Nels Wadycki » Gmail

As the iPhone evolves, so does Gmail

Nels — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:10:13 +0000

But none of the recently announced innovations are making my eyes light up like a kid first gazing on his Easter basket.

First, from the Gmail Blog: Nested Labels and Message Preview. The Nested Labels thing actually did have me excited as though it were a chocolate egg or perhaps a Peep. But then I read this:

Please note that this lab doesn’t play nicely with the “Hide Read Labels” lab. You might not get exactly what you expect if you have both labs enabled; for example, the collapse/expand icons won’t always appear when they should.

and all the twinkle in my eyes was snuffed out. I tried it out and found it to be true. It didn’t work.

Honestly, the “Hide Read Labels” lab experiment is more important to me than sub-labels ever could be. Since I make extensive use of the keyboard shortcuts, I can navigate to any label I want with a simple “g + l” or “/” and the name of the label. I use the “Hide Read Labels” so that I only see labels with unread messages, which gives me a visual indicator of what has been filtered out of my Inbox and placed under another label for later viewing. Thus instead of viewing 44 labels, I can collapse my chatterbox (which I don’t use anyway since I have Trillian) and see my Calendar Gadget. Viewing Unread Messages and Upcoming Events is easily of more value than being able to have labels under other labels. Of course, the whole labeling system was designed so that you don’t really need nested labels at all. I know there are people who have not given up the folder hierarchy mindset, but it’s too bad that they’ll have to give up their hidden read labels in order to get it.

Another thing it’s too bad people have to give up in exchange for something else: Flash. We all know Steve Jobs hates Flash, and since Apple can do whatever they want, they’re free to disallow the use of Flash on the iPhone and iPad until a court of law says otherwise. It just seems kind of mean and pointless. I mean, even if Flash goes the way of Cobol, Adobe isn’t going to die. They have a suite of graphic design and image editing tools that is basically unparalleled. Photoshop : Graphic Design :: iPhone : Smartphones.

It really just seems like another iPhone “because we can” move. Much like the we don’t want a porn store excuse for not allowing unsigned apps on the iPhone. At least with that one they have a reason, but really it’s just another “because we can” move. It’s not about porn on the iPhone, it’s about apps which provide no revenue for Apple.

It’s certainly not a dumb move by Apple, and in this case (as opposed to the Flash case), they at least have a legitimate excuse to hide behind. I’m sure Google is betting that once they hit a tipping point in terms of number of apps, normal people (i.e., the non-geeks) will get outside of the default “must buy iPhone” mentality and at least consider that there are other possibilities.

The other iPhone point I wanted to make was more related to the point I was making about addition of new Gmail features and concerns iPhone OS 4. Honestly, Multitasking isn’t something I think I actually need. It seems great in theory, but I’m not sure what I would actually use it for. Since I can already listen to the iPod through the native app and then go do other things, I’m not sure what else I would want running in the background that doesn’t already provide push notifications (e.g., email, phone, etc). I would consider streaming internet music if there were a Lala app available, but since Apple bought Lala, I think that multitasking use case has all but died.

The folders thing will be nice, but again, not something I’m jumping up and down about. I have a pretty stable set of apps on my phone now, and while grouping them will probably make life a little easier, I’ve gotten pretty used to things as they are so I’m not singing out for joy at the thought of being able to reconfigure them a little bit more now… It’s a nice feature, but it’s also something that I would have already had if I’d gotten an Android phone. And if the Motorola Droid or the Nexus One had been around at this time last year, I probably would have.

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Web Apps = Automatic Upgrades

Nels — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:00:02 +0000

While it wasn’t one of the major factors I talked about in my previous post, the following is a quick and easy example of another reason that webapps kick ass: No Upgrade Cycle

Google launched Buzz 2 days ago, and already their making changes based on user feedback. But the best part is not that they’re making changes and responding so quickly, rather it’s that the update gets automatically pushed to everyone. No download. No install. Just, roll out, and boom, it’s there.

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Chrome v Firefox: FACE/OFF

Nels — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:50:06 +0000

So, I downloaded the Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 build since I saw a chart that showed how much faster it is than the version of FF I was running. Unfortunately, that same chart also showed how much faster Chrome 2 and Safari 4* were than even the Beta Firefox build.

