The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

Being an avid Google Docs user, I receive a ton of emails with links to documents that my co-workers and friends share with me. From technical design documents at work to my roommate’s expenses spreadsheet, my inbox is full of document links that I need to view as I reply to my mail.

Opening these links in another tab or window is kind of annoying, plus it can be tough to keep the context of the email in mind while viewing the document.

Starting today, you can preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation right in your Gmail inbox — just like you’ve already been able to do with YouTube videos, Yelp reviews, and Picasa and Flickr albums. Gmail will automatically detect when you receive a document link and display the name and type of doc below the email.

Just click “Show preview” and the contents of the document will display right there — no need to switch back and forth between email response and document.

To enable Google Docs previews, go to the Labs tab under Settings. Let us know what you think and what else you’d like to see while viewing docs in Gmail.

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New in Labs: Google Docs previews

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Ari Leichtberg, Software Engineer and Yossi Matias, Head of Israel Engineering Center

When’s the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, “Are you sure you meant to send this to me?” and promptly realized that you didn’t? Sometimes these little mistakes are actually quite painful. Hate mail about your boss to your boss? Personal info to some random guy named Bob instead of Bob the HR rep? Doh!

“Got the wrong Bob?” is a new Labs feature aimed at sparing you this kind of embarrassment. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings, and based on the groups of people you email most often, Gmail will try to identify when you’ve accidentally included the wrong person — before it’s too late.

If you normally email Bob Smith together with Tim and Angela, but this time you added Bob Jones instead, we’ll warn you that it might be a mistake. Note that this only works if you’re emailing more than two people at once.

While we were at it, we also changed the name of “Suggest more recipients” to “Don’t forget Bob” — the two related Labs features just kind of went together better this way.

If you want to test “Got the wrong Bob?” out, try faking a mistake like this:
1) Think of three people you often email together.
2) Compose a message to two of them.
3) Start typing the third member of the group (for help you can use one of the people we suggest in “Don’t forget Bob”), but then auto-complete on the wrong name.

If you have suggestions please let us know. And if “Got the wrong Bob?” happens to save you from making a really bad mistake, we want to hear about that too.

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New in Labs: Got the wrong Bob?

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by David de Kloet, Software Engineer

A lot of people want to see their labels in order to see which ones have unread messages, but they don’t want a long list of label names cluttering up the left hand side of their inboxes. To help out with this, we’ve made a Gmail Labs feature called “Hide read labels.” Turn it on from the Labs tab under Settings and all your labels without unread messages will be hidden under the “More” menu. Labels with unread messages will automatically show up, unless you’ve explicitly chosen to keep them hidden.

This is particularly handy if you use your inbox as a to-do list where unread messages are the outstanding things you need to take care of. If you use that method along with labels like “Home” and “Project X,” it’s easy to see all your to-dos in context. With this Labs feature on, labels with outstanding to-dos will be bold and have a number next to them; everything else will be hidden in the “11 more” section:

We think this is a nice addition to the new labels navigation bar and hope you like it. Tell us what you think in the Gmail Labs forum.

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New in Labs: Hide read labels

Gmail Tips, Official Gmail News, Site a-long-list, a-number-next, everything-else, help-out-with, inboxes, labs, messages-will, outstanding, read-labels-, software, the-outstanding, without-unread

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Jake Knapp, UI Designer and Manu Cornet, Software Engineer

Manu: Hey Jake, you still using that same old theme?
Jake: Well, yeah. I mean, I like it — but I don’t know… I guess it just doesn’t feel as new as it used to.
Manu: I hear ya. Well, good news! Today four new themes are out there for everybody. Just go to the Themes tab under Settings…and ta da!
Jake: (click, click) There we go!
Manu: Should we tell people about why we created these four themes?
Jake: We should.
Manu: Assuming they’re still reading.
Jake: Right. Okay, well, Gmail themes have been out since November, and I know we were ready for some new ones.
Manu: And we heard some of you asking for new ones too. So we thought about what we wanted to stare at all day long, since we work on Gmail.
Jake: I’ve been living in Zurich for the last year, and I missed Washington State, where I grew up. The Orcas Island theme definitely takes away a little bit of that homesickness with a new image each day of the week.

Manu: Homesickness eh? What about timesickness?
Jake: There’s such a thing?
Manu: Totally. Sometimes I find myself timesick.
Jake: For when?
Manu: For a simpler time. For a time when processors weren’t too fast. When graphics weren’t too realistic.
Jake: Sounds like a real bummer. Too bad there’s no cure for timesickness.
Manu: That’s where you’re dead wrong, my friend. Take a look at High Score. It’s like being in a time machine isn’t it?

