Slashdot Log In
Google Releases Gmail Notifier
Posted by
michael
on Fri Aug 20, 2004 08:40 AM
from the service-with-a-smile dept.
from the service-with-a-smile dept.
Philipp Lenssen writes "After several unofficial, screen-scraping Gmail utilities, Google now released the official Gmail Notifier (Beta) for Windows. It will sit in the Windows tray, alerting you of new emails in your account (if you are lucky enough to have one already). Additionally, the Gmail Notifier can connect 'mailto:'-links in web pages to Gmail."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
this is awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
save a draft (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
You got mail! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You got mail! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You got mail! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:You got mail! (Score:5, Funny)
When the IQ of the gmail users drops by about 50 points?
Parent
Re:You got mail! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I installed the Gmail notifier, forgot how loud my speakers were set, and heard
"DIE BITCH" loud enough to make me spill my drink as I watched email notification pop ups in the right hand corner of my screen.
So as a warning to others and a reply to you...the notifier will play sounds for incoming mail.
For me, this article was a great and amusing way to start my Friday. Now I may buy a couple shares of Google stock!
Parent
new mail notification sound (Score:5, Informative)
And it's been mentioned before, but I still think the Gmail Loader [marklyon.org] is still a handy utility. I'm migrating a lot of my mail and accounts in to Gmail and this thing was a huge help.
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the Gmail Loader still have the limitation that the date that appears on any uploaded e-mail in Gmail is the date of its upload, not the date of its original sending? If not (and I don't see how it could, as that problem must lie on the Gmail side), then it's hardly worth using. What's the point of uploading twelve years of e-mail to Gmail if you can't tell it "Show me all mail from March of 1996" and get the
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:4, Informative)
But ya, it does kind of suck. But when I imported my stuff, I'm just importing old mail and I really don't care what the date is (for searching or not) - because if I want to refer to any of it, I'll just be searching by it's content.
Parent
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:3, Informative)
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:4, Informative)
Gmail->Search Options:
Date within: [1d, 3d, 1w, 2w, 1mo, 2mo, 6mo, 1y] of [e.g. today, Friday, Mar 26 or 3/26/2004].
Doing this within 3d of 12/5/02 turned up fourteen messages that were sent in that range. Which is about accurate. Now, I'm not going to go through four years of email to see if that got them all, but I can nail a date down that small, I'll remember another characteristic of the message to search on, rather than the date.
The whole point of gmail's design (i.e. no folders, only labels) is that you filter/label mail, which I did as I migrated all my mail. I have email from eight classes segregated, and it broke the messages into conversations properly, rather than each separate message displayed on it's own line.
Google has designed gmail better than I thought it could be done. There are some features there (undoubtedly more undocumented) that I would never have thought of including. For instance the date range search!
The fact that it dispalys all my migrated mail as received july 27 is odd considering what I just said, but all that mail is archived and there only for me to dig back for something specific.
Oh, and the spam filtering is aggressive (almost too much so), which I think is great, compared to missing every few spams and dropping them to the inbox.
Parent
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:4, Informative)
I'm wrong, it does not hit migrated mail dates properly when searching on date. I mistyped my date and only glanced down at what looked like was correct. Upon fixing it, gmail does not search this way.
Parent
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:new mail notification sound (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
How long.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How long.... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:How long.... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:How long.... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:How long.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Why not a small Java app? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not a small Java app? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is for close integration with the operating system (like putting stuff in the tray in windows) is impossible to do with out using API's that break portability.
If you break portability what the point in doing it in java the first place?
Parent
Re:Why not a small Java app? (Score:5, Informative)
http://community.java.net/javadesktop/
Parent
No point? (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep my browser open all the time (including a tab to gmail) and it refreshes automatically. I don't see the benefit, unless having Yet More processes running is a good thing.
Re:No point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow... Breakthrough (Score:5, Funny)
GTRAY (Score:5, Informative)
Don't need to switch unless there are more options that google can provide; which from the website there isn't any.
http://torrez.us/gtray
Yo Grark
FireFox extension (Score:5, Informative)
For those interested, the Firefox extension can be found here:
Gmail Notifier [nexgenmedia.net]
Re:FireFox extension (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to this, add on WebmailCompose [jedbrown.net] (previously GmailCompose [jedbrown.net]) and you've got pretty much the full functionality of this gmail toolbar, plus it's cross-platform, for those of you who use several platforms and want a more unified computing experience.
For the record, i've been terribly happy with this combination for a while. Together with the great featureset of Gmail, it makes Webmail actually pleasant to use!
Parent
So when do we get Gmessenger? (Score:4, Interesting)
How long before our contact lists in gmail are moved to orkut and into a messenger?
For Mac users (Score:5, Informative)
Google being evil already? (Score:5, Funny)
Google...good
Windows...evil
Windows only Google app...does not compute!
Swamped by GMail invites ? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it was fun for the first 20 or so, but now it's really annoying. Even people I just remotely know are sending me this stuff.
I usually sign them up with bogus data just to stop this madness but it doesn't really work.
Does anyone know when Google is stopping its beta test ? I hope soon otherwise I see a nervous breakdown coming.
Re:Swamped by GMail invites ? (Score:5, Funny)
What's your email address?
