Friday, August 28, 2009

Gmail: Right to Left Formatting

Sometimes you don't want you entire email to be right to left, but only a section, and this is why I think that it should be an applicable style.

Gmail: Archive, then...

If you're trying to plow through the hundreds of emails in your inbox, it might be hand to have an option to go to the next email in your inbox after you archive a message. At the moment it just goes back to the Inbox.

Gmail: Gmail as an IMAP Client

We all love Gmail. We never want to click out of that Gmail browser window. For many of us, we wouldn't ever have to leave that window if we could access our work email, or god forbid, yahoo or hotmail in Gmail. That is why Gmail should act as an IMAP client for other mail services.

Gmail: Search Attachments

You should be able to search for attachments by name. What would be more helpful would be to search the contents of files sent to you, the text in files, or even the metadata, although I doubt Gmail has the ability to index the contents of you email attachments.

Gmail: Drag and Drop Attachments

Why can't we drag and drop an attachment into an email and just send it? It would make life so much easier. Same with embedding photos into our email.

Gmail: Styling Signatures

In most desktop mail clients you are able to fully customize your signature with different fonts, or styles. Another great thing would be having the ability to embed photos into your signature, and have custom aligning of your text, and those photos. This feature is not available in Gmail at the moment, and I really wish it were.

Gmail: Delete Attachments

If you are one of the early adopters of Gmail, and use it constantly, it is possible that you could fill the 7.5 GB storage (as of 8/28/09.) In this case, it would help if you could delete an attachment from a message, but still keep the message itself. It would also be useful if you could forward a message without the attachment.

Gmail: Chat History Sorting

Wouldn't it be nice if google gave you an option to sort your chat histories by the person you're speaking to, instead of the date and time the chat took place? Just a thought.

Gmail: Storage Concept

Anybody using Gmail can agree that with almost 7.5 GB of storage (as of 8/28/09) and growing, they never have to worry about running out of space. In fact, I only use 3% of that space after 3 years of using Gmail. Most of them would also agree that it can be complicated keeping track of an old file they received in an email. They want universal access to it across any computer or mobile device, anywhere in the world. So how can they do that? Well, at the moment they can download the file to their laptop, desktop computer, and phone. And email it to themselves after making changes, then re-downloading it to the other devices, overwriting the old file. Now we come back to those extra GBs sitting on the Google sever just waiting to be used. I think that there should be a way to upload your files, and organize them in a simple file structure, just like you would on you computer. Unlike on your computer however, files could easily be emailed with a click. They could be transferred here from an email with a click, and easily uploaded from your computer. Also unlike the desktop of your computer, they can be accessed from anywhere in the world, and on any device. This would be a great use of your extra Gmail storage space, andif you run out, you can easily upgrade your space with a "Google Shared Storage Plan."

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Gmail: Calendar UI for Email Archive

Wouldn't it be cool to view your archived mail in a calendar view. Just like you can while viewing your web history. With a day, week, and a month view this would be great.

Gmail: Label Organization

Google sorts your labels by which ones are used most. But I would like to have drag and drop label sorting with dividers. It would be nice.

Gmail: Custom Spam Removal Timer

At the moment Gmail clears out spam that is older than 30 days, but why not have options to clear it certain days of the week, or certain times, or both.

Calendar: Add Attachments to Calendar Events

It would be great to be able to attach files, PDFs or Word Docs, or even Google Docs, to calendar events. This would be very useful for adding notes to meetings, or sending sections of group projects to the manager.

Gmail: Email Tags

I've heard this from a few people, and personally, I would never use it, but, here it is. You should be able to apply tags to emails for easy searching later on. I would never tag a single email, but plenty of people who would. Labels are great, but individual tags for each email are even greater when you need to search.

Calendar: Add Birthdays in Gmail Contacts to Google Calendar

There should be a dedicated calendar in Google Calendar, and if you input a birthday for a contact in Gmail, it should automatically add it to that calendar. Enough said.

