Google Data » Bill Kee

Google Talk chatback

Bill Kee — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:23:00 +0000

Do you have a blog, online profile, or some other personal web page? Would you like to communicate more with your visitors? Today we're launching a new Google Talk feature that lets visitors to your web site chat with you. We call it "chatback" because instead of you doing all the talking on your blog, your visitors can talk back to you. Sure, they could leave comments, but those are public and hard to use for a real conversation. With chatback, it's a real instant message session.

To use chatback, you must have a Google Talk account ... but your visitors don't have to! They don't even need to have an email address, or to have ever used instant messaging.

When they visit your site, they'll see a badge like the one on the right showing your online status (available, busy, offline) and, if you're available, they can just click and start chatting. Chatback uses the web-based Google Talk Gadget so your visitors don't need to download anything. It opens in a new window so they can keep chatting with you even if they browse to other pages.

Of course, chatback isn't just for blogs. You can use it on any web page that you can add HTML content to. To get started, visit the chatback start page. (This is also linked from the Google Talk homepage.) Then just copy the provided HTML snippet to your web site. Visitors will then see a badge on your site indicating your availability, and can click to start a chat with you. If there's a time when you don't want to be distracted, just set your online status to "busy" and visitors won't be able to chat with you until you change your status back to "available."

If you're not already a Google Talk user, it's easy to become one. If you've got a Gmail account, then you already have a Google Talk account. If not, just go to www.google.com/talk or www.gmail.com to get started.

Bruce Leban
Software Engineer

Try Google Apps Team Edition with Google Talk

Bill Kee — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:41:00 +0000

It goes without saying that instant messaging has become integral to communicating in the workplace and at school. Chat helps us to share ideas instantaneously with co-workers and classmates. That's why Google Talk has always been a part of Google Apps, our package of applications built for collaborating within organizations. We're happy to announce today that we've made it even easier for you and your co-workers or classmates to start using Google Apps and Google Talk. It's called Google Apps Team Edition, and if you have an email address from your employer or school, you can sign up right now.

With Google Apps Team Edition, you and members of your organization get Google Docs, for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and Google Calendar, for coordinating your schedule. When you use Google Talk with Google Apps Team Edition, your contacts list will automatically include the other people at your organization using Google Apps Team Edition. And since Team Edition recognizes your connection to co-workers or classmates, it makes sharing documents and calendars easier too. Give it a try by visiting www.google.com/apps.

Bill Kee
Associate Product Marketing Manager

Merry Christmas, God Jul and 圣诞快乐

Bill Kee — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:30:00 +0000

OK, I cheated. I don't really speak Chinese. But I know a bot that does, and we're releasing it today together with number of other translation bots. For those not familiar with bots, a (ro)bot is a piece of software that acts as a chat contact and provides some fun or useful functionality.

If you want to try it, just add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry.

For more languages, just add any of the 29 23 other translation bots. They're named using two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

For those of you into programming, why not build your own bot? Maybe a weather service or a rock/paper/scissors game. The Google Talk service uses an open protocol called XMPP, and it's easy to find client libraries and code samples that will give you a flying start. For Java users, check out Ignite Realtime's Smack library. Please note that the Google Talk service enforces traffic limitations on user accounts, so if you want to support more than a few thousand Google Talk users on your bot, connect using the server-to-server protocol (either by making your bot act as an XMPP server or by hosting the bot on your own XMPP server).

Jonas Lindberg
Software Engineer

Update: Our initial list of available bots included some languages that are not actually available. There are 24 bots currently available: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. As some have guessed, this is a 20% project, and while machine translation isn't perfect, we hope these bots can be helpful in bridging language barriers.

Set your Google Talk picture with a webcam

Bill Kee — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:46:00 +0000

Finding a good Google Talk picture can be a real chore. It's hard enough to find a photo of yourself where you're smiling and looking intelligent, without all the additional hassle of cropping, exporting, and manually uploading your picture. So I devoted a few cycles to solving this problem in a fun way. Today, we're launching a way for you to take your Google Talk picture directly from your webcam.

From the Google Talk gadget, click on your Google Talk picture, and select the "Take Photo" option. You'll see the image from your webcam appear, and you'll be able to take and retake pix to your heart's content. When you get that perfect shot, just click "Save" to set it as your picture.

Currently, this feature only works in the Google Talk gadget, but will set your picture across the Google Talk network, including in Gmail.

Have fun, and let us know what you think here.

Justin Uberti
Software Engineer

Google Talk Gadget in 20 new languages

Bill Kee — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:41:00 +0000

Today, we added support for 20 more languages to the web-based Google Talk Gadget. The new languages are: Chinese(Simplified), Chinese(Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English(UK), Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese(Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

To access the Google Talk Gadget in your language, go to the Google Talk homepage, select your language in the drop-down menu in the top right, and click on the 'launch Google Talk Gadget' link. Or you can simply add the Google Talk gadget to your iGoogle home page.

As usual, we would love to hear your feedback. Anything we can do to improve the experience for your language? Let us know.

Katya Rogers
Software Engineer

Updated Gmail for mobile application

Bill Kee — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:44:00 +0000

Posted by Joanne McKinley, Gmail mobile team

Accessing Gmail on my phone has become indispensable to me. So often, I need to do things like search through my archive to find the name of that coffee shop where I'm going to meet a friend, or to send a quick email when I don't have access to my laptop. Gmail for mobile helps make this all very easy and fast. I can access my whole archive, and send emails to anyone in my contacts list -- through an interface that's very familiar. We just released a new version with some updates that you can get by pointing your phone's browser to http://gmail.com/app. The new version works on most phones that are Java ME enabled. For BlackBerry devices, you can continue to download the previous version from the same site.

