Anyway, I look forward to serving in 2009 along side some new as well as familiar faces!

But one thing struck me as very disappointing. Prior to the work, the Chapter/Council/Commandery conducted their regular monthly business meeting. Wow! It was the fastest business meeting I have ever witnessed. After the work was finished, I was talking with the secretary, a very nice older man, and after some introductions and some chit-chat, he said, “Be sure to join us any time for our monthly business meetings. We make sure they’re done quickly, so we get in and out fast.”

Hmmm. Maybe it’s just because I’m new to all this, but to me it’s a real shame that so many people just want get-in-get-out-as-fast-as-you-can events. What’s the rush? Isn’t there more to talk about, lecture about, or discuss? Why not take the time to go over some of the finer points that we can all so easily forget like modes of recognition or the like? Why not talk about the history of the lodge, of Freemasonry, or of the various appendent bodies? (Did you know that there is WAY more to Freemasonry than just the Scottish Rite, the York Rite, and the Shrine?)

I spoke with some newer brothers about this, and they feel the same way. We’re not going to start up some coup or anything, but we are considering trying to put together some simple presentations that would be interesting and informative.

As with many things, it seems that we may be the ones who can bring about some positive change.

One thing that I really enjoyed about the Degree work was that we all had the opportunity to participate in the Degrees in some form. Like the Blue Lodge degrees, it wasn’t just a “sit back and watch” event. Being able to go through the work really makes it more interesting, enjoyable, and memorable. I honestly can’t conceive of sitting in a hall with hundreds of other men just watching.

We held 2009 Officer Elections at the November business meeting, and I had the honor of being elected as “Scribe” in our Royal Arch Chapter and “2nd Guard” in our Knights Templar Commandery. Both will allow me to become more involved with the York Rite. I look forward to a great upcoming year!

The final three Orders were conferred in November, 2008. The Illustrious Order of the Red Cross and the Order of Malta were conducted in short form, and the Order of the Temple was conducted in long form. (Some day, I’d love to see the first two done in long form.) The work took most of the morning, and it was impressive, interesting, and absolutely unforgettable.

It is very refreshing for me as a Christian to see a Masonic group that is wholly devoted to supporting and defending the Christian faith.

So my degree work in the York Rite is now complete, but as is so true with all of Freemasonry, my journey is now just beginning. I look forward to the upcoming year!

I was raised to a Master Mason in November of 2007, and in October 2008, my friend Shane and I, along with others, went through the first six of nine Degrees that make up the York Rite. In the united States, the York Rite is divided into three organizations. Each is independent, yet all are intimately connected. Collectively, these are called the “York Rite Bodies”. Some jurisdictions confer single Degrees over time, while others confer them either all together or in groups. Our local York Rite Bodies have a limited membership, so conferring Degree work has to be carefully planned. They decided to confer the multiple Degrees and Orders over two Saturdays.

The first Saturday consisted of the degrees of the Capitular Degrees and the Cryptic Degrees, and the second Saturday conferred the Chivalric Orders. The Capitular Degrees consisted of the four degrees of Royal Arch masonry which include the Mark Master, Past Master (Virtual), Most Excellent Master, and The Royal Arch Degrees. The Cryptic Masonry Degrees conferred were the Royal Master and Select Master.

(Please see my article, The York Rite Background for more details on these Degrees.)

The degree work on the first Saturday was long and exhausting, but it was well done and very impressive. It was certainly just as impressive as the Blue Lodge degrees, and was very engaging as many of the degrees built upon the foundations laid in the first three Degrees. From Mark Master through Select Master, the broader story of Freemasonry was revealed and was very memorable.

The remaining three Orders of the Chivalric Orders were conferred in November, 2008.

(Please see part two of this article for my experience in the Chivalric Orders.)

The York Rite is broken down into three “bodies”, each governing and controlling the degree work related to that body. The bodies are Royal Arch Masonry, Cryptic Masonry, and Knights Templar (also called the Chivalric Orders.) The intent is to confer additional Degrees or Orders, each building upon the foundations laid by the Blue Lodge Degrees. The order in which they are received is not necessarily historically chronological.

