Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

We've had a busy year re-coding Gmail and providing you with a slew of new features before this holiday season. Now it's time for a break. We'll be back in January, but until then, we've assembled a list of things you can do using Gmail in case you get bored over the holiday*:

• Try one of three new chat features to keep in better touch: group chat with your family, reconnect with your long lost AIM friends, or add some spirit to your smiley.
  
• Grab a video camera and share your Gmail story with the world.
• Send out your holiday cards by email -- it's cheaper than stamps and they're searchable that way.
  
• Change your labels to holiday colors to make your inbox more festive.
  
• Playing with your iPhone this holiday season? Then try out free IMAP access and sync your Gmail inbox across devices.

Thanks for all the feedback you've given us this year, and we hope you enjoy the newest features. On behalf of the entire Gmail team, happy holidays and have a wonderful New Year. See you in 2008.

*Some of these features only work in the latest version of Gmail, now available for English IE7 and Firefox 2 users.

Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Colored labels make it easier to keep track of emails, and by using them with filters, I realized they can provide an almost entirely new way of visualizing my inbox based on context rather than order. By setting up filters so emails from certain senders (or on certain topics) automatically appear with colored labels, I can scan my inbox just by looking at the colors.

For example, I have filters that apply a red "Important!" label to emails sent to me by my manager, a purple "Vacation" label to emails that have "vacation" in the text, and a green "Industry News" label to emails that are sent to industry lists I subscribe to. Now when I open my email and see a bunch of red labeled messages, I know I have a lot of responding to do right away.

To set up a filter with a colored label, simply click the "Create a filter" link next to the search box. Add senders or certain words you want to keep a better eye on, click next, and assign a label by checking "apply the label" and choosing an appropriate one. Then just pick a label color by clicking the color swatch next to the label title in the left-hand navigation menu. Give colored labels with filters a try and see if it changes the way you read your inbox too.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager

A few days after inviting you to share your Gmail stories, we're already impressed with the results. Among many others, so far we've heard from:

A father who uses Gmail as a digital journal for his son:


A soldier stationed in Iraq:


A record producer who completed an album without ever speaking to the artist in person:


A multi-tasking college student:


We've seen stories that are heartwarming, interesting, funny, and informative. Some people are singing, others are drawing, and some are using special effects. If you don't have a story to share, the responses might inspire you to think of a new way to use Gmail. (I'm already looking forward to starting that digital baby journal in a few years!)

Keep those stories -- and ideas -- coming; we can't wait to see what you'll think of next.

Posted by Anatol Pomazau, Software Engineer

Gmail shortcuts can save you a lot time, and recently we've added even more. But with so many shortcuts it can be a challenge to remember them all. For example, did you know that "s" applies a star, "!" reports spam, and "#" moves a message to the trash? For this reason, we added a shortcut reference menu you can call up by holding "shift" and hitting the "?" key while logged in. It's easy to remember: just type "?" any time you have a question about a shortcut and need a reminder. Then click anywhere off the shortcut menu in Gmail to dismiss it. This feature works in the latest version of Gmail, currently available for English IE7 and Firefox 2 users. Don't forget to enable shortcuts in Settings --"?" is a shortcut itself. Happy shortcutting and happy holidays.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager

You might remember that we were inspired to launch Gmail in 2004 after hearing one frustrated emailer's story. Many years and iterations later, we're still listening -- whether you have a bug to report or a feature to suggest. It keeps us motivated (and entertained) when we hear stories about what you've done using Gmail. A man in Jakarta told us that he uses Gmail on his mobile phone to stay productive during his four hour daily commute, while an author in Florida wrote to us describing how he relies on Gmail in every step of his writing process.

To continually remind us of why we work so hard on Gmail, we started pinning these cool stories on the walls around Google. We quickly realized, however, that this wasn't very resource-friendly (and despite a past April Fool's announcement, we are quite eco-conscious) and it definitely wasn't the best way to share them with the rest of the Gmail community. So to save some wall space -- and paper -- we'd like to give you the opportunity to make a video of your Gmail story to share with the world.

All you need is a story about how you've used Gmail and a video camera. You don't even need to be creative; you can just tell it like it is. But if creativity is your thing (and we know you have it in you after all the awesome submissions we got from our last collaborative video), feel free to spice it up however you'd like. Just make sure it's 30 seconds or less and submitted by December 31st. Go to http://gmail.com/yourstory to find directions on how to submit yours.

We look forward to hearing – and seeing – your stories. And saving a tree or two.

Posted by Michael Davidson, Software Engineer

I was pretty excited when we launched chat integration in Gmail. Finally I could chat and email in one place--but I couldn't chat with friends using other instant messaging services.

From the beginning, Google has been committed to open standards and interoperation for instant messaging. So when our friends at AOL agreed to let Gmail users talk to users on their network, we jumped at the chance.