Parent
Re:Swamped by GMail invites ? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gmail4troops.com/ [gmail4troops.com]
Parent
Re:Swamped by GMail invites ? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Gmail Notifier (Score:5, Informative)
skins (Score:3, Interesting)
And for autohiders? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean those of us who autohide the taskbar. It's not clear whether the notifier will pop up or not (and we may not want it to - the possibility for distraction is obvious).
You can get it to play a sound, but the FAQ says it may notify in error up to two minutes after all new mail's been cleared. Beep! Beep! BEEP! Urrgh....
This makes GMail 2x better (Score:5, Insightful)
I've installed it and it works great. It uses the same slide-up text bubble idiom that AIM and Yahoo and Thunderbird use. But the bubble not only tells you that you have mail but also who it is from and if there is room, the first part of the text of the email. If you missed it, you can right click and select 'Tell me again...' and it will scroll through all your unread emails, so you can get a quick overview of what's going on in your Inbox right now without having to use your browser. Much nicer.
Maybe it's me, maybe it's not (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why we are jumping through hoops to have auto refresing JavaScript-full convoluted html webmail that interacts with some little utility in your tray. I mean, I understand the convenience of webmail, but I think that installing this is whre I would draw the line between simple & easy and flakey & klunky.
Isn't 100% easier and more smooth to interact with POP3 and your favorite email software? Maybe it's just me. I've been using a hosting service for my website and email and I guess having that much control over the set up and delivery methods has made me skeptical of free webmail in general.
Re:Maybe it's me, maybe it's not (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the idea is your favorite email software isn't available everywhere. If you're ever using a computer other than your home desktop, and you want to read your email, you don't have the option of launching up whatever email client you like-- because the computer won't have it. Probably there will just be just Outlook Express, and you'll have to set up a user and configure your servers or whatnot. Not fun. It's much easier to have the option of just going to a website and checking your email, and once you start using this option you'll tend to want to use this website even when you get home-- even though at home you are actually free to run whatever your favorite email program-- because it's pleasant to have a single consistent interface every single time that you check your email, whereever in the world you are.
Of course, I don't use GMail, but the above logic is why even at home on my mac, I pretty much always check my email by sshing into a remote shell and using this command line mail program I sort of like. Ssh is pretty much available everywhere, and unlike webpages all ssh clients are actually compliant with one another...
Parent
Doesn't work with NT4 (Score:3, Informative)
Anyways, I need this tool at work. And some of us are still stuck with NT4 at work until the end of the year (when support dies and they finally upgrade us). This tool doesn't work with NT4, and I gather it doesn't work with 95/98/ME from the installer's error message. Just a heads-up for everyone.
Personally, GTray [torrez.us] works fine for me.
The iTunes model (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, iTunes. Apple needs people to have support for Quicktime; however, they have no way of making Windows users want to install Quicktime. Webpages that require Quicktime will, of course, force you to download it, but such pages would seem likely to become scarce as webmasters realize that every computer has WMP already and using WMP instead of Quicktime will not require their users to download a plugin. Apple's solution is to create a music player program for Windows that is considered by many to be the best there is, which everybody then wants to download and try out. As a process of doing this, these people inadvertently wind up installing Quicktime. End result: every computer has Quicktime already.
Google here is just another example. Google appears to be anticipating that at some point Microsoft will start using its space within the desktop to promote some engine of its own and dissuade the use of Google. Google is reacting to this by trying to get a toehold into the desktop of their own, using things such as the Google Toolbar and now, the GMail notifier. Both of these things will be installed by users for purposes largely irrelivant to Google's search-- the former for popup blocking, the latter for mail-- yet doing this means that Google builds up inertia with everyone who "just has" to download their Google tools after every system upgrade. This means that when the system update comes where Microsoft decides that every time you accidentally control-click on a word displayed on the screen it will open up Internet Explorer and search for it in MSN Search, Google can use their toehold in the desktop to undo this change and replace it with something (1) useful and (2) involving google search.
This approach hits Microsoft hard where it hurts; Microsoft is excellent at creating software. However, historically they have by and large failed at creating good software. Microsoft's strategy of destroying competitors by bundling their own special brand of mediocre with roughly equivilent functionality for "free" with the OS doesn't work anymore once people start to wind up downloading the software of Microsoft's competitors free just because it's better.
Why such a big fuss? (Score:5, Insightful)
And with other email service providers beefing up the storage space, one would have thought this pre-occupation with a gigabyte email-storage would be over!
This is awesome! This sucks! (Score:5, Interesting)
But then I noticed that it was for Win2k/XP/2k3 only. WTF? That's great for home, but at work (where I spend most of my time), I'm stuck on Windows ME!! So now this sucks as much as it rocks. I'm sad.
Personally, I wish Google had taken my suggestion to heart: password-protected RSS feeds of your email subjects. Then anybody could write a 3rd party notifier.
Available wherever Firefox is (Score:3, Informative)
That's a good idea, but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where is the notifier for (Score:4, Informative)
http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/cat
Parent
Re:percentage (Score:3, Informative)
I'm betting that a large percentage of people that use Gmail are using Windows. Everyone I know that has an account - including nearly two hundred people at my friend's company - is on a Windows box.