The new version of Gmail for mobile is faster than before -- and consumes a lot less data. It also has a number of new features, including:

more than 30 percent faster overall, and 80 percent faster for some tasks
a contacts viewer to view your all Gmail contacts and addresses
an outgoing mail footer to let your recipients know you've sent an email from a mobile device
click-to-call phone numbers which you can call without retyping the number
emails are saved for later re-editing if connection drops or if you want to perform another task before sending out the message
Gmail keyboard shortcuts to perform tasks faster (on phones with full keyboards).

Learn more about Gmail for mobile and other mobile services.

Google Reader: Out of Labs

Bill Kee — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:36:00 +0000

Posted by Nick Baum, Associate Product Manager

You may have noticed that Google Reader recently parted ways with Google Labs. If you're not familiar with Reader, it's Google's feed aggregator. Think of it as your inbox for the web: just subscribe to the news sites, blogs, or videos you want to follow. You can read all the updates in one place -- there's no need to visit 20 different sites to get all this stuff. To see how it works, try subscribing to this blog by clicking on the "Site Feed" link in the on the right-hand side. You'll find similar links on most blogs, and many news sites too. For further explanation about why feed readers are so great, watch RSS in Plain English:

So why has Reader graduated from Google Labs? There have been a bunch of feature updates in recent months. Reader now has offline access using Google Gears, a new search tool, it's available in 10 languages, and will show you trends about your reading and subscribing habits. There's even a version of Reader for the Nintendo Wii. (But, really, we found the chemistry with Labs just wasn't there anymore.)

"M" is for…mute

Bill Kee — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:52:00 +0000

Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Product Marketing Manager

Just like you, I get a lot of email. Much of it requires my reply, some is simply FYI, and some is the result of overactive mailing lists, like the one for Google's San Francisco commuters. I take the shuttle to work, so I need to stay on top of announcements about route and schedule changes. But when there's an alert about a route on the other side of the city, or a co-worker's comment spurs a long thread about bus etiquette, I use the "m" shortcut key to mute the conversation and spare my inbox. As new messages are added to the same conversation, they bypass my inbox. If someone puts my email address directly on the To: or cc: line, the conversation immediately re-appears; otherwise, irrelevant messages sent to the mailing list are archived. That way I can refer back to them when I really need to find out about changes to the route when there's a Monday night game at the 49ers stadium, or want to revisit the debate about dogs on the bus. To use the "m" shortcut key, first click "Settings" in the top right corner of Gmail and select the option "Keyboard shortcuts on." Then, when you're reading a conversation you want to mute, just press "m."

Updates from Google Docs and Google Calendar

Bill Kee — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:55:00 +0000

Posted by Shirin Oskooi, Associate Product Manager

We had a couple of updates to share this week from the Google Docs and Google Calendar teams. First, as you may have heard, the Docs team launched the ability to create and share presentations to go with existing document and spreadsheet capabilities. Now when you're collaborating on that strategy deck, you don't have to worry whether you're looking at version 5 or 15. Plus, having your presentation stored online means one less file to send as an email attachment.

The Google Calendar team, along with the mobile team, released an upgrade to the Calendar interface on the iPhone. It is now tailored for the iPhone, and you can now see your different calendars in distinctive colors. You can see the new Calendar interface by going to http://calendar.google.com on your iPhone browser.

Lessons in Building Scalable Systems

Bill Kee — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:06:00 +0000

I gave a presentation about the Google Talk Service a while ago at the Google Scalability Conference hosted by Googlers in Seattle. You can watch the video below.

Here is the abstract:
Since launching Google Talk in the summer of 2005, we have integrated the service with two large existing products: Gmail and orkut. Each of these integrations provided unique scalability challenges as we had to handle a sudden large increase in the number of users. Today, Google Talk supports millions of users and handles billions of packets per day. In the presentation, I discuss several practical lessons and key insights from our experience that can be used for any project. These lessons cover both engineering and operational areas.

Posted by Reza Behforooz, Software Engineer

Tips from a Digital Mom – How managing emails can be like picking up toys

Bill Kee — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:40:00 +0000

Posted by Jen "Digital Mom" Grant, Group Product Marketing Manager

So here's my next tip in the series I started a few weeks ago:

I laugh when I remember what I was like as a new mom. I was determined to be perfect: feeding only homemade food that I blended or pureed myself (great book about this btw) and organizing toys into drawers with labels like cars, puzzles, and blocks. But when the reality of every day life sets in, it's almost impossible to keep that up. Nowadays, I'm just proud when my house doesn't look like a hurricane just blew through it and my kids have eaten something green for dinner.

Lots of things I do work this way. Take email. First, I make very specific labels for all of the categories that I might need - meeting notes, action items, personal - and I very meticulously use these labels for maybe a month or so. But then, I get overwhelmed and don't have the time to spend filing things under each of these categories. This is the point where Gmail really starts to help me out. The reason I categorized everything in the first place was to find it again quickly, right? Well, if I can find anything easily with search, then why should I take the extra time organizing? For my purposes, searching takes much less time and works just as well.