Today we are happy to tell you about a new feature we've started to roll out which will enable you to sign into your AIM account and chat with your AIM buddies right inside Gmail. When you log in to AIM through Gmail chat, your AOL buddies will appear in your chat list with friends from your Google Talk network, and you will see the yellow "running man" logo to the right of your AIM friends' screen names. To your AIM friends it will look like you are logged in to AIM as usual.

Having more friends to chat with is always more fun and we hope you enjoy this new feature, which we are rolling out today to English Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 users.

P.S. If you own a large IM network and would like to work with us, have your people contact our people.

Posted by Dave Cohen, Software Engineer

Back in the Paleolithic Era, the world was a very different kind of place. People were hunter-gatherers, lived in caves, and kept all their email in folders*. You can't really blame them. Between tracking woolly mammoths, fashioning crude stone tools, and auditioning for commercials, having a highly tuned system for organizing email wasn't their highest priority.

But people changed. We moved out of caves and into skyscrapers. We hunt for bargains at the corner grocery. And we play video games simulating ourselves playing video games.

As we've changed, so too have our demands for email. Out of the email primordial ooze, Gmail was born with evolutionarily advantageous features like threaded conversations, a mitochondrial symbiosis between mail and chat, and labels. Most email solutions make users slot their emails into bland manila folders, classifying their contents as either black or white, with no subtle shades of gray. But where do you put the heated debate about M&M color superiority: the "ridiculous philosophical discussions," "all things brown," or "chats with mom" folder? With labels, you no longer have to choose. You can sort it all three ways.

Today, we're happy to announce the next evolution of labels: the colored label. Until now the label has been a little inconspicuous creature, subtly suggesting categorical associations in its simple green coat. Oh, we've seen the colored label here and there, its precursors surfacing in various experiments and Greasemonkey scripts; but the label has never before been so brazen, so bold. How will it use its new colors? Will it disguise itself with the chameleon's camouflage or clamor for attention with the monarch butterfly's vivid contrast?

Me? I'm subscribed to a lot of mailing lists: "The Britney Spears Fanboy Club," "Foie Gras Lovers Anonymous," and "UFO Sightings Daily," just to name a few. I get so much mail from my lists, I filter and archive most of it right away but I add labels just in case I need to find it again later. Those labels are my chameleons draped in subtle tones of green and blue. They're there doing their job, but I barely notice them. Every once in a while I get mail that's really important. These emails get my monarch butterfly labels, sporting bright red and yellow. Thanks to colored labels, it's easy to scan my inbox and immediately find all the emails that are really important to me.



Evolution is a great thing.

*P.S. We actually kinda like folders. In fact, we're doing some work to add some folder-y-ish functionality. Stay tuned.

P.P.S. Several new features we've launched, including colored labels, only work in the newest version of Gmail, currently available for IE7 and Firefox 2. Please upgrade your browser to start using those features now.

Posted by Sergey Solyanik, Software Engineer

The new Gmail Seattle team is happy to announce two additions to Gmail's built-in chat capabilities: group chat and enhanced emoticons.

To start a group chat, click "Group chat" from the "Options" menu when chatting. Enter the names of the people you want to add, and, bingo, you're in your very own chat room. All the familiar features such as chat archiving and taking the chat off the record still work as well.

You'll also now notice a smiley face in the bottom right-hand corner of your chat window. You can still use regular emoticon keyboard shortcuts, such as :) or =P, but this menu lets you select the style of the emoticons you send. Beyond the good old classic Gmail smileys there are two brand new, rich emoticon styles.

These features only work with the latest version of Gmail, which we are still rolling out to IE6, international and Google Apps users. We're looking forward to using Gmail's new modular architecture to bring you more features like these with faster turnaround.

Posted by Jen "Digital Mom" Grant, Group Product Marketing Manager

Every once in a while my husband and I wonder why we don't do more "cultural" things with the kids, especially around the holidays. We're so busy and we just don't have the time to keep up with what's going on around town or around the area. Usually, when we do go somewhere it's because we bump into someone who tells us that the local dance group is doing The Nutcracker, not because we read the paper or got any announcements.

But just the other day, I discovered the public calendar search button in Google Calendar. Of course, I had known it was there, but it had never occurred to me that events in my local area would be included. Just to experiment, I typed in Palo Alto, CA kids and found a fabulous calendar that showed me every day that there are events for families during the holiday season. One example I found is "Helicopter Santa" on Dec. 1: cookies, candy canes, and Santa at the Hiller Aviation Museum. I added this calendar to my own and now I can quickly check what's going on at any time.

My husband wonders how I suddenly seem to know everything. I just smile.

Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

When we began rolling out a new Gmail code architecture a few weeks ago, we also launched some new features to help improve the speed and convenience of managing email. I've been using several of these new additions over the last few weeks, and while they might seem small on their own, they really can add up to save you a lot of time and hassle. That's why I decided to list my five favorite new features that are so new, you may not have noticed them. We are still rolling them out to IE6, international and Google Apps users, but for those of you who noticed a new contact manager among other recent improvements in our latest version, here they are:

5. "Archive and next" shortcut
We added a bunch of new shortcuts to Gmail, but one that I've found to be a true time-saver is what I call the "archive and next" shortcut. When I have a lot of mail, it can be really annoying to have to open a message, click "Back to Inbox" and then select the next email I want to read. So once you enable shortcuts in Settings, you can simply press the left bracket key "[" while viewing a message to archive it, and then immediately open the next oldest one. When I see a long list of unread messages, I like to open the first one and then just hit "[" to swiftly move through my mail and archive as I go. (P.S. By clicking the right bracket "]" you can also move the other way if you want to open newer messages after you archive).






4. Share mail searches with friends
How many times do your friends tell you, "I can't find that email you sent me." Now you can prove that you did indeed send that message, despite the accusations. All you have to do is search for the message using your expert mail searching skills, and when you find it listed in the results, just copy and paste the URL and email it to your friend. When he or she goes to that link while in Gmail, your friend's Gmail will run the same search you ran and will be able to locate that "lost" email instantly. For example, if you wanted to share a search for "pick me up at airport," so flight information can be located, you would send over this URL: http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/pick+me+up+at+airport.

3. Browser navigation and history
Your web browser is now a great way to navigate Gmail. Instead of having to find the right links on the page to move from inbox to messages to other Gmail views, you can use the browser navigation buttons (back and forward) to jump back and forth between emails. You can also open your browser history and click on specific emails that you've read to go right back to them. This allows you to quickly access certain emails without having to re-read your inbox. Browser history is something that often doesn't work well on complex web apps like Gmail, but we've gone to great lengths to make it work right.








2. Bookmark emails
I frequently need to save a single email for a period of time, such as a message that includes an important phone number. But I don't want to create a separate label for one message, and I also don't want to archive all the email that comes in after that message just to keep that thread near the top of my inbox--and hopefully the top of my mind. This problem is now easily solved by a new ability to bookmark specific emails. All emails now have dedicated URLs, so just by adding a browser bookmark while viewing a message, you can return to it whenever you want, just like a regular web page--although you will still have to log in to Gmail if you've signed out.

1. "Filter messages like this"
I find filters to be one of the most useful features in Gmail, but sometimes it can be hard to set them up quickly. So we added a new capability that makes a filter based on the message you are reading, so you can keep track of future similar emails. By clicking on the dropdown menu in the upper right-hand corner of every email (the upside-down triangle), you can now see the option to "Filter messages like this." Not only can you easily create a filter based on the sender, but this is especially handy if you are trying to filter emails sent to mailing lists. We automatically set up a filter for you based on the "list ID" header, which does a better job of finding emails sent to mailing lists.

Posted by Kevin Systrom, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Congratulations to Robert Gould, the winner of our Threadless t-shirt competition. With much deliberation, we picked his design out of 420 submitted designs to win a pretty sweet prize package that includes an iPhone and some other goodies. His winning design is entitled 'Hello Dave':

We'd like to thank all the contributors for their snazzy designs - we loved all of them. If you'd like, you can pick up a copy of Robert's winning t-shirt over at Threadless, and even post a creative picture of yourself wearing the shirt.

P.S. We aren't making any money on this; all proceeds go to Threadless.

Posted by David Murray, Associate Product Manager

Last week we announced we were providing you with free IMAP access and said we would roll out the feature over time as fast as we could. I'm happy to say that all Gmail users can now enable IMAP and sync their inbox across devices. Right now you'll only see IMAP settings in Gmail if you're using the English (US) interface, but IMAP will appear for all languages in the coming weeks. Check out our Help Center to learn more about IMAP, or watch our video to learn how to quickly set it up on the iPhone.

Update: I'm also pleased to say that Gmail users with custom email addresses (through Google Apps) can now enable IMAP too.

Posted by Todd Jackson, Gmail Product Manager

I got lucky in April 2004, when Gmail had just launched, and I snagged one of the first invitations (I didn't work at Google at the time, but had a few friends who did). One of the first things I noticed was the spam filter. I had used another webmail service for the previous few years and was used to seeing spam in my inbox every day. With Gmail, I almost never did, and what's more, I didn't have legitimate email ending up in the spam folder (I eventually just stopped looking there). This is still true today, even though I've had my email address for 3+ years and use it on many sites around the web.

Now that I work on Gmail, not only do I keep an eye on my personal email, but I also monitor Gmail-wide stats which rigorously measure how our spam filters are doing. And despite an increase in spam targeted at Gmail, we're keeping more unwanted messages out of your inbox than ever before:


We get mail and read posts all the time from people who've noticed these results:

• "None of my real emails have slipped into the spam folder and I remember only one spam reaching my inbox in the period I've been using Gmail. Spam is the bane of the Internet and it is refreshing to see Gmail put up such a good fight against it." - Eric, who wrote into our support team


• "I've been using Gmail as my main email account ever since I started receiving an average of 2,500 emails a day...of which 70 percent are...personal health products, free software, and more! If not for this wonderful spam filter of Gmail, I'd have to spend 48 hours sitting in front of my mail 24/7 just to keep up!" - Nicholas, CNET blogger

To help explain how our spam filter works, we put together a video starring some of our anti-spam engineers. Enjoy!

