Gmail Tips and Tricks Monster Roundup
The Cyber-Knowledge weblog has a pretty good roundup of cool ways you can take advantage of your Gmail account.
Since we've covered most of Cyber-Knowledge's tips here before, I decided it was time to put together our own Gmail roundup. Ever since I bought my first Gmail invite for five dollars off eBay over 2 years ago, I've been a all squeezing every last productive drop I can out of Gmail. Check out my monster tribute to my favorite email application after the jump.
Read more: Email apps, Gmail, Top
Gmail keyboard shortcuts
Odeo CEO Evan Williams has made available a nicely printable Gmail keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet.
Everything is covered here, from Compose to Search, and a whole lotta other shortcuts I haven't seen before. Basically, this is just a reformatted version of what Google's already put out there for Gmail, but it's printable, people. Huzzah!
How about you - what's your best Gmail shortcut, keyboard or otherwise? Thoughts to comments or to tips at lifehacker.com.
Read more: Cheat Sheets, Gmail, Gmail Tips
Store your recipes in Gmail
The Parent Hacks blog has a neat alternative to printing out recipes you find on the web and stuffing them into your crusty old recipe box: send 'em to your Gmail account.
Use a filter to shuttle the messages to a recipes label. Then, using advanced search operators, you could search by ingredients (or any additional notes or words you use in the recipe, ie "dessert" or "vegan") with a label:recipes chicken+mushrooms. Neat! Check out the advanced search operators for more Gmail searchfu. Thanks, Michael!
Read more: Cooking, Email, Gmail, Recipes, Search Techniques, Top
How to filter Gmail image spam
The latest email spammer tactic - an image attachment that contains text with a legit-looking subject and from address - is getting by a bunch of spam filters, including Gmail's.
The folks at Ask MetaFilter along with lifehacker Matt Haughey offer a solution for ".gif" Gmail spam with a custom filter:
I tried this (filter):
Has the Words | multipart/related .gif
X Has attachment
And to forward everything to the trash (which will automatically clear after 30 days.)
Personally I've set up a "Spam-probably" label which uses this criteria, plus one that checks for the same To: and From: address - and that's caught 426 messages in the last 4 days. Damn you evil spammers!!!
Read more: Gmail, Spam, Spam filters, Top
How to insert images and other HTML into Gmail
The Digital Inspiration weblog has a step-by-step for adding HTML to Gmail messages.
For those of you who have tried inserting an image or table in Gmail, you've probably noticed that Gmail won't really allow embedded HTML (at least not in a traditional sense). In order to embed HTML, you actually need to copy the rendered HTML from either an existing web page or WYSIWYG HTML editor and then paste it into Gmail. Doing so allows you to insert your own tables, divs, images, etc. into Gmail pretty easily.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of embedded anything in emails (give me plain text, please!), but for those of you who have been missing HTML in Gmail, Digital Inspiration's method should do the trick. If that method isn't your cup of tea, you might also want to try the Gmail Skins Firefox extension, which allows you to embed HTML directly in Gmail.
Read more: Gmail, Gmail Tips, How To, HTML
Ask the Readers: Spam in my sent Gmail?
Reader Ludwig writes in:
Gmail's spam filter is pretty good at keeping junk out of my Inbox. But recently I noticed spams not in my Inbox but in my Sent Mail folder. How can I stop this from happening?
Read more: Email, Gmail, Spam, Spam filters
Google Apps
Google unveiled their new service late Sunday night: Google Apps for Your Domain, a collaborative set of Google tools for businesses and other organizations. Here's what it's all about:
Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer our communication and collaboration tools to your entire organization -- customizable with your branding, color scheme and content through the administrative control panel, and with no hardware or software to install or maintain.
Tools include Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator, and you choose the combo that fits for your business.
Right now, you can sign up for the beta service, and best of all it's all free - considering all that you get that's a pretty good deal. Do you plan on using Google Apps? Thoughts to comments or to tips at lifehacker.com.
Read more: Communication, Gmail, Google, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Office, Web
Why you shouldn't depend entirely on webapps
Because when they're down, you're screwed.
Read more: Gmail, Top, Web 2.0, Web as Desktop
Download of the Day: GTDGmail
Firefox extension GTDGmail integrates your Getting Things Done implementation directly in your Gmail account.
Gmail has always been a good GTD tool, but GTDGmail makes setting up of all your contexts, projects, and next actions a breeze. Honestly, I already have my own system of labels and whatnot in Gmail that I love, but after looking over and playing around with GTDGmail, I'm very tempted to dive head first into GTD all over again (though, for productivity's sake, I'd recommend everyone try out my Gmail master post, specifically for the Gmail Macros Greasemonkey script).
How does GTDGmail compare to your system? Anyone thinking about giving it a go? Let us know in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.
