Gmail

As BetaBeat first noticed, Google is attempting to peel back the anonymity cloak that surrounds YouTube.

The search engine, which seems to dabble in all things Web, mobile, and tech, now displays a pop-up box to YouTubers who try to leave a video comment. The notice prompts users to start surfing the video-sharing platform with their full name instead of a username or pseudonym.

Google appears to crop names from Google+ profiles, which is likely a byproduct of the Google+ integration from last year that required all YouTubers to login with their Gmail account credentials.

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In a blog post on the official Google Africa blog today, the company announced it created Gmail SMS. It is a new service that will allow users to send and receive Gmail messages via SMS. Rolling out first in Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, Google explained the feature would hopefully make Gmail even more accessible to users who often find themselves without an Internet connection:

You can now send and receive emails as SMS messages using your mobile phone, regardless of whether or not your phone has an internet connection, like Wifi or 3G. Gmail SMS works on any phone, even the most basic ones which only support voice and SMS. 

Gmail SMS automatically forwards your emails as SMS text messages to your phone and you can respond by replying directly to the SMS. You can control the emails received by replying with commands such as MORE, PAUSE and RESUME. Additionally, compose a new email as an SMS and send to any email address recipient – who will find your message in the right email conversation thread!

Receiving Gmail messages via SMS will be free, but your standard SMS rates will apply for replying to messages and everything else. Google has instructions for how to sign up for the new service on its blog.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYEtiWUHCRM&feature=player_embedded]

Google just announced new custom themes will come to Gmail that allows users to upload their own background images (or select from Google+ photos), browse from a selection of “Featured Photos,” or enter a URL of any image. The video above pretty much speaks for itself, but Google noted it would roll out the new themes for users over the next couple of days with both Light and Dark options.

You can upload your own images directly, select from your Google+ photos or simply paste any image URL. Or, if you don’t have a particular image in mind, you can browse our searchable Featured Photos section to find one that speaks to you. With so many great options, it may be hard to choose, so to get a sense of the images available, try searching for ‘hdr scenery’ or ‘bokeh wallpaper’ in the Featured tab.

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Google’s reduction of energy use for servers and server cooling.

Google wants businesses to make Google Apps their primary productivity suite, so the company is recruiting at full swing today with a new blog post that discloses a few stats about its energy efficiency.

Google Apps is a Google service that features several Web applications like traditional office suites. The services vary per edition but generally include Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Sites, Groups, Video, and Marketplace. Its popularity among businesses and academicians is rapidly increasing due to enhanced sharing features, accessibility, and cost.

According to Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure Urs Hoelzle on the Official Google Blog:

Hoelzle further explained how lower energy use equals less carbon pollution. The executive supported this statement with an anecdote about the U.S. General Administration. It switched to Google Apps for Government to save $285,000 annually at a 93 percent cost reduction, and it reduced energy consumption by 90-percent and carbon emissions by 85-percent.

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Following an update to Gmail last week that brought improved search results and integration of contact information and Google+ Circles, today Google announced on the Official Gmail Blog that it is now including autocomplete predictions when searching from within your Gmail inbox.

Much like Google Web search and many of its other services, when beginning to type in the search bar from within Gmail, you will now see suggestions or autocomplete predictions matching content within your emails. Google explained:

Now when you type something into the Gmail search box, the autocomplete predictions will be tailored to the content in your email, so you can save time and get the information you want faster than ever before. For example, you might now get lax reservation or lax united as predictions after typing “lax” if you have received an email with a flight confirmation for your trip to Los Angeles in your inbox recently.

The new feature will roll out to English Gmail users over the next few days, but Google noted support for additional languages would roll out over the coming months. The feature is also not yet available to Google Apps users.

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Google just announced a small, but welcomed, update to Gmail. Among the new features is the ability to quickly access contact information and Google+ circles from within your inbox.

When searching for an email address in Gmail, in addition to person’s profile image and past conversations, you will now see the person’s contact details like email, phone number, and quick links to start voice and video chats. Google noted the contact data would automatically stay updated for users who have a Google+ profile.

