Gmail Tests Image Ads

Gmail Tests Image Ads: "Greg Sterling spotted image ads in Gmail and this seems to be a controversial Gmail experiment. A Google spokesperson said that Google 'recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content.' Greg confirmed that the image ads aren't displayed next text-only messages and they sometimes appear next to HTML messages that include a lot of images, especially newsletters.



Gmail's image ads are contextually targeted, but it's unlikely that users will tolerate them well. After all, one of Gmail's selling points was that it only used relevant text ads. Here's Google's answer from 2005 to the question 'What makes Gmail different?': 'There are other differences in the way Gmail provides access to your email. For example, Gmail automatically groups an email and the replies to it as a conversation. That means you always see a message in its proper context. And there are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail, just relevant text ads and links to related pages'. Google's explanation continues: '[Gmail ads] are small and unobtrusive. They don't fill half your screen and we don't make you read them just to get to your inbox. Ads are never inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing Gmail messages and you won't see any pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail.'

It's interesting to see that a Gmail page about privacy explains that 'showing relevant advertising offers more value to users than displaying random pop-ups or untargeted banner ads'. The key words are 'random' and 'untargeted'.

{ Thanks, Greg. }

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This week in Docs: Quick starring, justify paragraph in the toolbar and improved sharing invitations

This week in Docs: Quick starring, justify paragraph in the toolbar and improved sharing invitations: "We’ve got a few features this week that we hope will save you time.

Starring

Have you ever run out of time while you’re reading a doc and wanted to remind yourself to come back to it? Today we’re making that easy -- now you can star documents while editing them.

Once a doc is starred, you’ll be able to find the doc by clicking on the starred link in your document list.

We’ll also be adding starring to drawings and spreadsheets over the next few weeks.

Justify is now in the toolbar

We also made it faster to justify paragraphs in documents by adding a button to the toolbar. No need to select Format > Align > Justify.

Improved sharing invitations

Lastly, we’re launching an update to sharing invitations today that will make it easier to start discussions around files. When you share a doc with others, all new collaborators are now included on the email thread.

This means that when someone replies to the email in the thread, the other invitees will automatically see the message. We’re hoping this will help spark conversations and put an end to multiple email threads about a single doc.

That’s it for this week. If you have feedback on any of these features, let us know in the comments.

Posted by: Michael Frederick, Software Engineer

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Gmail Desktop Notifications

Gmail Desktop Notifications: "If you use Google Chrome, you can enable a new Gmail feature that shows desktop notifications for new messages. Go to 'Settings', and enable chat notifications and mail notifications to see a small bubble when you get a new message. If you get a lot of messages, it's a good idea to only enable notifications for important messages.


The nice thing is that the notifications are displayed even when you're visiting a different site or the Chrome window is minimized. Gmail's blog mentions an important use case: 'you've probably missed an important chat message because you weren't looking at your Gmail window when it came in'.

Unfortunately, you'll no longer see the notifications if you close Gmail or Google Chrome, so this isn't a perfect replacement for Gmail Notifier. This issue could be solved by background web apps, a new Chrome feature that allows installed web apps to run in the background.

Right now, desktop notifications are only available in Google Chrome, but this feature has been implemented in WebKit and there's a W3C draft for web notifications. Google Calendar has a similar feature as part of the 'Gentle reminders' experiment.

{ Thanks, Sterling, Karol, Niranjan and Ran. }

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Celebrating Data Privacy Day

Celebrating Data Privacy Day: "It’s become a welcome tradition: Today is the fourth annual Data Privacy Day. Dozens of countries have been celebrating with events throughout the week to inform and educate us all about our personal data rights and protections.

This is the first year I’ve marked this day as director of privacy across both engineering and product management at Google. I’ve chosen to spend the day in Washington, D.C., where there’s a been a lot of robust and productive discussion lately. People from Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Commerce, and industry and consumer groups have been contributing to these important conversations about how to best protect people’s data, and we’re happy to be participating too. I’m doing my part by bringing my geek sensibilities into a public discussion that we’re hosting today. In fact, that’s what we’re calling it: “The Technology of Privacy: When Geeks Meet Wonks.” I’ll be joined on the panel by technologists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Federal Trade Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. If you can’t attend in person, don’t worry—we’ll be uploading a video of the event later in the day on our Public Policy blog and you’ll also be able to see it on the Google Privacy Channel on YouTube.

On this Data Privacy Day, a major focus for Google is on creating ways for people to manage and protect their data. We’ve built tools like the Google Dashboard, the Ads Preferences Manager and encrypted search, and we’re always working on further ideas for providing transparency, control and security to empower our users. For example, earlier this week we launched an extension for Chrome users called Keep My Opt-Outs, which enables you to opt out permanently from ad tracking cookies. And pretty soon we’ll be extending the availability of 2-step verification, an advanced account security solution that is now helping protect more than 1,000 new accounts a day from common problems like phishing and password compromise. Right now it’s available to Google Apps Accounts; we’ll be offering it to all users in the next few weeks.

Data Privacy Day 2011 reminds us that as industry and society are busy moving forward, we face new challenges that together we can tackle through conversation and innovation. We’re eager to be part of the solution.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

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New in Labs: Unread message icon

New in Labs: Unread message icon: "Posted by Manu Cornet, Software Engineer

When you’re visiting sites other than Gmail, it’s easy to find out how many unread messages are in your inbox by glancing at the title of your Gmail tab or window. However, if you have a ton of tabs open, or if you use Chrome’s “Pin Tab” feature that hides everything except the tab’s icon, it can be tricky to figure out without switching tabs.

If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, you may like the new Unread message icon we just added to Gmail Labs. It embeds the number of unread messages you have right into the Gmail icon itself, like this:


To turn it on, go to the Labs tab in Settings, enable this lab, and click the “Save Changes” button at the very bottom of the page. Note that it’ll only works in Chrome (version 6 and above) and Firefox (version 2 and above).

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Print from your phone with Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print

Print from your phone with Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print: "Posted by Tyler Odean, Google Cloud Print Team

Let’s say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it’s waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers — you can.

To get started, you’ll first need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. For now, this step requires a Windows PC but Linux and Mac support are coming soon. Once you’re set up, just go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print eligible email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.


We’re rolling this feature out in U.S. English over the next few days, so if you don’t see it right away please check back. In the meantime, you can learn more in the Google Cloud Print help center.

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Gmail Cloud Print

Gmail Cloud Print: "Google has enabled Cloud Print in Chrome's Dev Channel builds for Windows, but the only option available was to print a test page. Now you can use Google Cloud Print from Gmail's mobile web app for Android and iPhone. The integration lets you print attachments without having to use a full-fledged computer. Since there's no printer with native support for Google Cloud Print, you still need a computer running Google Chrome.

Cloud Print is enabled by default in Chrome Dev Channel and it can be manually enabled in the other builds by typing about:flags in the address bar, clicking 'Enable' next to 'Cloud Print Proxy' and restarting the browser. To be able to use it, you first need to go to Options >> Under the hood >> Google Cloud Print and log in with a Google account.




Update: According to Google, this feature is also available in Google Docs. 'This feature will be rolling out for English speaking users in the US and will work on most phones that support HTML5, such as devices running Android 2.1+ and iOS 3+.'

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