Posted by Dan Pupius, Gmail engineer

When Gmail launched in 2004, the web was a very different place: people's expectations were different, browser capabilities were less advanced, and certain terms that are now commonplace on software engineer résumés hadn't even been coined yet.

In the past three and a half years we have launched a number of cool features: deep chat integration, voice mail, Google Docs integration, and most recently, free IMAP. During this time we've learned a lot about building large web applications and what happens when you push web browsers to their limits.

So recently the Gmail team has been working on a structural code change that we'll be rolling out to Firefox 2 and IE 7 users over the coming weeks (with other browsers to follow). You won't notice too many differences to start with, but we're using a new model that enables us to iterate faster and share components (we now use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the Contact Manager can be seen in several Google apps). A few other things you will notice are some new keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches.

We have also been fanatical about speed. Even on a fast Internet connection, it can take a second to request and render a new web page, and when you read a lot of mail, these seconds can accumulate to hours waiting for email to load. We've spent a lot of time profiling all parts of the application, shaving milliseconds off wherever we can, and figuring out workarounds for some pretty deep-rooted issues with the current browser implementations. Some of the most common actions should be faster now. For instance, we prefetch messages in the current view, so when you open an email your browser doesn't have to talk to Google's server; it just displays the message. These techniques really shine on newer browsers and computers. Using an alpha version of Safari 3 on a MacBook, we're seeing sub-200ms times when opening messages—pretty quick.

One side effect of this change is that if you're using third-party Gmail extensions, they're likely to stop working. We've contacted a number of the developers behind some popular extensions and provided them with an opportunity to create fixes, so check back with them for updates. We're sorry that it may be a bit of a inconvenience, but we're trying to make this change as smooth as possible.

The team has a bunch more things in the works, so stay tuned.

Update (11/9): While we (like most web services) don't officially support third-party extensions like Greasemonkey scripts, we realize that some of our most active users want to write and run them. Because these scripts directly modify a web service's code rather than using a stable API, they tend to be fragile to even small changes in a web app's code (and can even create bugs in the web app itself).

To make this easier on our Greasemonkey users, we've recently added an experimental Gmail/Greasemonkey API that should make these types of scripts easier to write and more robust to code changes. (Note that this applies only to users who have installed Greasemonkey scripts -- if the term "Greasemonkey" evokes little more for you than an image of an oily mechanic, then you needn't worry about any of this.)

Posted by David Murray, Associate Product Manager


There are two online petitions I've signed in my life. One was for a "Xena: Warrior Princess" movie. The other, which I signed a few months before starting at Google, was for Gmail IMAP. As some of you know, IMAP is the best way to access your email from multiple devices (e.g. phone or desktop). It keeps the same information synced across all devices so that whatever you do in one place shows up everywhere else you might access your email.

For example, I can:

• read an email in Gmail, then
• move it to the "Starred" folder on my iPhone, then
• archive it by moving it to "All Mail" in Thunderbird, then
• see all of those changes on my Blackberry (or any of the above devices for that matter).

For the past few years, we've offered POP access, which is similar to IMAP but lacks one critical feature: your changes made on other devices aren't seen in Gmail when you log back in. Instead you are presented with a list of unread mail, and you must re-read and re-sort everything. For this reason, as soon as I started at Google, IMAP was one of the first things I asked about. Since then, I've seen countless blog posts, requests, chats, and just about everything else asking, "Are you guys ever going to do IMAP?" Well now I can say: Yes. Yes, we are doing IMAP. In fact, we are doing it for you for free on all devices and platforms.

As we roll out the feature over the next couple of days, you will be able to use Gmail at work, in your car, or just about anywhere on any device, and actions you take will be automatically synced with Gmail on the web (and remember it works the other way too: anything you do on the Web will be seen on your phone or in your mail client). Just click the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab in your Gmail "Settings" and turn it on. (Psst. If you don't see the "IMAP" in the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab, then check back soon. We are giving it to users as fast as we can).

Now if only they'll make that Xena movie...

Posted by Joanne McKinley, Gmail mobile team

Accessing Gmail on my phone has become indispensable to me. So often, I need to do things like search through my archive to find the name of that coffee shop where I'm going to meet a friend, or to send a quick email when I don't have access to my laptop. Gmail for mobile helps make this all very easy and fast. I can access my whole archive, and send emails to anyone in my contacts list -- through an interface that's very familiar. We just released a new version with some updates that you can get by pointing your phone's browser to http://gmail.com/app. The new version works on most phones that are Java ME enabled. For BlackBerry devices, you can continue to download the previous version from the same site.