Now, when I'm done with an email, I archive it. It's not deleted, but I don't have to see it and I can find it quickly anytime. And every day I have a few more bits of time to spend having that wonderful glass of wine after the kids go to bed - oh, and more time to spend with the kids too.

If only I had Gmail for my living room. With one button, I would remove all toys from the floor to a placeout of sight,and then, at any time, quickly find that special Thomas the train that my son is asking me about. Now that would make me a supermom. :-)

Here's a snippet from blogger Megan Morrone, who also has twins (here's a post from when her twins stopped napping - so funny!), talking about archiving, searching and how she uses Labels to organize her Gmail:

"I love Gmail's archive and search features. They give me license to get e-mails out of my inbox quickly without fear of losing them. It took me a little longer to appreciate the Labels feature. Now, I'm in love. Each of my kids gets a label so I can look at e-mails that apply directly to them, whether it be about playdates, school, or activities. I also have labels for my real job, my podcast, my blog, and other blog networks I belong to. And if e-mails ever fall in more than one category, I give them more than one label. It makes things really, really easy."

Send your own work-life balance suggestions to digitalmomtips@gmail.com and I'll share them here.

Top 10 little-known Gmail features (Part 2)

Bill Kee — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:25:00 +0000

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Here are five more entries in my list of little-known features begun last week:

5. Smart links on the right
When you get an email that references an address, look to the right and you'll probably see a link from Gmail pointing you to a map of the address on Google Maps. Gmail also recognizes email text that refers to an event (e.g., 'dinner tomorrow at 8pm'), and will give you a link to add it to your calendar. It'll even pick up on package tracking numbers from UPS and link you directly to the tracking page, so you don't have to copy and paste the number. I really like this last one when I order stuff online and want the instant gratification of knowing a package is on its way.

4. Conversation update notification
It can be really annoying to write up a whole response to an email and click send -- only to discover that someone else has already responded. Gmail has a little feature that helps solve this problem. When you're replying to (or reading) a conversation, and someone else replies, a small notification window pops up to let you know. I sometimes think of it as the "prevent embarrassment" notification. Plus, it can save a lot of time by avoiding the series of follow-up emails needed to clear up the confusion.

3. Advanced search
Most people know that searching your archive is a huge part of what makes Gmail useful. But there are a few search features that you may not know about, which can be really handy. For instance, if I want to narrow down my search to only messages sent from Kevin, I can just add "from: Kevin" to the query. You can even search only for messages with attachments by including "has: attachments," or narrow by date with "after:" and "before:" Check out this whole list of advanced search operators.

2. Offline chat
Offline chat is another feature which makes chatting in the context of your email particularly useful. When you're chatting with a friend and they suddenly go offline, you can keep sending IMs and your friends will receive your messages the next time they open Gmail. The chat will show up as a new item in their inbox. And, of course, if you're still online, your friend can go ahead and reply by chat.

1. Create event
Since I use Gmail and Google Calendar at work (through Google Apps), I'm constantly emailing people about meetings, and scheduling them on everyone's calendars. When I'm writing an email to set up an event, I can actually do it all from within Gmail by clicking the "Add event info" link below the subject line. Then choose the time and location for the meeting or party. When you send the email, the event details will be added to to your Google Calendar, and Gmail will send an invitation to the email recipients to add it to their calendars as well.

Gmail eats your Bacn

Bill Kee — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:00:00 +0000

Posted by Kevn Systrm, Gmail Team

Recently, the Internet has been abuzz over a new term: 'bacn' - with the requisite missing vowel - which is pronounced, you guessed it, "bacon." Wikipedia defines it as: "electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time." Or, for the rest of us, bacn is "email you want, but not right now." I get a bunch of messages every day from sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, all of which are important to me but which I don't need to see immediately. In fact, I'd like to defer them until later, for my late-night Family Guy-email sessions.

We have a couple of features in Gmail that can help tame your bacn and bring order back to your inbox. Here are 3 easy steps to inbox feng shui:

1) Create labels for each service that sends your bacn by clicking "Edit labels" in the green box on the lefthand side of your inbox. I've created some for my inbox:

2) Create filters to put bacn in its place by clicking "Create a Filter" next to the search buttons at the top of your inbox. First, tell Gmail what types of messages you'd like to filter. I typed "LinkedIn" in the "from" box and then clicked "Next step >>".
If you're like me, you probably want to review the notifications at a later time, so you click "Skip the Inbox" and "Apply the label: LinkedIn". This keeps all your notifications in one place, accessible by clicking the "LinkedIn" label on the left hand side of your inbox.

3) Since at some point I may want to review all my bacn at once, I created another label called "Review Later" into which all my bacn goes. Then, I use one of Gmail's advanced search operators ("OR") to create a filter that matches any bacn:

Now I can easily view my LinkedIn notifications all at once OR I can view all my bacn together by clicking the "Review Later" label.

Top 10 little-known Gmail features (Part 1)

Bill Kee — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:08:00 +0000

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Gmail has a bunch of lesser-known feature that can end up being very useful once you get to know them. I've put together a list of my top 10 favorite features that you may or may not be familiar with. Here are the first five; watch for the second batch sometime next week.

