Google Finally Ends the Folder vs. Label War – What’s Next? Find the Answer Here.
Personal Productivity, SaaS July 1st, 2009
Bear with me for this somewhat long post, for I am not only discussing the sweeping changes Gmail made today, but in the end will also tell you what they are going to do next year – or perhaps after that.
Gmail Changes
The Gmail label changes announced today and to be released to accounts slowly (you may not see them yet, I only have them on one account) are ones that I’ve long been waiting for, and that most reviewers seem to underestimate, thinking of them as mere cosmetic or usability changes, i.e. “drag and drop”, “right-side labels retired”..etc. We can always trust good old Lifehacker to call it what it is: Gmail Gives Labels the Folder Treatment.
Folders vs. Labels
Because they are. Folders, that is. Just very few people realize that. The Folders vs. Labels debate is older than the tenancy debates we discussed recently, with two deeply religious camps (apologies for the extreme characterization):
Tags: algorithm, email, folders, gmail, Google, labels, productivity, tags, usability, xref
Promoting SaaS on eBay?
Humor, Personal Productivity, SaaS June 23rd, 2009
This listing on eBay is hilarious, almost makes me wonder if it’s a true listing or carefully planted advertising for Google Apps (and SaaS in general). But the seller appears to be real, has been on eBay for ten years… Here we go, get Microsoft Office w. Outlook for $75, because:
It’s brand new and never been opened. My boss bought it right before I moved the whole company over to Google Apps.
We never looked back, but here’s your opportunity to live it up, 90’s style, with this great, retro piece of Microsoft 2007 software.
Tags: auction, eBay, google apps, marketing, microsoft, ms office, Outlook, SaaS, xref
Gmail’s Undo Send Isn’t Really Undo, Just Like Multiple Inboxes Were Not Really Multiple Inboxes
Personal Productivity, SaaS March 19th, 2009
First of all, I love Gmail, it’s my one-and-only email system. And I’m certainly glad to see the ever accelerating rate of enhancements, whether “official” or just the Labs variety. But oh, please, can we have some control here and call features what they really are?
First there was the multiple inboxes announcement. Nice. Except that it wasn’t. Multiple inboxes, that is. Think about it: that would defy logic – unless we’re talking about handling multiple email accounts, which is clearly not the case with Gmail. This feature is multi-pane viewing – no more, no less.
Today we’re getting another new feature: Undo Send. Except that it really isn’t. Undo Send, that is.
Undo Send is what Outlook has offered for ages: you can actually recall a message that had already been sent, provided the recipient has not opened it yet, and you’re both on Exchange. What Gmail offers now is a momentary delay of 5 seconds, during which you may just realize you’re emailing the wrong Smith or Brown, and hit the panic Undo button. It’s not really undo, since the message was never sent in the first place – Gmail was holding it for 5 seconds, if you had enabled this option.
Of course, as just about all TechCrunch commenters note, 5 seconds is not enough, the delay might as well be configurable. Something like this:
Oh, I forgot. It’s from that other Web-mail system (the one that actually has multiple inboxes, too).
Update: MG Siegler over @ VentureBeat agrees this is not real unsend, and he remembers AOL had a real unsend/recall feature, just like the Exchange theme I described above.
Update #2: Oh, please… per Wired, Google already plans configurability, but all you get to pick is 5 or 10 seconds.
Related posts:
- Take it back: Gmail gets ‘Undo Send’ Labs feature
- A button to avoid a Gmail embarrassment
- Immediately regret that decision? Unsend it in Gmail.
Tags: aol, email, Exchange, gmail, ms exchange, Outlook, productivity, zoho mail
My Miracle PC
Personal Productivity, Software February 19th, 2009
It does so much, while using zero resources:
Of course that’s not the typical picture, more often than not CPU usage is in the upper 80-90% range, while the Resource Monitor can only account for about 40%. Just another crappy program from Microsoft… but no worries: Windows 7: Cutting corners in the rush to market? How reassuring…
Tags: microsoft, resource monitor, vista, vistasucks, Windows, windows 7
The Tale of Two Notebooks, and Yes, It’s All About Earning a Buck
Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups January 15th, 2009
One down, one running better than ever. Thanks to the irony of TechMeme, the two news are juxtaposed almost side by side:
Stopping development on Google Notebook – as several blogs point out, this does not mean Google Notebook is dead. You can continue to use it as your scratch-pad, just don’t expect any further development. (Update: you won’t be able to use the web-clipping Firefox extension anymore.) Or if you’re cautious, start migrating your notes.- Multiple Enhancements in Zoho Notebook – yes, ironically Zoho announced a bunch
of enhancement on the very same day Google sent theirs to the deadpool. Kent Newsome calls it Zoho’s Lucky Day.