The new version of Gmail for mobile is faster than before -- and consumes a lot less data. It also has a number of new features, including:

• more than 30 percent faster overall, and 80 percent faster for some tasks
• a contacts viewer to view your all Gmail contacts and addresses
• an outgoing mail footer to let your recipients know you've sent an email from a mobile device
• click-to-call phone numbers which you can call without retyping the number
• emails are saved for later re-editing if connection drops or if you want to perform another task before sending out the message
• Gmail keyboard shortcuts to perform tasks faster (on phones with full keyboards).

Learn more about Gmail for mobile and other mobile services.

Posted by Rob Siemborski, Gmail Engineer

When people ask me about my job, one of the common questions I get is, "Where does Gmail put all that mail?" I generally answer by pointing them to a web site like this one. While that's not exactly how it works, we do spend a lot of time working to make sure our users have all the space they need.

In April 2005, we started increasing Gmail storage as part of our "Infinity+1" storage plan. At that time, we realized we'd never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able. That said, a few of you are using Gmail so much that you're running out of space, so to make good on our promise, today we're announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage.

And, just in case you are like my friend Miriam, whose sister sends minute to minute photo updates of her kids in RAW format, then we still have a paid storage program where you can get your fix, and we're giving you more space than before for the same price.

By the way, businesses, schools and organizations using Google Apps to get Gmail on their own custom addresses (like Google does for our @google.com accounts) will get a storage boost in the coming days, too. Standard and Education Edition storage (now at 2GB) will begin matching Gmail's counter, and Premier Edition users get a whopping 25 GB (up from 10 GB).

Posted by Nick Baum, Associate Product Manager

You may have noticed that Google Reader recently parted ways with Google Labs. If you're not familiar with Reader, it's Google's feed aggregator. Think of it as your inbox for the web: just subscribe to the news sites, blogs, or videos you want to follow. You can read all the updates in one place -- there's no need to visit 20 different sites to get all this stuff. To see how it works, try subscribing to this blog by clicking on the "Site Feed" link in the on the right-hand side. You'll find similar links on most blogs, and many news sites too. For further explanation about why feed readers are so great, watch RSS in Plain English:


So why has Reader graduated from Google Labs? There have been a bunch of feature updates in recent months. Reader now has offline access using Google Gears, a new search tool, it's available in 10 languages, and will show you trends about your reading and subscribing habits. There's even a version of Reader for the Nintendo Wii. (But, really, we found the chemistry with Labs just wasn't there anymore.)

Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Product Marketing Manager

Just like you, I get a lot of email. Much of it requires my reply, some is simply FYI, and some is the result of overactive mailing lists, like the one for Google's San Francisco commuters. I take the shuttle to work, so I need to stay on top of announcements about route and schedule changes. But when there's an alert about a route on the other side of the city, or a co-worker's comment spurs a long thread about bus etiquette, I use the "m" shortcut key to mute the conversation and spare my inbox. As new messages are added to the same conversation, they bypass my inbox. If someone puts my email address directly on the To: or cc: line, the conversation immediately re-appears; otherwise, irrelevant messages sent to the mailing list are archived. That way I can refer back to them when I really need to find out about changes to the route when there's a Monday night game at the 49ers stadium, or want to revisit the debate about dogs on the bus. To use the "m" shortcut key, first click "Settings" in the top right corner of Gmail and select the option "Keyboard shortcuts on." Then, when you're reading a conversation you want to mute, just press "m."

Posted by Shirin Oskooi, Associate Product Manager

We had a couple of updates to share this week from the Google Docs and Google Calendar teams. First, as you may have heard, the Docs team launched the ability to create and share presentations to go with existing document and spreadsheet capabilities. Now when you're collaborating on that strategy deck, you don't have to worry whether you're looking at version 5 or 15. Plus, having your presentation stored online means one less file to send as an email attachment.



The Google Calendar team, along with the mobile team, released an upgrade to the Calendar interface on the iPhone. It is now tailored for the iPhone, and you can now see your different calendars in distinctive colors. You can see the new Calendar interface by going to http://calendar.google.com on your iPhone browser.

Posted by Jen "Digital Mom" Grant, Group Product Marketing Manager

So here's my next tip in the series I started a few weeks ago:

I laugh when I remember what I was like as a new mom. I was determined to be perfect: feeding only homemade food that I blended or pureed myself (great book about this btw) and organizing toys into drawers with labels like cars, puzzles, and blocks. But when the reality of every day life sets in, it's almost impossible to keep that up. Nowadays, I'm just proud when my house doesn't look like a hurricane just blew through it and my kids have eaten something green for dinner.

Lots of things I do work this way. Take email. First, I make very specific labels for all of the categories that I might need - meeting notes, action items, personal - and I very meticulously use these labels for maybe a month or so. But then, I get overwhelmed and don't have the time to spend filing things under each of these categories. This is the point where Gmail really starts to help me out. The reason I categorized everything in the first place was to find it again quickly, right? Well, if I can find anything easily with search, then why should I take the extra time organizing? For my purposes, searching takes much less time and works just as well.

