Gmail added four new themes

Few hours back Gmail has added four new themes in themes tab, after almost a year Gmail has come up with these four new themes which should make the users little bit more cheerful as now they can try out some new themes as shown in the snap shots.

You can see these new themes in the following path:

Setting -> Theme tab

Orcas Island

 

High Score

 

Turf

The fourth theme is called Random and name explains itself that it will merely cycles through all the other themes randomly. This theme is good and bad as well, Good: you can have a look at all the themes automatically. Bad: Some people might get irritated with changing of themes all the time.

[source: Official Gmail Blog]

New Contact Chooser in Gmail

Gmail recently introduced contact chooser which would help the users to choose the contact from their list of contacts when you are composing a mail. This feature was available in Google Docs, Google Calendar as well in most of the mail clients and webmail services but Gmail dint had it till now. There’s a saying “Better late then Never” so lets make the best out this feature as it has been introduced now.

To use this feature you just have to click on “To” when you are composing a mail, which will give bring up a pop up having the list of contacts from where you can choose.

Some great features of Contact Chooser:

1. Just by clicking “To” get the list.
2. You can even search contact from the list.
3. Choose the contact from your group of lists in a drop-down menu.
4. Easily remove selected contacts by clicking it.
5. You have an options to “Select all”
6. This feature will also work by clicking “Add cc” and “bcc”

So from now onwards do not forget any people to include on your email using contact chooser. Also do let us know how did you found this feature by sharing your experience with us.

[source: Official Gmail Blog ]

Gmail introduce import mail and contact for everyone

Almost 3 months back Gmail had come up with a feature to import mail and contact from your old webmail's account like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL etc. which was only available for new users so that they can get the most out of Gmail and I must say it is pretty good feature to attract new user.

However Gmail dint forget their old time users who were using Gmail before this feature was introduced. So yesterday they introduced this new feature for everyone which is now available for new users as well for the old time Gmail users . Now anyone can get their old mails and contact imported to Gmail.

Following are the steps:

1. Click the Settings link.
2. Under the Accounts and Import tab, click the Import mail and contacts button. 
   
   
   
3. In the new window that opens, enter the email address of the account you'd like to import contacts from. Click Continue.
   
   
   
4. Enter the password for your other email account and click Continue.
   
   
   
5. Select all the checkboxes that apply: 
   
   
   
   • If you choose to import contacts, the information in your contacts list in your old account will be imported to your Contacts section in Gmail.
   • If you select the Import mail checkbox, your existing messages in that account will be imported to your Gmail inbox.
   • If you want, you can also select the Import new mail checkbox so that messages sent to your old account for the next 30 days will be imported to your Gmail account. These messages won't appear in Gmail immediately once they're sent to your other account, but should update within a day or two.
   • Finally, you can automatically apply a label to your imported messages to indicate that those were sent to your other account.
6. Click Start Import. The import will continue if you leave the Settings page or sign out of Gmail.
7. Your contacts and/or messages will be imported. It may take 24-48 hours before you see your imported messages, so don't worry if they're not there as soon as you click OK.

    

You can check the status of your import by clicking the Accounts and Imports tab on the Settings page. Once the import is complete, you'll see a confirmation message at the top of your inbox.  

For me it has been more then 24 hours and I’m still waiting, lets hope by tomorrow Gmail import’s all my old mails as well as contacts. However I personally think with this new feature Gmail wants pass a message to all old time Gmail users that they are as important as the new users for Gmail.

[source: Official Gmail Blog ]

New in Gmail Labs: Remove Labels from Subjects

Google has come up with a brand new experimental feature in Gmail Labs: Remove Labels from Subjects that allows to hide labels from the messages in your inbox and giving you a plenty of space for the messages subjects.

Gmail label is one of the most useful feature to categories incoming emails automatically or manually to get the mails at the right places. However given labels are marked in front of  the subject line and due to this it becomes difficult to read the subject of emails if the size of the screen is smaller.

Remove Labels from Subjects – Disable  

This new feature would a great help for those people who have a habit to browse through emails based on the subject and having a smaller screen size. By enabling the new feature Remove Labels from Subjects would automatically hides the labels from the subject line in you inbox which would give plenty of space for subject to get displayed.