Google has integrated with Gmail through a number of ways in recent months, but today’s update brings further integration with the ability to use Circles in search and filters by typing circle:[circle name] or has:circle. The update also adds profile photos of people in any selected circle in the upper right of the page. The new features will roll out to all Gmail users today.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/5Be2YnlRIg8]

Google released an animated video today that explores what happens to an email once the “send” button is clicked in Gmail.

The cartoon visually depicts a digital message’s journey as it travels past servers, cables, hard drives, even underground pathways equipped with vampires, from a user’s inbox to another’s mobile device.

The interactive timeline, dubbed “The Story of Send,” is meant to detail Google’s safety, security, and low energy footprint within its data centers as they handle billions of emails each day. While the HTML 5-based documentary provides an illustrated, advertised view of the process, visitors can get a more in-depth look by clicking on the informational tidbits, promotional videos, and photos embedded within the animation.

Check out the feature’s advertisement reel above, or just visit the website. You can even take a peak at 9to5Google’s video screen capture below.

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Google+ always allowed you to receive notification emails for specific activity from the network, such as comments on your posts and when another user mentions or shares with you. Today, Google is making the experience even better for Gmail users by making those notification emails interactive. In Gmail, you can now “view, comment on, and +1 posts” directly from within your inbox. Google noted, “Comments appear in the Google+ stream in real-time, and responses from others instantly appear in Gmail, as part of the notification message.”

Google explained replying to the notification emails is now possible from your mobile device through a “Reply to this email” prompt (pictured, right):

Tap reply, send your comment, and we’ll automatically add it to the ongoing Google+ conversation. Even if you don’t use Gmail, you can still reply by email from many different services.

Google will make these new features available to Gmail/Google+ users over the coming week, and you can always manage your Google+ notifications in settings here.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FrEzKtjKVio]

There are more than a few tools online to help you learn a new language, but none are as effective as immersing yourself in another country’s language by actually traveling there. Since we all do not have the time to do so, Google’s Creative Lab is providing a similar immersive experience through a new Chrome extension that employs the Google Translate API for translating certain text on any given webpage.

Available through the Google Chrome store, Google teamed up Use All Five to create the “Language Immersion for Chrome” extension and to currently provide options for translating a page into a mix of “Frenglish, Spanglish or even Tagaloglish.” However, all 64 languages supported by Google Translate are available. You can also roll over words to hear them pronounced, or click them to translate to English.

Within the extension, you will be able to filter the level of immersion with a sliding scale going from “Novice” to “Fluent” as you become more comfortable with any given language. A video demo of the extension in action is above.

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Gmail just received three handy improvements, while killing off some aging features, but the most notable update is automatic message translation.

According to the Official Gmail Blog, Google pushed Gmail Labs’ automatic message translation to everyone today after receiving overwhelming positive feedback on the feature from Google Apps for Business users:

We heard immediately from Google Apps for Business users that this was a killer feature for working with local teams across the world. […] Since message translation was one of the most popular labs, we decided it was time to graduate from Gmail Labs and move into the real world. Over the next few days, everyone who uses Gmail will be getting the convenience of translation added to their email.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/ZooybMt9sRQ]

Google released Gmail Meter today, which is a tool for analyzing your inbox that is similar to the Google Account Activity feature launched last month.

The Google Team announced Gmail Meter on the Official Gmail Blog. Google Apps Script Top Contributor Romain Vialard developed the Google Apps Script-powered feature after looking at his sent mail one day and noticing there were many things he wanted to know about his email habits.

The video above explains the tool, but here is a quick run-down: Gmail Meter sends an email on the first day of every month containing statistics about an Inbox for detailing a user’s emailing habits. Some of the data measured regards volume statistics, daily traffic, traffic patterns, email categories, times before first response, word count, thread lengths, and top senders and recipients.

A screenshot for each data measurement is below.

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LATEST UPDATE: Google’s App Status Dashboard, an official website that offers performance information for Google Apps services, claimed earlier today that Gmail’s status went down, but the problem is now resolved less than an hour later.

“Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better,” contended Google.

The service interruption only affected 2 percent of Gmail’s user-base. DownRightNow, a universal monitoring service for the Web that is similar to Google’s Dashboard, described the outage as a “widespread service disruption” that started somewhere between 12:40 p.m. and 12:59 p.m. EST. The service interruption did not seem to affect mail pushing to third-party clients.