Jake: (click, click) Aren’t these colors a little bright?
Manu: Aren’t you supposed to be a designer?
Jake: We’ll have to agree to disagree, my friend. This one just isn’t for me. I need something soothing. Something like laying face down in the grass.
Manu: I suppose you’re talking about Turf now. What’s the story behind that one?

Jake: Well, who doesn’t like the color green?
Manu: And it doesn’t change every day, so it was easier for us to make.
Jake: Are you suggesting we’re lazy?
Manu: Prove that we’re not.
Jake: We just made four new themes. How about that?
Manu: It took us ten months. And the fourth theme (Random) merely cycles through all the others.
Jake: Well, enjoy these themes for now. And, of course, let us know what you think. Maybe we’ll have some more for you in the next ten months

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Four new themes

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Ian Whitfield, Software Engineering Intern

People keep track of lots of things in their Google Calendars — meetings, business trips, due dates and conference calls. But when I started my summer internship at Google, I wondered why it wasn’t easier to add calendar events for the fun stuff in life, like birthdays and sports schedules.

Now, when you look under “Other Calendars,” click “Add,” then “Browse Interesting Calendars,” you’ll find calendars for hundreds of teams in dozens of sports leagues — everything from the National Football League to the Korean FA Cup.

When you subscribe to your favorite team’s calendar, you’ll see every game listed, updated in real time with the score as the game progresses.

You can also subscribe to a “Contacts’ Birthdays and Events” calendar, which will add all of your contacts’ birthdays to Google Calendar. Data is pulled from your Gmail contacts and your friends’ Google profiles.

Finally, we also have two new Calendar Labs features for you to check out: “Dim future repeating events” makes recurring meetings more transparent over time, helping more important meetings pop out, and “Add any gadget by URL” gives you the flexibility put any gadget you’d like in your calendar.

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New in Calendar: Sports schedules and contacts’ birthdays

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Adam de Boor, Software Engineer

Hello again. I’ve been taking advantage of my 20% time to make some improvements in the Google Search lab I told you about last April. For starters, I’ve hooked up a bunch of Google’s most popular search features, including:

• Dictionary definitions: use a keyword like “define” in English and you’ll see the first definition of the word, with a link to the dictionary from which it came.



• Spelling corrections: if you mistype something in your search, Google’s spell checking software will automatically ask if you meant a more common spelling of that word (especially helpful when looking up a new word).



• Calculations: type in an arithmetic expression and you’ll get the result. In this case the “Paste result” option from the result’s pop-up menu will actually paste the result of the computation.



• Local results: you can search for a particular place or for things near a particular place (map results will show up in a few weeks — they’re a little broken by our recent switch to use https). The “More info” link will take you to the place page.



• Weather: just type “weather” followed by the city and state, zip code, or city and country.



• News: if your query matches something in the news, we’ll show you one hit and an indication of how many related articles there are, with a link to go see them.

In addition, you can now use this Labs feature in any available Gmail language and you’ll get search results that match your preferred language.

Finally, as some folks have already noticed, I added a search button to the toolbar when you’re composing a message:

If you’ve got text selected when you click it, Gmail will search for that text. If you don’t have text selected, you’ll just get a search box where you can start typing.

That’s all for this installment. As always, we welcome your feedback.

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Improved Google Search in Labs

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Dominik Marcinski, Software Engineer

Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it’s no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. You’ve been able to merge contacts one-by-one for a while, but now we’ve added a single button that merges all your duplicate contacts at once. To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the “Find duplicates” button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don’t want merged), and hit the “Merge” button.

If you’ve been considering getting all your contacts into Gmail or syncing your Gmail contacts to your phone, now’s the time to do it. As we’ve written about previously, you can sync your contacts to a wide variety of devices (including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, SyncML, etc). So if you were dreading spending hours getting your contacts in order, now you can do it with a couple clicks.

See more here: 
One button to merge all duplicate contacts

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The following is is a posting from the Official Gmail News Blog:

Posted by Dominik Marcinski, Software Engineer

Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it’s no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. You’ve been able to merge contacts one-by-one for a while, but now we’ve added a single button that merges all your duplicate contacts at once. To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the “Find duplicates” button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don’t want merged), and hit the “Merge” button.

If you’ve been considering getting all your contacts into Gmail or syncing your Gmail contacts to your phone, now’s the time to do it. As we’ve written about previously, you can sync your contacts to a wide variety of devices (including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, SyncML, etc). So if you were dreading spending hours getting your contacts in order, now you can do it with a couple clicks.

See the rest here:
One button to merge all duplicate contacts

Official Gmail News a-single-button, contact, contacts, duplicate, Google, hours-getting, phone, single-button, software, time, your-contacts

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