10. Custom "from"
Most people end up managing more than one email account -- some are personal, others might be for work or school. When I graduated from college, I wanted to keep my .edu address for alumni-related things, but made Gmail my primary personal address. My university made it easy to forward my .edu mail to my Gmail address, so I could read all my mail from my within my Gmail account. I was happy to find out that Gmail would actually let me send mail "as" my .edu address, so I could continue to keep that identity, while managing all my email from one place. Here's how to set that up.

9. Open attachments in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, or view as slideshow
If you are sending a Word document or Excel file as an attachment, Gmail lets you easily open it in Google Docs & Spreadsheets. (In case you're not familiar with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, it's our online word processor and spreadsheet application, which lets you store and access documents online and collaborate on them with anyone.) Since other people are working on many of the docs I receive as attachments collaboratively, it's really easy to just open them in Docs & Spreadsheets and create a single document to work from, rather than constantly sending versions of documents back and forth. If the attachment is a PowerPoint presentation, Gmail will recognize this and give you a link to"View as a slideshow." This will open a window with a Flash preview of the slides. This is great for quickly reviewing slides in the browser.

8. Gmail gadget for iGoogle
I use iGoogle to bring together a lot of the information I care about on the web (feeds, my Google Calendar, YouTube videos, etc). I use it as a dashboard at the start of my day to get an overview of what's going on in the world. I've added the Gmail gadget to my page to get a preview of my Inbox, which is great because it's one of the first things I'm interested in seeing.

7. Reply by chat
Most people know that you can chat with your contacts in Gmail if they're using Gmail too. But there are some subtle features that make chat particularly useful in the context of using your email, like replying by chat. If you've received an email and notice that the sender is online (by seeing the little green dot next to his or her name in the conversation), you can click the button "reply by chat." What's particularly convenient about this is that the chat will be archived as part of the email thread to which you replied. I like this most because it means when I search for anything related to that thread, I find the chat transcript alongside all the relevant email messages.

6. Gmail for mobile application
It wasn't that long ago that my cellphone could barely handle sending text messages. I didn't used to think of it as being an efficient place to access my email. That's changed -- big time. Email has become one of my primary forms of communication when on the go. Unfortunately, on a lot of phones, dealing with email can still be a pretty annoying experience, especially if you're not using a device like a PDA. Enter Gmail for mobile. It's fast, it syncs with your online account, and it gives you virtually all of the same Gmail functionality like search, filters, and access to your whole archive of mail.

Next week: another 5 for you.

Watch the final Gmail collaborative video

Bill Kee — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:18:00 +0000

Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Product Marketing Manager

Several weeks back, we posted a video to YouTube giving a behind-the-scenes look at how Gmail messages "really" travels around the world. We then invited you to submit your own clips to continue the story, and Gmail fans from more than 65 countries submitted more than 1,100 fantastic videos! We have to say, we are quite overwhelmed with everyone's creativity. From two Rubik's cubes, a few jaunts in a bottle, countless babies, and one dog's trip to the Southernmost point of the continental US, to jugglers, firemen, camel-riders, and original animation, we've had a lot of fun watching the responses come in, and we hope you have too. A big thanks to everyone who submitted clips, watched videos, and left comments for making this project so much fun!

Because of the international reach of the submissions, we used the Google Maps API to put together this map showing where many of the clips came from:

View Larger Map

As you can probably tell from viewing all these amazing videos, it was truly a difficult task to try and piece together as many of these clips as we could. We know that some of your favorites (and ours) may not have made it into the final cut, so we encourage everyone to surf through all of the submissions.

But now, drum roll, without further ado, here is the final video. We hope you like it!

Tips from a Digital Mom

Bill Kee — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:14:00 +0000

Posted by Jen "Digital Mom" Grant, Group Product Marketing Manager

When I found out I was having twins a year or so ago, I was pretty worried. How could I possibly manage 2 babies, a three-year old, a dog, and a "I like to start companies and not hold down a 9-to-5 job" husband -- all while managing my own full-time job? This phase certainly started out rockily (mostly for our dog, Tobey, whom I consistently forgot to feed; he's fine, though, just a little hungry now and then). It turns out that Google actually offered much of what helped me survive. Well, Google and that great book about getting your kids to sleep through the night. So now, almost a year later, I have a few tips to share with other folks looking to find that balance between work and family - craziness and sanity - caffeine and a good night's rest - potty training and conference calls.

Without further ado, here's my first "Digital Mom" tip: keeping in sync with your spouse.

Sometimes when you get home from work and the kids are hollering about dinner, babies needing a change, and you just have time to kick off your shoes and throw something in the microwave, you don't really get a chance to talk to your spouse. In my case, with twins and a 3-year old, it can be days before I actually get a chance to ask him how he's feeling or what he's been doing. That's where Gmail chat comes in. Both my husband and I are on Gmail (his company uses it as a part of Google Apps and, of course, so does mine). So even if I fall asleep within minutes of wrestling my son into bed, at least my husband has already heard about how I'm feeling throughout the day. With a little :-) and a little <3, it's a wonderful way for us to stay connected.

Keep an eye on the Gmail blog for my tips, and I'd love to see yours. Send your own work-life balance suggestions to digitalmomtips@gmail.com and I'll share them here.

Gmail video deadline extended to Friday, 8/17

Bill Kee — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:06:00 +0000

Posted by Bill Kee, Gmail Team

Just a quick update to let you know we've extended the deadline for entries to our Gmail collaborative video to this Friday, August 17th. We've received a bunch of requests to extend the deadline, so we wanted to give people a bit more breathing room to get those last edits in. You can check out all the submissions (over 1000 now!) here. Some of them are just amazing - we've been blown away by the creativity and effort behind so many of the clips. Check out these:

Gmail par avion:

Email in a bottle:

Gmail cereal!