Here is a brief synopsis of the various Degrees or Orders conferred by each of the York Rite bodies:

Royal Arch Masonry

The degrees of the Royal Arch center on the construction phases of Solomon’s Temple. This York Rite Body is governed by a “Chapter”, and it consists of the following four Degrees:

Mark Master

This Degree emphasizes the lessons of regularity, discipline, and integrity. It is a most impressive Degree centered on the story of the Fellowcraft of the quarry and their role in the building of the Temple.

Past Master (Virtual)

This Degree emphasizes the lesson of harmony. This Degree is conferred because ancient custom required that a Mason must be a Past Master in order to be exalted to the Royal Arch. In some Grand Jurisdictions this Degree is conferred upon all sitting Masters of the Blue Lodge. The Degree confers no actual rank upon the recipient, but is exemplified to maintain the ancient custom.

Most Excellent Master

This Degree emphasizes the lesson of reverence. This Degree is centered on the dedication of the Temple after its completion, particularly the consecration of the Sanctum Sanctorum and the descent of the Host into the Temple. It is complimentary to the Mark Master Degree and completes the symbolic lessons introduced in that Degree.

The Royal Arch

This is the completion of the Master Mason Degree and the summit of the original Degrees of the Blue Lodge as practiced in the Antients Lodges of England before 1820. The Degree explains the origins of the Substitute Word found in the Master Mason Degree, the recovery of the Ineffable Word, and its concealment within the Royal Arch Word. This Degree, together with the Master Mason Degree, may have once been exemplified as one large or “super” Degree, with the Master Mason Degree explaining the loss of the Master’s Word and the Royal Arch explaining the recovery of the Master’s Word.

Cryptic Masonry

The next York Rite Body is Cryptic Masonry which is governed by a “Council”. The Degrees get their name from a hidden or secret vault referenced in the degrees. The following degrees are conferred in Cryptic Masonry:

Royal master

This Degree emphasizes the lessons of patience and fortitude. The Degree centers around the Fellowcraft Masons who were artificers fabricating the fittings and furniture of the Temple. It is unusual in that the first part of the Degree depicts events taking place before the death of the Grand Master Hiram Abif, and the last part depicts events occurring after his death.

Select Master

This Degree emphasizes the lessons of devotion and zeal. The Degree centers on the construction and furnishing of a Secret Vault beneath the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple, and the deposition of those secrets pertaining to the Craft by the three ancient Grand Masters of the Craft. This Degree bridges the events surrounding the concealment and loss of the Ineffable Word and the events leading to the recover of the Word in the Royal Arch Degree.

Super Excellent Master

This Degree emphasizes lessons of loyalty and faithfulness. It centers around events leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple at the hands of the Chaldeans. This degree is an honorary one, and a member of the Council does not need to have it in order to hold membership or office.

Chivalric Orders

The Chivalric Orders confer three Orders, instead of Degrees, culminating in the grade of Knight Templar. This is the only recognized Masonic Body that has religious connotations since it is based on the Christian Religion and virtues. The governing body is the Commandery. The orders conferred are The Illustrious Order of the Red Cross, The Order of Malta and The Order of the Temple. Prior to completing these Orders, the Companion must declare his belief in or loyalty to the Christian religion. These are the Chivalric Orders:

Illustrious Order of the Red Cross

This Order emphasizes the lesson of truth. Elements of this Order were practiced in Ancient Lodges before the final form of the Master Mason Degree came into use.

Order of Malta

This is an Order emphasizing the lesson of faith. This Order requires the Mason to profess and practice the Christian faith. It introduces the lesson and example of the unfearing and faithful martyr of Christianity. The Order is centered on allegorical elements of the Knights of Malta, inheritors of the medieval Knights Hospitaller.