Remove Labels from Subjects – Enable  

Steps to enable Remove Labels from Subjects :

1. Login to Gmail.
2. Go to the following path Setting –> Labs tab and scroll down to locate “Remove Labels from Subjects ”. 
   
3. Select “Enable” and then click “Save Changes”.

4. You are done – No more labels in the subject line !

I personally like Gmail labels and its pretty useful too however I don't have this issue because of my wide screen laptop, but for those who has a smaller screen they can try using their personal abbreviation for labels like for example:

• Important – IMP
• Different types of bills – Bills / MBill (mobile bill) / IBill (Internet bill)
• Different banks – Banks

Which would use small amount of space of the subject line and you can get both the labels as well as subjects on your screens.

Abbreviation Labels 

Please do let us know if above information helped you or if you have any more suggestion like these by leaving comments.

[via: Official Gmail blog]

Gmail Password Recovery Via Text Message

So you forget your Gmail password and want to get it back, try out recovering your password via text message which has been recently added in Google account . This is a new technique to recover your password which I don't think any other email service providers uses it.

Now sometime its easy to hack an account if the password recover system is only depends on birth-date and a security question like “What is your pet name?”, which can be guessed out easily if we know someone.

However things changes and email provider has to check their security vulnerability and have to fill up the loop holes. So its always a good thing to add as many password recovery options to your Google Account.

Steps to turn-on the recovery password via text message:

1. Sign in our Gmail account.
2. Select 'Change Password Recovery Options’.
3. Click on “Add a mobile phone number”
4. Select your “Country”.
5. Enter your cell phone number
6. Click “Save”.

Steps to get a new password:

Next time when you forget your password just follow these steps

1. Go at password-assistance page.
2. Enter your “Username”.
3. Click “Submit”
4. You will receive a text message with a recovery code  and a mail in the secondary email id.
5. Using the recovery code you can get a new password or by checking your secondary email and click the link which Google has sent you.

The advantage of using text message recovery is that you don't have check secondary email account or even leave the page. Just check the text message, use the recovery code and you are done. Let us know what do you think about this new password recovery option by leaving comments.

[Via: Official Gmail Blog  ]

New in Gmail Labs: Back to Beta

Finally Gmail peels off its beta tag and has come out of it’s beta version. It has been more then 5 years now that Gmail has been in beta, which I think is the longest time ever a product has been kept in beta version. Now Google has made a benchmark for keeping products in beat version which I think no one can compete it .

Jokes apart, lot of people are happy with this huge move which Google has made. Gmail is not the only product which has been moved out the beta version other Google Apps has also followed it.

Google Apps out of  beta version:

1. Google Calendar
2. Google Docs
3. Google Talk
4. Gmail

If you have been using Gmail for a long time and can’t digest to loose the gray “BETA” label under Gmail logo then you bring it back from Gmail Labs: Back to Beta.

Steps to enable Back to Beta:

1. Login to Gmail.
2. Go to the following path Setting –> Labs tab and scroll down to locate “Back to Beta”.  
   
3. Select “Enable” and then click “Save Changes”.

4. You are back to beta

Coming Soon:

Google has also announced that they would be coming up with few other Google Apps features in coming months or so.

• Enhancements to Apps reliability
• Mail delegation
• Mail retention

Though the beta tag is out they would continue their journey to improve their products. Let us know what do you think about coming out of the beta version. Will you miss it or its for good.

[Source: Gmail blog ]

Gmail Increased It’s Attachment Size – 25 MB

Yesterday I was sending some files to my friends from Gmail and I just missed out the calculation of the attachment size, so I got an error message as shown below. The interesting part in this message which I found was, it said “..exceed the 25MB attachment limit”.

Did Gmail increased its maximum attachment size to 25 MB from 20 MB. To cross check it I went to Gmail Help and found out that its true.

With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 25 megabytes (MB) in size.
Please note that you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use other email services with smaller attachment limits. If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail.

So now you can share some additional files using Gmail and if your mail bounces then its time to invite that person who has a smaller attachment limits from other email services to Gmail. As Gmail is one of the best email services, share your opinion by commenting below.