Now, when I'm done with an email, I archive it. It's not deleted, but I don't have to see it and I can find it quickly anytime. And every day I have a few more bits of time to spend having that wonderful glass of wine after the kids go to bed - oh, and more time to spend with the kids too.

If only I had Gmail for my living room. With one button, I would remove all toys from the floor to a placeout of sight,and then, at any time, quickly find that special Thomas the train that my son is asking me about. Now that would make me a supermom. :-)

Here's a snippet from blogger Megan Morrone, who also has twins (here's a post from when her twins stopped napping - so funny!), talking about archiving, searching and how she uses Labels to organize her Gmail:

"I love Gmail's archive and search features. They give me license to get e-mails out of my inbox quickly without fear of losing them. It took me a little longer to appreciate the Labels feature. Now, I'm in love. Each of my kids gets a label so I can look at e-mails that apply directly to them, whether it be about playdates, school, or activities. I also have labels for my real job, my podcast, my blog, and other blog networks I belong to. And if e-mails ever fall in more than one category, I give them more than one label. It makes things really, really easy."

Send your own work-life balance suggestions to digitalmomtips@gmail.com and I'll share them here.

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Here are five more entries in my list of little-known features begun last week:

5. Smart links on the right
When you get an email that references an address, look to the right and you'll probably see a link from Gmail pointing you to a map of the address on Google Maps. Gmail also recognizes email text that refers to an event (e.g., 'dinner tomorrow at 8pm'), and will give you a link to add it to your calendar. It'll even pick up on package tracking numbers from UPS and link you directly to the tracking page, so you don't have to copy and paste the number. I really like this last one when I order stuff online and want the instant gratification of knowing a package is on its way.

4. Conversation update notification
It can be really annoying to write up a whole response to an email and click send -- only to discover that someone else has already responded. Gmail has a little feature that helps solve this problem. When you're replying to (or reading) a conversation, and someone else replies, a small notification window pops up to let you know. I sometimes think of it as the "prevent embarrassment" notification. Plus, it can save a lot of time by avoiding the series of follow-up emails needed to clear up the confusion.



3. Advanced search
Most people know that searching your archive is a huge part of what makes Gmail useful. But there are a few search features that you may not know about, which can be really handy. For instance, if I want to narrow down my search to only messages sent from Kevin, I can just add "from: Kevin" to the query. You can even search only for messages with attachments by including "has: attachments," or narrow by date with "after:" and "before:" Check out this whole list of advanced search operators.

2. Offline chat
Offline chat is another feature which makes chatting in the context of your email particularly useful. When you're chatting with a friend and they suddenly go offline, you can keep sending IMs and your friends will receive your messages the next time they open Gmail. The chat will show up as a new item in their inbox. And, of course, if you're still online, your friend can go ahead and reply by chat.

1. Create event
Since I use Gmail and Google Calendar at work (through Google Apps), I'm constantly emailing people about meetings, and scheduling them on everyone's calendars. When I'm writing an email to set up an event, I can actually do it all from within Gmail by clicking the "Add event info" link below the subject line. Then choose the time and location for the meeting or party. When you send the email, the event details will be added to to your Google Calendar, and Gmail will send an invitation to the email recipients to add it to their calendars as well.

Posted by Kevn Systrm, Gmail Team

Recently, the Internet has been abuzz over a new term: 'bacn' - with the requisite missing vowel - which is pronounced, you guessed it, "bacon." Wikipedia defines it as: "electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time." Or, for the rest of us, bacn is "email you want, but not right now." I get a bunch of messages every day from sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, all of which are important to me but which I don't need to see immediately. In fact, I'd like to defer them until later, for my late-night Family Guy-email sessions.

We have a couple of features in Gmail that can help tame your bacn and bring order back to your inbox. Here are 3 easy steps to inbox feng shui:

1) Create labels for each service that sends your bacn by clicking "Edit labels" in the green box on the lefthand side of your inbox. I've created some for my inbox:



2) Create filters to put bacn in its place by clicking "Create a Filter" next to the search buttons at the top of your inbox. First, tell Gmail what types of messages you'd like to filter. I typed "LinkedIn" in the "from" box and then clicked "Next step >>".
If you're like me, you probably want to review the notifications at a later time, so you click "Skip the Inbox" and "Apply the label: LinkedIn". This keeps all your notifications in one place, accessible by clicking the "LinkedIn" label on the left hand side of your inbox.



3) Since at some point I may want to review all my bacn at once, I created another label called "Review Later" into which all my bacn goes. Then, I use one of Gmail's advanced search operators ("OR") to create a filter that matches any bacn:



Now I can easily view my LinkedIn notifications all at once OR I can view all my bacn together by clicking the "Review Later" label.

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Gmail has a bunch of lesser-known feature that can end up being very useful once you get to know them. I've put together a list of my top 10 favorite features that you may or may not be familiar with. Here are the first five; watch for the second batch sometime next week.