Gmail: Translate on the Fly

There is an option under settings to have all emails translated into your default language, but why stop there? Why not have an optional drop down language selector for any recieved, or composed, email. So I should be able to type an email in English, and translate it into Spanish when I send it. And translate the Spanish reply, into English. This would eliminate the need for another translator, such as Babel Fish, or Google Translate.

Gmail: Right Side Whatever You Like

Chat is on the right side of your inbox (with the lab option turned on), for a while you had the option to put labels on the right too, and with the "Navbar Drag and Drop" lab you are able to drag and drop any feature to anywhere on the left side of your inbox. But my question is why, why not on the right side of the inbox? This is probably the most requested feature, and people also agree that this is a simple, easy, tweak, that should have been there in the first place.

Chat: Status Log for Chat

Another desirable feature would be a status history for google chat. More or less like a mini twitter. It's always nice to reminisce, and things like these help to do just that.

Gmail: Alert for Inability to Connect to POP Accounts

When you get a Gmail account, it's great to be able to download emails from other accounts using POP. But for many people, they are forced to change their passwords by their school/work/security setup. But, when Gmail can no longer access your account, it doesn't act any differently. It wont notify you. In fact, it just says that there is no new mail from the account. There needs to be a notification that google can no longer access the old account, and is no longer retrieving emails via POP.

Gmail: Filter Emails Based on Time Recieved

Filtering emails in Gmail is a great way to customize, and it's by far my favorite tool. For people with a work and a personal account, it would be handy to be able to have emails forwarded to your personal account while you're out of office. Most people have a certain time of day when they're out of office, and know when that time is. If you had the ability to filter emails according to the time you received them, you would be able to forward those emails to your personal account.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Gmail: Group Conversation Shown as a Tree

When I am communicating with a group of people via email, people don't always reply to the entire group. This can make it hard to decide when you should reply to whom, and it is easy for somebody to be left out of a large section of the conversation. This is why I think it would be nice to have a group email conversation shown as a tree.

Gmail: Logo in Signature

I have heard from a number of bands and businesses that they wish they could put their logo in their automatic email signature. At the moment photos have to be uploaded and positioned manually, and this would be a helpful feature.

Gmail: Shortcut to Check POP Accounts for Mail

If you have a POP account configured to go into your Gmail inbox then you know how annoying it is to update. You have to go to Settings/Accounts/Check Mail. Why not add a shortcut to check for mail on inboxes with configured POP forwarding. Or at least an option for more frequent updates.

Gmail: Email to a Phone's Voicemail

This one is interesting. I heard, but have never tried, that is you try to SMS a landline it converts your message to speech and sends it straight to voicemail. This would be a neat feature for Gmail, and, eventhough it sounds strange, I can imagine myself using it frequently.

Chat: File Transfer over Google Chat

You can send files over AIM, so why not Google Chat. And if you can send a file over Google Chat, then why not over AIM in Google Chat. And to push it even further, why not send MMSs in Google Chat. It's time to take Google Chat out of the stone ages and into the real world. Hell, why not even throw in Facebook chat to boot.

Gmail: SMS Alert for Emails

We don't all have email capable phones, and even if we do, it can be expensive to get a data plan just for emailing. This is why I think that it not at all unreasonable to ask for an "SMS Me" option for filtering emails. You can get alerts from Google Calendar, so it is obviously possible.

Chat: MSN in Google Chat

You can use your AIM account, so why not MSN. I unerstand Microsoft may not give the okay to do it, but AIM is run by AOL, a (once) rival search engine.

Gmail: Theme Customization

Ok, I admit, this one is less of a lab and more of an annoyance, but don't you wish that you could do more to customize your theme than change the colors around. People should be able to uplead their own pictures and arange them however they like. We can use our own photos on iGoogle, so why not Gmail?

Gmail: Display when Recipient Reads Mail

This is an interesting/useful/privacy invading tool that could change the way we email today. I saw a request for a tool that would tell you when an email you sent was opened by the recipient. This tool could be used to bring about a new age of spamming, where you guess addresses, and if the mail gets opened then you know it's a real address. I don't know if this is even possible with current email standards, but I thought I'd throw it out there.