Life with Gmail

The gmail new look is not clear

Edwin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:43:22 +0000

I was traveling in the past weeks, after coming back, the first thing I noticed after logging in Gmail web (the Google Apps version) is the opportunity to switch to the new Gmail look before Google forces all of us to do that.

Some of the UI design of the new look seems to be more modern, however, I don’t like the new look, the main problem is the readability. The new look feels too “flat“, there is not clear UI elements (for example, borders) to make the different parts distinguish from each other, for example, when in the conversation view, clearer border lines should be added among the labels list on the left, the email messages on the middle, and the contacts info on the right.

Maybe Google should give us the option continuing using the old look of Gmail, instead of forcing us to do something we don’t like?

You can backup Gmail chat logs with Gmail Keeper now!

Edwin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:49:36 +0000

A good news! You can backup your chat logs in Gmail now with Gmail Keeper!

To do that, the first step is to enable IMAP access for your chats (this was not possible not long ago), illustrated in the following screenshot.

Then, in the backup settings window in Gmail Keeper, you must set ‘Chats‘ is a ‘Label’ when being asked, as shown in the following screenshot.

And the backed up gmail chats will be stored in eml format just like the ordinary emails. Check the screenshot below to have a look how the chat logs look like in the free Thunderbird email client program.

Gmail is going to have a new look!

Edwin — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 07:00:25 +0000

Preview the forth coming new look of Gmail in this blog post, it looks more beautiful than the current one, while still being clean and simple. Can’t wait to see it.

Gmail two-step verification and Gmail Keeper

Edwin — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:39:04 +0000

Recently I got a problem report fro ma Gmail Keeper user who want to backup his email and labels with Gmail Keeper, he’s having problem to get Gmail Keeper work. After some investigation he found that that’s because he have the gmail two-step verification enabled.

So if you have the two-step verification enabled for your Gmail account, you will need to generate an ‘application-sepcfic password’ for Gmail Keeper in order to let it access your Gmail account via the IMAP protocol.

Detailed instructions by Google here.

Google calendar new feature – let others check your availability and book appointments

Edwin — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:18:03 +0000

Google calendar now allows you to show others your available time and let them book appointments online.

How it works:

Basically, you’ll have to first in Google calendar create time blocks you’d be available;
You can then embed the ‘appointment slots’ in your website, blog, or send the link directly to your clients or friends;
Your clients or friends in turn can sign up and Google calendar will auto create corresponding events in both your calendar and theirs’ calendar.

More details about using this new Google Calendar feature here.

PS, as Google calendar’s new exciting features grow, you put more and more important data there, so backing up those important calendar data is becoming more and more important, and Gmail Keeper Gmail backup software is going to also support Google calendar backup in the future versions, stay turned!

New improvement of Gmail chat

Edwin — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:37:37 +0000

A quick note – according to the official Gmail blog, in Gmail chat now you can chat with AIM users without a AIM screenname, and you can directly type an AIM screen name to start chatting (screenshot below).

However, Google still doesn’t provide an API for accessing Gmail chats yet, that’s the improvement of Gmail chat I want, because a lot of users has been requesting for the ability to backup Gmail chat records with Gmail Keeper…

Now you can store more contacts in Gmail!

Edwin — Thu, 05 May 2011 09:11:36 +0000

Bigger Gmail contacts storage announced

According to the latest Gmail blog post, now you can:

Store much more contact items in your Gmail account (from 10K to 25K);
Add more notes or custom fields to each contact item.

Well, I myself don’t need that much space for storing my contacts data, but some of you probably need it anyway.

Screenshots below.

PS, the future versions of Gmail Keeper will be an all in one backup tool for your Gmail account, Gmail contacts included.

Speed up Gmail sending with the “Background send” lab

Edwin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:04:07 +0000

I want every operations fast when I’m using my computer, especially those day-to-day operations, for example, sending emails.

Sending emails in Gmail can be faster

Gmail is already quite fast, but it can be faster – when you click the Send button you’ll have to wait for a little while (half of second to seconds depending on your Internet speed), so that the email can be sent out.

