rolled out in the U.S. starting today.
"Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers," says Google software engineer Robin Schriebman. "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?’"
"We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant, to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception," says Schriebman.
When users with Google Voice numbers call people, that number will display as the caller ID to the other person.
Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year, Google says. Other calls will be based on these Google Voice rates.
Look for "Call Phones" to appear in the chat section of Gmail. You can also look for Google Phone booths to appear on college campuses and in airports.
Google is reportedly testing a new voice calling service that would reside in Gmail on the desktop. Tom Krazit at CNET says the service is launched from the Google Chat window within Gmail, and allows users to place and receive calls from within their contacts.
"Google has been edging in this direction for some time," he writes. "Google Talk was released years ago as a VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) desktop client, and it has also spent a lot of time and money evangelizing Google Voice, a service that transcribes voice mails and allows users to have one phone number that rings multiple phones."
Earlier in the year, we learned of a desktop app for Google Voice based on Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5, but putting such a service directly in Gmail would be news.
The official word from Google is the obligatory, "Google is always testing new features and products, but we have nothing specific to announce right now."
The company is also testing an auto-refreshing version of Gmail for the iPhone, according to TechCrunch.
Google announced today that it has updated its Google Mobile iPhone app to push notifications from users’ Google accounts to their phones. Now, an icon badge will show when you’ve got new mail in Gmail or when a reminder for a Google Calendar event comes up.
The badge will appear right on the home screen.
"We’ve also added spiffy features to get you information faster — when looking for flight info, weather, stock quotes or currency conversion you’ll see answers before you even hit ‘Search’," says Google engineering manager David Singleton.
Google launched an updated version of Google Mobile for the iPhone in December, with a redesigned search results display that showed more results at once. It also opens web pages from the results within the app, a change from the previous version. It also came with Voice Search and My Location.
Today’s release builds on these features integrating more of the overall Google experience with the device. This could prove to be key once Google reveals its plans for the rumored "Google Me".
About 22 months ago, Google launched a voice and video chat feature within Gmail, allowing many people to have live, face-to-face conversations with their friends and colleagues. Now, a few more folks – Linux users – will finally be permitted to take advantage of it, too.
Late yesterday, Tristan Schmelcher, a software engineer, wrote on the Gmail Blog, "If you’ve been wanting to use voice and video chat on Linux (our top video chat request), then we have good news for you: it’s now available!"
Schmelcher then spilled some specifics by continuing, "Visit gmail.com/videochat to download the plugin and get started. Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon."
This development represents a respectable nod to the Linux community if you believe in the phrase "better late than never." And it’s not like Google could have improved the situation by waiting longer.
Still, it’s hard to imagine Linux users aren’t feeling a little underappreciated due to the 22-month delay, so the matter of how quickly RPM support does (or doesn’t) arrive will bear watching.
Going forward, Google might want to do a better job of keeping the latest versions of other products and services available to Linux users, as well.
Google has released a new "stacked card" interface for Gmail on the iPad. What this does is allow for selecting and managing multiple conversations.
"In the past, performing actions on selected conversations was awkward," says Google Mobile software engineering intern Liam Asher Segel-Brown. "There were two similar toolbars on the screen: one on the bottom left and the other on the top right. The former affected the selected conversations, while the latter affected the currently open conversation. Since the toolbars’ buttons looked similar, it was easy to mistakenly use the wrong toolbar. Sound confusing? It was."
"In the new interface, selected conversations are displayed stacked on the right panel for easy organizing, archiving or deleting," he says. "The second toolbar is gone so it’s always clear which conversations you’re working with."
Google released a new Gmail Labs feature today that lets you search across email and Google Docs. If you turn it on and search from the Gmail search box, you will simply get results from both places, when applicable.
"Where is that presentation? Was it attached to an email? Or in Google Docs? If you’re not sure, you may end up searching several places with the same query in order to find it. With the new ‘Apps Search’ lab, we just made that all a bit simpler," writes Google software engineer Bram Moolenaar.
"You may notice that mail results show up just as fast as before while non-mail results may take a tiny bit longer. That way, if you’re just looking for an email, having this lab enabled won’t slow you down," adds Moolenaar.
The feature also comes with "did you mean?" suggestions.
Given that the feature is a Gmail Labs experiment, it is subject to bugs, so keep this in mind if you turn it on. The feature can be turned on by going to Gmail settings, and clicking the "labs" tab. From there find "Apps Search".
A Googler, by the name of Paul Truong (Creative Technologist) has created a game based on his love for Gmail. The game was created with HTML5, and runs a little choppy in Firefox.
The Gmail game is a throwback to arcade games of yesteryear in which you’re a spaceship flying around, shooting various flying objects. You know the kind – Galaga, Stinger, Lifeforce, and probably dozens of others.
The boss is some Android-looking object made out of a bird cage that swings spiked balls at you, though doesn’t appear to be able to get to you if you’re at the bottom of the screen. Not incredibly challenging, but I don’t think they intend to turn this into a moneymaker.
"Webmail has come a long way in the past few years but it’s all too easy to take for granted practically unlimited inbox capacities and responsive interfaces backed by the power of search," says Truong. "While I’m not on the Gmail team, I felt a little celebration of how far we’ve come was in order, so I wrote a little HTML5 game, in part as a ‘thank you’ to the Gmail team for their ongoing work to improve the webmail galaxy. If you’re into games, or just like the idea of flying m-velopes that shoot bad guys, give it a try (make sure you’re using a modern browser that supports HTML5 first)."
Part Gmail promotion, part Chrome promotion, part waste of time (no offense to Truong). Check it out if you’re really bored.
A post on the 
Virgin America said the move to Gmail will improve its productivity for its more than 1,700 employees and it will help to streamline its IT infrastructure. 
Earlier in the year, 