Gmail handstand delivery:

Hyperpolyglotic Gmail

Bill Kee — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:53:00 +0000

Posted by Jonas Shen, Associate, Consumer Operations

According to Wikipedia, the world’s most accomplished hyperpolyglot is Ziad Fazah. This guy can readily communicate in 58 (f-i-f-t-y e-i-g-h-t) languages. Wow.

Well Mr. Fazah, while we’re not quite up to your standard yet, you better watch out -- because Gmail is now available in 41 languages, and don’t think we’re going to stop there.

If you’re multilingual, feeling adventurous, or if you just want to test how well you know the Gmail user interface, try changing your account language settings. Sound a little risky? Don't worry - it's easy. You can change the language through the Settings menu. Get a taste of what hyperpolyglotic Gmail has to offer:

How many of these language UIs do you recognize?

192 t-shirt designs (and counting!)

Bill Kee — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:46:00 +0000

Posted by Kevin Systrom, Gmail Team

On July 16th, we launched a Gmail t-shirt design contest with Threadless.com. Needless to say, we're psyched to see the quality of work that is pouring in. At last count, we had 192 submissions from designers around the world. Now, with under a week left to submit designs (contest ends Aug. 16th), I'd like to encourage everyone to submit a design. Or, if you're like me, and drawing stick figures is an accomplishment, then you can help score designs too!

Here are samples of some fun designs from the contest that recently finished scoring:

Some great Gmail video responses!

Bill Kee — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 21:31:00 +0000

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Since we posted about our collaborative Gmail video project last week, we've gotten a lot of excellent submissions from around the world, and we wanted to share some of them with you here. I couldn't have imagined some of the ideas you've come up with, and they're going to make for a great final video. Here are just a few of the coolest clips made so far:

One of the first entries we got, from Taiwan:

Here's one that took some serious imagination:

Lightning mail:

Lego animation!

Gmail, the underwater edition:

X-ray Gmail:

Lots of people involved their kids. Here's a father and daughter from Spain:

You can see all of the responses here and learn how to submit your own clip at http://mail.google.com/mvideo. Remember, you can submit clips until August 13th.

Gmail-ganization

Bill Kee — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by David Murray, Associate Product Manager

My friend Theresa is always looking to keep better organized. And while she loves the "search, don't sort" approach that Gmail offers, sometimes she likes to sort. As a neat freak myself, I totally agree -- sometimes you need to get in there and organize. As it turns out, Gmail does have a tool for sorting - called "labels."

You can find labels on the left side of the Gmail window. Labels let you group together emails any way you choose. They also provide an added benefit called multiple inclusion. And that means you can associate a single message with as many labels as you want.

So how does this help you? Let's say you get lots of mail about Xena (you know, the Warrior Princess), and you also get lots of mail from friends. In most mail applications, you could put all messages about Xena in a "Xena" folder and all mail from friends in a "Friends" folder. But when a friend sends you a note about Xena -- well, you could make "Xena" a subfolder of "Friends," which doesn't totally make sense. You could make "Friends" a subfolder of "Xena?" Or maybe make a copy of the mail and put it into both? Sure, if you want to keep track of both, take up twice the space, and forget to delete one if you ever delete the other. Blah!

Now let's say you have Gmail labels. If you get a Xena mail from a friend, just apply the label "Xena" and the label "Friends". Now you can find it in "Xena," you can find it in "Friends" -- and you only have to keep track of one thing.

If you don't get the Xena thing, replace "Xena" with "Buffy". If you still don't get it, replace it with "Britney" or, if all else fails, replace it with "Work." And there you have it.

Help make a Gmail video

Bill Kee — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Posted by Bill Kee, Gmail Team

Do you have mad video-making skills? OK, how about just a video camera and a little bit of spare time to get creative? A few of us on the Gmail team came up with an idea to stitch together a bunch of video clips that all share one element: someone hands the Gmail M-velope in from the left of the screen, and hands it off to the right. Put them all together, and they form one long chain of hand-offs. We thought it would be fun to let everyone in on the action. Just go to http://mail.google.com/mvideo, where you'll find directions on how to submit your clip (including a PDF of the Gmail M-velope you can use in your video). We'll be accepting clips until August 13th. We'll then take a selection of the submitted clips and edit them together into one final video, which we'll release to the world on August 20th.

What does this have to do with email, you may ask? Well, you can see this as a symbol of how email connects people from all over, making the world feel a bit smaller. Or you could think of it as a metaphor for mail exchange servers, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and all of the technical steps involved in getting a Gmail message around the world from one inbox to another. But, really, we just wanted to have a little fun. So give it a shot, and enjoy! Remember, clips are due before August 13th. :-)

Thanks for all the spam reports

Bill Kee — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:01:00 +0000

Posted by Brad Taylor, Software Engineer

For all you Gmail users hitting those "Report Spam" and "Not Spam" buttons, thanks a ton! We hear from a lot of users that they love how well Gmail blocks spam, and the only reason it works is because you all report it to us. If you're not in the habit of doing this, I hope I can convince you to start. Here are three reasons you should report spam:

Reason #1: It helps you personally. It gets the spam out of your Inbox and keeps what is truly spam separate from any non-spam messages you just want to delete. We keep statistics on which senders you've flagged as spammers (and which you've marked as non-spammers), and we use this information to provide you a better, personalized Gmail spam filter that overrides the system-wide filter when appropriate.

