Google Data » Zach Yeskel

Google Reader gives back

Zach Yeskel — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:16:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

At the recent SXSW conference, we handed out free Google Reader T-shirts to people based on how many Reader items they'd ever read... in their whole life. We knew that free shirts would be a hit, but we learned something much more important: a lot of people have read a lot of items. (At an average of thirty seconds per item, the most prolific readers had spent more than 180 full days of their lives perusing stuff on Reader — what Blogger gives, Reader takes away)

After the conference, several of us felt like shirts didn't seem like enough of a reward for all the valuable hours people have spent trolling through so many feeds. One thing led to another, we did a few calculations, drank a few too many cups of coffee, and today we're happy to announce Google Reader's first rewards program: ReaderAdvantage™.

The ReaderAdvantage™ program is simple. You get one point for each item you read. The more you read, the more you get. Then you can trade in your points for cool stuff. And because we believe in a little friendly competition, there are four levels of ReaderAdvantage™ status:

Novice: 999 points
Gold: 25,000 points
Platinum: 133,700 points
Totally Sweet: 314,159 points

We considered inventing a secret ReaderAdvantage™ handshake, but instead we created embroidered badges to ensure that members can easily identify their compatriots.

If you use Google Reader, there's no reason not to join. Visit the ReaderAdvantage™ site to read all the details and enroll today. As always, please send us your thoughts and feedback in our forum or on Twitter.

Google Reader gives back

Zach Yeskel — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:16:00 +0000

Novice: 999 points
Gold: 25,000 points
Platinum: 133,700 points
Totally Sweet: 314,159 points

We considered inventing a secret ReaderAdvantage™ handshake, but instead we created embroidered badges to ensure that members can easily identify their compatriots.

Serving better ads in Gmail

Zach Yeskel — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:23:00 +0000

Posted by Steve Crossan, Gmail Product Manager

Ever since we launched Gmail, we've tried to show relevant and unobtrusive ads. We're always trying to improve our algorithms to show better, more useful ads.

When you open a message in Gmail, you often see ads related to that email. Let's say you're looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago. Next to your email, you might see ads about flights to Chicago.

But sometimes, there aren't any good ads to match to a particular message. From now on, you'll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let's say you're looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren't any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead.

To show these ads, our systems don't need to store any extra information -- Gmail just picks a different recent email to match. The process is entirely automated: no humans are involved in selecting ads, and no email or personal information is shared with advertisers.

We've updated a help center article and a few faqs where we had specified that ads alongside an email were related only to the text of the current message. This doesn't change the Gmail privacy policy. We've also created this short video explaining the change:

We'll be rolling this out over the next few days. With this change, we hope you see better ads in Gmail -- more of what you're interested in and less of what you're not.

Offline Gmail graduates from Labs

Zach Yeskel — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Posted by Aaron Whyte, Software Engineer

Almost a year ago, we launched Offline Gmail in Gmail Labs. By installing Offline Gmail, you're able to use the normal Gmail interface to read and write mail, search, and organize, even when there's no internet connection. And Flaky Connection mode speeds up Gmail when your connection is slow or unreliable.

Since we first launched in Labs, we've heard from a lot of you who tried Offline Gmail, and your feedback helped us make a lot of improvements. Aside from fixing bugs and making the whole offline experience smoother, we recently added two frequently requested features: an option to choose which messages get downloaded for offline use and the ability to send attachments while offline. Offline Gmail has proven particularly useful for business and schools making the switch to Google Apps from traditional desktop mail clients -- they're used to being able to access their mail whether or not they're online, and Offline Gmail brings this functionality right to the browser.

Now, we're happy to announce that Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail. If you're already using it, then you're all set. While you'll no longer see it on the Labs tab, you can tweak your settings and turn it on and off from the Offline tab under Settings. If you'd like to get started with Offline Gmail on your computer now, here's how:

Click the "Settings" link in the top-right corner of Gmail.
Click the "Offline" tab.
Select "Enable Offline Mail for this computer."
Click "Save Changes" and follow the directions from there.

Thanks for all of the feedback over the last year -- and for putting up with the occasional bug or two. We're going to have a little toast, and then get right back to working on more improvements for 2010.

P.S. We received some interesting pictures in response to our call for photos of people using Gmail offline in our last post. Our favorite so far came from Ugo, who is at a Saharawi refugee camp in south Algeria, where he uses Gmail offline most of the time and connects via a satellite phone to our servers just once a day.