Order of the Temple

Also known as the Knights Templar, this impressive Order emphasizes the lessons of self-sacrifice and reverence. It is meant to rekindle the spirit of the medieval Knights Templar devotion and self-sacrifice to Christianity. The history of this Masonic Order is long and convoluted, with the Order’s ritual differing between that conferred in England and in the United States. That practiced in the United States has a slight militant zeal to the lesson of Christianity, whereas the English ritual is more allegorical. However, the American ritual is most impressive, and more emphasis is placed on the solemnity and reverence associated with the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. Today’s Knight Templar is a man dedicated to the living Christ, and the defense of the virtues contained in the practices observed by all true Christians.

Here are some links to some additional information on these degrees:

York Rite Degrees:  http://yorkrite.com/degrees/
York Rite Wikipedia article:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Rite
Scottish Rite  Wikipedia article:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Rite
Masonic Appendant Bodies Wikipedia article:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonic_Appendant_Bodies

Byline is like many RSS readers, but this one really does understand how to be effective on an iPod Touch. For example, my iPod Touch is is not always connected online. I purposely turn off networking when I’m not in range to extend my battery. How many online applications have you launched that display an error message telling you that the network is not available? Well, duh, I turned it off. Why tell me something I already know? Byline elegantly ghosts the sync icon when you’re offline and makes it active when connected. It’s just done right.

And now, the great part: Byline optionally caches images for offline use! No longer do I feel cheated by not having always-on connectivity. Yes, it does take some to download all the images, but with multiple news feeds each having dozens and dozens of articles, it’s actually pretty quick.

The formatting is typical, and the inclusion if the images really rounds it out. Probably the only down side to this is that it requires setting up the feeds in Google Reader. At first, I was somewhat hesitant to go down this path, because this means that there is really no way to just add an ad-hoc feed, but realistically, I rarely want to do this anyway, so it’s not really an issue. Byline’s settings are located in the iPod Touch’s main Settings page, so you have to exit the application to get to it. I wish applications would be consistent with this. But once you set the settings, you rarely need to revisit them.

So the bottom line is that Byline provides an excellent news reading experience online or offline. It caches and displays images very nicely, so you don’t feel cheated by not being connected. So wherever I am, I always have something to read to kill some time.

Highly recommended!

Pros: Solid interface, ability to cache images for offline viewing, no annoying errors when not online, logical interface, very customizable.

Cons: Byline requires setting up your feeds in Google Reader. This is not really negative overall, it does eliminates the ability to add an ad-hoc RSS feed on the fly.

Tip: Your RSS feeds must reside in a folder. While you can put multiple RSS feeds in the same folder, if your article is not in any folder, it ill not display in ByLine.

How often do you try to chat with somebody and they don’t respond because they just walked away from their computer? Or maybe you’re in the middle of chatting with them just as they need to leave. But you still need to tell them something — something really important like you’ve moved where you’re meeting…or ice cream! We need ice cream! This is why we built a way to chat with your friends even when they’re away from their computers. Now you can keep the conversations going with a new Labs feature that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail. It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you chat from the comfort of your computer, and your friends can peck out replies on their little keyboards.

A few weeks back, we ran into a few snags when we first started rolling this out, but starting today you can turn on text messaging for chat. Just click on Settings, and go to the Labs tab. Scroll down until you see “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat” and select Enable and Save Changes.

We’re just trying it out for cell phones in the United States right now, but you can send texts to your friends with US phone numbers from anywhere in the world. You can start by just typing a phone number into the search box in the chat window on the left, then select “Send SMS.” You can also select the contact you want to SMS first and then add their phone number.

Once you give us a name for that phone number, you’ll be able to start chatting.

We’ll save your friends’ numbers in your Contacts, so next time you can just type their name in the chat box and select Send SMS.

On the receiving end, when you get a text message from Gmail on your phone, it will come from a number in the 406 area code. (The l33t folks in the crowd will note that this spells G0O.) You can reply to this text on your phone just like you’d reply to any other text. The reply gets routed back to our Gmail servers and shows up in your friend’s Gmail chat window. Each of your friends’ messages will come from a different 406 number so you can reply to any message and it will get back to the right person. Messages from the same person will always come from the same number, so you can even bookmark it in your phone.

