Google Releases Gmail Notifier

Philipp Lenssen writes "After several unofficial, screen-scraping Gmail utilities, Google now released the official Gmail Notifier (Beta) for Windows. It will sit in the Windows tray, alerting you of new emails in your account (if you are lucky enough to have one already). Additionally, the Gmail Notifier can connect 'mailto:'-links in web pages to Gmail."

Comments

this is awesome

[m2bord]

this is just one of the tools i've been waiting for. now if only gmail could have a "save as draft" feature...i can switch from my current webmail provider to gmail.

Re:this is awesome

[brotherscrim]

just send the email to yourself.

Re:this is awesome

[periol]

right. like all those times when gmail is down.

if the service goes down for a bit, fine. don't make me leave stuff running on my computer until gmail comes back up so i don't lose emails. until there's a 'save as draft' feature or gmail NEVER goes down, it just won't cut it.

Re:this is awesome

[Red Alastor]

Well... I *never* saw gmail going down. The worst that I saw was a weird error on logout that lasted for a day but that didn't caused problem to use my account.

They are working on it and meanwhile, why don't you save your mails on text files on your computer ?

Re:this is awesome

[brotherscrim]

I'm afraid I don't follow you here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have to click "save as draft" in order for it to work? With my suggestion, you click "send." It's not really all that different.

Re:this is awesome

[natron 2.0]

A similar tool has been around for a while now as a Mozilla/Firefox extension. I think I will just stick with that one for now...

Re:this is awesome

[nocomment]

Does it work in Linux? Got a URL? ps. I've been sitting on a gmail invite for awhile and can't seem to find someone to give it too. If you want it, just drop me a note.

Re:this is awesome

[slaad]

I'm just waiting for some reliability. Gmail has been good to me, except a few weeks ago I couldn't so much as connect to the site at all for about 6 days. I won't really trust the service until I see beta removed from the title (which may be a while if it's anything like google news....)

Re:this is awesome

[Apro im]

I'd love one.

Re:this is awesome

[Seek_1]

>> or gmail NEVER goes down, it just won't cut it.

beta
/bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n.
1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in': `in beta'. In the Real World, systems (hardware or software) software often go through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky (or unlucky) trusted customers.
2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving judgment.
3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously buggy).

Re:this is awesome

[natron 2.0]

here you go...

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php? application=firefox&id=173&vid=331

Re:this is awesome

[allan_q]

There was a workaround posted on the Gmail-Users Google Group

[quote]

1. make a contact that has the name 'save' with the email address USERNAME+save@gmail.com
2. make a lable called 'save'
3. create a filter that auto-archives and lable's the messages from USERNAME+save@gmail.com.

Since the messages get auto archived, they skip your inbox. If you want to recall drafts just click on the 'save' lable.

Now, inorder to save a draft, just type 'save' into the "TO" field and send the message.

[/quote]

Re:this is awesome

[Izago909]

This is a nice to that makes a "Compose GMail" option when you click a mailto: link.

This is the GMail Notifier that I think the parent was referring to. It displays the simple text "Gmail" at the bottom right of the browser window by the down button on the scroll bar. Hovering over it displays the number of unread emails, single clicking it opens gmail in a new tab, and double clicking lets you add, change, ir remove gmail login info. You should know that Google has blocked this program at least twice before so don't be alarmed if it stops working, just keep an eye on the webpage for a newer version.

Also, another neat google plugin displays a thumbnail to the left of many search results. It too displays the simple text "GP" near the bottom right scroll button. Single click it to turn it on and off again.

If you still have that invite, I could use one. My friend just finished his tour of duty in the air force and a bit jealous that I have a gmail account and he doesn't.

Re:this is awesome

[Izago909]

That's the old, non-functional version. Please go to the homepage and get the latest one.

Re:this is awesome

[inaeldi]

Did you get an email invite from him? If not, I have one too that I've been trying to get rid of.

Re:this is awesome

[ssssmemyself]

Actually, it's not all that awesome for me. You see, it appears to be for Windoze 2000, XP, or newer. I'm posting this from good old 98SE. What could possibly break compatibility is beyond my comprehension. Do they use transparency with their notifier? (most other apps make that optional to ensure compatibility) However, they say they are working on versions for other operating systems, so by the alpha or final release stage, I may be in luck.

Re:this is awesome

[cortana]

You know, you *can* just click 'back', copy your email and paste it into a text file...

You got mail!

[cwebb1977]

When will it learn to say "You got mail!" ?

Re:You got mail!

[ack154]

You mean "You've got Gmail!" right?

Re:You got mail!

[houghi]

Probably more like "You've G'mail!"

Re:You got mail!

[allism]

When will it learn to say "You got mail!" ?

When the IQ of the gmail users drops by about 50 points?

Re:You got mail!

[bloxnet]

Actually, it sort of can. A long time ago I had my outlook configured to play a wav of a girl saying "Die Bitch"...but I turned it off a short while ago.

Well, I installed the Gmail notifier, forgot how loud my speakers were set, and heard

"DIE BITCH" loud enough to make me spill my drink as I watched email notification pop ups in the right hand corner of my screen.

So as a warning to others and a reply to you...the notifier will play sounds for incoming mail.

For me, this article was a great and amusing way to start my Friday. Now I may buy a couple shares of Google stock!

Re:You got mail!

[wo1verin3]

Okay...... why on earth did you use a real e-mail address if you were using a name like that? You won't give them your name but you'll give them your e-mail? oi.

Re:You got mail!

[mgblst]

So about the same time that I get an account...

new mail notification sound

[ack154]

From the FAQ, it also says that it can play a sound when new mail arrives. And that sound is actually just the Windows New Mail Notification sound in the Control Panel.

And it's been mentioned before, but I still think the Gmail Loader is still a handy utility. I'm migrating a lot of my mail and accounts in to Gmail and this thing was a huge help.

Re:new mail notification sound

[kzinti]

And it's been mentioned before, but I still think the Gmail Loader is still a handy utility.

Does the Gmail Loader still have the limitation that the date that appears on any uploaded e-mail in Gmail is the date of its upload, not the date of its original sending? If not (and I don't see how it could, as that problem must lie on the Gmail side), then it's hardly worth using. What's the point of uploading twelve years of e-mail to Gmail if you can't tell it "Show me all mail from March of 1996" and get the right answer?

Importing mail from past archives is a big item on my wish list for Gmail. The Gmail Loader is a huge step in that direction, but until Google fixes the date problem, it doesn't do me any good.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Hogwash McFly]

Does anyone else think that a text-to-speech program would be useful and straightforward extension for a mail notifier, in the context of reading out mail subjects?

I know that existing notifiers can just print the subject text and sender in a little box in the corner of the screen but I'm thinking it would be more suited to when you're not at the computer - you don't want to be dragged back to the desk after hearing the little ding just to read some spam or FW!FW!FW! crap.

It'd be like having Stephen Hawking as your secretary.

"You have a new message. Subject: Your gas bill payment is now due"

Re:new mail notification sound

[ack154]

Yes, it does still have that limitation. And yes, it does seem to be on the Gmail side and I'm pretty sure there isn't much that can be done about it (short of Gmail making an import mail utility to function correctly).

But ya, it does kind of suck. But when I imported my stuff, I'm just importing old mail and I really don't care what the date is (for searching or not) - because if I want to refer to any of it, I'll just be searching by it's content.

Re:new mail notification sound

[88NoSoup4U88]

Don't you think that your co-workers would be a bit amazed hearing Stephen Hawking say 'Do you need a bigger penis ?' from out of your cubicle ? :D

Re:new mail notification sound

[UnrefinedLayman]

This screenshot seems to show that it will show the appropriate date on the messages.

Re:new mail notification sound

[flushtwice]

And exactly how is a text to speech program supposed to pronounce words like "V!4GR4", "X4|\|!X", etcetera? That seems like it would be an annoying sound.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Threni]

> it can play a sound when new mail arrives.

Does it play a sound when Gmail is actually released to end users?

Re:new mail notification sound

[kzinti]

I should have been more specific. Gmail does show the correct Date: header when you look at the message, but when you look at an index like Inbox, the dates listed there are the upload date, not the Date: of the message. The date by which Gmail "knows" the message is the date of arrival, not the date given in the Date: header.

Re:new mail notification sound

[jhoffoss]

Well, see, you can search your email. Using Google. And we all know that Google r0x0rz. So even if the SMTP timestamp is wrong, you can enter "march 1996" in your search, and pull up any messages that include that were sent then.

The system is a bit goofy, in that, when viewing a message/label index, you see the date you resent the message to gmail. But when you view the message, and message headers, they are as they were when originally received.

Re:new mail notification sound

[kzinti]

Well, see, you can search your email. Using Google. And we all know that Google r0x0rz. So even if the SMTP timestamp is wrong, you can enter "march 1996" in your search, and pull up any messages that include that were sent then.

But that's a text search, not a date search. It's a kludge, and it may not catch every message. It's been a long time since I looked at the RFC, but I seem to remember that there are different ways a timestamp can be legally formatted in a message header. Constructing a search to match all of them would be mind-numbing and error-prone.

Even worse than that, with text matching, it's very hard to say something like "find all messages within 2 days of March 10, 1996" - if I wanted to narrow the search in my first example.

In addition to the search problems, the Gmail indexes, like Inbox, will show all my mail as having arrived at the day of its uploading. Not helpful to see 10,000 messages all marked with the same date.

Re:new mail notification sound

[shawn(at)fsu]

Or the quadralaplegic guy in a family guy episode that was competering against Joe Swanson.

I want some one to send me an email with the subject

[electronic voice] That was pathetic. Tell your wife to come over to my place if she wants a little boom shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka. Boom shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka. Boom shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-lacka. Boom.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Ageless]

I do this with a little AppleScript and OS X's built in text to speech for Mail.app. When I get new email it says "New mail from [username] in [mailbox]." and it would be a matter of seconds to change it to recite the subject. I love it, but it tends to scare the hell out of me if I forget to turn my speakers off before I go to bed.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Smack]

Notesbuddy from IBM does this for Lotus Notes, it also has support for POP3 but I've never used that. Plus it's free.

Re:new mail notification sound

[burns210]

If you forwarded all your mail, then the original headers(including date) will be put into the body of the text, and new headers (the date uploaded) will be placed in the mail's header.

It works fine for me.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Go here for a huge selection of "You've Got Mail!" and other e-mail alert sounds...