Reason #2: It helps the Gmail community at large (this includes you!). When you report spam, we compute all kinds of interesting things about the spammy message you reported and combine it with the information that other users are reporting about the same message or sender. When our automated system sees a lot of people marking a particular email as spam, it starts blocking similar emails pretty quickly.

Reason #3: It lets us know when we need to do more development. We surround ourselves with monitors displaying the current spam situation on all kinds of nice charts and tickers. When a spammer figures out how to bypass our system, lots of spam reports start flowing in, and we see that pretty much immediately. We react as quickly as we can to these events, developing and testing new code. Usually we can address these in a few hours, but sometimes this can take a few days or weeks to get right. Please don't give up reporting the spam, though. We love and depend on the reminders: they keep us on our toes!

Sometimes people are afraid to report a message because they aren't sure if it is "really" spam or not. Our opinion is that if you didn't ask for it and you don't want it, it's spam to you, and it should be reported. We'll sort it out on our side. We aren't perfect, but in general it works because you tell us when it doesn't!

So if you see a spam message in your inbox, remember to select it and click the "Report Spam" button at the top of the page. And if we put messages in your spam folder that don't belong there, be sure to hit the "Not Spam" button on those too.

Thanks again for your help!

Win this competition and the shirt off our backs. Literally.

Bill Kee — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:39:00 +0000

Posted by Kevin Systrom, Gmail Team

James Surowiecki opens his book The Wisdom of Crowds with the example of Francis Galton, a famous statistician, who asked individuals to guess the weight of an ox. After collecting all the guesses, he came to a startling conclusion. Most of the people were wrong. However, if you took the median of all guesses, the group was closer to the true weight than even the best cattle experts.

After reading his book, I've become more interested in the power of communities. That's why, when tasked with creating the ultimate Gmail T-shirt design, I decided to turn to the wisdom of the crowds: you, our creative and tech-savvy Gmail users. Starting today you can submit a design that you think embodies the Gmail personality most. Also, you'll be able score designs and let us know the designs that you think have the most potential (think: not ox weight, but T-shirt awesomeness).

We've teamed up with Threadless.com which does this sort of thing all the time. Threadless.com is a site where anyone can submit designs that they'd like to see appear on a T-shirt, people vote, and a small number of winners are printed and sold online. Today, Gmail and Threadless launched a competition created specifically for Gmail with the theme "Connect!" To make it even more interesting, we're giving away an 8GB iPhone, a Jawbone Bluetooth headset, a $400 gift certificate from JetBlue Airlines, some fun Google schwag, and a whole bunch of moolah to the winning designer. So go ahead and pull out your Moleskine notebook, sharpen those No. 2 pencils, and submit away. The contest opens today, and will close at 11:59:59pm CST on August 16th.

Remember that I'll be looking to all of you to help grade the designs. In a way, I trust your judgment more than mine. After all, I once tried to launch Gmail Paper.

Learn more about the contest.

Manage multiple accounts with Mail Fetcher

Bill Kee — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:48:00 +0000

Posted by Shirley Liu, Strategist, Consumer Operations

As a member of the Gmail support team, I get to read testimonials from people about why they love Gmail. Many of you have lamented the fact that your work, school, and other email accounts aren’t more like Gmail. Why can't all my messages magically appear in my Gmail account? Well, we can't do magic, but we do offer free POP-in access with Mail Fetcher.

Mail Fetcher lets you retrieve messages from up to five different email accounts. Besides taking advantage of Gmail’s spam filtering, you can also use Gmail to send messages using your other email addresses. This is convenient for users juggling multiple accounts -- log in once from anywhere and access all of your messages from different email accounts (without missing a single Gmail chat). To enable Mail Fetcher, simply click "Settings," select the "Accounts" tab, click "Add another mail account" and specify your settings.

Just note that the account you're fetching from must have POP3 access. Some providers, including Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, don’t provide free POP3 access, but many ISP email services do. For more information on Mail Fetcher, you can visit the Gmail Help Center.

SMS to update your Google Calendar

Bill Kee — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:17:00 +0000

Posted by Shirin Oskooi, Google Calendar Associate Product Manager

People request new features for Google Calendar all the time. They post to blogs, send email to our support team, call to me on the street, etc. One thing people always ask me about is better mobile access. You can already send a text message to "GOOGL" with a search query, and you'll get a text message reply with the top Google search result. Some folks want a similar service for Google Calendar, where they can send text messages to add events to their calendar or find out what events they have coming up. This is by far my favorite request -- not only because I think it's a great feature, but because it already exists.

Here's how it works: send a text message to "GVENT" (48368) with information about an event, like "3pm cappuccino at Borrone's," and this event will be added to your calendar. Just like the "Quick Add" feature in Google Calendar, GVENT will pop the event into your calendar in the right place. You'll get a text message back confirming the details of your event. Or, send the word "day" to "GVENT" to get a text message response containing all of your scheduled events for today, "next" for your next scheduled event, or "nday" for all your events scheduled for tomorrow. You can learn more about GVENT in the help center.

And now I'm off to get my cappuccino.

