Tag Archives: gmail

Outlook for IOS – My First Look

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Screen shot 2015-10-29 at 10.18.28 AMOutlook for iOS has been out awhile, but this is my first look. 

Since I made the switch from Microsoft products to “other” products in 2008 or so, I haven’t looked back…. Until now.  

My wife started a new job and received a Microsoft Surface (Not sure exactly what model) as her work machine.  It came with Windows 8.1 which I wasn’t really impressed with.  When windows 10 came out, I upgraded it for her.  What a world of difference!  I have to say, windows just became usable again.  I have one older laptop that I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and it works great for what little I use it for. I’m not switching back from Apple for my desktop anytime soon, but I am impressed.

That being said, I notice that Microsoft is now putting out new office apps for iOS and Mac.  I decided I would try Outlook for iOS for email.

I use gmail for my main email and my work email.  I also have an icloud email account.  I figured I would give it a full test and put all 3 in it.  It was really easy, no server addresses, no SSL selections, it just worked (when is the last time you said that about a Microsoft Product?).

Outlook for IOS organizes things a lot like Gmail does.  In threads.  You can turn that off if you want.  It also handles “priority inbox” in Gmail in what is called “Focused Inbox”.   All in all, it’s a great email app and I’m 90% sure I’m going to dump Gmail for IOS as my go-to mobile email app.

Outlook also picked up my calendars from both iCloud and Google. The good thing is it didn’t make dupes like some calendar apps do.  I’m thinking if Microsoft keeps making good stuff like this, they may convert some of the die-hard Apple Fanboys.  

To check out Outlook for IOS, see it in the Apple App Store 

Gmail Contact Synching Bug

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Last fall I got a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone. I love the S3. It’s an awesome piece of technology.

Sometime overnight a couple of evenings ago, it developed a hardware problem and the next day it would no longer boot. It was working perfectly when I went to bed, but when I woke up something had gone wrong.

So, I went by a Sprint store. The technician tried to do a hard reset, but no go. He ended up giving me a new white S3.

I ended up having a bit of a problem getting my Gmail contacts to synch to the new phone from Google’s cloud. After a bit of research, I discovered there is an apparent bug in Google+. If you have Google+ friend synching enabled on your Android phone, it ends up preventing the Gmail contacts from synching to the phone.

The work-around to the problem is to turn off Google+ synching. Once I turned off Google+ data synching  in the the phone settings, the Gmail contacts instantly started synching over. I’ve got quite a large contact list since the list was originally developed in Windows and has been synched over to a number of different phones as well as OS/X, so it took a while to synch over.

I don’t need the Google+ contact list to synch over to the phone anyhow, so I will keep this Google+ app feature turned off. I had noticed even before this happened that contact updates didn’t synch properly to or from the old phone, so it is likely that the bug in the Google+ synching has been around for a while and as of this writing is not resolved.

So, if you get a new Android phone and you are having trouble getting your Gmail contacts to synch over to the new device, make sure that Google+ synching is disabled then cloud synching of your contacts should begin working just like it’s supposed to.

New Gmail is Rubbish

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Last night, Google pushed out the latest Gmail update for Android and I’ve spent the whole of today cursing the new app. What was a productivity tool has become an exercise in frustration and frankly I want to punch whoever thought up these changes (Disclaimer – Geek News Central does not condone any acts of violence).

Apparently Google thinks that there are only two types of people: those who archive and those who delete. If you are someone who archives and deletes regularly, you’re in trouble as Google has really screwed up the way archive and delete work together. To me it seems obvious that worthless emails should be deleted as soon as possible and that useful emails should be archived after reading. Google seem to have got it the other way round, making it impossible to delete worthless email without opening it. Here’s how Google has messed it up.

Gmail has a option in “General settings”called “Archive & delete actions”. It controls whether the archive and delete (wastebin) icons appear above an email. You can have only the archive icon, only the delete icon or both at the same time. I like having both so I can delete or archive emails quickly and as necessary. No problem so far, but….

Gmail OptionsGmail Icons

In the Conversation list, you can swipe emails off the screen. In the previous version, you could choose the behaviour directly – either no swiping, swipe to archive or swipe to delete. In this version, the swiping behaviour in the Conversation list is derived from the “Archive & delete actions”. Fine if you just archive or just delete, but in its wisdom, Google has chosen archiving to be the swipe behaviour if you choose to have both the archive and delete icons in show above the email.