So I also downloaded the Chrome 2 Beta (which has now been released), and have been using that this week. It took a little while to settle in, but the bookmarks and some of my passwords from Firefox were transferred over.

At first I hated that Chrome used a separate process for each tab because I couldn’t track it in the Windows Task Manager. But after using it for a bit, I discovered it has its own Task Manager that allows you to kill individual Chrome tabs, and with an extra click you can see the total amount of memory it’s using. A little extra work to see the usage, but at the same time, I don’t have to worry about how much RAM it’s using because it does a much better job at minimizing it’s use. Since each tab is its own process, when you close a tab, you immediately get that memory back. (I’m not entirely sure that’s true if that tab was using the Flash plugin, but you at least get some immediate giveback) I’m not sure what the memory recall process is in Firefox, but I know that it can just keep going up and up and up if you leave it open for a while. I haven’t experienced that (yet?) with Chrome.

Since I use Gmail almost constantly, Chrome was looking pretty good until today when I realized that I hadn’t looked at my Remember The Milk in a couple days. As any good GTDer should know, you have to be able to trust your system, and for me, having my list of Next Action sitting there is part of trusting my system. I can see it and know what’s on it… but if it’s not there, I get worried that somehow there is something that I might have forgotten.

Why does that matter?

Well, I realized that with Firefox, I had the RTM extension installed, so my list was always sitting there in my Gmail. Two Birds, One Stone, if you will. But with Chrome, I didn’t have that. I have RTM in my Bookmarks Toolbar, but I still have to open it to look at it.

So, I was ready to switch back to Firefox, until I remembered that Gmail Labs has a feature that lets you add any Google Gadget as a sidebar type thing. Remember The Milk has designed a nice Google Gadget that I used before even in Firefox (until my Gmail started spazzing out). So, I plugged that back in using Chrome, and so far, I haven’t had any Gmail freak outs and now I have a usable version of RTM in my inbox. It’s not quite as nice as the “Add On” version, but it works almost as well, and given Chrome’s speed and memory improvements, I’m sticking with it for now.

Everybody loves little charts right? I’ve put the characteristics in order of importance (to me):

Browser Feature	Chrome	Firefox
Speed	WIN
Memory	WIN
Remember The Milk		WIN
Adding RSS Feeds		WIN
Navbar Features	TIE	TIE

Now, if they’d only figure out a way to make PHP run super fast so that Wordpress would be as speedy as Gmail and Reader…

* Safari 4 Beta was included in the comparison because, while it is faster and uses less memory than both Firefox and Chrome, it has a bug where it takes an inordinately long time for the first page to be loaded. I’ve had to wait up to 14 seconds (I timed it) for Google.com to load when I first launch the browser. It also does not automatically remember the open tabs after you close and reopen the browser. You can get this by going to History and opening the tabs from last session, so it’s a minor inconvenience, but paired with the previously mentioned time-waster, it takes it out of contention. If Apple gets that first page loading thing fixed, I will definitely consider making Safari my full time browser.

Finally, I think we can all agree that Ashley Tisdale looks the best in that dress. That is all.

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Gmail’s Magic Inbox

Nels — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:54:34 +0000

Google Operating System has found some Gmail code that indicates the coming of a social inbox!

So, not only will we have one inbox for Everything, but it’ll be organized by importance (or at least how important Google thinks things are).

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More Google Voice

Nels — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:19:20 +0000

Gina “Lifehacker” Trapani wrote a post about Google Voice on SmarterWare in which she says:

Now that Google Voice supports SMS, you can send and receive text messages from your GV number as well, which is the last piece I needed to finally tell all my friends and family, “Here’s my new phone number.”

She’s been using GrandCentral since it came out, and only decided to switch completely with the addition of SMS. I’m pretty sure that when I get my iPhone (cross your fingers – any day now) I’ll just tell all my friends to send their text messages to my email address. Of course, then I’ll have to make sure to keep it less than 140 characters when I write them back, but at least I won’t have to give AT&T my wife’s arm and leg to pay for a text messaging plan.

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One Inbox To Rule Them All

Nels — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:26:52 +0000

or: All Your Inbox Are Belong To Us

So, there’s a thing called Google Voice (via TechCrunch). And to quote TechCrunch:

Google also says that full integration with Gmail is coming, but won’t say when. Personally, having all my email, SMS and transcribed voicemails in a single inbox could be life-changing.