More extra storage for less

Zach Yeskel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:15:00 +0000

Posted by Elvin Lee, Software Engineer

When Gmail launched five years ago, it came with a gigabyte of storage space. A gigabyte doesn't seem like very much any more, and now every Gmail account comes with more than seven gigs of space (and growing). Still, some people manage to use up all of this (that's a lot of email...), so for over two years we've offered the option to purchase even more storage. This extra storage acts as an overflow that you only start using when you reach the limit of your free storage, and is shared for use between Gmail and Picasa Web Albums. Picasa has always come with a gigabyte of free storage to share photos, but people need even more storage as they start taking more pictures and moving full resolution backups of their photo collection into the cloud.

While storage costs have been dropping naturally, we've also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce costs even further. Today, we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage more affordable. You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year, twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. And if you need more than 20 GB, you can purchase up to 16 terabytes!

So if you're running out of space in your overflowing inbox, or want to keep full resolution copies of thousands of photos, visit www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage to see all the plans and to buy more storage.

More ninja tips in more languages

Zach Yeskel — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:07:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

When we published the Gmail tips guide in July, we promised it would help you become a Gmail ninja. Now, if you want to become a Gmail ниндзя or 忍者, you can do that too: these tips are now available in Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and UK English.

We've also added a handful of new tips to the English site, culled from suggestions you submitted. Some of the new tricks to help manage your email efficiently include sending and receiving mail from multiple addresses, adding formatting to chat messages, and selecting multiple messages at once using shift-select. Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas, and please keep them coming.

Update (1/12): The Gmail tips guide is also now available in German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Find great stuff to read in Google Reader

Zach Yeskel — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:48:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Have you ever clicked the "Reader" link at the top of your Gmail inbox and ended up in Google Reader, kind of unsure about what to do next?

We realize this happens from time to time, so to help people get started with Reader, we asked a bunch of prominent journalists, techies, fashion critics, and foodies for their lists of favorite sites and blogs. We compiled their reading lists and made them accessible to everyone at google.com/powerreaders, where you can explore and subscribe to lists from Thomas Friedman, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing, Kottke.org, and many more.

Whether you're new to Google Reader or already have an extensive reading list, we hope this will be a good place to find great stuff to read. And if you want to create your own reading list to share with others, you can do that too.

Looking for great stuff to read?

Zach Yeskel — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:27:00 +0000

Where do Arianna Huffington and Thomas Friedman go to get different perspectives on the news? Which economics sites does Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman read? What sites and blogs do the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Kottke read?

These questions have always interested us, so we decided to approach leaders across a variety of fields and ask them what they read online. We got lots of great responses, which we've collected into our second edition of Power Readers. In this edition, we've expanded from Power Readers in Politics to include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies, and more. We hope this will be a good place for you to find more great things to read, whether you're new to Google Reader or already have an extensive reading list. Visit www.google.com/powerreaders to explore and subscribe to any of the participants' reading lists, or to any individual sites and blogs they recommend.

All these reading lists were built using Reader's new custom bundles, and we encourage you to create and share your own reading lists for your areas of expertise.

A big thanks to all of our contributors:

News: Thomas Friedman (New York Times), Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post), Michelle Malkin (Hot Air), Paul Krugman (New York Times), Patrick Ruffini (The Next Right), Nicholas Kristof (New York Times), John Dickerson (Slate), Dexter Filkins (New York Times), Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos), Charles Blow (New York Times)
Tech and web: Chris Anderson (Wired), Adam Pash (Lifehacker), Mark Frauenfelder (Boing Boing), Alex Papadimoulis (The Daily WTF), Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land), Jason Kottke (Kottke.org), Annalee Newitz (io9), Meaghan O’Neill (Treehugger), Ben Popken (The Consumerist)
Food and health: Mark Bittman (New York Times), Béatrice Peltre (La Tartine Gourmande), Faith Durand (Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn), Tara Parker-Pope (New York Times)
Trends and fashion: Abby Gardner (Fashionista), Cathy Horyn (New York Times), Danielle de Lange (The Style Files), Carrie Leber (Bloomacious)

We'd love to hear your feedback – please head over to our help group, Twitter, or Get Satisfaction.

So, you want to be a Gmail ninja?

Zach Yeskel — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

If you got 100 new messages, how long would it take you to get through them all? An hour? Five minutes? How would you find the important ones, reply to the ones that require an immediate reply, and mark the ones that you needed to take care of later? Would you use stars, filters, keyboard shortcuts, labels? What about Gmail Labs like tasks or canned responses?

Everybody has their own system for managing email, but some are definitely more efficient than others. Even if you only get a few messages a day, there are probably some simple things you can do to make it easier to get through your inbox and maybe even have a little fun along the way. We know time is valuable, so we asked lots of Googlers for their tips and tricks on how they make the most of Gmail, and we combined the best of these into a guide at www.gmail.com/tips, cheekily entitled "Become a Gmail Ninja." The tips are categorized into ninja belts (white, green, black and master ) based on how much mail you get each day.

