Ground Report

Seems Yahoo will soon have a new foe to content with? And a formidable one. The Internet search giant Google is fast ramping up its free email, adding new features at a dizzying speed. And since Google makes money every time email users click on ads, it is enhancing its email service to increase advertising and in turn taking away marketshare from Yahoo.

So far, Yahoo leads in email marketshare, followed by Microsoft. Gmail is still a distant third. Moving away from numbers, here’s looking into all the new features that Gmail has added in the recent past in its endeavour to climb up the ranking ladder.

Offline access

For those who live out of Gmail but don’t have Internet connection 24X7, here’s a surprise gift from Google. Google has rolled out a way by which Gmail users can access their accounts offline.

Google will cache users messages on their system using Google Gears. Once you install the Google Gears plug-in to your browser from the Gmail Lab, Gmail detects when you are offline. All you will have to do is open Gmail.com in your browser, see your inbox, read and label messages and even write replies without a Net connection. Your messages will send once your system reconnects to the Web.

The new version caches your email so that you can read it, respond to it, search it, star it, or label it. When you are connected to the Internet again, it sends all the messages that you have prepared while being offline. You can even open attachments.

According to Gmail Engineer Andy Palay, “Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronised with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection.”

New ways to label

One of the features that makes Gmail different is its use of labels instead of folders. The Google mail recently added another user-friendly way to organise users’ mails.

The feature allows users to archive and label emails in a single step. Google has revamped the buttons and menus along the top of the Gmail inbox. The new buttons lets users use the "Move to" button, which labels and archive an email in a single step, rather than the two steps it used to take.

There is a separate button for labels, which are now supported with auto-complete. Start typing the first few letters of a label, and list of suggested labels appears from which a user can select the one he wants.

In case he wants to add or remove a label, he can use the new "Labels" button. Also, Google has added new keyboard shortcuts to support these functions. Use "v" for "Move to" and "l" (lowercase L) for "Labels."

Tasks

This seems a new `Green’ in Gmail. Wondering how? Despite dual-core CPUs, 30" monitors and high speed internet connections, it was not hard to find many Googlers turn to paper chits to track their tasks. Gmail Tasks aims to curtail (if can’t end) just this. Gmail Tasks claim to make editing as fast and simple — as close to doing it on paper.

The feature is designed to help users keep a better track of their daily tasks by creating their daily to-do list. `Tasks’ sit in the same Window as chats, so is visible while users read his email, use the search function or do other tasks. To enable Tasks, go to Settings; click the Labs tab. Select `Enable’ next to `Tasks’ and then click `Save Changes’ at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the `Contacts’ link, users can see a `Tasks’ link. Just click on it to get started.

To enter a new Task, users just need to click on an empty part of their list and start typing. No buttons to click and it’s saved automatically. Hit Return and there’s a new task right there.

Gmail Tasks for iPhone, Android

Google also rolled out its Task app for the iPhone and Android handset, the G1. The feature will enable users to manage their task lists or to-do-lists on these devices, and access it from any xhtml-enabled phone.

To have tasks list enabled, users need to go to gmail.com/tasks, from any iPhone or Android phone and go ahead with the list that always remains in sync. Add new tasks, and cancel off the ones that are completed. Users can also get the tasks icon on their homescreen.

Gmail video

Gmail and Google App subscribers can now choose to speak with friends on a video screen and simultaneously instant message them in a Google chat box. The video screen can be popped out of the chat box and moved around a user’s computer screen. Users can also change the size of the screen and expand it to full-screen size.

The condition being that both the user and his contact have computers equipped with Web cameras and microphones. Businesses that have bought an enterprise version of Gmail, found within the Google Apps software package, will also receive the feature at no extra cost.

PDF Viewer

Google has added support for PDF document viewing in Gmail. Users can see a View link in an email with a PDF attachment.

Click View and the PDF document opens inside your browser with formatting options like those available with Google Docs. The PDF can be viewed in HTML as well as in a new viewer. The document can also be downloaded.

With the transition, the option to open up PDFs as HTML pages straight from the message has gone; however, it still remains as a viewing option once the user is in the new PDF view and in search results from Google.com.