10. Custom "from"
Most people end up managing more than one email account -- some are personal, others might be for work or school. When I graduated from college, I wanted to keep my .edu address for alumni-related things, but made Gmail my primary personal address. My university made it easy to forward my .edu mail to my Gmail address, so I could read all my mail from my within my Gmail account. I was happy to find out that Gmail would actually let me send mail "as" my .edu address, so I could continue to keep that identity, while managing all my email from one place. Here's how to set that up.

9. Open attachments in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, or view as slideshow
If you are sending a Word document or Excel file as an attachment, Gmail lets you easily open it in Google Docs & Spreadsheets. (In case you're not familiar with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, it's our online word processor and spreadsheet application, which lets you store and access documents online and collaborate on them with anyone.) Since other people are working on many of the docs I receive as attachments collaboratively, it's really easy to just open them in Docs & Spreadsheets and create a single document to work from, rather than constantly sending versions of documents back and forth. If the attachment is a PowerPoint presentation, Gmail will recognize this and give you a link to"View as a slideshow." This will open a window with a Flash preview of the slides. This is great for quickly reviewing slides in the browser.



8. Gmail gadget for iGoogle
I use iGoogle to bring together a lot of the information I care about on the web (feeds, my Google Calendar, YouTube videos, etc). I use it as a dashboard at the start of my day to get an overview of what's going on in the world. I've added the Gmail gadget to my page to get a preview of my Inbox, which is great because it's one of the first things I'm interested in seeing.

7. Reply by chat
Most people know that you can chat with your contacts in Gmail if they're using Gmail too. But there are some subtle features that make chat particularly useful in the context of using your email, like replying by chat. If you've received an email and notice that the sender is online (by seeing the little green dot next to his or her name in the conversation), you can click the button "reply by chat." What's particularly convenient about this is that the chat will be archived as part of the email thread to which you replied. I like this most because it means when I search for anything related to that thread, I find the chat transcript alongside all the relevant email messages.



6. Gmail for mobile application
It wasn't that long ago that my cellphone could barely handle sending text messages. I didn't used to think of it as being an efficient place to access my email. That's changed -- big time. Email has become one of my primary forms of communication when on the go. Unfortunately, on a lot of phones, dealing with email can still be a pretty annoying experience, especially if you're not using a device like a PDA. Enter Gmail for mobile. It's fast, it syncs with your online account, and it gives you virtually all of the same Gmail functionality like search, filters, and access to your whole archive of mail.

Next week: another 5 for you.

Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Product Marketing Manager

Several weeks back, we posted a video to YouTube giving a behind-the-scenes look at how Gmail messages "really" travels around the world. We then invited you to submit your own clips to continue the story, and Gmail fans from more than 65 countries submitted more than 1,100 fantastic videos! We have to say, we are quite overwhelmed with everyone's creativity. From two Rubik's cubes, a few jaunts in a bottle, countless babies, and one dog's trip to the Southernmost point of the continental US, to jugglers, firemen, camel-riders, and original animation, we've had a lot of fun watching the responses come in, and we hope you have too. A big thanks to everyone who submitted clips, watched videos, and left comments for making this project so much fun!

Because of the international reach of the submissions, we used the Google Maps API to put together this map showing where many of the clips came from:


View Larger Map

As you can probably tell from viewing all these amazing videos, it was truly a difficult task to try and piece together as many of these clips as we could. We know that some of your favorites (and ours) may not have made it into the final cut, so we encourage everyone to surf through all of the submissions.

But now, drum roll, without further ado, here is the final video. We hope you like it!

Posted by Jen "Digital Mom" Grant, Group Product Marketing Manager

When I found out I was having twins a year or so ago, I was pretty worried. How could I possibly manage 2 babies, a three-year old, a dog, and a "I like to start companies and not hold down a 9-to-5 job" husband -- all while managing my own full-time job? This phase certainly started out rockily (mostly for our dog, Tobey, whom I consistently forgot to feed; he's fine, though, just a little hungry now and then). It turns out that Google actually offered much of what helped me survive. Well, Google and that great book about getting your kids to sleep through the night. So now, almost a year later, I have a few tips to share with other folks looking to find that balance between work and family - craziness and sanity - caffeine and a good night's rest - potty training and conference calls.

Without further ado, here's my first "Digital Mom" tip: keeping in sync with your spouse.

Sometimes when you get home from work and the kids are hollering about dinner, babies needing a change, and you just have time to kick off your shoes and throw something in the microwave, you don't really get a chance to talk to your spouse. In my case, with twins and a 3-year old, it can be days before I actually get a chance to ask him how he's feeling or what he's been doing. That's where Gmail chat comes in. Both my husband and I are on Gmail (his company uses it as a part of Google Apps and, of course, so does mine). So even if I fall asleep within minutes of wrestling my son into bed, at least my husband has already heard about how I'm feeling throughout the day. With a little :-) and a little <3, it's a wonderful way for us to stay connected.

Keep an eye on the Gmail blog for my tips, and I'd love to see yours. Send your own work-life balance suggestions to digitalmomtips@gmail.com and I'll share them here.