Re:new mail notification sound

[Solder Fumes]

Can anyone explain to me what the point is of moving all your personal email into someone else's free service? I could have gotten a Gmail account by now, but I don't need it. Domain names are cheap, web hosting+email is cheap, hard disk space is cheap, my email archives are irreplacable. I have my own email domain, and I can store hundreds of gigs of email if I really have to. If I need to get to my archives from somewhere else, I can always SSH into my network. Maybe Google lets you search easily, but all you really need is a better indexer for your local email archives. I just don't understand why someone would move 12 years of their life into the data warehouse of someone you don't control. Their handling of their stock offering certainly doesn't inspire confidence. Maybe Google really messes up and they get shut down tomorrow. You never know.

Re:new mail notification sound

[jhoffoss]

Actually, after looking, doing something like "find all within x days" is not difficult at all, and is in fact the only way you can search for a date.

Gmail->Search Options:
Date within: [1d, 3d, 1w, 2w, 1mo, 2mo, 6mo, 1y] of [e.g. today, Friday, Mar 26 or 3/26/2004].

Doing this within 3d of 12/5/02 turned up fourteen messages that were sent in that range. Which is about accurate. Now, I'm not going to go through four years of email to see if that got them all, but I can nail a date down that small, I'll remember another characteristic of the message to search on, rather than the date.

The whole point of gmail's design (i.e. no folders, only labels) is that you filter/label mail, which I did as I migrated all my mail. I have email from eight classes segregated, and it broke the messages into conversations properly, rather than each separate message displayed on it's own line.

Google has designed gmail better than I thought it could be done. There are some features there (undoubtedly more undocumented) that I would never have thought of including. For instance the date range search!

The fact that it dispalys all my migrated mail as received july 27 is odd considering what I just said, but all that mail is archived and there only for me to dig back for something specific.

Oh, and the spam filtering is aggressive (almost too much so), which I think is great, compared to missing every few spams and dropping them to the inbox.

Re:new mail notification sound

[jhoffoss]

Actually, after looking, doing something like "find all within x days" is not difficult at all, and is in fact the only way you can search for a date.

<sheepishly>

I'm wrong, it does not hit migrated mail dates properly when searching on date. I mistyped my date and only glanced down at what looked like was correct. Upon fixing it, gmail does not search this way.

/me goes to submit feature request to gmail team

Re:new mail notification sound

[kzinti]

Doing this within 3d of 12/5/02 turned up fourteen messages that were sent in that range.

Wait. You mean Google's date search is working for uploaded mail? Didn't work for me last time I tried it. Hmm... if the date search does work, then I can probably live with the wrong dates displayed on the indexes.

Re:new mail notification sound

[UnrefinedLayman]

Ahh... that does make all the difference. That's very good to know.

I hope Google will take steps to correct this.

Re:new mail notification sound

[kzinti]

I like the idea of having all my mail - ever - indexed, searchable, available through the Internet, without having to manage the infrastructure myself. I have a setup similar to what you describe. I ssh into my site. Redirect an IMAP and SMTP port, and voila - I can read my mail from anywhere. I'm experimenting with the idea of Google Mail as an alternative that I don't have to manage myself.

My e-mail, too, is irreplaceable. I regard it as among the most precious of my data. I would never trust Gmail to be my only copy of anything, for a variety of reasons. But it would be nice to upload my old e-mail to it, mirror my new e-mail to it (or vice-versa), and have a nice searchable backup that I can get to from anywhere.

Re:new mail notification sound

[ptr2004]

With so many applications wanting to put themselves in the tray. I think its about time we had a super tray. The super tray will notify us when something important in the regular tray is happening

Re:new mail notification sound

[hank]

Agreed. I have a 384MB Outlook PST file that I want to move into GMail, but the current loading utilities and methods don't do it for me. Do the current crop of tools even support folders/subfolders or does all the mail come into the Inbox in one large batch?

I put in a suggestion (as I'm sure hundreds already have) to have an importing tool for common mailbox formats.

I've been a slave to POP for 5-6 years...just waiting on Google to break the last shackle.

So here's my promise to you...I graduate in December. If I end up working for Google, I'll push for it and write it if it isn't already done.

Re:new mail notification sound

[kkovach]

This is because this utility isn't so much an email import tool, as it is an email forwarding tool.

- Kevin

Re:new mail notification sound

[avdp]

gmail doesn't have a folder/subfolder structure. They have labels, other than that mail is either in your box or in the archive. It is a bit of an adjustment.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Nephilium]

I do know that Eudora already has this feature. It's inside the filters section. I've got it set to read the subject and sender for anyone on my whitelist...

Nephilium

Re:new mail notification sound

[Quixadhal]

True enough... and I have my own mail server at home that works around my ISP's evil blocking of port 25 by the use of a friend's not-so-evil ISP in another state.

However, while google may get shut down tomorrow, your house could catch fire and burn tomorrow too. I'm willing to bet that Google does a better job of backing up their data than I do, and that I'll have a little warning before they pull the plug (at least once they aren't in BETA).

Besides, what kind of moron MOVES their data... I'd just copy it and keep my own "backup" copy on my own server.

Re:new mail notification sound

[kzinti]

It works fine for me.

Until you need to do a search by date, and discover that Gmail's date search relies on the upload date (not really the header date) and entirely ignores the message content dates. Your search returns an empty result because Gmail thinks all your mail was sent on Fri, Aug 20, 2004.

Re:new mail notification sound

[naChoZ]

Sorry this might not be extremely useful to you yet... but if you have access to an IMAP server, you can use my script. It supports IMAP accounts and mbox files right now. I'm working on adding from a pop account, (about 75% complete). Then I might delve into other mailbox file formats.

Re:new mail notification sound

[quecojones]

Dude, can I get a copy of that script?

Re:new mail notification sound

[Solder Fumes]

I don't have anything incriminating in my email, though as private conversations they include a lot of idle comments that could be misconstrued. While my data is impossible to replace, what I consider MORE valuable is my ability to control that data.

It is true that for every email I have stored, another copy possibly exists elsewhere with the person I sent the email to, or the person who sent me the email. However, my storage is what links all of those emails together. It is much more difficult to track down hundreds of individuals and gain access to their email. Of course, if everyone used Gmail, finding all archived emails from and to me could be as simple as typing my name in a search form. That's the scary part; it is now no longer safe to believe that email is a private medium. Massive email correlation is only protected by a few lines of code and a few lines of law, instead of physically having to track down everything.

I now take special care to word my emails carefully and refrain from writing things that could be misconstrued. An axiom of journalism from many years ago is to "never write down anything you wouldn't want the whole world to see." That is probably the best way to protect yourself.

Re:new mail notification sound

[koniosis]

expect to see something simliar to that in longhorn, the notification area is getting an overhaul.

Re:new mail notification sound

[Electrum]

gmail doesn't have a folder/subfolder structure. They have labels, other than that mail is either in your box or in the archive. It is a bit of an adjustment.

While that description is technically correct, it makes the system sound much worse than it is. Labels are like a single depth meta-folders. There is a list of labels and you can click on one to display all mail with that label, just like you would click on a folder.

Labels are better than folders because you can have multiple labels for any message / conversation (hence the term meta-folders). Not having a hierarchy is fine, because labels make the data a folder tree provides explicit, rather than implicit and actually allows for more information (an item in a tree can only be in one branch).

How long....

[avalys]

How long until someone reverse-engineers this API and makes an OS X and Linux client available?

Re:How long....

[pedestrian crossing]

From the FAQ: To use the Gmail Notifier, you need Windows 2000, Windows XP, or a more recent version of Windows. The Notifier is not compatible with Macintosh or Linux systems at this time, but we look forward to offering support for more operating systems in the future.

Re:How long....

[Tranzig]

What about the gmail notifier Firefox extension?

Re:How long....

[the unbeliever]

Re-read the parent again.

He said "How long until someone reverse engineers this and makes a Linux or Macintosh client available?" not "How long until Google makes a Linux or Macintosh client available?"

Re:How long....

[Mickut]

There is already a Mozilla (and Firefox) extension for this, GMail Notifier (homepage http://www.nexgenmedia.net/extensions/). It works with both the Linux and windows versions of the browser.

Re:How long....

[pedestrian crossing]

My point being, why bother, they are going to do an official one soon...

Re:How long....

[misterjingles]

There is already a Mac menu extra.

http://homepage.mac.com/carsten.guenther/GmailSt at us/

Re:How long....

[the unbeliever]

They've said that about Google Toolbar for about a year now, too.

Re:How long....

[Nicholas Evans]

My point being, why bother, they are going to do an official one soon...

So opensource purists/debian users can have one for their linux box. (I'm implying anyone who reverse engineers it will make it opensource.) And it can't be too hard to reverse-engineer...

Re:How long....

[Greedo]

Already done.

Re:How long....

[buchan232]

Hey, THANK YOU. This works great, one little problem, your link goes to an old version. Here http://nexgenmedia.net/extensions/ is the developers page for the latest version. The version you link to has issues but once I updated it works perfectly.

Re:How long....

[AKAImBatman]

Mac user, right here! Using GMail with Mozilla!

Supposedly Google has fixed GMail so that it works with Safari. Unfortunately, I'm still on OS X 10.2, so I can't verify this.

Re:How long....

[Blakey Rat]

I use GMailStatus 0.8. Despite being a beta, I've only run into one problem and that was when Google changed the layout of the mail page and the widget broke. Ran the auto-update, and all is well again.

It puts the number of emails in your menu bar, plays a sound when you receive mail and (I think) redirects mailto: links to GMail.

Oh, and it's free.

I found a similar product for my Windows box at work, but I can't remember the name of it right now. I'm actually surprised that people are so surprised, these widgets are easy to find on sites like VersionTracker or just through Google.

Re:How long....

[frankie]

Those two on VersionTracker don't use any Google APIs. They're just ordinary screen-scrapers, with the curl and the grep and the pipes, mm-hey.

Re:How long....

[JHromadka]

I use gmail with Safari on 10.3 without any problems.

Re:How long....

[follower-fillet]

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere in this story, so thought I'd mention it:

> They're just ordinary screen-scrapers
Most Gmail interaction doesn't rely on "ordinary" screen-scraping. Apart from the login sequence, the data is sent in mostly plain text which can be quite easily parsed, rather than extracting it from a fully formed HTML page.

If you have a Gmail account take a look at the source of the main frame--it's not HTML, the view itself is created on the fly.

The upshot is that it's more reliable than "ordinary" screen-scraping.

--Phil.

P.S. Oh, why not, ObGmailUtilityPlug: libgmail (http://libgmail.sf.net/) provides Python bindings to Gmail and demonstration utilities to provide POP3, SMTP and FTP (download) proxies.

