Five years after launching, Gmail finally adds a contact-chooser

It was one of the most sorely-missing features in what is otherwise the best email service, by far. For some reason, since its launch in April 2004, Gmail has never had an option for a pop-up window to choose contacts that you want to send an email to.

Well, that has now changed as the service has finally added a contact-chooser for its users. In a post on the official Google blog, Benjamin Grol, Product Manager (Gmail), wrote:

"When composing messages, you probably rely pretty heavily on auto-complete to add recipients. Auto-complete is convenient and fast, and usually does the trick. But sometimes seeing your list of contacts can help you remember all the people you want to include on your email. 

"So, we've added a contact chooser to Gmail. Click the "To:" link (or Cc:/Bcc:) when composing a message and you'll see something like this:

"You can click on the contacts you want to add or search for others.

"If you use contact groups, your groups will appear in a drop-down menu in the contact chooser, so you can select contacts from the groups you've already created. And if you happen to use Gmail in Chinese, Japanese or Korean, being able to pick from your list of contacts should be particularly useful since auto-complete doesn't offer the same search as you type experience that it does in other languages."

Lifehacker lists the uses of the new service, noting: “Most convenient of all is the search function in the contact chooser, and the ability to select all the results that come up from a particular search. That makes it easy to, say, pick everyone you know from the Rochester Institute of Technology by searching rit.edu and picking everyone who comes up.”

However, all is not well with the new contact chooser. "The big irk that some are noting is that Gmail's contact chooser opens in a new window, confounding Firefox users that have relegated new windows to tabs, and forcing those with pop-up blockers to set them to allow Gmail's chooser through," Lifehacker says.

Source: Lifehacker

Google Mail Gets a "Mail Fetcher"

Google has announced a new innovative feature called "Mail Fetcher" that allows Gmail to fetch mail from any of the user's other non Gmail accounts.

Google has announced a new innovative feature called "Mail Fetcher" that allows Gmail to fetch mail from any of the user's other non Gmail accounts. 

With "Mail Fetcher," multiple email account users will find it easier and more convenient to manage all their mails from one place. 

The feature needs to be configured before use, and the user needs to follow a few simple steps: 

1) Click 'Settings' on any Gmail page 
2) Click 'Accounts' 
3) Click 'Add another mail account' in the 'Get mail from other 
accounts' section 
4) Enter full email address of the account/s to be accessed 
5) Click 'Next Step' 
6) Enter Password (Gmail will populate Username and POP Server fields 
when possible, based on email address) 
7) Decide on: leaving a copy of retrieved messages on the server; 
always using a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail; 
labeling incoming messages; and archiving incoming messages 
8) Click 'Add Account' 
9) Once the account has been added successfully, there is an option 
for setting it as a custom 'From Address' 

As of now, users can add up to 5 email accounts to their Gmail account. Meanwhile, there could be skepticism with respect to privacy issues while using this feature. 

Google Mail Gets a "Mail Fetcher"

Google has announced a new innovative feature called "Mail Fetcher" that allows Gmail to fetch mail from any of the user's other non Gmail accounts.

Google has announced a new innovative feature called "Mail Fetcher" that allows Gmail to fetch mail from any of the user's other non Gmail accounts. 

With "Mail Fetcher," multiple email account users will find it easier and more convenient to manage all their mails from one place. 

The feature needs to be configured before use, and the user needs to follow a few simple steps: 

1) Click 'Settings' on any Gmail page 
2) Click 'Accounts' 
3) Click 'Add another mail account' in the 'Get mail from other 
accounts' section 
4) Enter full email address of the account/s to be accessed 
5) Click 'Next Step' 
6) Enter Password (Gmail will populate Username and POP Server fields 
when possible, based on email address) 
7) Decide on: leaving a copy of retrieved messages on the server; 
always using a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail; 
labeling incoming messages; and archiving incoming messages 
8) Click 'Add Account' 
9) Once the account has been added successfully, there is an option 
for setting it as a custom 'From Address' 

As of now, users can add up to 5 email accounts to their Gmail account. Meanwhile, there could be skepticism with respect to privacy issues while using this feature. 

Import Messages and Contacts from Old Accounts to Gmail

In May, Gmail launched a feature that lets you import messages and contacts from other mail services like Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL. Google promised that the feature will be rolled out to all accounts, but it was only enabled in new accounts. The good news is that the feature is now available in all accounts and you can find it if you go to the "Accounts and import" tab from the settings page.

You may wonder if it's a good idea to use this service powered by TrueSwitch instead of Gmail's mail fetcher. Here are some differences between the two service:

* Mail importing saves to your Gmail account the existing messages from other accounts and continues to check for new messages only for 30 days. Gmail's mail fetcher downloads the existing messages and checks for new messages indefinitely.

* Mail importing saves to your account messages and contacts, while Gmail's mail fetcher doesn't import contacts (you can manually import contacts).

* Mail importing works for mail services that don't support POP3 (for example: the US version of Yahoo Mail), but the mail fetcher requires POP3. Mail importing supports a small number of popular mail services.

"Copying mail over usually takes a couple days, occasionally up to a week — but eventually it all arrives. And once it's done, you can forget your old account and enjoy having everything in one place," says Google, but I disagree. You'll import the old messages to your account, but after 30 days the service will no longer fetch new messages.