Email and Gmail

When you choose to use Gmail for your POP3 email client instead of using a POP3 email client (like Thunderbird, Outlook etc… some) email programs show both your Gmail address and your POP3 email’s address.

I do this at work because I prefer Gmail for its superior spam protection, and because when I want to access my email I don’t have to be at my home or office, and I don’t need to worry about transferring emails, settings and such every timwe I get a new computer. So at myemail@gmail.com I get email from mywork@myjob.com, and until now some email programs would show my emails as:

From myemail@gmail.com on behalf of mywork@myjob.com

Not so cool, but now I don’t have to face that.

Read the Gmail blog post that explains how to do this…
New Gmail POP3 settings

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.

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.

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.