I’ve never considered these two Notebooks comparable, despite the common name. Google’s one was your web-based post-it notes, barebones, easy to use. Zoho’s version is a full-featured multimedia application to create, aggregate, share, collaborate on just about any type of content easily, be it text, database, spreadsheet, image, drawings, audio, video – you name it. It offers a lot more, but may be “too much” if all you want is the yellow stickies. The two apps serve entirely different needs. But I don’t want to focus on the products here, did it before: Not All Notebooks Are Created Equal.
Let’s talk about the economics: Google is simply ditching some of the money losers which is clearly the right strategy in a recession when it saw it’s primary revenue source, advertising drop radically. A while ago (before the economy collapsed) Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu provided great insight into why getting into applications does not make much financial sense for Google, whereas it is Zoho’s primary business. Today we’re seeing that logic in action.
Of course Google is not the only one, we’re seeing startups shut down service, or give up the free-for-all principle and start charging for their services. Over at CloudAve we’ve discussed Jott as an example, but there are many others. We may have enjoyed all these free services, but deep down had to predict this bonanza would not last forever. It’s time for rationalizing business – after all, it’s all about making a buck.
Update (1/20/09): Surprise, surprise! (not really). Zoho came out with a tool to import your Google Notebook data into Zoho Notebook.
Update (1/22/09) Two days later here comes Evernote with an import process. Who’s next?
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Tags: free services, Google, jott, recession, revenue model, Startups, web 2.0, zoho
Forbidden 403 Error in Gmail Contacts Manager
Personal Productivity December 14th, 2008
Forbidden
Error 403
Ouch … this is not what you want to see in your Gmail Contacts. Weird… and not fun, not even on Sunday.
It’s not system-wide, appears to be specific to one of my accounts – crazy log-in-log out sequence produces occasional access, but mostly the error. 
Update: apparently (thanks, Charlie), this is a more wide-spread problem than I had thought…
Tags: contact manager, gmail, gmail contacts, Google
Your Digital Data My Not Be Accessible Soon
Personal Productivity, Technology December 12th, 2008
So you’re doing the right thing, backing up everything on CDs or DVDs. Too bad they may not be readable in a few years… and even if they are, you still have to worry about data formats.
Data sitting on your hard disk may not be much better: in fact files you created with the very apps you’ve just upgraded to the most recent version my no longer be readable by the current version anymore.
Read the details here…
Tags: archives, cloud computing, compatibility, data continuity, data conversion, data formats, digital continuity, hard-disk, legacy data, microsoft, ms office, netbooks, solid state drive, ssd, storage
Gmail Themes Go Beyond Cosmetics
Personal Productivity, SaaS November 19th, 2008
I couldn’t care less when Gmail added those cute smiley, but the newly released themes go beyond cosmetics, they can actually increase your productivity. How? By helping you differentiate between multiple Gmail accounts.
I have branded (Google Apps, using my own domain) accounts for business and personal use, and a few generic @gmail.com types for subscriptions, lists, online purchases. It’s all neatly tied together by Gmail Manager, the excellent Firefox extension. Even then I sometimes find myself typing an email in the wrong account window. Here’s the solution: give all your Gmail accounts its own distinctive theme.
I don’t really care for the fancy themes, but at least the top row are all subtle, minimalist styles. Pick one for each of your accounts, you’ll get used to the colors fast and never mix up your accounts again.
Well.. almost. As usual, Google rolled out this new feature to the generic, @gmail.com accounts only. Google Apps users will have to wait – lets’ hope not too long.
Related articles:
- Spice up your inbox with colors and themes
- Gmail Gets Themes
- Gmail Themes. That’s Totally Ninja.
- Gmail Themes as Productivity Tools?
Tags: gmail, Google, productivity, skins, themes
Google Lockouts are not Fun. Are You Prepared?