Google Talk Gadget on Google Apps

Bill Kee — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:06:00 +0000

If you use Google Apps at your business, organization or school, you can now use the Google Talk Gadget on your Start Page to have chats with colleagues or classmates (including group chats). Google Apps lets your organization create Gmail accounts that use your domain name -- like me@my-organization.com -- instead of @gmail.com in the email address. It also offers collaborative tools, like Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and the customizable Start Page, where all your students, employees, or members can view relevant content, preview their inboxes and calendars, and now, chat with one or more colleagues or classmates -- all from the same webpage.

As a Google Apps user, you can add the Google Talk Gadget to your Start Page by clicking on the "Add stuff" link on the top left corner of your homepage, opening the 'Google Apps' category of gadgets, and clicking 'add it now.' If you're a Google Apps administrator, click here to learn how to add the Google Talk Gadget and other content to your users' Start Page. If your organization doesn't use Google Apps yet, you can learn more about getting started at http://www.google.com/a.

Adam Fass
Software Engineer

Group Chat for the Google Talk Gadget

Bill Kee — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:07:00 +0000

We use Google Talk all the time at work to chat with people on our team. It can sometimes be limiting, though, when you want to include multiple people in the conversation, like you can on an email thread or a conference call. That's why we're really excited to announce a new feature for the Google Talk Gadget: group chat. Now, for instance, when the two of us are chatting about an upcoming launch, and we've heard that Seth knows the latest, we can just invite him to join our chat.

To start a group chat, launch the Google Talk Gadget here, and start a chat with one of your friends. Click on the button at the top of the chat window that says "Group Chat," and then pick the name of the third (or fourth, or fifth...) friend you want to invite from the drop-down menu. They'll receive an invitation to join the group chat. If your friends are using Gmail chat or the downloadable Google Talk client, their invitation will launch the Google Talk Gadget.

Rhett Robinson and Qi Ke
Software Engineers

How are you using Talk?

Bill Kee — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:40:00 +0000

We focus a lot in this blog on the features we're adding to Google Talk and the technology behind them. But I wanted to share a bit about our users and what they're doing with Google Talk.

As a member of the Google Talk support team, my day is usually busy reading emails reporting issues, troubleshooting, and generally learning about what's up with Google Talk users and how we can make their experience better. Mixed in to the grab bag of technical issues are bits and blurbs from users who can't get enough of Google Talk. Nothing makes my day more than hearing from Google Talk users who enjoy using the product to keep in touch with their friends, families, classmates, fellow online gamers, and business partners. It's inspiring to be a part of something that helps make the world a smaller place.

Reading stories from avid Google Talkers has made me think twice about ways to use the product. Some users have come up with creative ways to help communicate with their contacts and loved ones:

"I'm an exchange student here in Monterrey, Mexico. I'm originally from France and two months ago I left my family and my loved one there. What I like about Google Talk is the MP3 message you get in your Gmail address when someone leaves you a voicemail. You see, my girlfriend works during the day, and with the time difference it's sometimes hard to stay the phone for a long time. So when she's sleeping and I, on the other end of the planet, am not, I leave her Google Talk messages and she listens to them at work during the day, while I am asleep. Also, she can transfer the MP3 messages on her USB device at work and take them home to listen to me if she misses me or she can just connect back to her email address and I'm there! In a way Google Talk helps us keep up our relationship and reduces a bit of the awful distance that separates us." -Olivier, Monterrey, Mexico.

"I am hard-of-hearing and in my daily work activities, and I conduct or
participate in meetings in the form of teleconferences. I dial in on my
desk phone, but I still need help understanding the others on the line, so
I use the Google Talk client for Blackberry.

That's not all. My wife is deaf and she is from an all deaf family. We
keep in touch with each other by using Google Talk for the Blackberry (like
hearing couples tend to use their cell phones) and keep in touch with deaf
family members and many of our deaf friends, no matter which IM client
they choose." - Steve, Dunbar, IA

I also love to read about the zany and fun things people are doing with Google Talk:

"I talk to my 1 year old niece on Google Talk. She lives in North Dakota and I am in Michigan.

She often says things like: jk[-;p//om90, or: .........ff.;;..;. ycv?"C( cc96? C9('?(( (?('"

It is very fun to talk to her via Google Talk. I hear that she runs
upstairs to the computer and says 'Lee lee' (her name for me) when she
hears the incoming chat sound." -Leigh, Commerce, MI

"I met my girlfriend in Abu Dhabi, UAE when I had gone back for my summer vacation. When I came back to the United States to complete my undergrad education, I didn't want to lose contact with her. We speak day and night through Google Talk. I can't count the number of times I've fallen asleep to wake up in the morning with the headset still on my head, and still connected to her." - Carnik, Abu Dhabi, UAE

If you have a story of your own, let us know!

Iris Lu
Online Sales & Ops Coordinator

Something to :) about

Bill Kee — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:10:00 +0000

Tired of expressing emotions to your friends with words? Exhausted by the two and sometimes three keys you have to press to enter an emoticon? The Google Talk Gadget has got your back. Today we're introducing an emoticon menu to put those :D and :-( feelings right at your fingertips. We've also heard you asking for a wider emoticon selection, so we added some new choices. You can choose from three different styles of emoticons. Maybe you like things simple and classic . Maybe you like them colorful and fun . Or maybe you're a square . Everybody can be themselves with the Google Talk Gadget, and you'll find it right here.

