New Version of Gmail Being Tested

Keith writes "Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004, and has revolutionized the way many of us use email. The interface has remained largely untouched since it launched, but get ready, it's soon to undergo a change in what they describe as a 'New Version'. Only a select few people have access to use the new interface — mainly employees and trusted people outside the company called 'Trusted Testers'. From the ZDNet blog entry: 'Google lets every-day users who are fluent in both English and another language translate small snippets of English text into the language of their choice. This is how they can offer services in several languages without spending a dime on professional translators. Unfortunately, exposing sensitive information in this manner makes it hard to keep a secret. One of my readers, who wishes to remain anonymous, stumbled across an interesting snippet of text (which I confirmed exists) spilling the beans on a new version of Gmail that is either currently being tested, or about to be released to testing in short order.'"

The feature everybody wants!

[Stephen Williams (23750)]

Oooh! Oooh! Let's hope it has Flash ads!

-Stephen

Re:The feature everybody wants!

[eebra82 (907996)]

According to a friend of mine, who knows someone who knows a person who is a compulsive liar, we might end up seeing Silverlight ads instead.

Note to mods..

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

Whoosh!

Warning! Humor Process Failure. (A)bort (R)etry

Re:

[Almahtar (991773)]

I hope it has flash ads. Firefox's flashblock extension makes Flash ads very convenient for me.

Dr. Dre would be proud

[User 956 (568564)]

The interface has remained largely untouched since it launched, but get ready, it's soon to undergo a change in what they describe as a 'New Version'.

Does that mean they're going to rename the existing version "O.G. Mail?"

Bit speculative

[Pop69 (700500)]

So, on the basis of 2 words in a translation request, there is a whole new version of Gmail coming out ?

How the hell did this get to be news ?

Re:Bit speculative

[desenz (687520)]

Did you happen to notice what those two words were translated to? Pig latin. Is there really a pig latin version of google?

Re:Bit speculative

[the-amazing-blob (917722)]

Actually, Google has some funky languages to choose from, including Pig Latin, Esperanto, and "bork bork bork" (swedish chef). They're on the preferences page, and I believe apply to all Google services

Re:

[mithras the prophet (579978)]

...and there's someone that they pay to translate phrases into Pig Latin? (a) couldn't that be done by computer, (b) how the heck do you get that job? Document your extensive travel and work experience in Pig Latin America?

Re:

[x_MeRLiN_x (935994)]

From the summary:

Google lets every-day users who are fluent in both English and another language translate small snippets of English text into the language of their choice. This is how they can offer services in several languages without spending a dime on professional translators.

Re:Bit speculative

[JensenDied (1009293)]

$ echo "...and there's someone that they pay to translate phrases into Pig Latin? (a) couldn't that be done by computer, (b) how the heck do you get that job? Document your extensive travel and work experience in Pig Latin America?" | pig
...andway erethay'say omeonesay atthay eythay aypay otay anslatetray asesphray intoway Igpay Atinlay? (away) ouldncay'tay atthay ebay oneday ybay omputercay, (bay) owhay ethay eckhay oday youay etgay atthay objay? Ocumentday youray extensiveway aveltray andway orkway experienceway inway Igpay Atinlay Americaway?

Re:Bit speculative

[iacvlvs (1155873)]

RTFA. The "Phrase in English" is "Newer Version" - and in the "Translation Help" section, it reads "Link that users can click on if they are part of the trusted testers program to go to the newer UI." On the basis of being asked to translate a link to the new UI, there's a whole new UI coming out.

Make that 9 words

[AySz88 (1151141)]

Here comes 7 more words for ya. [zdnet.com] At least it has a possible new feature, this time. (Breaking news! Now with 350% more proof!)

Re:Bit speculative

[Cutriss (262920)]

How the hell did this get to be news?

Posted by Zonk on Sunday September 23, @05:13PM

That's how.

Re:

[Nimey (114278)]

Google is the new Apple.

Re:Bit speculative

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

And Apple the new Microsoft, and Microsoft the new IBM. Was there reality before IBM? and what will succeed Google? What if IBM succeeds Google? Would this be proof of reincarnation?

Cheapskates

[xaxa (988988)]

"without spending a dime on professional translators"
Why do people do stuff for Google for free? What do they get out of it?

Re:Cheapskates

[GreyPoopon (411036)]

Why do people do stuff for Google for free? What do they get out of it?

They get to find out about secret new products and tell the world. ;) But seriously, maybe some people do stuff like that because they want to give back; they want to see Google's ideas succeed. If spending one minute a day translating a sentence helps out, who are we to give them a hard time about it?

Re:Cheapskates

[adnonsense (826530)]

But seriously, maybe some people do stuff like that because they want to give back; they want to see Google's ideas succeed. If spending one minute a day translating a sentence helps out, who are we to give them a hard time about it?

