New Look for GMail

Those of you who use GMail, or love Gmail, will want to know about the new look and functionality Google is bringing to the email service.


The new Gmail interface isbased on the "preview" theme that's already available in Gmail.


There now is an action bar that uses icons instead of text labels, a completely new interface for conversations, profile pictures next to contacts, a flexible layout that adapts to any window size, display density options like in Google Docs, resizable chat/labels sections, new high-definition themes and an updated search box. 

Gmail is Now a Viable Enterprise Email Provider, Gartner Says

After being in the market for five years, Google's enterprise Gmail is building momentum with commercial organizations with more than 5,000 seats, and it now presents a viable alternative to Microsoft Exchange Online and other cloud email services, according to Gartner analysts.

"The road to its enterprise enlightenment has been long and bumpy, but Gmail should now be considered a mainstream cloud email supplier," said Matthew Cain, research vice president at Gartner. "While Gmail's enterprise email market share currently hovers around one percent, it has close to half of the market for enterprise cloud email.

"While cloud email is still in its infancy, at three percent to four percent of the overall enterprise email market, we expect it to be a growth industry, reaching 20 percent of the market by year-end 2016, and 55 percent by year-end 2020," Cain says.

Other than Microsoft Exchange, Google Gmail is the only email system that has prospered in the enterprise space over the past several years, Cain says. Other enterprise email providers — Novell GroupWise and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino — have lost market momentum, Cisco closed its cloud email effort and VMware's Zimbra is only now refocusing on the enterprise space, he says.

Gmail is Now a Viable Option in Enterprise Email Market

Cloud email, video impact

A recent report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and Verdantix estimates that cloud computing has the potential to reduce global carbon emissions by millions of metric tons.

Comparing Gmail to the traditional enterprise email solutions, switching to Gmail can be almost 80 times more energy efficient than running in-house email. This is because cloud-based services are typically housed in highly efficient data centers that operate at higher server utilization rates and use hardware and software that’s built specifically for the services they provide, conditions that small businesses are rarely able to create on their own.

A similar calculation for YouTube shows the servers needed to play one minute of YouTube consume about 0.0002 kWh of energy. To put that in perspective, it takes about eight seconds for the human body to burn off that same amount. You’d have to watch YouTube for three straight days for our servers to consume the amount of energy required to manufacture, package and ship a single DVD.

Cloud email energy impact

Mobile Gmail Now "Feels" More Like an App

Google has improved the performance of Gmail on an iPhone, suggesting that the performance gap between native mobile apps and web apps will grow smaller over time.

The new improvements make scrolling faster. In fact scrolling speed seems to match swipe gestures. This is helpful for long conversations where a few quick flicks will get you to the information you need much faster than before.

Also, toolbars stay on screen while users are scrolling, rather than moving down after each scroll. Being able to access toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage email and move around the app.

Gmail in mobile Safari: now even more like a native app - Official Google Mobile Blog

Gmail Adds "Priority Inbox" Feature

I'm just trying it, so nothing to report about how it changes, or helps, the email sifting process.

Google To Offer Threaded, Non-Threaded Email Formats

Google is planning to offer a standard email option in Gmail in the next few months, Henry Blodget reports. Currently, Gmail presents email in a threaded format, in which replies and follow-on emails with the same subject line are grouped together. That's helpful to people who want to follow a single conversation as it develops, or refer back to earlier messages.

Others will find it less useful since the threading feature means new replies do not automatically appear at the top of the inbox, and that's where people are trained to look for new messages.

Apparently Google will simply offer a way to select the "threaded" or non-threaded" formats.

Google To Change Gmail, Add "Normal Email" Option Instead Of Just "Conversations"

How iPad Changes Gmail Experience

One of the more interesting questions about the tablet device market, assuming it does develop as a new and discrete mobile device category, is how user experience and application design might change simply because of the new form factor and navigation method.

For Google, one of the changes it already has made is a redesign of the Gmail interface on the Apple iPad.

"When you write an email you’ll now get a big full screen compose window instead of splitting the screen between your inbox and the compose view," Google says. More text is visible at once and there are no more distractions with messages on the side.

As with adaptations made to format content and navigation for smartphone screens, it appears Google already has made adaptations of the email-compose layout specifically for the iPad form factor.

For application providers, all this suggests a possible need for a "third" way to format web sites and applications, including different rendering for large PC screens, small mobile phone screens and mid-size tablet form factors.

The Iterative Web App: New Compose Interface for Gmail on iPad - Official Google Mobile Blog

Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail

Google apparently is testing a new feature that makes Gmail chat more useful: users are able to make and receive Google Voice calls from inside the Gmail application, as they would using Skype on a PC.

A new phone icon opens a Gmail chat window with a dialpad, an option to find contacts, a credit balance and a call button.

Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail as a VoIP Service:

GMail Gets Drag and Drop

Those of you who use Microsoft Outlook or Exchange won't be excited, but those of us who do use GMail with Chrome or Firefox browsers now can "drag and drop" file attachments into email messages.

It's just a small enhancement, but an enhancement that will shave a few seconds, and  few mouse clicks, off the attachment process.

It's also an example of how application "disruption" typically happens these days. Attackers generally start out "low" on the functionality scale, offering an alternative that generally does not have all the functionality of the market-leading application.