Jake Knapp
User Interface Designer

Talking with TypePad

Bill Kee — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:42:00 +0000

I was excited when the Google Talk Gadget launched in March, since it meant there was one more way to chat with your buddies on the Web -- it let you access Google Talk as a gadget on iGoogle or add it to your own Web page. Today we're pleased that TypePad has syndicated the Google Talk Gadget to their Widget Gallery, and we're looking forward to staying connected with our fellow bloggers. Check it out here: http://www.sixapart.comtypepad/widgets/chat/google-talk.html

Mary Himinkool
New Business Development

Popouts, Buttons and Slideshows

Bill Kee — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:53:00 +0000

As an engineer, one of my favorite aspects of delivering Google Talk through the web is that we can enhance it quickly. In fact, we updated the Google Talk Gadget today with a few new features:

(1) To make it easier to use Google Talk anywhere, we made it possible to pop out the Google Talk Gadget into a separate window. If you're using Google Talk on your Google Personalized Homepage, you'll find a link in right inside the gadget that lets you pop it out. You can also find the popout version of the gadget at http://www.google.com/talk .

(2) For website owners and bloggers, we announced earlier that you can add Google Talk to your own webpage with a single line of code. To take advantage of the new pop-out functionality, we created a new way to add Google Talk to your website: a button you can add that lets your visitors launch Google Talk in a separate window.

To add the button, just copy and paste this script into your site's HTML:

(3) We also wanted to highlight a way to use the gadget that others discovered shortly after our first release. If you use Firefox, you can run the gadget in your Firefox sidebar, so it stays open when you navigate from page to page in the main frame. Just click on the link below:

Google Talk Sidebar

You can also bookmark Google Talk for your sidebar in Firefox. Right click on the link above. Select "Bookmark this Link," then "Create In: Bookmarks Toolbar." Next open the Bookmarks menu from the Firefox menu bar, right click on the Google Talk bookmark entry, and select "Properties." In the menu that opens, check the box that says: "Load this bookmark in the sidebar."

When you open the bookmark, the gadget will load in the sidebar on the left.

(4) We also added some new media viewing capability to the gadget. In addition to watching YouTube videos and Picasa Web Albums slideshows, you can now also view Flickr photo slideshows by pasting URLs from Flickr into your chats.

We look forward to adding more and more features to the gadget. And you don't need to do anything to get the updates. Each time you load the gadget you will have the latest version.

Scott Ludwig
Software Engineer

Google Talk Gadget

Bill Kee — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:57:00 +0000

We're thrilled to be launching a new way to use Google Talk today. The Google Talk Gadget is a web-based module that you can add to your Google Personalized Homepage, letting you see your friends and chat with them -- all on your homepage.

We know a lot of people love being able to chat with their friends in Gmail Chat, so we created the Talk Gadget to offer that experience in other places, starting with the Google Personalized Homepage. You'll also find all your Gmail and Google Talk contacts organized for you in the Talk Gadget. And just like with Gmail Chat, you don't have to download and install software to use it. One thing we really like is that it looks and feels the same on a Linux desktop as on a Windows laptop, and it also works on Macs. No matter where you go, all you have to do is login to your Google account, and there it is.

And if you have a webpage or blog, you can put the Google Talk Gadget in those places too, so your visitors can sign in and start instant messaging right from your page. If you post your username next to it, visitors can add you as a contact and start chatting with you right away. Like most other gadgets, you can do this by pasting a single line of code into your page, which you can find here.

We worked hard to make the Google Talk Gadget embody the same simple, clean feel of Gmail Chat and the Talk download client--but we threw in some extra goodies too. You'll notice that your conversations all open up in tabs inside the Gadget. And one of the coolest features in the Google Talk Gadget is the ability to do media previews. When we're not busy working on new features for Talk, we're checking out "Ask A Ninja" on YouTube or Friday night's party photos on Picasa Web Albums, sending around links to this multimedia in our chats, and posting them in our status messages. It was just plain silly that our IM client didn't know more about photos and videos other than the fact that it was a link. So by scratching our itch, we can now watch YouTube videos and see Picasa Web Albums photos inside of the Google Talk Gadget anytime someone IMs us a link or sets it as their status message.

So give it a try, let us know what you think, and keep an eye out for lots of improvements to come!

Dudley and Wes Carr
Software Engineers

P.S. Get a sneak peek at the Google Talk Gadget in this short video:

Twittering with Google Talk

Bill Kee — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:54:00 +0000

What are you doing right now? It's a pretty simple question. Me? I'm writing this post. Maybe you're "eating a magnolia cupcake," or "at work, but shopping online." Or maybe you're "thinking of how to use the word of the day in a sentence: polypropolene."

Twitter is a site that makes it easy to let the world know what you're doing, and see what other people are up to in a fun, social environment. You can think of it as low-effort mini-blogging. And you can update your status with even less effort by using Google Talk. Just add twitter@twitter.com to your contact list and shoot off an IM to it about how you're "cooking up some spicy chicken jambalaya" or "walking the cat." (Cats can go on walks, too.)

You can also use Talk with Twitter on a mobile device. Using the RIM Blackberry Google Talk Client you can quickly and easily send status updates to Twitter, and we'll all know how you're shoveling yourself out of a foot of snow. Advanced apologies to our NYC office, we've got sun here in Mountain View.

Add twitter@twitter.com to your Google Talk contacts to check it out.

Bill Kee
Associate Product Marketing Manager