The new ‘Background Send’ Gmail lab

The good news is, a new lab called ‘Background Send‘ eliminates the wait and making sending emails with Gmail even faster.

How the ‘Background Send’ lab works?

When you click the Send button Gmail doesn’t send the email immediately, but instead, it put it to a queue and let’s you immediately jump to your next actions, and Gmail will be taking care of sending the queued emails in the background.

Warning!

Google warns you – Don’t log out Gmail before all queued emails are sent!

Gmail now displays long labels better

Edwin — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:46:43 +0000

Do you have long labels in Gmail? I do, because I use the ‘nested label‘ feature in Gmail.

But, previously, long labels are not displayed very nice in Gmail (screenshot taken from the official Gmail blog):

But now things are getting better, long Gmail labels will be shortened when displaying in the conversations view in Gmail:

The Gmail team is awesome!

My Windows system backup tool choice – Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Version

Edwin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:51:35 +0000

System backup tools I’ve used

Acronis True Image Home 2009

Back in 2009, I bought Acronis True Image Home, and at that time I used it to backup my system drive (C:\), so that if in case my Windows crashes and can’t start up, I can qukckly restore my Windows system, and most importantly, as well as the installed programs and their settings.

Acronis’ tool is very user friendly and easy to use, and it has worked quite well in terms of the backup and restore functions, except that it always try to run at least two background services on my computer, and IIRC:

One is for mounting backup archives as virtual drives so that you can view the files in it, this I don’t need but I couldn’t figure out how to disable it permanently, I disabled with AutoRuns, but once I use Acronis again it’ll re-enable it, it’s a pain.
Another backup service is for the scheduled backups (even if I hasn’t any scheduled backup jobs, and this made me think that, Gmail Keeper should utilize Window’s built-in scheduler for regular Gmail backups).

That has slowed down my computer quite a little, and I’m a guy who has a greedy requirement for a high performance work PC. So I have given it up, and haven’t used such a backup tool since then, until I have upgraded to Windows 7 and I realized again I should be able to restore quickly my system if a crash happens, to save my time from a lot of tedious re-installations and re-setups.

Windows 7′s build-in System Image Backup Tool.

Windows seven is shipped with a system drive backup tool which is quite good (does the work, and easy to use), except that:

If your hard disk fails to start Windows, to recover your system you’ll have to either use your original Windows setup disc, or a system rescue disc, and this process is not very user friendly. This is OK to me, but,
It has a fatal design problem – you can’t have multiple backup images on a portable hard disk, every time you make a new backup it’ll first destroy the old backup.

My New Windows System Image Backup Software

So I had to find an alternative (a lightweight one, of course). In searching for a lightweight system backup tool, after reading quite much reviews, I decided to give Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 (Advanced) Free a try.

And cheerfully after doing two system backups to both my portable HDD and DVD-R, and tried restoring to a Virtualbox VM, the result turned out to be great because:

Most importantly, it starts up only when I need to do a manual backup and it doesn’t run any backup programs or services that will slow down my system.
It can burn a bootable DVD witch include this backup software itself.
It’s free! Wow!

However, upon my limited test, although it’s OK to me as a software developer I found it’s not very easy to use. For example, when simulating a system restore using a DVD it burned for me, in the restore process I had to insert the DVD’s back and forth:

Insert backup DVD 1, so that it could select an archive file in the DVD;
Then insert the last backup DVD (disc 2 in my case) so that I could do some verification;
Then insert backup DVD 1 again, so that I could start the recovery;
Finally, insert the backup DVD 2 again.

But the messages shown in the popup dialog windows wasn’t clear at all, and before I figured it out I had to tried several times. This might turn none tech-savvy users away.

And this is only my personal POV for a system backup software

This is not a complete review of these three backup software, but it might be of helpful info for you if you are looking for a lightweight Windows system image backup tool that doesn’t affect your productivity because you don’t have to add background program to your computer that’s already quite busy.