Can’t Delete More Than 20 Contacts in Gmail

I was trying to clean up my contacts in Gmail. I was selecting so many contacts which I have never known (there are a few hundreds of them out of my 1000+ contacts). Then I click Delete Contacts. The message below not just simply disappointed me but made me feel I wasted so much of my time.

I’m not the first person to complain about Gmail’s contacts. Gmail not only helps you collect junks in your contacts but it also doesn’t give you a way to clean up those junks. That you can’t delete more than 20 contacts at a time means you can’t export your contacts to CSV, clear your contacts, clean up the contacts in Excel and then import back to Gmail. Gmail simply doesn’t want you to clear away the junks; these junks are, in other words, some form of traces of your communication too. So many people have complained but Google is resistant to this change; this probably means Google may have a hidden agenda for keeping these junks.

Colorful Labels in Gmail

Google wants your Gmail to be colorful. Just a few days ago, Google added colorful smiley to Gmail Chat. Now Google again added a new feature to make your label world colorful. As usual, this new feature is only available in the new Gmail which only works with IE7 and Firefox2 yet.

The pace at which Google added new features into the new Gmail is amazing if you think about how long the old Gmail has been running with very few new features. If you think the new features currently available are not many yet, wait until some time later when Google announces the hierarchical labeling. (I just can't wait until that day. I have too many labels and an hierarchy is the best way to clean them up.)

{Official Announcement}

Technorati Tag: Gmail

Gmail 2.0

I just got my new Gmail 2.0. It improved the loading of messages, as promised. There was not drastic UI changes though.



One subtle change was done to the Quick Contact which is now renamed as Chat. And there is no setting to change the size of the then-Quick Contact; instead the size setting of the Chat is found in the Option menu at the bottom of the Chat list. And, instead of saying in terms of numbers, it uses descriptive qualifiers: Tiny, Small, etc.

Although there was a general improvement to the loading of messages, it still takes quite some time to load the All Mail and some messages that you haven't opened before.


Also, there is now a quick way to "Filter messages like these" which automatically fills in the From field of the filter. There is also a Mute option under the More Action menu; before, Mute was accessed by the key "M" and many people didn't know that.


The new redesigned Contacts is not impressive enough, considering that it sometimes breaks the whole Gmail application (I needed to restart Gmail). One good feature of new Contacts is Instant Search; you'll see the contacts as you search. The new design puts more emphasis on the Groups of contacts instead of showing all of them in one go. From each group, you select one contact and it will be shown on the right-hand side of the screen where you can edit or remove the contact and view Recent Conversations with that contact; but there's no way to come back to the contact once you view the recent conversation with him/her. Also, the new UI lacks any option to change the view of the Contacts: nothing like Outlook contact views and all you get is a single flat view of a list of contacts represented by the names.

I hope there will be more new features (actaully there are) coming soon.

Technorati Tag: Gmail

IMAP for Gmail

Gmail will start to support IMAP, a better option than POP3, for the iPhone. Although it's advertised for iPhone, you can enable IMAP in your Gmail and use any mail client that support IMAP. If you are a hard-core desktop mail client user who has been using Gmail with POP3, it's now time to make some changes to use IMAP. Nothing much will change but you'll notice some performance improvement though.

Justin

PS: I don't see IMAP option in my Gmail yet.

Technorati Tag: Gmail, IMAP

Gmail Video Final Version

After collecting quite a large number of Gmail videos from users, Google compiled them into a final version where the Gmail envelope is moving from the left to the right.

You can take a look at all the users submitted Gmail videos here.

Technorati Tag: Gmail

Why is "Invite" still there?

Now that obtaining a Gmail account is just about "picking a name", I wonder why they still put the option to invite friends to Gmail. Maybe Google just want us to invite more users to use Gmail? But, why is "92 left" there too?


It seems like this is just something Google forgot to rid off of Gmail. As for me, I want it to be replaced with something like "Quick Tasks" (just like Quick Contacts) although nothing like To-do list has ever been in Google Labs yet. Yahoo has a To-Do list and I can't understand why Google should not do something like it to help the users get more organized.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Google, Gmail

PayPal Phishing from Gmail

These days I have been receiving many PayPal phishing emails from Gmail and Yahoo. When I checked with friends, they are also receiving such emails in their "inbox". Yes, these phishing emails end up in the Inbox since they are mailed by Gmail.

Although I have reported phishing to Google every time I receive those PalPay messages, they still end up in my Inbox, which is a bit annoying.

This is the first phishing attempt from Gmail (at least for me) after Google made a move a few months ago to suspend the gmail accounts involved in spamming and phishing.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Gmail, Phishing