Yup? Myself, I spend up to 15 minutes a day proofreading Microsoft documentation for free, and I'm always available for any other multibillion dollar corporations who's ideas I can help succeed at no cost to them.

Re:Cheapskates

[greppling (601175)]

Myself, I spend up to 15 minutes a day proofreading Microsoft documentation for free, and I'm always available for any other multibillion dollar corporations who's ideas I can help succeed at no cost to them.

You kids have low standards these days. When I was your age, I spent hours everyday proof-reading and commenting on AT&T whitepapers.

Re:Cheapskates

[Joebert (946227)]

What do they get out of it?

First go to the following URL.
http://www.google.com/ [google.com]

Next type somthing into the box, anything, type in Hot Monkey Fecal Sex [google.com] if you want.

Finally, click the "Google Search" button.

Do you see why people do stuff for Google for "free" yet ?

Come on, there's 320,000 results for hot monkey fecal sex [google.com] for cryin out loud !

Lots of mystery...

[Glowing Fish (155236)]

seems to be a lot of mystery and intrigue around what is probably going to be minor cosmetic changes.
Are we all so enamored of googles many accomplishments that a site redesign becomes major news?
I don't think anyone was that concerned when yahoo and hotmail redid their sites...of course, they just made them more annoying.
Having said that, it will probably be that this rumored site redesign is when Google starts rolling out their sinister "Phase II"

Re:Lots of mystery...

[svunt (916464)]

If /. can support as many ipod/iphone stories as it does, surely this warrants the front page.

For what it's worth....

[moosesocks (264553)]

For what it's worth, Google is stopping to call it GMail.

All of the icons were changed over the past few days to say "Google Mail" instead of GMail with little fanfare. Not sure if this is any indication of things to come, or simply a branding effort coming from the top-down. Guess we'll have to wait and see...

Re:For what it's worth....

[Bieeanda (961632)]

That could have something to do with the suit that they lost in Germany... and speaking of Germany, this 'translate tiny snippets of text' thing reminds me of how the British handled The funniest joke in the world [wikipedia.org].

Re:For what it's worth....

[empaler (130732)]

That's just a choice. You can use your mail address (XYZ) in following ways:
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail] (/googlemail.com)
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

Possibly more. Helps filtering stuff, and in some cases smell out the rats that sell your mail address to spammers :)

Great

[DaleGlass (1068434)]

So this will be a beta of the new version of a service that's still in beta?

I wonder how many years more it'll take for gmail to lose the "beta" designation.

Re:

[yomahz (35486)]

I wonder how many years more it'll take for gmail to lose the "beta" designation.

Not until web 3.0rc1

This is ridiculous

[bgfay (5362)]

Even if there is a new version coming, this is the least reliable source of information about it. I mean, for Pete's sake, pig latin? We're going to trust that Google really needs this translated into pig latin in order to make it accessible to users?

By the way there's a giant that's been unearthed in Cardiff, NY. It looks to be proof that giants once roamed the Earth and maybe still do. Check it out. It's true for sure.

Hopefully they fix...

[duckpoopy (585203)]

Hopefully they fix broken signatures when responding to email. Now it places my signature to the very bottom of the email - below the quoted text I am responding to. I am tired of cutting and pasting my sig every time I respond to an email.

Re:

[Braino420 (896819)]

Now it places my signature to the very bottom of the email - below the quoted text I am responding to.

Then stop top posting...

What the hell?

[glwtta (532858)]

"revolutionized the way many of us use email"

It's just a nice webmail system - webmail has been around for years before gmail. I use gmail, I like gmail, but what exactly did it revolutionize?

Re:What the hell?

[macshit (157376)]

It's just a nice webmail system - webmail has been around for years before gmail. I use gmail, I like gmail, but what exactly did it revolutionize?

It didn't suck.

In the context of webmail, that was pretty darn revolutionary!

Re:What the hell?

[catbutt (469582)]

It didn't suck.

That's very true. I hated web mail before gmail, and love it now.

Also, prior to gmail, users of free web mail had to constantly delete all their old messages so they wouldn't go over their quota. Also if you didn't log in for a month you got your account cancelled. Also you couldn't use free web mail for professional purposes because it stuck an ad on your outgoing mail. Web mail also didn't allow free forwarding, pop access, or allow you to use an address at your own domain....which basically locked you in. Gmail changed all that.

And it was the first mainstream Ajax application I know of.

I agree...it was pretty damn revolutionary. At least for those who pay attention to such things.

