GrandCentral Certificate Expires

January appears to be a rough month for the internet behemoth.  Last January, around the same time (January 23rd actually), someone at Google failed to renew the Google.de domain which brought it down for several hours after someone else registered it.

I guess for those few (maybe there is actually a lot) that have problems with drunk-mailing this could be a good fix but I’d much prefer Gmail spend the time to come up with ‘mailbox rules’ similar to Outlook.  Before people start screaming, yes, I know you can use Outlook with Gmail but I don’t want to have to use it.  With rules, I can easily setup a 1 minute delay on outbound emails.  This allows me to catch that last sentence or add that last recipient that may have slipped my mind as I clicked ‘send’.

You can configure the settings on the ‘general’ tab after enabling the feature.  It’s a pretty quick configuration and let’s you tell Google when your preferred drinking times are and allows you to make it as easy or as difficult as you want.

As I found while I was testing, once you ‘pass the test’ once you can send as many emails as you want without being prompted to take the quiz again.  Apparently, you have to logout and then login again to re-prompt the ‘Mail Goggles’.  At least I had to logout, even when I tried sending messages to a different address.  Maybe it only asks you to verify once every set amount of time?!?

Verdict: Leave this one disabled.

Settings:

Gmail Adds Mail Goggles - Settings

Easy: 

Gmail Mail Goggles Easy Settings

Difficult: 

Gmail Mail Goggles Difficult Settings

I consider myself an early adopter.  I’m currently using Google Chrome (the newest web browser), I’ve been using web-based email for years (I own Outlook and it’s not even setup), I blog, I have a Twitter account, I’ve had Facebook since it was first launched at my school and I read almost all my news online (I’m a fan of Google Reader).  Those are the best examples I could come up with…it’s been a long week.  Bare with me.  But sometimes, it’s nice to have a copy in hand and get your eyes off the computer screen.  With my travel schedule (around 120-140 segments a year) sometimes it just isn’t efficient to turn on the PC and use Google Reader offline with Gears.

The biggest problem I have with my magazine subscriptions is managing the content for reference later.  One of the best features (in my humble opinion) of Google Reader is the ability to tag and ‘Star’ posts.  I currently have 222 starred posts organized under 252 tags…I read a lot.  But, I can’t really do that with an article in a magazine can I?!?  It would be a little inefficient to award an article a gold star (think back to elementary school people) but have to look through each page to find it.

Here are a couple things I do to keep this information at my fingertips:

Summary Emails 

I send summary emails to myself for each issue if there is something worth remembering.  For example, I just finished reading the October issue of Money.  I sent myself an email with the subject “Money Magazine – October 2008″ and included key words such as “retirement locations”, “Roth Advantages”, “Social Security Taxation Formula”, etc.

I have a general tag (SUBSCRIPTIONS) that I apply to each of these emails for easy location later and if an issue is particularly heavy on something I may assign it additional tags.  For example, Money tends to have issues packed with retirement information.  So, at times, I label a whole issue with the ‘RETIREMENT’ tag.

The tags are great but it’s inefficient to create a tag for every possible key word.  By entering meaningful words in the body of the email I can search for them later with GMails built in search functionality and figure out which issue(s) I need to pull for additional information.

Scanned Articles

Sometimes an article just jumps out at me as amazing or there’s just one article from an issue that I’m interested in saving for later.  In this case I’ll scan the article and send it to myself as an image.  Nothing too fancy here folks, my $150 All-in-One handles the workload nicely.  Attach the image, label it ‘subscriptions’, add some key words and an appropriate subject and I’m sure to find it later.  For articles that fall into this category, I often star the conversation as well just to make it that much easier to find.

This allows me to trash the issue (there’s only so much space for storing subscriptions these days) but retain the information.  I don’t even know how many times I’ve pulled up previously read articles for quotes or references. 

The only real downside I’m facing right now is that I have to search twice.  With as much as I read, I can’t always remember where exactly I read something…I have to search.  In order to get the proper results I have to search Google Reader/sort through tags and search GMail.

It’s cumbersome at times, but I’ve found it to be a great way to manage print information so that it’s easy to find when you need it.  Hope this helps!

Don’t get me wrong, Adobe needs to keep the lights on, but they have a whole suite of products to keep them afloat.  Not to mention they have premium Acrobat tools (more than just creating a simple PDF) and the Adobe Interactive Forms suite to keep Acrobat alive and kicking.  Adobe Interactive Forms allow businesses to develop forms that mimic an existing layout that communicate with their backend ERP systems.  This allows the business to implement technology changes with minimal impact to field workers.

I thought I’d share my online PDF creator approach that also fits with my slow transition to an online-only productivity suite.

To get your documents as PDFs follow these few steps:

1) Login to Google Docs and upload your existing document – they cover Word and Powerpoint

2) Click on the document to enter ‘change mode’

3) Navigate to File -> Download file as -> PDF and save when prompted

I started noticing the changes Tuesday morning when I logged in and was immediately excited. Google announced the new streamlined login Tuesday night on the Google Analytics blog.

