Tag Archives | E-Mail

Google’s (Unpleasant, Heavy-Handed) Father’s Day Surprise

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 20, 2011 at 10:46 am

To celebrate Father’s Day, Google inserted a line underneath the Google Voice calling feature in Gmail’s Chat feature: “Reminder: Call dad.” Sounds innocuous, huh?

Well, no. Some people who don’t have dads were understandably upset by the note. Eventually, most of us won’t have a dad to call; I’m surprised that nobody at Google figured out that the message would be at best irrelevant and at worst an unhappy little moment for a meaningful percentage of Gmail users.

Companies like Hallmark and 1-800-Flowers presumably don’t worry much about Father’s Day and Mother’s Day advertising hurting anyone’s feelings. But Google’s “reminder,” while promotional in nature, was presented as a task-like item within a piece of Web-based productivity software. That made it feel more personal. It also involved Google futzing around with an application used by millions of people. Microsoft wouldn’t insert a Father’s Day requirement reminder into Outlook–and even though Outlook is a paid product and Gmail isn’t, Google crossed a boundary which it apparently didn’t realize existed.

It’s a safe bet that Google won’t commemorate Father’s Day or Mother’s Day in this particular way again. But I hope it comes away from this with another lesson: it needs to tread gingerly when it comes to messing around with Gmail and other apps for any reason except making them better. And sometimes even then.

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What’s Gotten Into Gmail?

Posted by Jared Newman on May 27, 2011 at 1:55 pm

My, how hyperactive Gmail has become.

Google’s web mail service just rolled out a “people widget,” which shows information about the person you’re e-mailing right next to the message, but that’s not the only change we’ve seen recently in Gmail. Here’s a quick rundown of other changes:

  • Importance Markers: Like a light version of Gmail’s priority inbox, these little yellow tabs attempt to decipher which e-mails are truly important. You can help the algorithm out by using plus and minus markers in the top navigation bar.
  • AIM in GChat: AOL now lets Instant Messenger users migrate their buddies to Gmail’s chat service. You can add individual buddies by typing their screen names followed by “@aol.com,” or add everyone by choosing “options” in AIM, clicking “Add to Buddy List” and selecting “Set up Google Talk.”
  • Advanced advertisements: Google’s been rolling out a new automated ad system for Gmail that looks not only at the content of e-mails, but at whether the user is reading or deleting messages. The idea is to make ads smarter by pinning down the user’s main interests.

I don’t know what’s going on in the Googleplex, but Yahoo, meanwhile, has been rolling out its own big upgrades for Yahoo Mail, and they’re quite nice. Perhaps Google is rapidly releasing its own new features to stay competitive, or maybe it’s just coincidence.

Whatever the case, I don’t find any of Gmail’s recent changes intrusive or offensive, but they’re not game-changers, either. And that’s okay; I like Gmail just the way it is.

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The New Yahoo Mail: Quite Nice!

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 24, 2011 at 7:42 pm

Yahoo has started rolling out the new version of Yahoo Mail it’s been beta-testing since last fall. I’ve been playing with it for awhile and mostly enjoying the experience. It’s a very credible Webmail client–similar in general feel and some particulars to Hotmail’s 2010 update. If, like me, you spend most of your time in Gmail (and aren’t 100% happy with the experience) it’s kind of refreshing to spend time in an alternative which is quite different in approach.

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Office 365 Public Beta: A Web-Based Way to “Go Microsoft”

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 18, 2011 at 10:58 am

Last October, Microsoft announced Office 365, a new product (replacing something called the Business Productivity Office Suite, or BPOS) that ties together an array of offerings into one Web-hosted service. Today, it’s launching a public beta, which you can sign up for at Office365.com. It’s letting folks into the service in batches, so expect a bit of a wait until you can try it out; the final version should go live later this year.

Office 365 enters the market as the instant archrival of Google’s Google Apps, but the two services are anything but exact counterparts. Philosophically, they’re at odds: Google Apps is based on the idea that you’ll do most or all of your work using Web-based apps, resorting to a traditional suite such as Microsoft Office either not at all or only in a pinch. (Google continues to acknowledge that many businesses aren’t ready to dump Office by introducing features designed to make Apps and Office work better together.)

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Hotmail’s Active Views Get More Active

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 29, 2011 at 9:19 am

When Microsoft rolled out its major Hotmail upgrade last year, one big new feature was Active Views–the ability for Hotmail to do stuff such as as display Hulu videos and Flickr slideshows right in your inbox, as well as identify e-mails with shipping-service tracking numbers in them and show the package’s status. Today the company is announcing some additional Active View capabilities that let Web companies produce e-mails that behave a whole lot like Web pages. The idea, as before, is to let Hotmail users take action on e-mails without having to hop out of Hotmail at all.

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Google Docs Viewer Adds More Formats

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 18, 2011 at 2:25 pm

One of Gmail’s best, least high-profile features is the Google Docs Viewer, which does a very solid job of displaying the contents of file attachments without requiring you to download them or have the appropriate application installed. (Its PDF support is so nicely done that I rarely download Acrobat files anymore.) And now Google is adding support for a dozen more formats, from the essential (Excel) to the surprisingly arcane (fonts in TTF format).

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Hotmail Brings E-Mail Aliases to the Masses

Posted by Ed Oswald on February 3, 2011 at 11:58 pm

The tech-savvy among us know its completely possible to have a single physical email address, yet be able to make it appear as if we have more through the use of an alias. Well, enter Microsoft, which is bringing this to the masses in the form of what it’s calling throwaway e-mail addresses.

Possible uses for this are almost limitless: For example, you can create an alias to give to untrusted web sites, then create a rule to forward all those potential e-mails to a specific folder to keep your inbox unclogged. Got a less than professional e-mail address? Hide it with a much more dignified one.

“The average person maintains three different email addresses,” Windows Live product management director Dharmesh Mehta reported. He added the updates save the user time by allowing one account to appear as many, rather than the need to maintain several disparate accounts.

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I Still Can’t Use Both My Gmail Accounts at Once

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 14, 2010 at 5:24 pm

I have two Gmail accounts: a personal one and a Google Apps one (at Technologizer.com) which I use for work. The fact that I can’t be logged into both at one time in the same browser is a hassle. I’d hoped today’s introduction of a Gmail feature that lets you grant access to another user (including yourself, at another Gmail account) would fix this. But it turns out you can only let in e-mail accounts at the same domain, so the new feature doesn’t help me. (When I’m on a Mac, I use a program called Mailplane to hop back and forth between the two accounts with one click.)

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