The attacking applications tends to be derided as "okay for consumer use" or "just a toy" in other cases, but that isn't the point. Over time, features get richer and the differences between the attacking application and the market leading application begin to narrow. At some point the attacking app starts to compete head to head with the leading app in one or more customer verticals.

And that is what this smallish new feature is, another small step towards feature parity.

Google Optimizes Apps For iPad: Which Raises a Question

Google says it has optimized applications for the iPad to take advantage of its large display. Using Gmail on the iPad, for example, users will see a two-pane display that mimics what they are used to seeing on PCs, notebooks or netbooks.

The YouTube and Google Maps apps are preloaded on iPads.

But those features still raise the as-yet-unanswered question: can the iPad uncover significant demand for a new category of device in between a smartphone and a netbook or notebook? Or is the iPad really going to wind up succeeding or failing as a replacement for the netbook or notebook?

Those are quite different outcomes. For me it comes down to the irreducible number of devices I must carry, both locally and when traveling. Around town, the irreducible and desired number is "one." When traveling, because when push comes to shove I use a laptop for work, the irreducible number is "two." Well, actually three, as I carry two mobiles.

Years ago, the irreducible number when traveling briefly floated up to four, when I added the iPod. That turned out to be one item too many, and I no longer travel with it, except when running.

My point is that consumers weighing use of an  iPad will have to decide what it is, before they buy. And that means an identity "crisis" has to be solved before it becomes a huge mass market success. It seems to me to be a very-good media consumption platform, crudely put, an iPod touch on steroids. That will raise the question of the physical need to add more more portable device to the purse or backpack. For some users, that will be a point of friction.

But some people very quickly are going to try seeing whether, in their circumstances, an iPad can displace an existing netbook or notebook. And that could point the way to the iPad becoming a new form of netbook, rather than creating a new category of devices people generally use.

Apple could win, in either scenario, but wins most if it can create a new product category.

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Verizon to Debut Motorola Droid Nov. 6, 2009

Verizon Wireless will take the wraps off its new "Droid" device, built by Motorola, on Nov. 6, 2009. The new device will feature a 3.7-inch high-resolution screen featuring more than 400,000 pixels total, more than twice that of the "leading competitor," Verizon says.

The Android operating system supports running of multiple applications at once, and allows toggling between as many as six simultaneous applications. Google searches can be conducted using voice input and results are location dependent. Content on the phone, such as apps and contacts plus the Web can be searched using the search box.

"Push" Gmail is supported, as is "push" Microsoft Exchange email. "Google Maps Navigation" provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps.

Droid will be available in the United States exclusively at Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online for $199.99 with a new two-year customer agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate.

Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.

Customers will need to subscribe to a nationwide voice plan and an email and Web for plan. Nationwide voice plans begin at $39.99 for monthly access for 450 minutes and an "Email and Web for Smartphone" plan costs $29.99 for monthly access.

Google Increases Storage

Gmail will increase the amount of free storage it provides to 5 Gytes. Some users already have seen the increase. Everybody will notice in January. In October the amount of free storage was something on the order of 4 Gbytes.

From January 4 on, users will get an additional 3.3 MBytes every day, an expontential rate of increase. Pretty amazing.

Google Apps mail accounts will have the same quota as standard Gmail accounts, while Google Apps Premier Edition will have 25 GB mail accounts. Previously, Google Apps accounts had 2 GBytes of storage, while the business edition offered 10 GBytes per account.

Gmail's paid storage option will feature around 50 percent more storage for the same price: 10 GB for $20 a year, 40 GB for $75 a year, 150 GB for $250 a year and 400 GB for $500 a year.

If Microsoft Had Designed GMail...

A funny spoof at http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

gPC from Wal-Mart, Everex

Wal-Mart will sell a $200 Linux-powered desktop built by Everex and running Google applications. The Everex gPC runs Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google Product Search, Google Blogger, Google YouTube, Google Maps, Google News, Meebo (instant messaging), GIMP (image editing), Firefox, Xing Movie Player, RhythmBox, Faqly, Facebook, Skype and OpenOffice.org 2.2.

The device is seen as an impulse buy. First-time users and grandparents, perhaps. Or, as will happen, as test platforms for people who already have full-featured PCs, but want to experiment with Linux apps and cloud computing. In some cases, people might just use it as a communications and Web apps platform.

Besides green, the “g” stands for the gOS, the Ubuntu 7.1 Linux desktop developed by an open source startup of the same name. “The gOS is an alternative operating system that makes it apparent that Google is your entire computing experience,” said gOS founder David Liu.

Gmail Storage Increasing to 6 Gbytes January 4

Gmail will increase free storage gradually over the next several weeks. On October 23, users will get 4321 MB of storage. Storage will continue to increase to 6.283 Gbytes on Jan. 4. After Jan. 4, storage will increase 3.3 MBytes every day, says Google.

Google Apps mail accounts will have the same quota as standard Gmail accounts, while Google Apps Premier Edition will have 25 GB mail accounts. Previously, Google Apps accounts had 2 GB of storage, while the business edition offered 10 GB per account.

Gmail paid storage options also will expand, providing about 50 percent more storage for the same price: 10 GB for $20/year, 40 GB for $75/year, 150 GB for $250/year and 400 GB for $500/year.