For a handy reference that you can pin to your wall or keep on your desk, we even made a printable version of the guide where all the tips fit on one page front and back. And for the first 1024 of you who want them, we'll send a limited-edition, laminated guide for free. Just fill out this form with your address. Sorry, we can only ship to addresses in the US. If you're not one of the lucky 1024, you can still buy a laminated guide at www.barcharts.com.

If you're already a Gmail ninja and have your own tips you'd like to share, let us know and we'll add the best ones to the online guide.

*Our lawyers asked us to make sure it was clear that your contact information won't be maintained longer than necessary to send you the laminated guide and that this offer is "void where prohibited and only while supplies last."

Update (11:59am): Well, that was fast. We've run out of the free laminated guides, but if you weren't part of the first 1024 people to sign up, you can still can buy them for $1.25 at www.barcharts.com/gmail.

New fields for Gmail contacts and better importing too

Zach Yeskel — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:20:00 +0000

Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager

Up until now, Gmail only supported some contact fields. Whenever someone imported their contacts from apps like Outlook and OS X Address Book, we used to put fields Gmail didn't recognize into the contact's notes section. Based on feedback from you, we added support for more contact fields (like birthday and website) and now store each of these fields separately, which makes syncing and round-tripping your data work better. We updated the standalone contact manager with this improvement last month and now it's available in Gmail too, with support for Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail and Yahoo in CSV format, and OS X Address Book in vCard format.

With all your contact info in Gmail, you can access it from anywhere, sync your contacts to your mobile phone or other devices, and more easily collaborate on Google Docs and invite people to Calendar events. We're working hard to make Gmail contacts even more useful, so please keep the feedback coming.

Tip: Slice and dice your mail with search operators

Zach Yeskel — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:11:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

My friends email me all the time with ideas for improving Gmail. Just this weekend, my friend Dave said he wanted a way to select all of his messages with a certain label (like "urgent"). Two weeks ago, Adam came up with the idea of a button that would filter his inbox to only show unread items. Good ideas, but it turns out that doing stuff like this (and much more) is already possible using search operators.

For example, Dave would just need to search for "in:urgent" to get all items labeled "urgent," and Adam would just search for "is:unread in:inbox" to see all the unread messages in his inbox.

Here are a few other useful ways to filter your inbox:

"to:me is:starred" shows all messages sent directly to you that are starred
"is:chat from:heather" shows all chat conversations you had with Heather
"is:starred -in:inbox" shows all your starred messages that aren't in your inbox (a good way to find anything important that you might have accidentally archived)
"from:elliot filename:pdf" shows all messages from Elliot that have a pdf attachment

We've written about search operators here before, but lots of people find them hard to remember. That's why we built Search Autocomplete in Gmail Labs, designed to make searching in Gmail much easier. Instead of having to remember the exact syntax for advanced searches, you can just start typing, and search autocomplete will help you fill in the rest. If you find yourself doing some of the same searches over and over again, consider creating a permanent link to them using Quick Links in Labs.

Update (6/10): Revised the example about searching for a label to use "urgent" instead of "important."

New in Labs: Inbox preview

Zach Yeskel — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Posted by Peter Balsiger, Software Engineer

Whenever I open up my inbox at work, I'm never surprised to find several new messages waiting to be read. The same thing can't always be said about my personal Gmail account. Sometimes I end up checking my mail only to find nothing new there.

No big deal, really. But now imagine that you access Gmail on a super slow connection from a remote place in Ethopia where it might take minutes to completely load your inbox. The disappointment is larger when you find out that there is nothing new to read and you could have saved all that time.

To ease this pain a bit, we created a new feature in Gmail Labs called Inbox Preview. While Gmail is loading, a simple, static preview of your inbox with your ten most recent messages is displayed. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Settings, and if you're on a slow connection you'll know from the start if it's worth the wait.

New in Labs: Inserting images

Zach Yeskel — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:08:00 +0000

Posted by Kent Tamura, Software Engineer

Well, it's about time. You no longer have to use workarounds to put images into your messages or attach images when you really want to inline them. Just turn on "Inserting images" from the Labs tab under Settings, and you'll see a new toolbar icon like this:

Make sure you're in rich formatting mode, or it won't show up. Click the little image icon, and you can insert images in two ways: by uploading image files from your computer or providing image URLs.

Keep in mind that Gmail doesn't show URL-based images in messages by default to protect you from spammers, so if you're sending mail to other Gmail users, they'll still have to click "Display images below" or "Always display images from ..." to see images you embed.

Got feedback on inserting images? Send it our way.