Re:How long....

[petrol pumper]

There is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kcheckgmail

Re:How long....

[tropavantgarde]

I get a 404 error whenever I click to the nexgen link...

Why not a small Java app?

[tliet]

I mean, come on, Win32 only?

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[random_culchie]

I don't know why the parent was marked a troll because its a valid question.

The fact is for close integration with the operating system (like putting stuff in the tray in windows) is impossible to do with out using API's that break portability.

If you break portability what the point in doing it in java the first place?

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[Hitiek]

Azureus puts itself in the tray in windows. I'm sure they need some win32 API to do that, but they must have a way to detecting what OS the java app is runnning under and then make the appropriate calls Anyway, my point is that there is already a java open source project that uses the windows system tray without breaking portability, so it can be done.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[bygimis]

You can indeed put a Java app in the Windows system tray. The same code will also put it in the Gnome system tray in Linux for example - all part of the Java Desktop open source tools at;

http://community.java.net/javadesktop/

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there is no such thing a a SMALL java app. They are all huge - thanks to the JRE.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[Espectr0]

I would appreciate if you would give me a direct link for this. Using the search in that page i found http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Main/NativeHooks. Is that it? It heavily uses JNI, which is not the same code at all

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[ad0gg]

Because not all machines have a gig of ram.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[dubious9]

>ll jedit*
2076042 ... jedit42pre14install.jar

hmm? Two megs for a kitchen-sink editor? That seems pretty small to me. Perhaps you meant memory wise. Or you could be a troll. This got insightful? You could easily put together a mail agent in like a 100K jar.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.

But don't worry, I'm sure your gmail account is just filled with offers from people who can help you make your system tray bigger for just $19.95, shipped!

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[Elwood P Dowd]

I mean, come on, Win32 only?

All their desktop software is Windows only. Their in house desktop software developement team is probably all geared around Windows.

I'm sure they've discussed the issue, and I'm sure they've come to all the obvious conclusions: It's cheaper & more valuable for them to make Windows only applications.

Blah blah blah blah.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[adolf]

Sure you can.

But who wants tens of megabytes of general-purpose Java cruft sitting around just for a glorified biff(1)?

Doesn't Windows start slow enough already?

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[HillBilly]

Because its Java which is a memory hogging bloated bit of crap.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[koniosis]

Or .NET for that matter.

Re:Why not a small Java app?

[bedessen]

I don't know why the parent was marked a troll because its a valid question.

The reason is that most win32 users would scoff at the notion of keeping Sun's bloated pig of a JVM loaded all the time for something fairly simple like a tray mail notifier. It's like saying, "Hey, check out my neat new gmail indicator! Only 50MB runtime!" That's the reason for the troll moderation.

No point?

[grub]

I keep my browser open all the time (including a tab to gmail) and it refreshes automatically. I don't see the benefit, unless having Yet More processes running is a good thing.

Re:No point?

[slungsolow]

I would rather have a process running in the background that takes up less memory than a browser window. There are always instances when I need to keep my memory management in mind, and a tool like this makes it easier to do that.

Re:No point?

[cbrocious]

It's to show your aversion to cut down versions of Windows that can only run 3 processes.

Re:No point?

[melkorainur]

I agree with that. Clearly, there's an overpopulation of the system tray for windows users. For Linux, something that would be nice would be a system tray icon (what do you call gnome's applets, something like rhupdate's beaming red exclamation mark?) that that could be more easily customized to incorporate useful behavior. That way, I could customize such an applet to do something like: If I get an email from people on my contacts list, then go ahead and alert me, otherwise just keep calm and change your colour mildly so that I know there's been some change.

Re:No point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The mailto: handler alone makes it worthwhile.

Re:No point?

[cs02rm0]

The key difference is this notifies you of new mail.

Having a tab refresh doesn't notify you of new mail... you still have to click in there - something that's been bugging me all day at work with checking squirrelmail on my home server.

Re:No point?

[blanks]

"I keep my browser open all the time (including a tab to gmail) and it refreshes automatically. I don't see the benefit, unless having Yet More processes running is a good thing." Because having an extra tab open in your browser that refreshes automatically dosen't use any more machine processes right?

Re:No point?

[garcia]

I don't like having browser windows open at all times and I vertainly wouldn't mind a tiny app that likely takes up less resources than an open browser.

That's me though... My Gmail account is for permanent archival of all email. If I get an email to Gmail other than something procmail forwarded it it's likely spam.

YMMV.

Re:No point?

[timmyf2371]

It actually does - I have my Gmail open in a tab constantly and the title of the page actually changes from "Gmail - Inbox" to "Gmail - Inbox (1)" , if for example you have one new message.

As a side note, the actual Gmail tab auto-refreshes itself (at least in Firefox).

Re:No point?

[Ark42]

Well handling mailto: is a start. If it handled simple-MAPI that would be awesome. Webmail sucks for that exact reason - any MAPI-aware application is going to load your last set default mail program, which is going to be Outlook Express, or nothing. Many programs include features such as "email document" to make it really easy for the non-technical to automatically attach a file to a new email, but if you use webmail, then sorry! you are left out. Figure out how to save the file and upload it and attach it yourself.

Re:No point?

[anti-trojan]

Currently gnotify.exe takes about 6,792 KB in my system.

Re:No point?

[anti-trojan]

If you keep GMail in a separate window (instead of a tab) you can see taskbar button changing to something like "Gmail (3)".

I believe it still won't show the count when a message gets labelled and skips inbox because of a filter.

Re:No point?

[kyhwana]

O.o except that gnofity seems to be taking up 40MEGABYTES of RAM.
Of course, firefox has gobbled up 100MB already, so I don't need any more ram gobbled away.

Re:No point?

[Trelane]

Applets and Notification Area.

Applets are added into your panels. An applet you can add to your panels is the Notification Area, where the Bluetooth and Rhythmbox notification icons are located.

Notification area is explicitly for notification-type things, not applets, although people seem tempted to do this.

Re:No point?

[gavbaa]

With Squirrelmail, you can have a popup window appear when you get new mail. I do this at times.

I've also taken it a step further, but haven't rolled the changes back into the codebase: the popup opens, stays there for x seconds, and then closes itself. Hooray for Squirrelmail being easy to patch. :)

Re:No point?

[Ice_Balrog]

And because you don't need it, no one else will, eh?

Wow... Breakthrough

[Aceto3for5]

Now I will have an up to the minute report of exactly how MUCH spam im getting. And with a Gig of email space, I can learn about Coeds who want to show me thier cams, and low cost Ci@lis, maybe even learn how to start a buisness-- all without having to clear my inbox every two days.

Re:Wow... Breakthrough

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using gmail for a few months now, and as of this writing, I've gotten 1 piece of spam delievered to that mail box.

Maybe no one knows about it.

Re:Wow... Breakthrough

[Freshie]

I've had Gmail since May, and haven't received one spam yet...

Re:Wow... Breakthrough

[buchan232]

You know ... I thought this very same thing. Then one day I clicked my spam folder and there was a whole pile of them in there.

Have a look, you may not be as anonymous as you think :-)

Re:Wow... Breakthrough

[Freshie]

Nope. Not one. Not braggin' just impressed..

GTRAY

[Yo Grark]

Gtray has been working FABULOUSLY for me.

Don't need to switch unless there are more options that google can provide; which from the website there isn't any.

http://torrez.us/gtray

Yo Grark

Re:GTRAY

[celerityfm]

My only question is what is the memory requirements of GTray vs GMail Notifier?

Re:GTRAY

[Sargent1]

The main difference is that, for me, GTray occasionally stops working silently, requiring me to realize that it isn't announcing and then go download a new version. With luck that won't be the case with Google's version.

Re:GTRAY

[ares284]

I absolutely loved Gtray, and it usually worked great for me, except for the occasional need to update it when Google changed something.

I'm trying out the official checker now, and I must say, it's awesome! It's missing Gtray's ability to specify how often it checks, but it seems to be every 5 minutes, which is what I had Gtray set to anyway.

But the cool part is... it acts like Outlook 2003 and will pop up a notification when you get mail - including what the message says! No more loading up Gmail when Gtray tells you have new mail, only to find it's something that wasn't worth your time.

-Ares

Re:GTRAY

[ares284]

Oh, guess I didn't RTFA's FAQ. It checks mail every 2 minutes, which is more than enough for me. Great little program...


-Ares

FireFox extension

[GizmoToy]

I've been using something similar as an extension to FireFox. It works pretty darn well, but you obviously have to keep your web browser open for it to work. This program might be pretty cool, I'll have to give it a shot.

For those interested, the Firefox extension can be found here:
Gmail Notifier

Re:FireFox extension

[Shelrem]

Heh, beat me to it!

In addition to this, add on WebmailCompose (previously GmailCompose) and you've got pretty much the full functionality of this gmail toolbar, plus it's cross-platform, for those of you who use several platforms and want a more unified computing experience.

For the record, i've been terribly happy with this combination for a while. Together with the great featureset of Gmail, it makes Webmail actually pleasant to use!

Re:FireFox extension

[GizmoToy]

It is still in Beta, I suppose. I haven't had any problems with it, but I have noticed it won't throw login errors, it'll just sit there. On our corporate intranet I have to goto a regular webpage and log in before I can have the notifier log in. Slightly annoying, but not a big deal in my case.

Re:FireFox extension

[anti-trojan]

If you are talking about the FireFox extension; the version on the Mozilla update site is old. Go to the the homepage of the extension and download the latest version.

So when do we get Gmessenger?

[silverbyte]

This is obviously the first step by google towards integration of search and the personal interaction space.
How long before our contact lists in gmail are moved to orkut and into a messenger?

Re:So when do we get Gmessenger?

[wolfemi1]

Sorry, GAIM has already been taken :)

Re:So when do we get Gmessenger?

[theCoder]

Another incompatible instant messaging system? Ick. I'd much prefer people just started using Jabber instead.

Re:So when do we get Gmessenger?

[burns210]

a hybrid social network app, email app(realtime gmail, using jabber!) and search functionality... just because they are Google.

Mmm. Drool.

Re:So when do we get Gmessenger?

[abdulla]

I seriously think Google should intergrate there services in to an IM that runs atop jabber. That would truly challenge Microsoft's whole Hotmail/Messenger service which so many people rely on, and what better company than Google to promote Jabber?

percentage

[kc0re]

I wonder if Google collects statistics on how many and what type of operating systems hit google a day... I am betting a large percentage of people that use Gmail don't use Windows. I reserve the right to be wrong.