If you get a message from somebody you don’t want to chat with from your phone, just reply with the word BLOCK. If you don’t want to get texts from anybody using Gmail, reply with the word STOP and we’ll leave you alone. Keep in mind that all these text messages count as part of your regular mobile messaging plan and might incur fees. So unless you know your friends have unlimited text message plans, please be sensitive to their phone bills.

People use Gmail to get stuff done, so we’ve added a lightweight way to keep track of what you need to do, right from within Gmail.

Take entering a new task: just click in an empty part of your list and start typing. No buttons to click and it’s saved automatically. Hit Return and you’ve got a new task right there.

You can also easily convert emails into tasks: select one or more messages and go to More Actions > Add to Tasks. (Or turn on keyboard shortcuts and use <shift> + t.)

We put your tasks in the same kind of window as chats, so they’re visible while you’re scanning your inbox, reading mail, or searching (and in Settings, too!). Just pop your list out into a new window to use Tasks outside of Gmail.

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you’re signed in). Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

We have a list of things we’d like to do to make Tasks more useful, and we want to hear your ideas, too — drop us a line.

Not too long ago, one of the Gmail engineers broke out her vinyl cutter and made some Gmail m-velope stickers. Pretty soon, they were pasted to our desks, stuck on our laptops, and adorning the walls around the office. Then other people started asking us about them — first it was just other Googlers. But when a guy I was sitting next to on an airplane asked where he could get a Gmail sticker, we realized other people might like them too.

So we designed some more, and printed up a whole bunch.

There’s the standard Gmail m-velope — dressed up in glitter. One of three bookplate style stickers you can stick on anything from the inside of a favorite book to your laptop or your skateboard. (Trading with friends is encouraged — we realize the unicorn isn’t for everyone.) And there’s a sheet of keyboard shortcut stickers intended as a tool to help people learn Gmail’s shortcuts. The adhesive is a bit more removable than standard stickiness, so you can take them off once you’ve trained your fingers.

So how do you get your stickers? We may be all about speedy electronic communication, but this time we’re going old school with snail mail. Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope (along with a note if you’re so inclined) to:

Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420

Make sure to include enough postage to return a sticker pack via U.S. mail. It’s less than one ounce, so a standard $0.42 stamp will do if you’re in the United States; enclose an international reply coupon (IRC) if you’re outside of the U.S. And be sure to send your envelope in soon — one per person please.

*Our lawyers asked us to make sure it was clear that your contact information won’t be maintained in any way and these stickers are “void where prohibited and only while supplies last.”

(photos by Dustin Diaz)

On the Google Desktop gadgets team, we’ve seen countless requests for a Gmail gadget over the years. That gadget is finally here, so if you’ve got Google Desktop for Windows, give it a try.

You’ll see that it covers the basics such as reading, searching, and sending messages. You can star messages, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and we didn’t forget about contact auto-complete. It doesn’t take up much space in your sidebar or desktop, and you can also resize it to show as few or as many messages as you’d like.

When I’m at work, I keep two instances of the gadget open: one logged into my personal Gmail account and the other set to my Google Apps account for work related stuff. Instead of getting lost in a sea of tabs or browser windows, I can bring up the gadgets in an instant (hint: pressing the shift key twice brings up all your hidden Desktop gadgets).

The Gmail gadget currently works with the latest release of Google Desktop for Windows. Try it out and please let us know what you think.

Update: Changed title to clarify this is for Google Desktop.

We on the Google Calendar team work hard to play well with others, so you can synchronize your calendars with a number of mobile devices and desktop applications. This way, you can choose whichever calendars you want to use and keep all of them up to date. Most of these options have been around for a while, and we’re happy to announce that Google Calendar now supports the CalDAV protocol — an evolving, open standard for calendar synchronization.

Apple iCal and Mozilla Sunbird
You can now sync your calendar with applications that support CalDAV, such as Apple’s iCal and Mozilla’s Sunbird. Learn more about how to get started in our help center.

Microsoft Outlook
Google Calendar Sync for Outlook lets you sync events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. You determine the direction of information flow, as well as the sync frequency. It’s compatible with Microsoft Outlook versions 2003 and 2007, and operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista.