Those who tried to access Gmail.com directly found the following “Temporary Error (500)” notice with a “93” numeric technical code:

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Gmail updated its people widget to include three photos from recent emails for a showcased person (example to the right).

“The next time you look at the people widget, you might see up to 3 photos from recent emails from that person. Not only does this remind you of photos they’ve sent to you, but it also gives you one click access to the emails with those photos,” announced Gmail on Google+.

The Gmail people widget is located on the right-hand side of messages and displays users’ contextual information about people their interacting with in the email service.

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[tweet https://twitter.com/sprint/status/188003634016030720]

It looks like Google and Sprint finally got around to updating the NExus S 4G to Ice Cream Sandwich.  The update, certainly expected for awhile, is detailled below.

4/5 – Nexus S Software Update – IMM76D (Android 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich)

Nexus S Software Update – IMM76D  (Android 4.0 –  Ice Cream Sandwich)

Enhancements/Fixes:
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Google just rolled out updates to a few of its Android apps, the biggest of which brings a ton of new features to “Gmail for Android” 3.2 (Honeycomb) users. Previously, only Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich users had access to features like swiping between conversations, custom notifications for labels, and the ability to sync messages for the last 30 days. All of those features and the rest of the Ice Cream Sandwich Gmail experience are now being implemented for Honeycomb users. The updated app is available on Google Play now, and a full list of the features is below:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KhZKNZO8mQ&feature=youtu.be]

I was just thinking about something like this.

By the way, is that LL Cool J at the end?
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Google just launched a new feature called “Account Activity” that sends account-holders monthly encrypted reports about their signed-in frittering across the Web and Google services.

Once a user opts-in to the feature, Google will confirm and then send the first monthly report (see image below). The full-report gives Account information, such as locations, browsers, and platforms employed while Internet surfing.

The report also gives Gmail specifics, like most contacted addresses and to-and-fro message counts, and it breaks-down other Google services’ particulars, including Web history with users’ top searches, types, and queries, and a personal YouTube report on uploaded video activity and viewers’ location data. Users can also delete old reports or browse previous months as they begin to pile up.

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Princeton University’s Office of Information Technology recently polled 150 students who tested Google Apps’ Gmail and Microsoft Office 365 and results showed only two preferred the latter.

According to The Daily Princetonian, the undergraduate student government is collaborating with OIT to move the student body from its current email server Webmail to either Google Apps or Microsoft Office 365.

Google Apps is a cloud-based productivity suite that features several Web application user-interfaces similar to traditional office suites—like Microsoft Office 365. The services vary per edition but generally include Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Sites, Groups, Video, and Marketplace. Its popularity among students and educational institutions is rapidly increasing due to enhanced sharing features, accessibility, and cost.

Google Apps for Education is just one edition that offers 25 GB of storage space per user for free through K-12 schools, colleges, and universities with up to 30,000 users. Forty-million active users currently use Google Apps, and according to US News & World Report, 61 of the Top 100 schools have switched to the educational service.

USG IT Committee Chair Josh Chen said the University’s polled students prefer Gmail due to its “many benefits and no drawbacks.” Meanwhile, U-Councilor Lily Alberts said the poll’s results likely attribute to the student’s prior familiarity with Gmail during pilot testing. The group of 150 students piloted the two options, and those students came from a pool that replied to an earlier campus-wide email.

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Google can now check the University of Pennsylvania off its ever-growing list of ivy leaguers wielding Google Apps for Education, because the school just announced a recent move from Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail to Gmail.

The Philadelphia-based private university ranks No. 5 in National Universities, according to U.S. News and World Report, and it joins over 60 other leading institutions from the nation’s top 100 to use Google Apps. Harvard College, Yale, and Brown University are a few of the more prominent schools to top Google’s list.

Penn changed services after studying student email trends:

“We just saw more than 50 percent of students forward emails from their Hotmail to Gmail accounts and thought it would be more convenient this way,” said Director of Social Sciences Computing and Student Technology Chris Mustazza to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

More information is available below.

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