Re:percentage

[lukewarmfusion]

This was covered recently here on Slashdot. Google does keep stats, but they're not for any real analysis. That doesn't stop people from trying to use them for real analysis.

I'm betting that a large percentage of people that use Gmail are using Windows. Everyone I know that has an account - including nearly two hundred people at my friend's company - is on a Windows box.

Re:percentage

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Oh God, are you wrong. And that's certainly your right.

The breakdown of people using Gmail will be close to the same breakdown of the fools using their blogs or regular folks using their search engine.

Here's your small percentage of Linux users.

Re:percentage

[stephenbooth]

I suspect that there would be a lot of people like myself who are Linux (or which ever OS you prefer) users by choice at home but Windows users by necessity (i.e. it's what's there) at work. Until we get more work places onto Linux, Windows will always dominate stats. I'm pretty sure that if you looked at the logs for /. you'd see a lot of Windows hits, same for the websites of any of the big Linux vendors even. Where I work it is actually impossible to access the web from a non-Windows machine as the proxy (Novell Border Manager) authentication uses client side VBScript!

Stephen

Re:percentage

[slungsolow]

The market saturation of Windows OS's alone should tell you that they will have the largest footprint when it comes to gmail accounts.

Re:percentage

[slungsolow]

Thats a horrible way to rationalize it. Your average american family does not use linux as a home operating system. Of the 80 million users connecting to the internet from home, I am willing to bet that more than 80% use a windows OS. Moms and pops aren't going to dial into AOL from a linux box, and they certainly aren't going to "power ebay" by using Konquerer.

For Mac users

[jdwest]

Mac users have this http://homepage.mac.com/carsten.guenther/GmailStat us/ as a freeware option.

Re:For Mac users

[jeffehobbs]

...and gCount too.

Both GmailStatus and GCount use the in-development Mac OS X Growl framework for cute little pop-up notifiers.

If you (understandably) don't want to compile Growl, here's a compiled version.

~jeff

Google being evil already?

[tehcyder]

I bet this has caused some confusion in /. readers minds.

Google...good

Windows...evil

Windows only Google app...does not compute!

Re:Google being evil already?

[bookemdano63]

Maybe Google had the crazy idea to make something that will work in 80+% of the computers out there.
It is really boggling why they didn't make a version that would work on only 7% of the computers first.
I would link to Zeitgeist but- oh well.

Re:Google being evil already?

[anti-trojan]

So why does GMail works with Firefox then?

Re:Google being evil already?

[Insipid Trunculance]

I bet this has caused some confusion in /. readers minds. Google...good Windows...evil Windows only Google app...does not compute!

No No no....The mathematically rigid form is this: Google = 1 Windows = 0 Google only for Windows = 1 /0 = Division by Zero = Not Defined.

There,i bet many geeks have been saved from that cold hell we call windows freeze.

Re:Google being evil already?

[anti-trojan]

I think you either don't use GMail or didn't examine the pages carefully. They have hell of a lot Javascript/XML parsing/CSS tricks and they change the method according to the browser. I'm sure that half of the development time went for Mozilla compatibility.

Re:Google being evil already?

[berkut7]

Haven't you heard of Google Toolbar? It's not only exclusive to Windows but also to Internet Explorer.

Am I alone

[RLiegh]

in the fact that I've just been sitting on my gmail accounts and not actually using them?

Re:Am I alone

[ack154]

Yes.

Re:Am I alone

[Tumbleweed]

I'm waiting for Google to open up gmail with POP3/IMAP/SMTP access before I really get into using it much.

Re:Am I alone

[bwhaley]

Ha, nope. I do the same thing. 1000MB of storage, 0 KB used.

Re:Am I alone

[s7uar7]

If Google are effectively paying for Gmail with the adverts that are displayed next to email messages, how will offering POP3 benefit them? They would have to actually insert the ads in to your emails, and you can imagine the uproar if that happened.

Swamped by GMail invites ?

[vi (editor)]

I wonder if someone here has the same problem as me: I get constantly swamped with GMail invites. Far too much people are sending me these stupid invites and it's really getting on my nerves.
Well, it was fun for the first 20 or so, but now it's really annoying. Even people I just remotely know are sending me this stuff.
I usually sign them up with bogus data just to stop this madness but it doesn't really work.
Does anyone know when Google is stopping its beta test ? I hope soon otherwise I see a nervous breakdown coming.

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[linnorm]

Send them this way. I'm sure there's plenty of people here (including me!) who'd love to have one.

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[ElDuderino44137]

"(if you are lucky enough to have one already)." How does one get in on the invite avalanche? --The Dude

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[Dogers]

You're lucky then!
I've had an account for almost 3 months now and I've not had a single one..
My girlfriend almost killed me when I took the original account (all she has is Hotmail!) but I and another friend, who also had a gmail account, promised you get invites every 2 weeks.. whoops!

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[saderax]

Well, it was fun for the first 20 or so, but now it's really annoying. Even people I just remotely know are sending me this stuff.

What's your email address?

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[FosterKanig]

It's a real easy to get invites if you have friends.

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[ElDuderino44137]

Damn stupid social interaction!

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[gwynevans]

So, how many requests have you had for your girlfriend's email address so far, then? :-)

[Can't help myself, as I've only had the one invite and thought I ought to pass it onto my wife! - It's easier to get ./ mod points!]

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[Dogers]

heh
thats why i took the original invite, it was from someone on the net I'd rather she not speak to! ;)

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[Espectr0]

Dude, give them to the military.

http://www.gmail4troops.com/

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[kieranbenton]

It'd be great if you could send one this way, would appreciate it forever!! kieranbentonhotmailcom

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[Thomas Miconi]

I usually sign them up with bogus data

Good idea. However forging random data is cumbersome and time consuming. To save your precious time, I graciously offer my name, email address and personal information for you to copy-paste in the info form :)

You're welcome !

Thomas Miconi

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[burns210]

just forward the email to someone else, the invites still work for them.

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[shokk]

Just dropped off 3 invites myself. It's a very small thing for me to do, but can mean a lot for the recipient.

Re:Swamped by GMail invites ?

[gwynevans]

Having said the above, I got some over the w/e, so if you still need one, let me know where at gwyn at javaguy dot co dot uk.

Gmail Notifier

[Stypen]

This is something that has been in the fires for a while for Firefox users. Doron Rosenberg authored an extension that allows the same functionality. You can find it here.

skins

[Texodore]

Why don't they just skin Windows? They have the toolbar, mail checker client thing, searcher bar that can sit in the task bar. I mean, just have google be a part of every single app on the desktop.

Re:skins

[SightlessMind]

A Gmail litestep module would be a nice step in that direction. It could even be combined with one of the current news-feed modules.

Re:skins

[FooAtWFU]

Forget skinning it. Release an explorer.exe shell replacement. *THAT* would be more worthwhile.

Re:skins

[SightlessMind]

http://dev.litestep.net/news.php

Re:skins

[glenrm]

Shh! Not so loud that part of the corporate strategy will not be unleashed till next year :)

Re:skins

[LiquidCoooled]

noooooooooooooooooooo

that just brings about strange unhealthy thoughts.

Google Clippy:

I can see your writing a letter, showing 1-10 of 32848324238 suggestions

Click Yes to see more, or No to close this window.

__ [OK] __

I know... its evil, but in a post IPO google, anythings possible.

Re:skins

[value_added]

It's been done. Try http://www.shellfront.org/ for a few. Litestep seems to be the most popular and long-lived.

Re:skins

[burns210]

If they would release a local application that indexed(or worked off the windows index) silently in the background the contents of my harddrive, then let me search those files, I would just about make love to google. Heck, they could even add a quick search field in the explorer window.

Oh, and don't add the little clippy dog. No one likes him.

Strategic move towards the desktop...

[markkellman]

In preparation for facing Microsoft, any move towards the desktop bodes well for Google.

The alerting space is also a growing one, especially considering the success of the third-party alerting Google Alert service based on the Google API.

Re:Where is the notifier for

[ravydavygravy]

In the increasingly useful gdesklets framewrok:
http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/cate gories.php?f unc=gd_show_app&gd_app_id=171

What about Linux?

[jbash]

I wonder what operating systems the users of this will be usuing. Maybe a larger-than-average percentage of people who use Gmail are on Linux instead of Windows. What then?

And for autohiders?

[judmarc]

I mean those of us who autohide the taskbar. It's not clear whether the notifier will pop up or not (and we may not want it to - the possibility for distraction is obvious).

You can get it to play a sound, but the FAQ says it may notify in error up to two minutes after all new mail's been cleared. Beep! Beep! BEEP! Urrgh....

Re:And for autohiders?

[NeoSkandranon]

it appears to pop up an MSN-like notify in the bottom corner..at least it does when you click "tell me again" presumably that would show regardless of whether your taskbar is hidden or not

Re:And for autohiders?

[anti-trojan]

Probably it won't beep for the same message more than once (it shows the message snippet in the popup, so I understand that it knows the message sender, content etc).

This makes GMail 2x better

[six11]

This is great! I know people who have been holding back on using GMail because of the notification thing. I sometimes still get email at my Yahoo account, and I am notified when I receive them. Every time the Yahoo notification thing pops up I am reminded of how almost-but-not-quite perfect GMail is. This little icon in the tray will end up being a bigger deal than it looks.

I've installed it and it works great. It uses the same slide-up text bubble idiom that AIM and Yahoo and Thunderbird use. But the bubble not only tells you that you have mail but also who it is from and if there is room, the first part of the text of the email. If you missed it, you can right click and select 'Tell me again...' and it will scroll through all your unread emails, so you can get a quick overview of what's going on in your Inbox right now without having to use your browser. Much nicer.

Re:This makes GMail 2x better

[LiquidCoooled]

Something I expected is still missing, and an opportunity wasted on this initial version.

When I get a notification from other systems (MSN Messenger mainly), I can click on the popped up window and be taken directly to the email, this I can't.

I believe this is because of the integration that the online app has, with no directly linkable page for an individual email.

Re:This makes GMail 2x better

[microTodd]

So, um, where is the Yahoo email notifier? I can't find it on SourceForge?

Thanks.

Re:This makes GMail 2x better

[kleinux]

Which has me wondering when google will enter the IM market. Perhaps they will make it so you can search prior conversations? An IM client is the natural place to house things like e-mail notifications.

Re:This makes GMail 2x better

[six11]

The Yahoo notifier I was talking about is just the Yahoo IM client. You don't need to use it for instant messaging, you can use it for notification only if you want.

Re:This makes GMail 2x better

[six11]

Something I expected is still missing, and an opportunity wasted on this initial version. When I get a notification from other systems (MSN Messenger mainly), I can click on the popped up window and be taken directly to the email, this I can't.

