thegeniusfiles - Filed under 'gmail'

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How to Add Inline Images in Gmail

By Brent W. Hopkins

Gmail is most definitely my #1 most-used productivity tool, and for good reason: it's highly flexible and customizable. Like the Google search engine, the basic Gmail interface is very simple with most of the available features kept out of view in order to reduce clutter. However, you can enable many advanced features in Gmail through the Settings menu and the Gmail Labs section in particular. Use Gmail Labs to enable your choice of many different modules which provide enhanced functionality to your Gmail account. One of my favorite Gmail Labs features enables you to insert images into the body of your composed email, rather than just attaching them. It's very easy to activate, and the procedure for activating other Labs features is exactly the same.

Just click the Settings link along the top-right navigation bar in Gmail.

Then click the Labs tab in Settings.

You will see a scrollable list of different Labs features; each has checkboxes to "Enable" or "Disable" the feature. Scroll down to "Inserting Images" and select "Enable." You can also enable any other Labs that you like at this time.

Now, and this is important, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click the "Save Changes" button. If you don't do that, Gmail will not enable the Labs you selected. Now, when you Compose an email, you should see a new button in the Compose window. Click it to add an in-line image.

Congratulations, now you can compose emails with images right inside the message! Now go have fun experimenting with other cool Gmail Labs features.

Tagged email gmail image labs productivity web app

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Get Firefox 3.5 to Use Google Apps Mail for Mailto: Links

Have a Google Apps account that you want to use as your default mail client in the Firefox web browser? Here are the instructions:

In the Firefox address bar, type about:config and press Enter. Click to indicate that you want to proceed.

In the filter box, type gecko. to show fewer config items.

Look for an item called gecko.handlerService.AllowRegisterFromDifferentHost and double-click on it to change the value from false to true.

Copy the following code into the address bar and press Enter:
javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto", "https://mail.google.com/mail/a/yourdomain.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Google Apps Mail")
NOTE: change yourdomain.com to the actual text of your domain (mine is schellack.net, so I put that there, even with the period).

On the prompt asking whether or not you want to add the mailto handler, click OK.

Open up Firefox’s Options (Tools >> Options on a PC or Firefox >> Preferences on a Mac). Go to the Applications tab.

Scroll down until you see a Content Type of mailto, and change its action to Google Apps Mail.

Once you’ve followed those steps, clicking on an email link (with the prefix mailto:) will create a new email in your Google Apps Mail account!

via 74.125.95.132

Tagged firefox Firefox 3.5 gmail web app

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Gadgets for Google Calendar and Gmail

You can add these gadgets to your Google Calendar! (Enable Gadgets by clicking green Labs beaker at top right)

Google Talk Chat (Open a GTalk chat session without leaving your Calendar)

http://opensocialtadka.googlepages.com/googleTalkopensocial.xml

Aztec Calendar

http://www.azteccalendar.com/module.xml

or, if you want to add Aztec Calendar as an "of-the-day" calendar (click on google icon at top of day to view in a bubble) for Google Apps insert hosted/yourdomain.com/ after /calendar/

http://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=%2541ztec%2520%2543alendar_http%253A%252F%252Fwww.azteccalendar.com%252Fmodule.xml_http%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Ffavicon.ico___260_330%23gadget%40group.v.calendar.google.com

Facebook

http://spongestuff.googlepages.com/fbook.xml

Evernote

http://renecum.com/gadgets/evernote/evernote.xml

Flickr

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/flickr.xml

MySpace

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/myspace.xml

Feed Reader (defaults to CNN Headline News. Mouse over left edge and click wrench icon to change feed URL)

http://gad.getpla.net/feed/reader.xml

You can add these gadgets to Gmail! (Enable Gadgets by clicking green Labs beaker at top right)

Google Voice (GVoice)

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/103004048084238050439/GoogleVoice.xml

Twitter (This version uses OAuth and https. Also has a cool Canvas view: click on top bar of gadget)

https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml

Facebook

http://spongestuff.googlepages.com/fbook.xml

Evernote

http://renecum.com/gadgets/evernote/evernote.xml

Flickr

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/flickr.xml

MySpace

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/myspace.xml

Feed Reader (defaults to CNN Headline News. Mouse over left edge and click wrench icon to change feed URL)

http://gad.getpla.net/feed/reader.xml

Yours truly, Brent Hopkins

Tagged gadget gcal gmail google

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FriendFeed Multi-posting Mayhem: Integrating My Online Identity

As I mentioned in a previous post, online identity is emerging as a powerful trend which is reducing the dominance of the top-level domain in the Web browsing experience. Social sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a legion of others create a Web experience which centers around the user rather than some www.top_level_domain.com. Additionally, innovations such as OAuth and Facebook Connect allow a user to log into multiple services using the same credentials - the beginnings of a true Web identity.