Now to play the devils advocate. I appreciate the change because I hated pausing to enter my password again but I’m not sure why they couldn’t take it one step further and take me right to the main landing page. If it’s for security reasons, I’ve got to say there are other services that use the Google single-signon that I’m more worried about if my account is compromised.

Also, if you visit Google Analytics without being logged into another Google service you now have an additional step. Now, you have to click the ‘access analytics’ button which will determine you’re not logged in and then you have to enter your Google credentials.

All in all, I think it will save me some time because I don’t often visit Analytics first thing (I tend to be an email person followed by RSS reader) but I’m not exactly sure what the engineers where thinking when they ok’d that approach.

Here are a couple screenshots of the new login approach:

Tonight, as with most nights, I login to check club activity and make sure things are working smoothly.  I have a lot of faith in Google but based on my experiences at work, a random check up here and there can save you in the long run.

Much to my surprise, I was greeted by a message that said my users may have issues using Google Apps – specifically the email application.  I like that I was warned and luckily we all still keep our own personal email addresses, but I was still pretty shocked.  While implementing the site I read several of the forums and there are a lot of people that use Google Apps for ‘mission critical’ purposes.

I will say though…at least they warn you.  It was nice for them to let me know I may get some crappy emails before they actually made it to my inbox.  I tried to get an image of the problem but I’m on the road (Dallas, TX this week) for work and well…my company issued computer is pretty worthless.  I apologize for its quality in advance.

There is the obviously emphasis on collaboration and communication between team/project members. My ‘sales’ experience is relatively limited – I managed a newspaper in college and filling in for the occasional employee is about the extent of it – but the functionality seems practical.

One key feature I liked is the fact that email being sent (from the Gmail interface) can automatically be sent to a customers CRM account. This provides you with a worry-free audit trail and allows your boss or someone covering for you (if you’re out sick or something) to quickly pick up where you left off. Likewise, you can send customer emails directly within Salesforce. I also liked the fact that you can attach/create Google Docs directly from Salesforce. The uses for this are obvious and I think it will really be able to help the sales process. Everything from quote notes, sales presentations and final contracts can be created directly from the Salesforce interface.

It didn’t look like the interface was the same between the two systems which is disappointing but I haven’t signed up for a test account yet so that’s just speculation based on the tour. I think that offering a consistent interface between Google and Salesforce is a must and could help adoption among small businesses.

I don’t know much about Salesforce’s push for mobile but Google has mobile versions of Gmail and Docs and continues to improve them. I’m curious to see what kind of mobile sales/business applications they make available to their users. Anything less than full functionality is unacceptable, but that would be a pretty major project.  I’d also like to get some information on what the security architecture looks like.  ZOHO just announced an enhanced architecture as part of it’s enterprise CRM which is a little more inline with what I see as an SAP consultant.

Simply put, the decision makes sense – Google is trying to break into enterprise business, Salesforce has a great customer base (and from what I read a decent set of applications) and both are competing with Microsoft in some fashion. The partnership allows them to put the full-court press on Microsoft who has been slow to adopt a web-based business model.

It will obviously take time for larger corporations to make the move given the obvious security concerns (mostly on the Google front) and the fact that the majority of business users are still not comfortable with online applications. One thing that could help Google’s case for enterprise applications is the fact that Vista has had so many bumps along the way. The rate at which corporations have been moving to Vista has been slow at best. I work for a technology company and we haven’t even heard rumor’s of a potential migration.

Here’s a quick video tour of Salesforce for Google Apps:

Like it or not, Microsoft still commands a huge share of the presentation software market with it’s PowerPoint product. In order for Google, or any of the other start-ups, to ease the transition for users it’s imperative they allow users to save in the traditional PPT format. If users know they won’t impact how other people have to view something, they’ll be a little more likely to make the move from desktop to webtop.

I personally like the online collaboration features that Google has built into the ‘Docs’ application but not many of my friends and family are into it. And for those of you that work in large corporations, let’s be honest, you’ll be sending out presentations as attachments for a while longer.

Good job Google, keep ‘em coming!

If there aren’t any relevant ads displayed, they suggest repeating yourself or to continue rambling on until the system picks up your conversation. They’ve implemented a pretty neat click process – they transport you directly to the site with their Teleportation Technology. They also mention that you can opt to have the product placed directly in your hands, though they are not clear what kind of setup configuration is required for this.

I think AdSense for Conversations is by far the best April Fools joke Google managed today. However, I will admit that I enjoyed the fact that they admitted to using the e-flux capacitor to solve causality issues in Gmail Custom Time.

(photo credit: AdSense blog)

Some of you may remember last year’s Gmail April Fools joke – Gmail Paper. Basically, they offered a free service for you to print all your email and they would send it to you on paper. Where do they come up with this stuff?!?

So how will Gmail Custom Time play out? I’m guessing a ‘service’ to let you set times emails will be sent (I can actually see a use for this) or when an email should have been sent.

Here’s a shot from my Gmail account.