You're absolutely right about that, and I'm a little concerned that they didn't get that the first time through. They've got more Ph.D's than Harvard, and they don't get something like that the first time?

I think Google has such an incredibly large number of people looking at them that they really can't afford to have a 1.0 release of *anything* be cruddy, or people will become jaded. This is, however, a beta release of the notifier, and (I could be blind!) I couldn't find any reference to it either from the main Google homepage or the GMail homepage. So it's not something that is going to be generally visible quite yet. So I think I am jumping the gun on getting down on them this soon.

Now, a Google IM client that uses open transport protocols that don't change every week. That would be awesome, and I will be surprised if they don't have a beta out within the next three months.

Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[fiftyvolts]

I don't understand why we are jumping through hoops to have auto refresing JavaScript-full convoluted html webmail that interacts with some little utility in your tray. I mean, I understand the convenience of webmail, but I think that installing this is whre I would draw the line between simple & easy and flakey & klunky.

Isn't 100% easier and more smooth to interact with POP3 and your favorite email software? Maybe it's just me. I've been using a hosting service for my website and email and I guess having that much control over the set up and delivery methods has made me skeptical of free webmail in general.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[erykjj]

I agree. You can use POP (with Thunderbird or something else) when you're at home; and have the convenience of webmail (using www.mail2web.com) when you're away. Simple. Clean. Private.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[mcc]

Isn't 100% easier and more smooth to interact with POP3 and your favorite email software?

I think the idea is your favorite email software isn't available everywhere. If you're ever using a computer other than your home desktop, and you want to read your email, you don't have the option of launching up whatever email client you like-- because the computer won't have it. Probably there will just be just Outlook Express, and you'll have to set up a user and configure your servers or whatnot. Not fun. It's much easier to have the option of just going to a website and checking your email, and once you start using this option you'll tend to want to use this website even when you get home-- even though at home you are actually free to run whatever your favorite email program-- because it's pleasant to have a single consistent interface every single time that you check your email, whereever in the world you are.

Of course, I don't use GMail, but the above logic is why even at home on my mac, I pretty much always check my email by sshing into a remote shell and using this command line mail program I sort of like. Ssh is pretty much available everywhere, and unlike webpages all ssh clients are actually compliant with one another...

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[t_allardyce]

Gmail is just in at the moment, you have to run with it dude, sometimes something can be in but its also cool not to do it because you're making a statement (like blogging) but gmail is just totally 100% in right now. POP3 is like soooo pre-Iraq, I have a couple of IMAP accounts in Thunderbird but even there, no POP.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[timmyf2371]

I like POP3/IMAP mail through Outlook/Thunderbird/ as much as the next guy, but given that I can't access my normal e-mail boxes through my work computer (and for obvious reasons don't want to be using work email for personal business), and add to the fact that Gmail acts more like an actual application than any other webmail I've used previously - you'll see why so many people like it.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[Canuck_TV]

Ssh is pretty much available everywhere, and unlike webpages all ssh clients are actually compliant with one another...

Last time I logged in to a Windows box, I couldn't find an SSH client in the start menu. And I've yet to meet a Win32 SSH client I really liked. I find things like VNC a lot more useful - I started using Timbuktu Pro years ago working at Northern Telecom in IT, and have gradually moved on to simpler, leaner desktop remote apps.
As for the Gmail notifier, yay, another app running in the backround sucking out system resources and liable to bring the system down because someone forgot an endquote in some obscure procedure call.

Speaking of which, when is the beta test over? I'm not a high-octane g33k so I haven't received an invite but am kind of anxious to check it out.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[__aamkky7574]

think the idea is your favorite email software isn't available everywhere. If you're ever using a computer other than your home desktop, and you want to read your email, you don't have the option of launching up whatever email client you like-- because the computer won't have it.

With Outlook Express/Hotmail, I have the best of both worlds. At home and the office, I have a full-fledged email client which allows me to access, IMAP-style, a centralised email account, back up mails, store address books (which I can sync with PDAs, phones, etc). On the move, I simply go to www.hotmail.com. Sorry, I still don't get the whole Gmail buzz. I have an account and haven't used it; why bother? Maybe if I was in the habit of sending multi-MB attachments, but I'm not.

P.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[mcc]

Search for "java ssh" on google. There are actually some very good java ssh clients now.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[ksiddique]

If you don't want to use Outlook Express just to check some POP mail, I'd suggest trying something like Mail2Web.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[NeoSkandranon]

I'm kindof digging the part where this notifyer takes a fraction of the memory and sits quietly in the corner until something happens.

Before I got this account i had about six POP and hotmail ones that various things were going to (school, work, personal, throw-away etc) but since i forwarded most of the worth reading things to gmail thats ALL I need to check, so firing up a full blown mail client is somewhat overkill (besides that gmail doesnt work with pop yet anyway) and I only turn on Thunderbird once every few days to check those other accounts to see if anything fell through the cracks

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[dave420]

I wrote an HTTPMAIL wrapper for Gmail, so your favourite HTTPMAIL client can access gmail accounts. Of course, that means notification is part of that app (and the same for all your mail accounts), and so not an issue. Damn I sound like a tool. "oh! look at me and my precious code!"

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[theCoder]

Have you tried PuTTY? Whenever I happen to find myself on Windows and need to ssh, that's the first (and usually only) thing I think of. Just Feel Lucky for putty at google and it'll take you right there. And the best thing about PuTTY is that it doesn't require any sort of install -- just download and run. I've yet to find a simpler and more feature complete SSH client for Windows.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[Canuck_TV]

I have tried PuTTY on several occasions. I agree that the download-and-run model is great, however the session load/save interface drives me to distraction. It needs to be cleaned up, and given a multiwindow-inside-a-main-window interface IMHO.

If I ever got off my ass suppose I could write one... nah, complaining is easier ;)

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[bahwi]

Yeah, I use Thunderbird(and love it) with SSL Imap(never, ever, ever, unencrypted communication for e-mail). When I'm away, I use SquirrelMail(encrypted again, because I tunnel the HTTP through SSH. =)

But, you get my point. Mind you, gmail's interface is much nicer than squirrelmail's, even though squirrelmail works on pretty much everything. All in all I am happy, but it would be nice to have something like Gmail that works locally.

As a side note:

Why am I paranoid about security? Try sitting at the coffeeshop with Ethereal on. Or if not that, then etherwatch. You'll see. You have no idea how many prostitutes work via AIM, you have no idea.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[Jagasian]

Mod parent up! Free web based email services such as www.mail2web.com and www.mailinator.com are invaluable resources!

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[jbarr]

You nailed it! Obviously, desktop email clients tend to be the most "powerful" and feature-rich, but you can't always have access. Personally, I'm rarely at home in front of my PC, so that availablity of Web-based email is a Godsend. Realistically speaking, most Web clients are certainly adequate, but Gmail's unique Search and Label functions combined with its very fast interface makes it my #1 choice.

On the other side, if you typically access the same PC, then definitely go with a desktop client.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[glesga_kiss]

If you have broadband, set up an IMAP server, apache-ssl and a web interface like SquirrelMail. You get:

• Unlimited storage (more-or-less, HD space is cheap)
• Access to all your mail via any webbrowser using SSL encryption
• Access to all your mail via IMAPS (secure IMAP) or IMAP (if the client doesn't support it)

Using this I get mail 24/7 whereever I am, including to my mobile. As soon as it gets marked as read, other clients no longer show it as unread. Move them around at will on each client; I've yet to see a sync issue. Importing mails for archive is a breeze, you can add an IMAP account in just about any client and simply drag the mails onto your server.

Throw in some anti-virus protection, spam filters and message rules, and you beat just about anything google has to offer. Many e-mail clients have been using thread-based grouping of mails for years. Google is just bringing this to the masses in a form that doesn't require editing of main.cf.

Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not

[follower-fillet]

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere in this story, so thought I'd mention it:

> all traffic must be tortured through a webmail interface
Most Gmail interaction doesn't rely on ordinary screen-scraping. Apart from the login sequence, the data is sent in mostly plain text which can be quite easily parsed, rather than extracting it from a fully formed HTML page.

If you have a Gmail account take a look at the source of the main frame--it's not HTML, the view itself is created on the fly.

The upshot is that it's more reliable than "ordinary" screen-scraping.

--Phil.

P.S. Oh, why not, ObGmailUtilityPlug: libgmail (http://libgmail.sf.net/) provides Python bindings to Gmail and demonstration utilities to provide POP3, SMTP and FTP (download) proxies.

Re:Where is the notifier for

[Raagshinnah]

gmail notifier
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php? id=173&vid=331&category=
gmail compose
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php? id=127&vid=275&category= there is also a fetchmail gmail recipes flying around

Google's open source developer legion

[otisg]

I wonder if Google, but virtue of leaving certain portions of their systems open and accessible in a variety of ways, is really creating a large legion of creative and technical individuals who, without maybe even realizing, are working for Google for free, creating software like GMail notifier.

Even if Google cannot directly adopt somebody else's work, they certainly get a pile of high-quality ideas from 'the Lazy Web', which they can then use to direct their internal development.

Google is really playing this game so so so well, and it goes far beyong their technical PhDs.

If you think about it, this is much like the openness of Linux - does any OS out there have so many developers working on it 24/7? Nope.

Please stop

[Sp00nMan]

teasing us people who do not have a gmail account! This kind of information just leads us on and gives us information on tools 95% of the IT population can't use. I mean, how many times do you have articles on Windows Longhorn beta that talks about the cool new features that the beta users are using, when the rest of us can't use it???

Re:Please stop

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Email me and I'll send you an invitation to gmail. I have a gmail account that I don't use and I still have the ability to send some invites to people.

John.

Doesn't work with NT4

[Kuad]

Generally, I'm not logged into the net at home on a 24 hour basis - I disconnect my DSL whenever I don't need it. Paranoia can have its advantages.

Anyways, I need this tool at work. And some of us are still stuck with NT4 at work until the end of the year (when support dies and they finally upgrade us). This tool doesn't work with NT4, and I gather it doesn't work with 95/98/ME from the installer's error message. Just a heads-up for everyone.

Personally, GTray works fine for me.