BlackBerry mobile devices
If you carry a BlackBerry smartphone, Google Sync for BlackBerry synchronizes your device’s native calendar with Google. You can access your Google Calendar even when you don’t have network coverage and get alerts for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration. It automatically runs in the background, so you can attend to other tasks and still be reminded of your appointments.

Android devices
It’s easy to connect an Android-powered phone to Google Calendar using the phone’s preloaded Calendar application. New events are pushed in real-time to your phone and any changes you make on-the-go are immediately available on the web.

If you have another mobile device, just visit calendar.google.com from your phone, and you’ll get a special version of Google Calendar optimized for the small screen.

Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven’t been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There’s even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers — it’s not exactly practical, but it’s great for testing out your geek cred. We’ve also done a minor facelift to Gmail’s default look to make it crisper and cleaner — you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

As you can see from these photos taken around our office in Zurich, Switzerland, themes have made their way into more than our inboxes — that’s a character from the ninja theme made out of pixel blocks, customized laptop decals, and a giant Zoozimps character on a beam next to my desk:

To customize your inbox, go to the Themes tab under Settings. We’ll be rolling out themes to everyone over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see them yet, check back soon. As for which theme to choose, don’t ask us. We’re neutral

I’m a big user of Gmail chat. Being able to switch from email to chat as needed, all within the same app, is really great for productivity. But people can only type so fast, and even with our new emoticons, there are still some things that just can’t be expressed in a chat message.

That’s why today we’re launching voice and video chat — right inside Gmail. We’ve tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video — all for free. All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

Once you install the plugin, to start a video chat, just click on the “Video & more” menu at the bottom of your Gmail chat window, and choose “Start video chat.” You’ll have a few seconds to make sure you look presentable while it’s ringing, and then you’ll see and hear your friend live, right from within Gmail. You can click the “pop-out” iconto make the video larger, or click the fullscreen iconin the upper left-hand corner for a fully immersive experience. See this all in action in the video below:

Our team is spread between Google offices in the US and Sweden, and video has really changed the way we work. Collaborating across continents and timezones is a fact of life for us, and it sure is easier (and greener) to click “Start video chat” than to get on a plane! And when I do have to visit another Google office, I can use Gmail voice and video chat to check in with my family.

We’ve just started to roll out Gmail voice and video chat for both PCs and Macs, so if you don’t see it right away, don’t worry — it could take a day or so for this feature to be available in all Gmail and Google Apps accounts. If you want to download the plugin right away, visit http://gmail.com/videochat. And if you need a webcam, there are a few models with special discounts through November 30th (I use the QuickCam Pro 9000 myself).

Oh snap. Last night, we started rolling out a new feature to Gmail Labs that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail. It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you chat from your computer and reach your friends no matter where they are. Your friends who are away from their computers get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards. It was pretty cool for a few minutes last night when we were sitting around texting each other.

Then we found a glitch. When you’d try to turn it on, it wouldn’t fully enable. We thought about keeping it out there — bugs and all — but the experience wasn’t that great. So, in the spirit of Labs, we’ve pulled SMS chat back to fix it, and we’ll get it back out to you as soon as it’s ready — probably within 2 weeks, so stay tuned.

Are you addicted to email? Do you keep Gmail open on your browser, constantly hitting refresh to get your latest messages?

If you’re using Google Toolbar 5 for Internet Explorer (or Toolbar’s Firefox version), you can add the Gmail custom button to make your life easier. With the Gmail button, you can get new message alerts, see previews of your mail and use Toolbar’s search box to find any message no matter what page you’re on.

Google Toolbar also has a “Send to” feature: when you click on the “Send to” icon, a Gmail compose window opens that automatically includes a link to the page you’re currently on and any text you have highlighted on that page. This makes it easy to email your friends interesting pages you come across as you browse the web.

Plus, you can also add Google gadgets to your Toolbar to bring your favorite websites and online services closer to you. One of my favorites is the Google Calendar gadget: by clicking on the calendar icon, I can check out my schedule for the next few days and even add events.