UPDATE: The link in Gmail is now live and it’s pointing to a page with a similar format to last year’s April Fools. The joke this year is a feature that allows you to set the time emails are ‘sent’ as I predicted above. Now I can tell my boss that I sent him that email hours ago even though I didn’t. “Hey boss, refresh your inbox, I know I sent you that TPS report.” Obviously this wouldn’t really work (it’s like printing “hundred of thousands” of emails and having them delivered)…let’s hope they have something else for us when I wake up.

Since Gmail released the IMAP feature a few months ago I’ve been a pretty happy camper. While I’m pretty happy, there is always room for improvement. I think Gmail recognizes that since they’re continually releasing new features! Keep it up guys.

• Tagging: The ability to label emails with several tags is great but having to select them from a drop down list is inefficient. It would be great if there was a type-ahead feature that auto-completed tags as I began typing them. It would also be great if you could apply multiple tags to filters.
• Filtering: Gmail has a great filter set-up but there is one thing I’d like to see added. The ability to apply multiple tags to filtered messages. Some people may not use tags to quite the same extent I do but I like to keep an organized mailbox. With my travels for work I also like to make sure I keep as many records as possible and there are some emails that I get on a regular basis that I like filtered into two buckets. Hotel receipts are the main culprit (expense reporting can be such a pain). Currently, I just have to filter it with one tag and add the second manually. Not a huge deal, but it would definitely be a time saver.
• Shortcut Keys: For those of us that use Outlook all day for corporate email, shortcut keys are where it’s at. I can successfully navigate almost all of Outlook (that I use at least) without touching the mouse. Google has done a pretty good job building out the shortcut keys but some of them are counter-intuitive. Maybe the problem is they just aren’t intuitive based on the Windows habits that we have all picked up. I’d like to see the ability to customize your shortcut keys or at least add a few more like ‘ALT+s’ to quickly send an email from compose mode.

If I new anything about writing GreaseMonkey scripts or had a couple hours of extra time I would consider writing a couple of these enhancements myself. But…since I don’t and I have no extra time I’m hoping the various Google teams go ahead and step-up.

These are obviously just my opinions but I think they’re enhancements that would benefit the masses.

I get tons of email – between work and personal email I don’t know how I ever do anything but email (I’m working on implementing Tim Ferris’ recent email suggestions, but I’m not there yet). Anyways, I get a lot of email and I love hearing new methods for filtering message so that I know exactly what I have to read and what can wait until later. While reading my daily blogs today I stumbled on this little beauty – all Gmail users are given two email addresses.

In short – Google gives you two email addresses when you sign up for a Gmail account. youraccount@gmail.com and youraccount@googlemail.com both end up in your Gmail inbox. Lucky for you, this provides you with a simple way of filtering email from friends, family and coworkers differently than email from random places such as Amazon, Comcast, Cingular, etc.

All you have to do is continue using your Gmail address for the emails that you want to read immediately and start using your @googlemail.com address for all your other communication such as hotel reservations, bill notifications, online orders, news subscriptions, etc. Then create a filter in Gmail with youraccount@googlemail.com in the ‘to’ field. Have this filter apply a label to the email and archive for you to revisit later.

Give it a test and email yourself at youremail@googlemail.com.

You now have the ability to remain ‘invisible’ while chatting through the Gmail interface. This allows you to initiate all conversations with the people you want since nobody else can see that you’re online. No more pesky work related IMs!

If you’re one of those people that occasionally uses both Gmail (where I’m always logged in to chat) and the Google Talk desktop application be careful. Since the Google Talk application doesn’t support ‘invisible’ mode yet, if you’re logged into both your status will show up as online even if you’re set as ‘invisible’ in Gmail Chat.

Here’s a quick shot of ‘invisible’ mode in action…

You’ve always been able to mass-upload documents via email but the size limits it imposed on uploads was really annoying.

One thing I didn’t care for was the fact that I had to be running the upload application in order for the right-click functionality to be present. I understand they wouldn’t be able to actually upload the file but allowing me the option and then sending them to Google Docs the next time I started the app would be more useful for me.  I’m running a lot of software everyday for work so I like to trim the fat wherever possible.  Here’s a screenshot for all you visual people.

All-in-all I think it’s a pretty good tool and if you read the API documentation (link below) I think you’ll find that there are a lot of opportunities for further applications.  Besides the point I mentioned above, I’d like to see folder support.  I use Google Docs for collaboration and if I’m working on one specific topic I’d like the ability to upload an entire folder to the group.

You can get the application from Google here but it does require the .NET Framework 2.0. For you technical people out there you can also review the Google Documents API documentation for a little more information on what the protocol offers.

Getting set up is extremely easy, I had a new group with members set up and ready to email (test group for my screenshot) in roughly two minutes. I’ve got a couple different groups but they’re useful for family and friends.  Makes sending out the family news a whole lot easier.

When sending an email all you have to do is start typing the group name and Gmail will populate the email addresses for everyone in the group.

Sorry everyone, this is only available for IE7 and Firefox 2 or newer.