The iTunes model

[mcc]

What I find increasingly interesting is how Microsoft's competitors-- now that it's been made clear that united states antitrust law is not going to be enforced-- are trying to get around the Microsoft OS monopoly with what amounts to shareware. Microsoft has the power to create the default configuration for the vast majority of PCs, and since traditionally few users have stepped away from the default configuration this means Microsoft has the ability to dictate many things, from what formats will gain popularity to what web standards succeed or fail. If Microsoft desires, it can install a piece of software on every new copy of Windows in the world. Those companies that are not Microsoft do not have this luxury. Some of them now appear to be circumventing this by just trying to create random pieces of "must-have" software for free and bundling the service or format that they are actually making their money from with it.

For example, iTunes. Apple needs people to have support for Quicktime; however, they have no way of making Windows users want to install Quicktime. Webpages that require Quicktime will, of course, force you to download it, but such pages would seem likely to become scarce as webmasters realize that every computer has WMP already and using WMP instead of Quicktime will not require their users to download a plugin. Apple's solution is to create a music player program for Windows that is considered by many to be the best there is, which everybody then wants to download and try out. As a process of doing this, these people inadvertently wind up installing Quicktime. End result: every computer has Quicktime already.

Google here is just another example. Google appears to be anticipating that at some point Microsoft will start using its space within the desktop to promote some engine of its own and dissuade the use of Google. Google is reacting to this by trying to get a toehold into the desktop of their own, using things such as the Google Toolbar and now, the GMail notifier. Both of these things will be installed by users for purposes largely irrelivant to Google's search-- the former for popup blocking, the latter for mail-- yet doing this means that Google builds up inertia with everyone who "just has" to download their Google tools after every system upgrade. This means that when the system update comes where Microsoft decides that every time you accidentally control-click on a word displayed on the screen it will open up Internet Explorer and search for it in MSN Search, Google can use their toehold in the desktop to undo this change and replace it with something (1) useful and (2) involving google search.

This approach hits Microsoft hard where it hurts; Microsoft is excellent at creating software. However, historically they have by and large failed at creating good software. Microsoft's strategy of destroying competitors by bundling their own special brand of mediocre with roughly equivilent functionality for "free" with the OS doesn't work anymore once people start to wind up downloading the software of Microsoft's competitors free just because it's better.

Re:The iTunes model

[maxume]

Sir, I do believe you have hit yourself squarely on the thumb. That must be quite painful. Hopefully the rest of your day will go better.

Re:The iTunes model

[abdulla]

On the iTunes deal, I think iTunes uses the Quicktime media framework for playing it's files, it was just an easy choice for apple, rather than create a new media framework from scratch. While this also has the added bonus of Apple getting Quicktime on a lot of computers, I'm not sure if that was the primary goal.

Why such a big fuss?

[manavendra]

Isnt this kind of notifier common with other email service providers (yahoo and hotmail)?! So what makes it so special?

And with other email service providers beefing up the storage space, one would have thought this pre-occupation with a gigabyte email-storage would be over!

Re:Why such a big fuss?

[bookemdano63]

The gmail search and threading interface is the best I have seen.
I am currently using 1% of my gigabyte.

Re:Why such a big fuss?

[CeleronXL]

It has already been acknowledged that Yahoo! and Hotmail had them, this was merely an announcement that Google has one too. Is there a problem with this?

Re:Why such a big fuss?

[grioghar]

What you fail to realize is that the interface is distinctly unique. The way email interfaces are designed in the future are going to be influenced by Gmail.

5 invites

[Capt_Troy]

I have 5 invites if anyone wants one. email me at tfandango_@_gmail_._com (remove the _s).

-troy

When will it be ready for the rest of us?

[digitalamish]

This looks like a nice addition and all, but for the seemingly few of us that don't have Gmail (it's still not available for general signup), do we have any idea of when Google will finally open this up?

save a draft

[sirshannon]

They say they are working on it.

Re:save a draft

[AKAImBatman]

For those of you who don't have a GMail account (and therefore can't see the above link), it simply says:

Features and more
What's on your webmail wish list? (1,000 MB? Check.)

done! - Address book import
we'll try - Opera support
we'll try - Ability to send messages with HTML formatting
we'll try - POP3 access
working on it - Plain HTML version of Gmail
working on it - Ability to save a draft
working on it - More robust contacts list
working on it - Automatic message forwarding

Re:save a draft

[drsmack1]

>> Have you read Asimov's lost masterpiece?

Yes, it was excellent.

Re:save a draft

[Thomas Miconi]

we'll try - Ability to send messages with HTML formatting

God. Please. NO !

Am I the only one out there who thinks HTML emails are a nuisance ?

Thomas Miconi

Re:save a draft

[AyeRoxor!]

Am I the only one out there who thinks HTML emails are a nuisance?

I noticed you used italics in your post...

Just sayin'...

Re:save a draft

[Kent Recal]

Forum != E-Mail.

Any good mail client will take care of highlighting quoted text. Be it italics, colors or whatever else the recipient prefers.

HTML-Mail basically forces you to see what the sender wants you to see.
But since that simply doesn't work (different clients have different ideas of how to render the same mail) you'd rather use PDF for that purpose - or many of your recipients will only see garbled paragraphs, unexpected linewraps, ugly fonts and broken/misplaced images.

Re:save a draft

[smacktits]

I would like to see Opera support. I had to re-install IE to access Gmail, a task which I was thoroughly unimpressed with.

Re:Where is the notifier for

[arose]

mail-notification for most of your mail notification needs.

Re:Where is the notifier for

[jupiter909]

They assume that linux users such as you and I will hack their own. ;-)

Gmail for the public?

[Sandman69]

Troll me or whatever for being lazy and not searching,

When is (if at all) Gmail going to be released to the public for anyone to sign up?

Re:Gmail for the public?

[artemis67]

As soon as they get done with their viral marketing campaign.

Right now, GMail accounts are in high demand, so Google is cleverly using the Invites function to slowly roll it out and generate more positive buzz about the service. It's the cool email service to have and everybody wants one, so if they make it hard to get one they can ramp up demand.

OTOH, if Google has just announced one day, "Ok, we have free email now!" it probably would have garnered a collective yawn from most of us. "Gee, another free email service. Woot."

konfabulators

[crackshoe]

I use konfabulator widgets.

Just what I need....

[war3rd]

Another TSR. What's one more when you have 30 I guess...

GSuite

[excaliber19]

I personally use GSuite.

It provides mail notification, handy browsing from the tray, handy access to search, the mailto assocation feature (and automatically backs up the old settings so it can roll back), shortcut creation, and a few more features. Has everything I need.

The multithreaded SMTP Uploader/Mail importer tool is almost done as well.

Seems Google is trying to steal the thunder from the independant utilities, which at this point, are all far superior (GSuite, Gtray, etc)

Doesn't work with Windows 98

[zoward]

When you run the installer on a Windows 98 PC, it pops up a message that reads: Gmail Notifier requires Windows 2000, XP, 2003 or newer.

I guess I won't be using this on my work box...

This is awesome! This sucks!

[Randolpho]

Ok, so I started with this huge happy giggle when I saw this... exactly what I've been waiting for to fully switch to gmail. I love Gmail, but currently stick to Yahoo since Y!IM will let me know when I have new mail, and that's a feature I desperately need. I considered some of the third-party equivalants, like Pop Goes the Gmail, but they rely on hacking through the website and all it takes is a change from GMail to break them.

But then I noticed that it was for Win2k/XP/2k3 only. WTF? That's great for home, but at work (where I spend most of my time), I'm stuck on Windows ME!! So now this sucks as much as it rocks. I'm sad.

Personally, I wish Google had taken my suggestion to heart: password-protected RSS feeds of your email subjects. Then anybody could write a 3rd party notifier.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[Canuck_TV]

but at work (where I spend most of my time), I'm stuck on Windows ME!!

You mean you can actually get work done on WinME? You might want to let Bill know; I think he's been waiting to hear a success story (for about 4 years).

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[Randolpho]

Heh. Yeah, it's actually possible to get work done on Windows ME. It's actually not as bad an OS as most people imply, but it does need tweaking occasionally. And the inevitable reboot. ;)

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[glwtta]

Dude, I just gotta know where it is you work. That's just a very interesting decision on the part of some IT department.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[norkakn]

Not to critisize your choice as you are perfectly within your rights to use any operating system you wish.. but why not put windows 2k on the beast? I've had such a horrible time with ME that I normally put 9x on any machine that needs programs that cannot be run on an NT kernel.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[burns210]

That is not a google coding flaw, that is gross incompitence at your employer.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[jred]

Nothing like a little incompetence to get your weekend started right.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[Rob.Mathers]

at work (where I spend most of my time), I'm stuck on Windows ME!!

I think I speak for all of slashdot when I say, you poor bastard.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[Motherfucking Shit]

But then I noticed that it was for Win2k/XP/2k3 only. WTF? That's great for home, but at work (where I spend most of my time), I'm stuck on Windows ME!!

So install it anyway. What's the worst that will happen, it doesn't work? Unlikely.

The difference in Win32 API calls which affect the systray between ME and 2K is negligible if there's any difference at all. I ran ME (by choice, even) on one machine for more than two years, and never found anything that "required" 2K or NT but didn't work on ME. I'd wager that Gmail Notifier works fine on Win98 as well. Google either didn't test on those platforms, or just don't want to support them.

Re:This is awesome! This sucks!

[Randolpho]

Actually, it's quite impossible to install it on Windows ME -- the installer is OS aware.

I suppose I could install it on my XP box and copy the files and registry keys....

Windows???

[fabiolr]

Now Google has always been a multi-platform and anti-windows/msft player... So i'd expect an OSX/Linux version first... Luckly, some David Estes have published a Konfabulator widged that does just the same, and works pretty well.

Available wherever Firefox is

[Duke Machesne]

I've been enjoying both of those key functionalities on every platform I use, by way of two excellent firefox extensions: Gmail Notifier and Gmail Compose.

I'm All Out :( Sorry

[Capt_Troy]

That's it. My 5 invites were sucked up within 3 minutes. Thanks!

what about something for Freedesktops?

[xutopia]

KDE/GNOME?

Perl fans...

[virid]

CPAN has GMail modules!

Toolbar Integration

[nyc_paladin]

I wonder when google will integrate the notifier into their toolbar.

Re:Toolbar Integration

[origamy]

I indeed agree. I don't need yet another app - just integrate it into the existing one.

Doesn't help

[MeBadMagic]

Doesn't make much of a difference for use that don't / can't get a gmail address or use WinDoze! heheh B-)

Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that matters

[Jicksta]

Senator blacklisted......
C'mon guys, I don't see how this is "News for Nerds" OR "Stuff that matters."

Are we starting to treat politicians like E! Hollywood celebrities with our covering of their lives to the most insignificant facts?

Next week:
Maryland senator's lost dog found!