No Delete

This is RUBBISH. Think how it works….I have a near-spam email that I have no interest whatsoever in reading. I want to swipe it into oblivion but I can’t because that would only archive it. I have to open the email before I can hit the delete button. But if I change the settings so that I can swipe to delete, archiving becomes a two-step operation – options menu and then archive. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Google, simply let people choose the swiping behaviour for themselves rather than forcing your useless assumptions on people.

Get Ready for Gmail Revamp – New Inbox on Desktop and Mobile Gmail Coming

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Google has been doing some major updating as of late to try and make it all work together. Gmail is one of those items that is getting a revamp. Today on the Official Gmail Blog, Product Manager Itamar Gilad announced the new features of this version to Gmail.

From the Gmail Blog: We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more. All of these emails can compete for our attention and make it harder to focus on the things we need to get done. Sometimes it feels like our inboxes are controlling us, rather than the other way around.

The new Gmail inbox will include tabs to organize different emails. Inbox groups (as Google calls it) will organize mail into categorized tabs. So spammy posts can go to an “Offers” tab and friends can be put into another tab.

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The mobile version of Gmail will also have this option. You will need to download from Google Play or Apple iOS App Store to get these features.

If you don’t like the new inbox, simply switch it off and it goes away.

This feature is rolling out slowly. When you get the new feature, you will see a “Configure Inbox” option in the settings (the gear icon on the top-right).

Quick tip: Back out of the new Gmail Compose

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Last week Google began rolling out its brand new Compose feature, a version that had been a part of Labs for testing over the past few months. Originally, it appeared that the roll out of that feature to all users was irrevocable, but now we have learned that is not actually the case….yet.

As it turns out, Google has built in a way to go back to the old compose feature and, no, this is not part of the company’s annual raft of April Fool’s jokes.

When you click the Compose button and receive the new pop-out box that it generates, simply move your mouse to the bottom right of the screen and click the down arrow that appears there. From here you will find an option to “Temporarily switch back to the old compose”. Its that simple. However, the resulting warning does let you know that this feature will be going away “soon”.

gmail compose switch

Major Gmail update rolls out to Android

Android, gmail, ,

gmail logoGoogle may be the company we love to hate lately, but there is no denying that it dominates many markets, like search, advertising and mobile. The company also has one of the most popular web-based email services on the internet. Today it finally rolled out an anticipated update to its Gmail app for Android and it brings the features we had been promised.

The new app rolled quietly out to the Play store this morning and users should receive the update to their Android devices automatically, if they have that feature enabled. Otherwise you will need to manually install it.

The bigger question is, what do you get in this latest version? If you are fortunate enough to have a device running Jelly Bean (4.1 and up) then there is great new feature — the ability to reply, archive or delete from notifications, meaning there is no need to open the actual Gmail app.

For those running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or newer, you will get faster search (including offline) and bug fixes. Those stuck on 2.2 and newer devices will get a new Labels API for 3rd-party app developers and some performance improvements.

Obviously all updates from 2.2 up are available to those running Jelly Bean, but that is sadly still a minority of Android customers.

Gmail 4.2 for Android Still Available

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A few days ago Android Police posted an exclusive video showing the next version of the Gmail app.  Version 4.2 includes several new features that users have wanted for some time now, like pinch to zoom in emails, swiping away emails to archive them, reporting emails as phishing scams and a lot more.  At the time, they also posted links to the download of the .APK file, but Google asked them to take the links down and the site complied.  The folks at XDA Developers also complied with the request but, as you probably know, things posted online never really go away.

If you  do some searching around you will see that the file is still available, but only a bit harder to find.  Hint: you can click here.  Before you get too excited though, there are a few things you should probably know.  Most importantly, your device needs to be rooted in order to install this update.  You will also need to have a phone or tablet running Android 4.0 or 4.1. and you will need follow several hacky steps to get it up and running.  You can find all of the steps detailed over at The Android Soul.

This has been a good week for Google app updates with, not only this new version of Gmail, but also a nice update to the Google Play Store (now at version 3.9.16).  The Play Store update, unlike the Gmail update, has already begun rolling out to users, but if you haven’t received it then you can also grab the .APK file, which Google is NOT asking to be taken down.  The new Gmail should begin rolling out very soon.