Gmail now imports mail and contacts from other accounts

We all know how appealing Gmail is but most of the people cannot switch over Gmail as they have piled up thousands of emails and contacts on other webmail's which they can’t neglect. So taking these obstacles under considerations Gmail today came up with a great new feature called “Import mail and contacts” which would definitely increase their numbers of user.

So what this new feature can do?

With this new feature it would be a hassle free job for the average computer users to import  mails and contacts from other webmail’s, rather then going through a frustrating process .

• Import emails and contacts from other email providers which includes AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and lots more, check out the list. 
• To try your hands on Gmail, you can even forward emails from your old account for 30 days. what’s the harm try it out.

However this new feature is only available on new accounts, and it would take some days to get it rolled out in the existing accounts. Once it has been enabled in your account you will see “Accounts and Import” tab which might be right now “Accounts” under Settings.

Accounts and Import 

Accounts

So from now onwards guys whenever you login Gmail, remember to check if this new feature has been added in your account and please do share your experience with us after trying it. 

[via: Official Gmail Blog ]

Gmail Update: Multi-Select and Progress Bars for Attachments

Today one more update has been made by Google in Gmail with its attachments. There are two new features introduced with Gmail attachments:

1. Multi-select files.
2. Progress or Status bar for the uploaded files.

Multi-select files:

This works when you want to attach few files from the same folder in Gmail. You can select multiple files at one go or else earlier we had to select one file each time. This can be done simply by holding the “Ctrl” key (Cmd in case of OS X) and click on each file you want to attach. You can also use the “Shift” key by holding it and select a continuous list of files.

Progress bar:

Before you never knew how long a file will take to upload, now it will also show you the status on the progress bars on each file as it uploads.

Note: At the time of selecting multiple files you should not exceed Gmail attachment limit which is 20MB.

[via: Official Gmail Blog]

Create your own theme colors in Gmail

From the day Google has launched themes in Gmail and Orkut everyone is trying to create there own themes and use there own colors in the theme. So Google has worked on it and today they have launched with a new option “Choose your own colors” in Gmail theme.

You can see this option in the following path:

Setting -> Theme tab and scroll down to locate “Choose your own colors”

Click on it and you'll get a pop-up in which you will be able to select colors for everything from background of your inbox to the link of the text.

Now you can play with your favorite colors and create your own theme everyday by mix- matching the colors. If you get carried out with lot of mix - matching and lost the track of colors then you can always use the “Reset” button at the bottom, which would revert to the default colors.

Note: Companies that use Google Apps would not be able to see this option for themes yet, but don't worry Google is working on it.

Hope Google gets this option with Orkut themes also !!

via: Official Gmail Blog

New “Move to” and “Labels” buttons in Gmail

Labels are used to sort out the mails in Gmail, for example - mails from friends, from work, some important mail, etc which helps us to find them easily next time we want to. Most of us follow this process which is very common, but for it we had to do complicated steps. For an instance if you wished to move an email from your inbox to a label you had to first apply a label to it. To label an email you had to go to “More actions” menu button and then you had to click “Archive” button.

Now after introducing these to buttons “Move to” and “Labels” Google has made things easier for us. Usages of the new buttons are given bellow:

“Move to” button- You can label and archive an email in a single step.
“Labels” button - To add or remove a label.

These buttons would be more helpful for those people who have lot of labels, as it uses auto-complete. It looks as they also have a search bar which will help to select the label just by typing the first couple of characters.

Google will be adding keyboard shortcuts for them, “v” for “Move to” and “l” (lowercase L) for “Labels”. For using these shortcuts you should have keyboard shortcuts turned on.

Note: These changes are for everyone and as it has been launched today so it is in process that might be the reason you may not see these buttons right away.

Via | Image Credit: Official Gmail
Credit: Emil A Eklund, Gmail engineer

Watch Videos in Gmail Chat Window

Google team has come up with a very interesting and cool new feature in Gmail chat: YouTube and Google Video previews. Now you don’t have to flip between the tabs to chat and see video. With this new feature integrated in Gmail chat you can chat as well watch the video at the same time. Whenever you receive or send a link to a video in the Gmail chat message, you will see a preview of the video inside your chat window.