That's a good idea, but

[bwalling]

What I'd like to see is a little app to sit in the system tray and let me know when I'll get a GMail account.

Re:That's a good idea, but

[ecrips]

Well for fun I'm giving out gmail accounts to people with high (linux) uptimes. See here (or my sig).

Interesting bug

[acariquara]

You need 2 accounts for this one to work. Log in both ones, one in FireFox and one in IE.

Make FireFox the default browser. The app ignores that and takes the cookie info from the IE folder.

BUT, when double clicking the damn thing it launches the default web browser, i.e., Firefox. Result -> opens the WRONG account (or better said, checks the wrong default account).

Re:Gmail invites

[Newspimp]

sure, what the heck... (above username)1 at yahoo.com No spaces or other characters, just my slashdot username above and then the number 1.

Re:Gmail invites

[linnorm]

You can send one over to linnorm(at)hotmail(dot)com

FYI: multiple copies don't work.

[Gondola]

I have three Google accounts. I have one super-secret account that nobody knows so I can... uh... tell people that I have a super secret account that nobody knows. I have one that's close to my real name, so I can use it for a backup for work. And I have one generic one for normal everyday use and storage.

Unfortunately, now I have three different Gmail accounts to track.

For those of you with two more Gmail accounts who haven't had a chance to try out the Gmail Notifier yet, it doesn't work for multiple accounts. You can have multiple copies running simultaneously, but it will only refer to the first one you signed in as, even though it *will* prompt you for a new username/password on the second copy you run.

If you are monitoring more than one Gmail account, what solution have you come up with?

Re:FYI: multiple copies don't work.

[dave420]

As I've already posted in this discussion, I wrote an HTTPMAIL->Gmail wrapper. Just add an extra HTTPMAIL account to your favourite email client, and you're done. Notification and email processing in your own client, cross-platform.

Re:FYI: multiple copies don't work.

[Gondola]

I checked your other respons in this article, and I don't see where you posted a location to get this HTTPMAIL->Gmail wrapper.

Re:FYI: multiple copies don't work.

[dave420]

It's there, trust me :)

Anyway, if you can't find it, it's just a PHP wrapper that sits on an apache box, and accepts HTTPMAIL requests from a client, and performs the required actions on the gmail web interface. That means you can use whatever client you want to read your gmail. I suppose it would be trivial to write a pop3 wrapper for it, too...

Will Mod "+5 Thank You" for invite

[FerretFrottage]

...not sure how a bunch of people are getting invites, but throw an old dog a bone here. I guess I need to stop talking to people on the phone and start using this [I|i]nternet thing to make friends with real power.

Re:Will Mod "+5 Thank You" for invite

[geeber]

I've got an extra invite sitting around that I am not using. Send me an email to jwn87@nospam.hotmail.com and I can fix you up.

Except for one big annoyance

[Morphix84]

If you click on a mailto hyperlink, while it brings you to the gmail site and creates the appropriate template, it doesn't log you in automatically (and since the toolbar has your uid and password, it should). Definately want to be able to save local too.

You insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

You need 2 accounts for this one to work

Just rub it in our faces that you have two freaking accounts while many of us languish in Gmail-less-ness!

Re:You insensitive clod!

[Kick the Donkey]

If you would have logged in, I would have sent you a gmail invite. But since you're a coward, you'll have to go gmail-less a bit longer.

;)

Re:You insensitive clod!

[It'sYerMam]

I'm logged in - pick me! pick me!

Re:You insensitive clod!

[Yert]

And here I've been looking for one for weeks...early bird gets the worm, I guess.

Re:You insensitive clod!

[acariquara]

Actually, I have only one. The other is my spouse's. :)

I don't know what you guys should envy more, the fact that I am happily married or that I have received sufficient invites for me, my wife and family...

Re:Footprint?

[Gondola]

Good point. I'm running two processes (in a futile attempt to monitor two Gmail accounts) and one is using 8.7MB of RAM and the other is using around 8MB.

By contrast, I'm using the Java based Jabber IM program; it's using 8MB of RAM, and it has full IM functionality.

A little bloated?

Am I the only one?

[weave]

without a damn google gmail account?

I guess I don't know the right people.

This entire 5 year beta period and dribbling out invites is a bit maddening (mainly because I won't go begging for an invite, I prefer to just whine about it :-)

Seriously, anyone know how many people have gmail accounts now?

Re:Am I the only one?

[Vega043]

Guess, not. But I think there's a big chance dat we are te only two here on /. without gmail. O I feel SO rejected....

Re:Am I the only one?

[TheBigTBird]

not One, not Two, but Many.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Sacka]

Send me an email (j_zacharias at yahoo dot com) (yes, the address is ironic, I know, but I'm very protective of the email addresses I actually use regularly) and I'll send you an invite.

Re:Am I the only one?

[bungeejumper]

Would you like an invite ? I had 36 invites sitting in 6 accounts that i created from my original 6 invites...I figured that everyone had gmail accounts...I used to post them on my blog...click on the link above.

looking for a gmail account? try gmailswap.com

[spoonyfork]

Looking for a gmail account? Get one at gmailswap.com. Please offer something creative and worthwhile. It's so much more fun that way.

Because it works

[cascadingstylesheet]

I don't understand why we are jumping through hoops to have auto refresing JavaScript-full convoluted html webmail that interacts with some little utility in your tray. I mean, I understand the convenience of webmail, but I think that installing this is whre I would draw the line between simple & easy and flakey & klunky.

Because it works. I use GMail at home, at work, wherever, and it just works. Works in Mozilla or IE. I didn't have to set up my own IMAP server or anything crazy like that.

Yeah, I could (and do) ssh to my home box and read my POP mail with mutt, but even with GMail's occasional brief outages that has been less reliable than just using GMail. And it wouldn't help me when I'm sitting in a boring training seesion and can't really install Cygwin on the machine ...

Re:Because it works

[Kiryat Malachi]

PuTTY. No need to install cygwin for SSH. And since you just download the executable and run it, no install needed, only the most locked down machines will prevent its use.

Re:Got spare invites?

[suso]

What the hell? I can't believe there is actually a site for this. What is wrong with you people.

I'll pass

[mcc]

I just fricking hate webmail.

Re:I'll pass

[ksiddique]

I'd take a BlackBerry over webmail any day. :)

Re:Gmail invites

[Vega043]

Yes, FIRST POS.. eh REPLY


Just kidding, but an invite would be appreciated

Re:Gmail invites

[stubbie999]

Worth a shot...

Above username at yahoo dot com...

If it works, I thank you heartily!

Re:Gmail invites

[Vega043]

ROFL, not only I don't have gmail but I'm also to slow to make first reply ;)... Ow I s*ck

I have an EXTRA gmail invite!

[callipygian-showsyst]

And the FIRST PERSON who gets an email to me (you'll have to figure out how -- look on my home page) will get it.

Re:I have an EXTRA gmail invite!

[callipygian-showsyst]

GONE!

Mr. "DEREK" got it. Thank you all for playing!

Re:Gmail invites

[whiplash]

thanks (hoping it's not just a troll)
whiplash(at)armory(dot)com

Re:Gmail invites

[Thrymm]

thrymm@yahoo.com Thanks!

Unofficial one is probably better.

[pmsyyz]

Just use Gmail Notifier 0.3.3 for Mozilla Firefox.

See also WebMailCompose Makes mailto: links load your webmail's compose page and adds a Compose link to the context menu. Currently supports GMail/Yahoo/Hotmail/Netscape/OperaMail/Mail.com/Ho rde/Squirrel and 1 user customizable entry. (Firefox/Mozilla Suite/Netscape 7.x)

And pagerankstatus

My general point

[mcc]

Is that some people like being able to use a single email interface whereever they are. Gmail provides this. Using a normal IMAP client would provide extra features such as a tray notifier, but would remove the single-interface advantage. The gmail tray notifier allows users to reclaim this one advantage of fullscale email applications, without having to give up their unified interface. This notifier will not be available everywhere; however this does not matter, since the notifier is tangential and external to the actual mail client (gmail) itself.

Default browser only

[TimButterfield]

I had Gmail Notifier briefly installed on my XP box at work. It seems that the current version of Notifier will only use the default browser for viewing my inbox and handling the mailto links. The default browser on my box is IE, which is required to run the web app I inherited when I started working here. For anything else, I prefer a tabbed brower and currently use Firefox. Hopefully, Google will add an option to Notifier to allow selecting which browser you wish to use. Until then, I will do without it.

Really handy

[ki4bbo]

This is really handy, the main reason I dont use my gmail account more often, is that it cant be checked automaticly with the rest of my email accounts.. this helps some, but the GUI honestly sucks. It really need some more work.

Also, I find it a pain that it cant automaticly check two accounts at the same time, not that anybody has two accounts ;)

Do you want to try Gmail Notifier?

[larry2k]

I have 2 gmail invitations, send me your First, Last Name and the email where you want to receive the invite, this is a limited offer, in a first come first serve basis. email me to: larry2k[NOSPAM]@[NOSPAM]gmail.com remember to remove the [NOSPAM] strings.

Privacy vs. tech

[scrm]

I just don't understand why someone would move 12 years of their life into the data warehouse of someone you don't control.

You're right. Re-read Brad Templeton's privacy concerns over Gmail and the prospect of storing the "12 years of your life into the data warehouse of someone you don't control" becomes rather dubious.

However, from a purely technical standpoint there are some real advantages to chucking your mail archives into Gmail. The search feature is second to none (who even needs labels?), the interface beats any webmail (Squirrelmail? come on!) or IMAP reader hands-down, and the conversations feature is a real bonus (Mark Lyon informs me that GMail automatically makes conversations from the messages as they are uploaded with his Gmail loader).

The bottom line is, I don't know whether to upload all my old mail to Gmail yet, and for me the jury's still out until the geeks and the lawyers agree.

Confused

[mcc]

...how does gmail not provide one interface everywhere? It is a web page.

What you need is an IMAP mail server, and an IMAP webmail client for when you don't have an IMAP software client.

I am trying to discuss the specific case of people who prefer to use the exact same email client on every computer they come into contact with. What you propose is clearly not a solution for these people. Gmail, or ssh (which is what I use) is.

Re:Gmail invites

[Dharkaron]

please send one to dharkaron01@hotmail.com Thanks

Who cares?

[Artooman]

This is beta software of something that only runs in the windows. There were already plenty of gmail programs that did this?

Why is this a Slashdot article?

Who cares?

Is the Gmail notifier push or pull?

[scrm]

Does this utility check for mail at given intervals, or does it get alerted to new mail whenever it arrives (the promise of IMAP IDLE)?