Personal Productivity, SaaS October 20th, 2008
Loren Baker, Editor of Search Engine Journal discusses his experience of getting his Google account frozen without a warning. Nothing new, we see these cases every few months. If you’re a well-know blogger like Loren, getting resolution might take 15 hours – I don’t even want to think how long it would take for less prominent users get their account issues fixed.
There are a few things we can all learn from Loren’s case:
- Communication – $50 buys you Phone Support
- Backup – offline, within Google or another Web service
- Your Domain – should be a no-brainer for Branding reasons anyway, and when all hell breaks lose, allows to quickly switch to another provider.
I’m discussing these and other steps to avoid disruption on CloudAve. (To stay up-to-date on SaaS, Cloud Computing and Business, grab the CloudAve Feed here).
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Tags: backup, branding, Customer Service, domains, gmail, Google, small Business, smb, synchronization, syncplicity, zoho mail
Google Releases Zoho Mail with Offline Support
Personal Productivity, SaaS October 10th, 2008
Yes, you read it right: the first announcement of Zoho Mail’s general availability, with Google Gears-based offline support did not come from Zoho, but from the Google Gears team, which released this video discussing Zoho’a use of Google Gears, synchronization, the Marketplace and a lot more a bit prematurely:
Somewhat used to it (see TechCrunch Releases New Zoho Service: Invoice) the Zoho folks decided to play along and released their own announcement.
This announcement somewhat symbolizes the interesting dynamics between Zoho and Google: competitors, yet collaborators. ReadWriteWeb is probably right:
But also Google probably sees Zoho less as a competitor at this point (even though Zoho does compete directly against Google Apps) and more as an evangelist for its technology – such as Google Gears.
First of all what’s in today’s announcement:
- Zoho Mail has been in private beta for over a year now. As much as we like to switch to native collaboration using web-based tools, email is still where most productivity workers spend 80+% of their time. Mail is the glue that brings it all together – so it’s important for Zoho to step out of background testing mode and make Mail publicly available. It’s also an integral part of the Zoho Business Suite.
- Features: It’s an email service (everyone gets a user@zoho.com email account) and an email program that can consolidate several other email accounts, Outlook-style. It combines old and new: supports hierarchical folders a’la Outlook as well as Gmail-style labels, chronological view as well as the threaded conversation views made popular by Gmail.
- Access anywhere, any time: Offline access is provided via Google Gears (for now Firefox and IE only), and it’s also available on the iPhone.
- Integrated Chat – this is another “glue” application within the Zoho Suite, and several other features listed here.
So with all that, why am I unhappy? I’m a die-hard Gmail fan, mostly for its productivity boosting features:
- Conversation threads
- Labels
- Search
Zoho Mail handles the latter two well, but I am not too happy with the way conversation threading works. My business conversations last weeks, include dozens of emails, and on a traditional mail system the threads are basically a pain to put together before responding to someone. Gmail handles it automagically, and as a side-effect, it presents a lot more information on it’s list screen – since the dozen individual emails are now compressed into one line.
But we all have different usage patterns. When debating the importance of threads, I looked at other Zoho Mail users whose conversations are typically one-off, so they won’t value threading feature at all. In fact not everyone needs productivity. Not everyone wants to go through a paradigm change.
AOL, YAHOO, Hotmail are the absolute web-mail market leaders,and they should do whatever it takes to keep their customers. Their mainstream users are corporate employees who use Outlook in the Office, whether they like it or not is irrelevant, they are used to it. When they go home, they may not email a lot. Some will check their emails daily, once a week, or less. They want a personal email that resembles to what they already know. For them familiarity is more important than productivity.
As much as I hate to admit it, I am NOT the mainstream Zoho customer. I am probably more a part of the TechCrunch 53,651 (even though it’s 1M now) than the mainstream customer base Zoho targets. And if it wasn’t clear before, the current crisis brought home the message loud and clear: only businesses with real revenues survive. Which probably means that for all my yelling and screaming, Zoho is quite right coming out with an email system that meets the needs of businesses who actually pay for it. After all, this is what enables them to offer all the other apps I like for free. And I like free. 
(Disclosure: I’ve been a long-time Advisor to Zoho and they are exclusive sponsor of my main gig, CloudAve. This article has been cross-posted there.)
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Tags: business model, Collaboration, email, gmail, Google, google gears, iPhone, offline access, zoho, zoho mail
Zoli Erdos