Yes indeed. Of course, this post has been skulking around in the background for almost a week, and so I’ve developed a counter-point as well, but let’s start with the positive.

Google Voice is a Google Product, so it has a pretty good chance of being awesome. Being a Google Product, it also has a pretty good chance of sucking, and pretty much no chance of being in between. But since TechCrunch says it’s Very Very Good, then I think the chances of being awesome are pretty good.

As someone who does not have a “smartphone” I would like a phone number that could direct my calls to my home number if I didn’t really want to deal with them, and deliver them to my cell phone if they were important. Of course, since it usually takes 24 hours or more for me to remember to set my cell phone back to Loud after I have to put it on Silent (like for a movie), the announcement of voicemails and SMS in my Gmail seems like a brilliant idea. I also like the idea of getting transcriptions of my voicemails and perhaps even moreso, the ability to save my text messages forever. Storing them in a place where I keep emails that I want to save forever is like getting fouled on a monster dunk.

Of course, if it could also tell me if a SMS message went to anyone else (like, say, and email does), then I would be 100% happy (as opposed to, you know, 99.999%), like getting fouled on a dunk from the three-point line, NBA Jam-style.

I already saw that at least one of my Facebook friends has upgraded from GrandCentral to Google Voice. Lucky b-tard. I don’t even remember hearing of GrandCentral before, but I wish I was part of the in crowd now. If you’re like me, you can find a link here that will give you a form to sign up to be notified when Google Voice is available to everyone.

Here’s the official Google Blog post which doesn’t have much besides a link to the Google Voice About Page. The About Page has a video for every feature (I believe) in the product, though, so that’s pretty awesome.

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Gmail Is My Home

Nels — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:22:59 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

By disabling the Labs extensions and then reenabling the most important ones, I’ve managed to fix my issue with Gmail constantly resizing the inbox, and now have 4 different (lowercase) inboxes displayed one on top of the other: Inbox (for GTD style collection – even though my library still hasn’t gotten the book for me yet), Starred items (basically an easy way to not High Priority items), label:To Do (my original To Do inbox, now reserved for the second most important things), and label: Keep in Mind (for stuff that I don’t want to forget about, but might not necessarily be To Do items).

Image via CrunchBase

I also installed the Remember The Milk Firefox Add-On to replace the Google Gadget (I suspect the Gadgets were part of what was messing things up). The Firefox adding is better in some ways and worse in some ways. It takes up a lot more room, but it feels more full-featured.

So, now that that’s all settled, I’m going to have to play around with the Custom Theme Colors that were just added today. I tried the theme templates but didn’t really like any of them enough to switch from just the basic one. But now that I tend to leave Gmail open more and more, I might go back and have a second try with them (since I’m usually pretty terrible at coming up with custom theme colors that are any good – see also: My Yahoo!)

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Multiple Inboxes almost allowed me some GTD-Fu

Nels — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:13:50 +0000

So, yesterday I set up additional mailboxes using Gmail Labs’ new Multiple Inboxes feature. Then I created a label called To Do and added “label:To Do” as one of my other inboxes (well, actually, my only other one). This slight tweak allowed me to move things from my capital-I Inbox to the To Do label, which was still there on the Inbox page, but since I changed the multiple inbox setting to put the additional collection points below the main inbox, it was slightly less intrusive. This was surprisingly effective at allowing me to not worry as much about those things down there since my Inbox was still technically empty. While I haven’t actually read GTD (though I do have it on hold at the library right now), I felt very GTDized by doing this.

That was, until today, when the Gmail couldn’t figure out how wide to make the page, and kept moving the right side back and forth. Now, granted, I’ve moved my chat and lables boxes to the right side, and have the Remember the Milk gadget, Google Calendar, and Google Documents on the left side, and I understand that aligning things like that is probably a recipe for disaster. That said, it works fine with just one Inbox… so, I’m stuck with that for now, and stuck waiting for GTD from the library to see how I can further adapt my Gmail set up. (For the record, I have tried the GTDInbox plugin and wasn’t really feeling it, and I’ve read a bunch of other ways to organize the Inbox as a Collection Point, but feel like I’ll be better able to understand what they’re meant to do once I’ve actually read the book).