Gmail Labels - Drag, Drop, Hide, plus new location

gmail drag, drop and hide labels ... and more!Labels, labels, labels. Although I arguably have too many labels in my Gmail account, Google is helping out in that arena while adding some other cool functionality… Check out Gmail Labels, you can drag and drop, hide, and more.

Mine has been auto-set for me by Gmail (as everyone’s likely will be), and now all I have to do is go in later and customize their settings - if I need to. Labels have moved up to right under the Inbox, and the ones I use the least often have been hidden. To customize labels, all you need to do is click the ## More link underneath of the labels you can see, (mine says 34 More) or you can go to Settings > Labels and you’ll see that settings page has changed.

Also, Gmail has retired their first Labs experiment - Right Side Labels…

All of these changes also mean the end of Right-side Labels, an experimental Gmail Labs feature. This is the first Labs feature we’re retiring. (The idea behind Labs was always that things could break or disappear at any time or they might work so well that they become regular features. More on that soon…) Now that labels aren’t in their own little box and take up much less space, moving them around the screen didn’t seem as important. We realize quite a few of you used and liked Right-side Labels, so if you feel strapped for left nav screen real estate without it, try turning on Right-side Chat in Labs instead.

- Gmail Labs, Damian Gajda, Software Engineer

Don’t forget you can also move conversations into different labels (out of your inbox, but into the selected label) just by selecting messages and then going to the “new” Move to dropdown.

Organize Gmail + Your Desktop

ORGANIZE GMAIL

Check out the Gmailblog’s “So, you want to be a Gmail ninja?” and Gmail Help’s Become a Gmail Ninja for some ideas to increase your productivity with Gmail. You’ll read interesting tips and see entertaining videos about Gmail and how to get more out of it.

Note that the Gmail has already sent out all 1,024 of their free, laminated printed versions of the Become a Gmail Ninja guide, but you can get them online for $1.25 at http://www.barcharts.com/gmail.

ORGANIZE YOUR WINDOWS DESKTOP

You also might look to Stardock’s Fences to tame your Windows desktop. Fences lets you create labeled, re-sizeable “fences” on your desktop to keep all of your desktop icons in a neat arrangement of your choosing. Its easy-to-use and customize. Read the directions, there are some system requirements.

FENCES YOUTUBE DEMO
YouTube Preview Image

Gmail - Multiple Email Addresses and Improved Contact Importing

MANAGE EMAILS WITH GMAIL

Did you know you can manage several email accounts in Gmail? Gmail gives you the benefit of their excellent spam filtering, managing multiple emails in one email program, and not having to re-install and import emails and contacts from your old computer when you get a new one. Not having to install my email program and import all of my emails and contacts alone is a good enough reason for me to use Gmail, but it also makes managing email easier.

IMPROVED GMAIL CONTACTS IMPORTING

Gmail’s also added more fields to Contacts so importing them from other email programs like Outlook for smoother importing.

Clear the path for Alyse - Wanted: Weapons of Fate

In the “When the Water Broke” sequence you have to clear a path for Alyse. This frustrated me so here I am posting the way to get past it. You need to realize three things thing…

  1. The mounted gun you are standing behind has a shield
  2. When you shoot, you move out from the protection of the shield
  3. When use precise aim (LT), you move out from the protection of the shield

Shoot, get behind the shield and repeat.Part way through you’ll see Alyse move to the center of the area below. I read somewhere that your opponents will shoot your shield away if you are too slow. Keep the pace going, and only stay behind the shield long enough to heal.

Fire/kill - duck behind shield/heal - fire/kill - duck behind shield/heal

Keep doing that until all of the bad guys are gone.

Turkish Hackers Penetrate Army Servers

According to ZDNet’s U.S. Army servers breached by Turkish hackers and InformationWeek’s Anti-U.S. Hackers Infiltrate Army Servers Turkish hackers penetrated US Army servers in January of this year and September 2007. The same group also hacked a site maintained by Internet Security experts Kaspersky Lab.

I understand how NASA can get hacked, though I don’t know why the government puts up with it. However when it comes to the US Army everything should be locked down tight. These sources indicate that the hack was carried out through an SQL Injection attack exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft’s SQL Server. Why would anyone use a Windows Server on purpose?

Rant, rant, yes I rant and I should not. I just guess I sort of expect that the US Army (and other government agencies) shouldn’t be getting hacked - even every 2 years.

Google’s Live Game June 24

Google’s Day in the Cloud Challenge was announced Thursday by “puzzle creator” Corey Anderson of Google.

June 24, 2009… will you play, or not? Oh, Gmail account required!

On Wednesday, June 24th, Google Apps and Virgin America invite the brave and the willing, the airborne and the earthbound to embark on the “Day in the Cloud Challenge,” the first online scavenger hunt played simultaneously in the air and, well, everywhere else.

- official Day in the Cloud Challenge website (click for more info or to sign up)

According to posts you can play whether you are on the ground or in the air. Oh, and there’s a Day in the Cloud Challenge post on the Google Apps website as well!

VISIT:

Gmail Blog: Day in the Cloud Challenge
Day in the Cloud.com
Google Apps Blog: Day in the Cloud Challenge
Virgin America

Windows 7 on Windows XP Machine

Thanks to Sun Microsystem’s VirtualBox I can run both Windows XP and Windows 7 (Release Candidate) on my Windows XP machine with a 2.4GHz Athlon CPU and 2GB of RAM. Naturally, its not the fastest running setup mainly due to RAM, but its really cool for me. I wanted to check out Windows 7 first-hand and I didn’t feel like figuring out how to partition my laptop’s hard disk into partitions to allow Windows 7 to be run along-side Windows Vista or by overwriting it.

Click to enlarge screenshots.

Gmail says Slice and Dice with Search Operators

Slice and dice your mail with search operators says the Gmail blog’s most recent post. They have some good points to make about search operators, and Search Autocomplete but I still have one major issue with Gmail’s search…

I search for domain names and client names which are sometimes separated by spaces and sometimes not. So, if I am search for ABCFilmCompany.com (fictitious, of course) then I want to be able to search for ABC, Film Company, ABC Film Company or ABCFilmCompany.com… its just something I expect from search giant Google.

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