Typing in Indian Languages

Zach Yeskel — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:58:00 +0000

Anuj Sharma, Software Engineer

Until now, there hasn't been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice. That's why I'm happy to announce a new feature for Gmail that lets you type email in Indian languages. If you're in India, this feature is enabled by default. If not, you'll need to turn it on in the "Language" section under Settings. Once enabled, just click the Indian languages icon and type words in the way they sound in English -- Gmail will automatically convert them to their Indian language equivalent.

For example, if you have Hindi selected, "namaste" will transliterate to "नमस्ते." We currently support five Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, and businesses and schools using Google Apps should see this in the coming weeks.

Gmail Labs goes global

Zach Yeskel — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:12:00 +0000

Posted by Pal Takacsi, Engineering Manager

This post comes to you from our team in Switzerland, a small country with no fewer than four official languages and many more spoken by people living here. The majority of Gmail users are outside the U.S., so it's no surprise that since we launched Gmail Labs last year, people around the world have been asking for these experimental features in their local languages. As of today, we're making Gmail Labs available internationally.

You may wonder, since most Gmail features are available in almost every supported language immediately at launch, why Labs hasn't been. The truth is that Labs itself is a bit of an experiment -- it came out of people's 20% time, and we weren't sure if it would really work. Specifically, we thought there was a chance that everything would just break. Every time a Gmail user signs in we create a custom version of JavaScript for them based on the Labs features they have enabled. Since we have 43 Labs right now, there are 2⁴³ (~8 trillion) possible versions of the Gmail JavaScript that a user could get. If you account for the 49 languages where Labs are now available, it gets even bigger -- 49 x 2⁴³ (~430 trillion) versions. It would obviously be a challenge to actually test all of these versions. But we put a lot of effort into building an architecture that supports this type of modularity, and fortunately, it seems to be working pretty well so far. So we figured, why not, what's another another 422 trillion permutations?

If your language is set to, say, Italian, you'll see a new page in Settings (or Impostazioni) called Labs. There, you'll find a list of experimental features you can choose to turn on -- everything from the useful (like offline access), to the arcane (like filter import/export), to the slightly ridiculous (like mail goggles). Most of these are translated to work in all of Gmail's supported languages except Hebrew, Arabic, and Urdu. Keep in mind that all Labs features are early experiments -- no design reviews, no product analysis, and not that much testing -- so they may occasionally break. If you run into problems with your account after turning them on, try this escape hatch.

Tip: Manage several email accounts with Multiple Inboxes

Zach Yeskel — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:28:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Geller, University Programs Specialist

A couple weeks back we launched Multiple Inboxes, an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that you can use to customize the different "inboxes" you see in one view when you log into Gmail.

If you forward all your work or school email to Gmail, you can use Multiple Inboxes to see your two accounts separately within the same browser window. Here's how:

1. Turn on Multiple Inboxes from the Labs tab under Settings.
2. Set up a filter to auto-archive all mail sent to your work or school address.
3. Customize one of your multiple inboxes to show mail sent to your other address. To do this, go to the Multiple Inboxes tab under Settings and set up one of the panes to search for mail sent to your other address.

4. (Optional) Use a "custom from" address so that replies will be sent from Gmail but as if they're from your other account. This way, your coworkers or classmates won't know the difference.

I use Multiple Inboxes to keep track of email sent to my college alumni address which I forward to Gmail. I used to filter, label, and auto-archive all these messages (my alumni frisbee team listserve gets tons of mail), but found that I rarely looked at the relevant labels. Now with a separate "inbox" I can see them easily without cluttering my primary inbox.

A holiday break to play with all the new stuff

Zach Yeskel — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

It's been another busy year for the Gmail elves, trying to find places to store all these emails (don't you people ever sleep?)... If you're finding it hard to keep track of all the new things we've added to Gmail over the last few months, here are some of our favorites to check out while you're sipping your eggnog this week:

Catch up with distant friends and family with Gmail voice and video chat, or send them a text message with SMS chat.
When you're having trouble putting your feelings into words, try an emoticon. (There's nothing quite like a virtual emoticon hug...)
Pick a Gmail theme and spice up your inbox.
Turn on Tasks and keep track of your holiday shopping.
See your calendar, documents, and email all at once with Calendar and Docs gadgets.
Get a new, faster Gmail app on your mobile phone.
Use Mail Goggles to avoid sending out that embarrassing email after the company holiday party.
Send in your self-addressed stamped envelope and get yourself some Gmail stickers.
And there's more in Gmail Labs – forgotten attachment detector, superstars, and advanced IMAP controls – check out all the new stuff in the Labs tab under Settings.

On behalf of the entire Gmail team, happy holidays! We'll see you in 2009.