Problem is, there is such a multitude of competing services, each having something unique which sets it apart from the others. Nobody has every cool feature, not even the mighty Facebook. How can you take advantage of all the cool stuff without fragmenting your identity so badly that you lose track of the pieces? No one has managed to solve that problem perfectly so far, but FriendFeed is trying. FriendFeed is a social network aggregator which allows you to plug in about 50 of the most popular social networks, then view and post to them from one interface. It's quite an ambitious project, but it works surprisingly well once you invest the time and effort it takes to set up.

However, due to the complex nature of what FriendFeed does, the setup process can be hella confusing. With so many options it is bound to be. I found out the hard way that enabling certain options can lead to double, triple, or even quadruple-posting, depending on how you have set up some of your individual social networks. For instance, I had installed the Twitter Facebook app that pushes your tweets into your Facebook Status updates. And I set up Posterous to push into Twitter and Facebook. Oops! Now I'm inadvertently link-spamming my Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Debugging such mistakes can be confusing for a newbie like me. To make it even more confusing, Friend Feed has its own Twitter push options:

Yeah, I know! Imagine if I plugged in every possible service! I'm still not entirely sure if I have it worked out properly yet, so if I link-spam you, please be patient and don't get mad. I'm working on it.

One of the coolest features of the FriendFeed Home Page is that it updates in real-time. You don't have to hit the refresh button to see what's new like you do with Twitter's or Facebook's Home Page. Another cool FriendFeed feature is that you can plug it into the Gmail Chat widget (you have to enable chat in Gmail Settiings). Once you do that, your FriendFeed updates will appear in the Gmail chatbox. You pan post your own updates in the chatbox too. If your online activities revolve around Gmail like mine do, this is a very handy option.

FriendFeed Settings:

Gmail Chatbox with FriendFeed stream:

Tagged chat facebook friendfeed gmail identity Posterous twitter

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Official Gmail Blog: Send mail from another address without "on behalf of"

Like many students at the University of Wisconsin - River Falls, I have set up my University email to auto-forward into Gmail. I have also set up Gmail to allow me to send mail using my UWRF account as an alias. Unfortunately, until recently people who read such emails in Outlook would see a lame "From username@gmail.com On Behalf Of username@uwrf" message in the From field.

Well, now Gmail offers an option to send the email through the University's (or any other supported email provider's) SMPT servers, thus doing away with the "On Behalf Of" message. It looks more professional. Hit the link to read more about it. If you are a UWRF student and you want to try it, here's a screenshot of the details:

Tagged alias email gmail tips uwrf

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Affixa - Attachments Made Easy - Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Mail

via affixa.com

There was a time years ago when I used Outlook for email. I never liked it. Then I discovered Thunderbird, and I liked that better. Eventually, as web mail improved, I found that I really only used Gmail in Firefox and on my cell phone. I gave up on desktop email clients, and never looked back.

However, there remains the annoyance peculiar to Windows, of the default program setting for email links. This would be those mailto: links you find in some documents and on Web pages. Those links will continue to open in Outlook or Outlook Express even if you don't have those programs configured with your email provider.

You can change Firefox through the Tools > Options menu to use Gmail or Ymail to open mailto: links. But not so with Word or Adobe Reader. Until recently, my only recourse was to copy and paste these mailto: links into Firefox.

Well, now there's a better way. It's a free program called Affixa, and it changes your Windows system default for mailto: links so that Gmail, Ymail or Windows Live Mail opens automatically. You can select files from your desktop file explorer and email them with just a click. And for files that surpass the email attachment size limit, Affixa integrates with Drop.io to automatically create a Drop of the file and email the download link to the recipient. Slick!

There is a premium version of Affixa which adds some extra options. It costs two British Pounds per year, which is currently about $3.30. Purchase is through Google Checkout and is pretty hassle-free.

The free version works great, but after I thought about it I decided that $3.30/yr is a very cheap way to show my appreciation to the developer for a really useful utility.

Since Posterous is an email-driven blogging platform, I thought that perhaps some of you in the Posterous community might appreciate a utility like this.

Tagged affixa drop.io email file sharing gmail utility Windows

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