I hope it's the latter, but I have a feeling it's not smart enough for that.

Notify in RSS format

[cabra771]

Dammit! I want a RSS feed of my Gmail inbox. It can't be that hard to have a password protected feed of my inbox.

A cooler program..

[ki4bbo]

I just found this, http://www.gnotify.com/index.asp , and I think its better than the version google has realesed.. you might give it a go :D

Re:Gmail invites

[bojdom]

bojdom@yahoo.no Thanks!

Re:Gmail invites

[bhurak]

pepsiisthedevil at hotmail.com

Save me from hotmail!

Thanks!

Gmail name / domain name

[sparkhead]

From This article (and others), will Google retain the gmail.com domain? Is it even in jeopardy?

Hey, I did that

[Teknikill]

I did the mailto: thing first. I even emailed them about it, but I received an email back from a clueless person

MailTo for Gmail

I don't get it

[HeyLaughingBoy]

OK, somebody explain to me what the big deal with a GMail account is. As far as I can tell it's just free webmail with 1Gb storage. Yet people are so excited about it. Why?

I mean, free webmail is everywhere. I have untold gigs of storage on my HD and unused old HDs in the closet and I have never come close to more than a meg or so of saved email (if people send me pictures I want to keep, I just detach the file and save it somewhere else).

So am I missing something here?

Re:I don't get it

[oojah]

Google = cool so gmail must be cool as well. No? Well maybe.

It is certainly the best webmail I have ever used by far. Ok, so it is only webmail...

Also, by using invites like this google has created an artificial scarcity of accounts. Because they are rare people want them.

If you want to give it a go, send me an email at oojah@excite.com and I'll send you an invite.

Cheers,

Roger

Re:I don't get it

[Psycho77]

Well there is 2-3 things that make gmail very superior.

The UI is just AWESOME, its so easy to use, very dynamic. You dont have to click refresh to see your new email, the screen update. When you compose, you start to type a name. a Box (not a drop box) appear with all the suggestion that begin with that letter from your address book.

The Thread function is awesome, when you in a conversation with the same topic. All you see in your inbox is 1 line xxxx to yyyyy (52) "Hey fromy our last email.."
Basically thats tell you there is 52 email in the thread and you see the last message. When you click on it. it open every reply are "hidden in kind of table" except the messages you didnt read yet. It make it easy to follow your conversations. My friends and me use that and we have like 12-14 peoples replying. So its easy to use.

When you reply you automaically get up the message with a option to reply or reply all (no screen update or change or anything its direct).

The 1 Gigs is just fantastic. I have the conversations for the last month. You can just archive them to do Search. There is filter and label function to automatically filter your email.

There is starred option too if you think a conversation is important, you can see all your important message in a different section.

With the new notifier, its kinda better than any email system around.

It has nothing to do with a webmail, its way superior.

you want a gmail account?

[geekoid]

I can send you an invite for [puts pinky to mouth] one Million Dollars!

Gmail notifier for gkrellm

[Azureflare]

Here's a little hack I made for gkrellm. It works pretty well. I'm currently working on creating a plugin for monitoring multiple gmail accounts. It has some bugs still, but it works pretty well (it's basically a hack of mailwatch, and I've added in the revolving penguin too!).

Monitor a Gmail Account with gkrellm

Gmail for Everyone?

[mangusman]

So what's the projected data for Gmail to accessible by the masses?

That's my address and I have no invites

[jesser]

I am jruderman@gmail.com and I have not had Gmail invites for a month. Any particular reason you're trying to get Slashdot users to spam me?

Re:Gmail invites

[binkys]

one for me if possible. bill_schmidt(at]mail(dot]com

Are they even issuing invites anymore???

[Dman33]

I got my account a few months ago and I have had only one invite to use. I figured I would get more but there was that one only. Are they even issuing invites anymore???

mailto handler

[hiroshi912681]

That mailto handler is a pretty cool idea, I don't think I've seen that before. Is there a mailto handler for any other web based email service like Yahoo? That would be handy for my mom, who doesn't understand the whole mailto thing.

On a slightly related/unrelated note, some people here are mentioning webmail to pop conversion programs like yahoo pops and pop goes the gmail. Does anyone know if there's such a program available for everyone.net webmail users?

About the "mailto:" mail handler...

[jbarr]

While Gmail Notifier DOES open a new compose window, be aware that unless you check the "keep me logged in for two weeks" checkbox on the login screen, you will have to log in every time, even if you are already logged into Gmail in another browser window.

While it's a bit cumbersom, at least it's still more secure...

Waiting for eprompter

[data64]

I am waiting for eprompter(www.eprompter.com) to add GMail support. That way I get all my Yahoo, hotmail, Gmail and other web based mail accounts monitored by the same app.

No options, yay!

[yuting]

The Notifier doesn't come with any options to configure. Yay! Simplicity at last!

This server is too busy

[Frobisher]

Great. Hotmail is gasping now, I get This server is too busy message regularly NOW - I dread to think how often I'll see it when they upgrade the storage. No, thanks MS but no thanks. I'm very happy with my spanky GMail. Sure, I'll keep my Hotmail account, but only as my main "alternate" for commercial email stuff.

access normal e-mail anywhere

[Jagasian]

http://www.mail2web.com/

Re:for all you guys sitting on your accounts...

[Benanov]

invite sent.

Memory whore

[SnAzBaZ]

This thing is eating 7mb of ram on my system, I am not impressed.

Re:Gmail invites

[froschmann]

letting-AT-juno-DOT-com

Thanks a lot.

Problem with gmail..

[dwipal]

This is a little offtopic, but I have found gmail to be quite unreliable. Most of the messages i send to gmail take between 1 minute to 5 hours before they reach my gmail inbox, as compared to almost no time for other email services. This is y maybe it still in beta. No using gmail till it works well.

Re:for all you guys sitting on your accounts...

[Tongo]

I wouldn't mind getting an invite either...

tong at nwi dot net

I'd love to try this out...

[cagem0nkey]

...but I still don't have a gmail account and I'm not above trolling for one! =/
cagemonkey@hotmail.com

So they release notifier for Windows only first?

[xswl0931]

I suppose it makes a lot of sense if the majority of Gmail users don't use Windows but their notifier is being developed on Windows first? Same with their toolbar.

Re: Mee too :-)

[markus_baertschi]

markus at markus dot org

I'd like one too, very much :-)

Markus

Re:for all you guys sitting on your accounts...

[Tongo]

Interesting....I wonder if that means they may be moving closer to the official release?

In any event, thank you!

I want to marry this Tray Application!!!

[Johnny318]

This rocks and is everything I wanted in a Gmail notification utility. YES!!! The last huge feature I need in Gmail is being able to choose from a picklist of validated "send from" addresses, like Yahoo Plus allows. But this Tray App is just fantastic!!!!

Re: Mee too :-)

[markus_baertschi]

While I understand Googles desire for an extended beta-test period I find the black market surrounding the invites disgusting.

Markus

Gmail Invites Available...

[SuperDave913]

If you want a Gmail invite... send me an email... bigwavedave[at]gmail.com

Re:Gmail Invites Available...

[SuperDave913]

All gone... Sorry!? :-)

Could I please have an invite?

[jxs2151]

I hate to shamelessly beg like this but what will I tell my kids if they find out that Dad is not as cool as I have been telling them all these years?

jxs2151 atat hotmail dotdot com

Re:I have four gmail invites

[Thrymm]

I see it! Could I have an invite please? thrymm @ yahoo.com Thanks :)

Re:I have four gmail invites

[jsinnema]

jsinnema(at)dds(dot).nl

Thanks in advance!

Re:I have four gmail invites

[bojdom]

bojdom(at)yahoo(dot)no

Elephants

[qray]

Why the heck does such a little notification app take up 7megs? I'm tired of lazy developers gobling up my system RAM.

Re:Here they come!

[linnorm]

I think hotmail ate it. Can you resend it to raxx@netscape.net? Thanks!

That's what I used to think...

[rm -vrf]

That's what I usually do when on a remote computer, but it won't work all the time. A couple of months ago, for example, I was stationed at Ft. Lee (VA) for two weeks, and the security on those computers was completely airtight (menus were disabled, you couldn't download anything, you couldn't browse the hard drive and run programs even with the SaveAs trick). Gmail worked just fine however, as any other webmail would have. It was nice to have that option available, that's all.

Beg Alert!

[Cinematique]

I'm trying to hook a few friends up with an account but no one I know has any invites left... if I could get a few people to help me (and them) I'd really appreciate it!

Various Gmail tools

[guttersn]

A bit of shameless plugging, but I have saved a collection of links to different Gmail tools from around the Web here.

Prefer the Firefox extensions...

[hawkeye]

I prefer the Firefox extensions.

Gmail Notifier:

http://nexgenmedia.net/extensions

Web Mail Compose:

http://jedbrown.net/mozilla

In my opinion, they offer a better solution.

- hawkeye

Hotmail vs. GMail

[ffdixon]

Storage isn't everything. After 1G, its really a case of diminishing returns. Ask any user, and what they really care about is usability.

I also know a bit about e-mail checkers and what GMail is doing. I work at Serence, a company that makes KlipFolio, a windows tool that watches multiple remote sites for changes to save you effort.

We just released a Hotmail Klip that monitors your Hotmail inbox for new messages, shows you the messages in concise list, and gives you a preview on mouse over. Screen shots are here.

Our plan is to do a GMail Klip next. It took us quite a while to figure out Hotmail's use of WebDav and how to authenticate against Microsoft Passport. Hopefully, GMail offers an easier API than HotMail.

It's really in the interest of these companies to make their product easy for users (again: usability), and very easy for third-party vendors to add value to it.

Cheers,... Fred

it already exists

[wibs]

It goes in the menubar, and it's called Gmail Status. It's not perfect, but it does a fine job and doesn't require any open web browsers or whatnot.

Re:Here they come!

[Vega043]

I guess hotmail ate mine too... could resend it to amannaerts (at) planet (dot) nl? Thanks

For KDE users..

[petrol pumper]

I've written a is a systray applet

what's wrong with Firefox?

[sirshannon]

nothing at all. It is my default browser and the only one I have used GMail with. No reason to use IE at all, as far as GMail is concerned.

Official GMail suggestion form

[sirshannon]

this may not be new, but I've never seen it before: http://services.google.com/inquiry/gmail_suggest/

If you still want that gmail invite...

[sumo]

drop me a line at my gmail account. My gmail id is soumenb .

Re:If you still want that gmail invite...

[Arthur B.]

Thank you for everything !