You just have to click on the preview of the video inside your chat window and then a small screen will come up and you would be able to watch the video on the same page. Now with this new feature integrate in Gmail chat, don't forget to reply to your friends

via: Official Release

credit: Jessan Hutchison-Quillian

Grab Your Own Gmail Stickers from Googel

Yes now you can also get your own Gmail stickers. How you can get them? Ask Google to send for it. Now you can only get by sending an ENVELOPE not e-mail. Yah you can go ahead and read it again its “envelope”.

Gmail stickers

Google has been one of the fastest growing companies in electronic communication but for getting a sticker it’s the old way guys. Who cares, when at the end we get a Gmail sticker “How cool is that”.

Gmail Keyboard Shortcut stickers

Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope (along with a note if you're so inclined) to:

Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420

It will cost $0.42 stamp if you are in the United States. And if you are outside U.S then enclose an international reply coupon (IRC).

But the bad news is that Google will send only one sticker per person.

Source & Image : gmailblog

New! Video Chat In Gmail

Gmail is getting better day by day guys. Now it has introduces a new update Voice and Video Chat in Gmail. You must have noticed a new link on top-right hand side of your Gmail account page.

Steps to get started :

1. You can see new link in Gmail chat Options as Add voice/video chat.

2. Install voice and video chat plug-in.

3. Once you have installed the plug-in, it may ask you to restart you system.

4. Then sign in to Gmail.

5. Now you can see the that Options has changed to Video & more. In it you can invite all those friends who have yet not installed the new video chat plug-in.

6. And if they have the plug-in installed in there system then you will see the two new links Start voice chat and Start video chat.

So now you can enjoy the video chatting from Gmail as easy as sending an instant message.

Source: Gmail Blog

New Update in Gmail for new bunch of stuff

Hi every one, if you have noticed a new update has been made in gmail page. Its just a new link which shows all the new stuff's in gmail which has been made by gmail team.

As shown in below snap short, the link is in your gmail account on top-left hand side conner.

So now if you want to know any new stuff for gmail you can find it out in link New! A bunch of stuff

These are few new stuffs which gmail has

1. Emoticons – they're not just for chat anymore ( Which I wrote about few days back)


2. Gmail for mobile 2.0


3. Gmail has a new look on the iPhone browser


4. More friends are more fun. Gmail welcomes your AIM® friends.


5. Increased attachment limit-- 20 MB!


6. And many more....

New Emoticons In Gmail ;-)

Google has added new set of emoticons in Gmail and Gmail Chat (IM conversation). This update had been made few days back.I came to know about this update when I was sending a MSG to one of my friend late night.

The interesting part is that Gmail Chat has less emoticons then in an email. As you can see in the snap-shot below.

Compose Mail:

Chat:

But the best part is that now you (party) all and ... So lets (chill) with all new emoticons in Gmail.

source: Gmail blog

Tack Your Gmail Hacker!!!

Yes guys now you can track the hacker who is trying to hack your Gmail account. This is possible with the help of google. If you have notices or not but in your gmail page you have a link Details for Last account activity as shown in snap-shot.

1. Bottom of your gmail page you have a link Details

2. Once you click the above link then you can see the Recent Activities, with Access Type, IP Address and Date and Time of login.

• If you always or most often sign in to Gmail using a single computer, your IP address should be the same, or start with the same two sets of numbers (for example, 172.16.xx.xx).
• If you're seeing an IP address that differs greatly from your usual IP address, it could either mean that you've recently accessed your mail from a different location, or that someone has accessed your mail.
  

3. If some one is using your Gmail at same time then you can see Concurrent session information with Access Type and IP Address. Gmail has given an option called Sign out all other session button which will force the hacker to sign out from your account.

4. After that you will see a link Chang your password, which will help you save it from hacker to access your account again.

5. Now here is the best part, if you want to see from where the hacker was accessing your account, you will just need the IP address of the hacker which can been seen from the 3rd step, just copy the IP address and past in the link below

1. ipillion
2. ip2location
   

These are web-site's from where you can find the place or location with the help of IP address.

Note: You can try and search in google for other site too, which can give you the location by IP Address

You can also refer to:

1. Tips For Not Getting Your Orkut Account HACKED
2. Save Your Hacked Orkut / Gmail / Google Account