Read more: Downloads, Firefox, Firefox Extension, Getting Things Done, Gmail, GTD, Productivity, Top
Download of the Day: Google Notifier
Mac OS X only: If you've grown accustomed to new mail notifications from the Gmail Notifier, you may be excited (as I was) to learn that Google has released a new and improved notifier, henceforth to be known as the Google Notifier.
Why the name change? Well, aside from the Gmail alerts, the Google Notifier also integrates alerts from your Google Calendar. Awesome, right? Strange that Google hasn't released a Windows version, but I suppose it's only a matter of time. I can attest to the Google Notifier looking and working great on a Mac.
Read more: Alerts, Downloads, Gmail, Google, Google Calendar, Mac OS X, Reminders, Top
Blacklist unwanted senders in Gmail
The Google Operating System weblog describes a method for setting up an email blacklist in Gmail for the persistent spam that Gmail lets slip through the cracks.
Despite Gmail's excellent spam filter, several spammers have found their way through, and marking an email as spam doesn't mean the next twenty emails from the same address will be recognized as spam (bummer, right?). The Google Operating System's method is really pretty simple - basically you set up a filter to move email from your "blacklisted" addresses out of the inbox and automatically delete them (it could work with any email that allows filtering).
How do you handle the unwanted email that manages to sneak past your spam filter? Got a better method for blacklisting email using Gmail (to be honest, I was hoping for something a little better, too)? Let us know in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com. Thanks DRide!
Read more: Email, Filters, Gmail, Gmail Tips, Spam, Spam filters
Two-paned blogging with your browser's sidebar
Weblog They're Missiles; They're Not Eggs suggests loading a compose email or blog post bookmark in your browser's sidebar for two-paned reading and writing. For example, to compose a Gmail message from the sidebar:
Add a bookmark which links to a Gmail compose window (go to Gmail, click Compose and then press the pop out button, top left of compose field). Then select the option in the Firefox's Bookmark Properties dialog to open the bookmark in the sidebar.
This method is fantastic for opening your blogging "New Post" screen alongside a page you're linking and quoting, as shown in the screenshot. Note: the wider your screen, the better this works. Thanks, unchosenone!
Read more: Blogging, Bookmarks, Email, Gmail, Multitasking, Top, Widescreen
Track emails with the Gmail contact view
Here's another way to track individual Gmails: sort by name via the Contact list view.
According to productivity blogger Chris Brogan, all you need to do is click on the Contacts button in the left-hand navigation pane, then click on someone's name. All the emails between you and that person will be displayed. One thing missing is a "sort by" drop-down menu here, but this hack is still incredibly useful.
Gmail news headlines
Gmail has a useful feature called Web Clips which displays RSS and Atom feed headlines above your inbox.
This is useful if you are just checking your emails and don't have time to log-in to your online news reader, but are wondering if anything interesting has been posted at your favourite blogs. Also, it's an unobtrusive way to catch up with breaking news.
To set up Web Clips in Gmail, from the Settings area go to Web Clips. From there, type in the feed's URL or edit the feed list already added.
Read more: Feed reader, Gmail, RSS, RSS reader
Use Google Calendar to clean up Gmail
You can use Google's nicely integrated services to do a bit of housecleaning in Gmail via Google Calendar.
Lifehack.org suggests a Google Calendar alert perhaps every other day to remind you to get in there and do some organizing; as someone who's been trying to follow Gina's excellent advice of the Trusted Trio, I found that Google Calendar helped this already excellent system work even better.
Read more: Email, Email Notification, Gmail, Gmail Tips, Google Calendar, Organization
New Gmail features: Delete all spam and apply filters to old email
If you've been paying close attention to your Gmail, you may have noticed a couple of new features that have been slowly rolled out over the last couple of weeks.
On the Spam front, Gmail now allows you to delete all your spam in one fell swoop (rather than a page at a time). For the filter junkies out there, you can now apply filters to already-received email (rather than only those received after the filter's creation). Nothing huge, but a couple of nice new features to show us that our favorite hosted email is still moving forward.
Out of curiosity, what features would you most like to see Gmail add next? Let us know in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.
Ask the Law Geek: How the government (doesn't) read your email
[or How Conspiracy Theorists Were Reborn as 'Privacy Advocates']
by Stewart Rutledge
Are Gmail and online data storage the end of privacy as we know it? Has the government finally found a way to get to all of our personal information with a simple court order? Are we mere sheep being lead to the slaughter of digital kidnapping? Some people think so, but I don't.
Read more: Ask the Law Geek, Feature, Flickr, Gmail, Privacy, Top
Use Gmail as your universal email account
Do you waste time checking 6 different email accounts with 6 different applications? The Google Tutor has a rundown on how to consolidate and manage them all from Gmail.
We couldn't possibly sing the praises of Gmail any more, and this is probably old hat to most power Gmailers. But with a new email account around every corner these days, it's a good reminder to stop and get it all in once place without having to change your address.
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