Re:

[jjohnson (62583)]

A conversation is just a thread, yes, but what was innovative was google's non-tree method of grouping them, and making that the basis of the email interface. Usenet accomplished this with headers, and displayed it in a tree mode that wasn't particularly good, imho, at sorting things tidily into piles based on most recent update. I'm not aware of any email program that operates like gmail does (rather than simply offering an option to sort an flat mailbox by subject). I could be wrong, though.

beta

[in_ur_face (177250)]

Maybe they can finally get rid of the 'beta' in the logo :)? Overall, I think Google has a hit with their latest offerings. Google desktop for instance is a perfect addition to indexing and searching 65k+ Outlook emails (work still uses Outlook). Similar to Lookout, but doesnt crash Outlook. Google Documents has greatly improved and is perfect for sharing documents across PCs. Installing Microsoft office or OpenOffice is really optional now. While Gmail's interface isn't perfect, they have been making small updates throughout the months. I still think it beats Hotmail, Yahoo, etc...

Re:

[bgfay (5362)]

This is one of the first people I've seen to say that Google Docs is as useful as I'm finding it to be. I teach high school and am having my students use it for many reasons including that it's much more difficult for their dogs to eat their homework and because we can collaborate on documents. It really is a powerful thing. Yes, there are things that OpenOffice can do much better (and Word too though I've never used it), but there are things that Google Docs does much better than any of the offline word pr

One request

[sootman (158191)]

Let me click one button and sort by sender, subject, size, etc. That's the #1 reason I don't use Gmail.

Re:One request

[mattwarden (699984)]

you can search by any of those items (and more) and you would rather sort??? What the hell good does sorting do? Surely you are looking for emails from 1 person, not a group of people with names starting with 'A', right???

I prefer IMAP

[by Anonymous Coward]

Why use POP when you can use IMAP? As long as you can backup your messages on your local computers, I don't see any benefit of using POP over IMAP.

Re:I prefer IMAP

[DaleGlass (1068434)]

Gmail is really pointless with IMAP anyway.

I use offline IMAP here. The best of both worlds, my mail is on the server and accessible anywhere, but also cached locally so I still can see what was there even if the connection fails.

Re:I prefer IMAP

[johnkzin (917611)]

http://search.cpan.org/~krs/GMail-IMAPD-0.93/lib/GMail/IMAPD.pm [cpan.org]

I read a review of it, and I'm not sure I agree with all of the implementation choices, but supposedly it works.

I'd rather have real IMAP from google though.

Proof

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

I tried submitting this to Slashdot but it wasn't accepted. It did get picked up on the InsideGoogle blog [blognewschannel.com]. They have some photos and discussion.

:P

[n1hilist (997601)]

I'm a nerd, It's news to me, it matters.

Nothing to see here (cause we aren't looking lol)

[weirdcrashingnoises (1151951)]

maybe you missed the big, bold "Translate Phrase for Gmail UI" at the top of the image?

or maybe u missed the "Link that users can click on if they are part of the trusted testers program to go to the newer UI." that is near the bottom?

+1 irony for subject title this was posted under... "nothing to see here"

Look over here!

[Mal-2 (675116)]

What are they distracting us from? Does Google really need human help to translate into Pig Latin. Iay ont'day inkthay osay. This sounds too much to me like an "accidentally on purpose" leak. Either they want us to know about it to create some free buzz, or it's sleight of hand to distract us from something else they're doing. Either way, there is probably a new something on the way. It just may not be Google Mail.

Mal-2

Re:

[Aladrin (926209)]

Someone already pointed out that the translation if for the 'GMail UI', so yeah, it's for GMail.

But what nobody's proven is that there are any significant differences. 'New Version' might mean it's using a newer AJAX library, or has different colors. I don't care about color changes, but I care about functionality changes. Especially since I convinced the company I work for to use them for mail, and I use the web interface exclusively. If it takes a turn for the worse, I'll end up going back to Thunderb

Re:Pkease,,,,

[Antique Geekmeister (740220)]

Or a "delete" button that goes to the next thread automatically.

Re:let's get a grip

[Tim Browse (9263)]

gmail hasn't brought anything to the table that wasn't there before.

Apart from a little thing I like to call "User interface that doesn't irritate the living fuck out of me." And almost instant searching of all my email.

Au contraire: Gmail has an awesome UI

[LKM (227954)]

In the case of gmail it might be because the current UI is shitty.

Except that it's the best mail UI ever devised. I have actually switched from my "real" mail client to using gmail exclusively. I love the "keep everything in one folder, tag it and search" approach. Much better than dozens of folders with filters. I love how threaded mails are displayed; I always know what people are replying to. Oh, and search is fast.

Furthermore, they don't try to create a "real" app inside the browser, instead concentrating on making an awesome "web app." Yahoo recreates a "real" application inside the browser. So you've got tons of buttons and drag and drop and folders and all that crap, all of which makes the application slow, and doesn't really help you get your stuff done. Google has the right idea: It's a browser, make it a great web app, not a shitty copy of a "real" app.

Pray tell, what is so shitty about the current gmail UI?