At the end of last year, startup ToutApp released an online tool that analyzes my entire gmail account and provides an interesting statistical breakdown of email trends.
A few excerpts from the report:
ToutApp also makes a nice business networking iPhone app, which simplifies the network/instant followup workflow when meeting people. A competitor to Bump? Maybe…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2RQV08R_8
I love using Google Apps for my Calendar, Documents, and especially email. For Gmail, the interface is great, fast with keyboard shortcuts, and since it’s all online, it’s available everywhere and doesn’t tax my local system. And up until recently, for those times when I’m offline, I could still access my Gmail offline using Google Gears. Googles Gears was a browser plugin that enabled offline storage – allowing me to download all of my email into Gmail before getting on a flight, and then going through it offline, and syncing when I landed and got my connection back. However a few months ago Google dropped support for Gears, since the new HTML5 standard natively supports offline storage. However, they have yet to actually update the Gmail, or other Google Apps to use this feature of HTML5 – leaving users with no way of accessing offline Gmail anymore.
And now, finally, there’s an end in sight for this offline email dryspell. Google has announced at Google I/O conference that it will be updating Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs sometime this summer to use the offline storage features in HTML5, thus bringing back offline Gmail. Whew!
It’s been a long time coming, but this is definitely a step in the right direction, and as the Tech Crunch article mentions, helps Google position their Chrome OS and ChromeBooks as viable options for normal people – IE people who don’t always always have an internet connection. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the release…
Listening to: Black Sabbath – Junior’s Eyes (Hype Machine Link) WOW! This track has some serious dynamic range! Sounds amazing!!!
Gmail has been down for me for almost 12 hours now. And it’s only my main account. Seems like there is a documented issue, which is good to hear, but still not fixed. According to the Google Groups Gmail discussion board, they are working on the issue:
Update: our engineers have identified the source of the problem and are working to restore account access as quickly as possible. We know how important email is to our customers, and we are taking this very seriously. We apologize for this inconvenience, and we will provide updates as new information becomes available.
This makes somewhat glad about using my own domain for my email. Right now, any email you send me gets forwarded to my gmail account. However, if this gmail situation doesn’t get fixed, it’s a quick switch with my domain registrar to have my email forwarded somewhere else – either another gmail account, my own hosted webmail, or another email provider altogether.
**Update Update**
Google just updated the 502 error message, with more familar Gmail branding, and a very slightly more reassuring error message.
Update 2* – And… we’re back! Luckily gmail didn’t lose any messages. But those few hours were intense – also kind of nice.. like a vacation.
Update 3* – 2008-08-11 – Gmail is back down, but now it seems to be down for many more people. It’s down for me, too. Luckily, I’m still doing just fine with email. My email address is at a domain I own. I simply have it all forwarded to my gmail account, so I can use the great gmail interface and services – imap, etc etc. However, during the latest gmail outage, i fiddled with some settings on my webhost, and set it up to not only continue to forward to my gmail acct, as it has been, but to also use a locally hosted email box. So, for now, since gmail is down, I’m seamlessly switching over to my own hosted email box. Victory!