Posted by Bill Kee, Gmail Team

Just a quick update to let you know we've extended the deadline for entries to our Gmail collaborative video to this Friday, August 17th. We've received a bunch of requests to extend the deadline, so we wanted to give people a bit more breathing room to get those last edits in. You can check out all the submissions (over 1000 now!) here. Some of them are just amazing - we've been blown away by the creativity and effort behind so many of the clips. Check out these:

Gmail par avion:


Email in a bottle:


Gmail cereal!


Gmail handstand delivery:

Posted by Jonas Shen, Associate, Consumer Operations

According to Wikipedia, the world’s most accomplished hyperpolyglot is Ziad Fazah. This guy can readily communicate in 58 (f-i-f-t-y e-i-g-h-t) languages. Wow.

Well Mr. Fazah, while we’re not quite up to your standard yet, you better watch out -- because Gmail is now available in 41 languages, and don’t think we’re going to stop there.

If you’re multilingual, feeling adventurous, or if you just want to test how well you know the Gmail user interface, try changing your account language settings. Sound a little risky? Don't worry - it's easy. You can change the language through the Settings menu. Get a taste of what hyperpolyglotic Gmail has to offer:





How many of these language UIs do you recognize?

Posted by Kevin Systrom, Gmail Team

On July 16th, we launched a Gmail t-shirt design contest with Threadless.com. Needless to say, we're psyched to see the quality of work that is pouring in. At last count, we had 192 submissions from designers around the world. Now, with under a week left to submit designs (contest ends Aug. 16th), I'd like to encourage everyone to submit a design. Or, if you're like me, and drawing stick figures is an accomplishment, then you can help score designs too!

Here are samples of some fun designs from the contest that recently finished scoring:

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Since we posted about our collaborative Gmail video project last week, we've gotten a lot of excellent submissions from around the world, and we wanted to share some of them with you here. I couldn't have imagined some of the ideas you've come up with, and they're going to make for a great final video. Here are just a few of the coolest clips made so far:


One of the first entries we got, from Taiwan:



Here's one that took some serious imagination:


Lightning mail:


Lego animation!


Gmail, the underwater edition:


X-ray Gmail:


Lots of people involved their kids. Here's a father and daughter from Spain:



You can see all of the responses here and learn how to submit your own clip at http://mail.google.com/mvideo. Remember, you can submit clips until August 13th.

Posted by Dave Marmaros, Technical Lead, Google Calendar

Posted by David Murray, Associate Product Manager

My friend Theresa is always looking to keep better organized. And while she loves the "search, don't sort" approach that Gmail offers, sometimes she likes to sort. As a neat freak myself, I totally agree -- sometimes you need to get in there and organize. As it turns out, Gmail does have a tool for sorting - called "labels."

You can find labels on the left side of the Gmail window. Labels let you group together emails any way you choose. They also provide an added benefit called multiple inclusion. And that means you can associate a single message with as many labels as you want.

So how does this help you? Let's say you get lots of mail about Xena (you know, the Warrior Princess), and you also get lots of mail from friends. In most mail applications, you could put all messages about Xena in a "Xena" folder and all mail from friends in a "Friends" folder. But when a friend sends you a note about Xena -- well, you could make "Xena" a subfolder of "Friends," which doesn't totally make sense. You could make "Friends" a subfolder of "Xena?" Or maybe make a copy of the mail and put it into both? Sure, if you want to keep track of both, take up twice the space, and forget to delete one if you ever delete the other. Blah!

Now let's say you have Gmail labels. If you get a Xena mail from a friend, just apply the label "Xena" and the label "Friends". Now you can find it in "Xena," you can find it in "Friends" -- and you only have to keep track of one thing.

If you don't get the Xena thing, replace "Xena" with "Buffy". If you still don't get it, replace it with "Britney" or, if all else fails, replace it with "Work." And there you have it.

Posted by Bill Kee, Gmail Team

Do you have mad video-making skills? OK, how about just a video camera and a little bit of spare time to get creative? A few of us on the Gmail team came up with an idea to stitch together a bunch of video clips that all share one element: someone hands the Gmail M-velope in from the left of the screen, and hands it off to the right. Put them all together, and they form one long chain of hand-offs. We thought it would be fun to let everyone in on the action. Just go to http://mail.google.com/mvideo, where you'll find directions on how to submit your clip (including a PDF of the Gmail M-velope you can use in your video). We'll be accepting clips until August 13th. We'll then take a selection of the submitted clips and edit them together into one final video, which we'll release to the world on August 20th.

What does this have to do with email, you may ask? Well, you can see this as a symbol of how email connects people from all over, making the world feel a bit smaller. Or you could think of it as a metaphor for mail exchange servers, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and all of the technical steps involved in getting a Gmail message around the world from one inbox to another. But, really, we just wanted to have a little fun. So give it a shot, and enjoy! Remember, clips are due before August 13th. :-)

Posted by Brad Taylor, Software Engineer