To try out these gadgets for yourself, check out Toolbar’s gallery.

Gmail Labs has been a really fun way to easily try out new ideas and get some of our pet feature requests implemented quickly. We wanted to take this to the next level and let you start adding your own stuff to Gmail. Today we’re launching a few Labs experiments that let you add gadgets to the left-nav, next to Chat and Labels.

To get you started, we’ve worked with the engineers from the Calendar and Docs teams on two highly requested features: a simple way to see your Google Calendar agenda and get an alert when you have a meeting, and a gadget that shows a list of your recently accessed Google Docs and lets you search across all of your documents right from within Gmail.

There’s a third Lab that allows you to add any gadget by pasting in the URL of its XML spec file (e.g. http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml). We realize this isn’t very user friendly right now; it’s a sandbox mainly aimed at developers who want to play around with gadgets in Gmail. We’re not tied to the left-nav as a primary way to extend Gmail — in fact we think it is relatively limited and doesn’t offer scalable real estate. There are also some downsides to the iframe-style Gadgets we’re using today — they can sometimes slow down the page. We’re fanatical about speed, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on performance.

This is also a chance for us to test the developer infrastructure involved. We’re using common gadget infrastructure, such as the Apache Shindig project, and working with other gadget containers to make gadgets more portable.

We’re looking forward to your comments in the Labs forum, so send us your ideas, let us know how you like the Calendar and Docs gadgets, and if you’ve written a gadget that you think works well in Gmail, post it and let us and other users try it out.

A couple of notes:
(1) Try out Anatol’s Navbar drag and drop Labs feature so you can easily re-order all the boxes on Gmail’s left hand side.
(2) Not all gadgets are fully compatible with https, so if you’re connecting to Gmail via https, you may see mixed content warnings caused by parts of the gadgets being served over http. We’re working on fixing this where we can.

Update: To turn on these gadgets, click Settings, then visit the Labs tab. Scroll to the bottom, select “Enable” next to the features you want to turn on, and then click “Save Changes.”

Here on the Gmail team, we’re always thinking of ways to help you communicate. Back in the day, we put chat right inside Gmail. Then along came group chat and more emoticons. And when we realized that late night communication had its downsides, we created a state-of-the-art lucidity test for after-hours email. Anyway, the black and white days of text-based emails have had their day. Following the evolutionary path blazed by colored labels, we present, in all their technicolor glory, emoticons in your mail.

No more will you have to settle for a when you can have a. Out with the “XOXO” and in with the. And of course, when the bad news smells really bad, transcends all words.

So raise yourand welcome in the colorful new world of Gmail

P.S. For those of you who love our chat smileys,
we’ve also added a whole new set for your enjoyment.

When I joined the Gmail for mobile team a year ago, the mobile client worked like a web application designed for networks that were always available. This was fine on a fast and reliable network, but when you hopped on the subway, network reliability could be a big problem. Today, we’re happy to announce Gmail for mobile 2.0 for J2ME-supported and BlackBerry phones. For this version, we changed our fundamental assumption about the network. We re-thought every action that you might perform with the app and tried to solve for the case where there is no signal. We wanted to make the mobile client faster and more reliable and added some other new features along the way.

If you haven’t tried Gmail on your phone in a while, try this new version and let us know what you think. Gmail for mobile 2.0 is designed to be more reliable in low signal areas and provides basic offline support for phones like the Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson W910i, and BlackBerry Curve. You can now log into multiple accounts (including both Gmail and Google Apps email accounts) at the same time. Switching between them is as easy as a few button clicks or just hitting + j on phones that have a QWERTY keyboard. We’ve also added support for multiple mobile drafts, undo (using the menu or the z shortcut), and sending mail in the background (no more staring at the “Sending…” dialog until it finally gets sent). Be sure to check the help page from Gmail for mobile’s main menu for a list of all keyboard shortcuts.

To download Gmail for mobile version 2.0, just go to m.google.com/mail in your mobile browser.

Parlez-vous français? ¿Habla usted español? Gmail for mobile 2.0 supports over 35 languages, and the application language will automatically match your phone’s language setting.