Google 2 point verification

Dear Readers,

As i said you all early in my wall that Google has just announced the next level of security measure to our accounts by introducing 2 point verification.

2 Point verification is nothing but once you enter your password for any Google account , you would be prompted to enter the verification code which will be generated on your smartphones. Once you enter the verification code if it matches then you would be allowed to access your account else you will not be able to access your account.

This two point verification is divided into two different parts 

1. Via smartphone

2. Via application specific password.

Via Smartphone:

This method is nothing but your verification code will be generated via your smartphone thru Google Authenticator application and you can use this to login to your Google account using that verification code.

Via application specific password:

Once smartphone verification is enabled for example if you have configured your gmail account with outlook or with your iphone mail application then it will not fetch any emails. It will say authentication failed. Because these applications will not be prompting for verification code so you would need to enter your application specific password.

Don't worry Google has many recovery option in-case if your phone is missed or stolen.

It's very simple to activate 2 point verification code.

1. Login to your Google account

2. Click on settings

3. Click on Accounts and import tab

4. Click on "Other Google account Settings"

5. Now click on "using 2 step verification" rest is very simple. Follow as said on screen.

Unread message in gmail

Dear Readers,

There are couple of changes in gmail Labs recently that i have noticed.

1. Search option for gmail labs has been introduced. Ie., you can give a search of any lab features instead of scrolling down.

2. New lab feature "Unread Message Icon". Actually either you can turn on "Title Tweak" lab feature or Unread Message icon feature. Both does the same job but display is different.

Stop Ads in your Gmail

Dear Readers,

An another good day with resolution to couple of queries from our readers. 

Ads are good occationally not every day, every minute. This really anoys to everyone. Most of you should be aware of Google Ads. They try to put ads on all possible applicaitons that google have and earn $$$'s by themself.

They put the ads on our gmail mailbox. Our readers has sated that they click on the ads accidently many times and it pops up many windows. Though not all ads will popup multiple windows but if we don't want obvisouly we should stop it. Lets see how.

1. Login to your Gmail account

2. At the top right corner click on "Settings"

3. Click on "Web Clibs" tab on the listing

4. Uncheck "Show my web clips above the Inbox" option. This will stop your ads in your gmail inbox.

Dear All, This blog is to inspire others to share and learn hence please share your learnings with us.

Moving next/previous message after archival

Folks,
 
As I keep saying in most of my post like everyone has their own taste. I like the way to be very professional and process related but not everyone will be like that. We have people with different taste. It’s since long time Google didn’t think about swapping to next/previous message if we archive any message. This feature was available in yahoo from earlier days. When we delete any emails from yahoo account we can setup an option either to move to next message or to stay back in inbox.
 
Now it’s Google which has introduced this feature.  Google gives three options upon archiving any message.
ü  Go to next conversation
ü  Go to previous conversation
ü  Go back to inbox
 
It’s up to you to choose which option suits for you. I don’t believe any users will request for other than the above 3 optionsJ.
 
Happy mailing

Easy identification of your gtalk Buddies

Dear All,

It’s known fact that we have 200+million users who has access to gtalk worldwide. Everyone has at least 30+ buddies in their list which includes family, friends, co-workers etc.,

It’s getting tough time for us to identify my friend john and my teacher john as both of them has the same name in their display. Mostly I will ping my teacher john thinking he is my friend john J you know how friends conversation starts…

Today’s post is to show you all how to easily identify the difference between identical friends in you gtalk.

First confirm with their email id which is your firend/worker/ whoever it may be. Now right click on their id from gtalk and choose “Rename” option. Now you can give the nick name as you want Eg: “Friend John/Teacher John” Simple.

Now when they login to gtalk you will be notified as “Friend John Online”. Happy Chatting.

Expand or merge conversations in Gmail - New feature

Dear Readers,

When we offer something  to users we should always offer them with choice. We cannot say to user like this is the new feature that i have introduced/discovered. A part of people will accept and a part of people will not.

Gmail team earlier they have given this feature by default. Ie., Merging the conversation with same subject line. Users are not given any other option. Finally we are used to it. Now considering everyone they have redesigned this option by leaving the choice to user to either turn it on or off. 

If you are the one who doesnt like the feature that was existing for years then you can follow the below steps to disable that.

1. Goto Settings --> General --> Click on "Conversation View Off"

Typing in Indian languages - Gmail

All,

My college friends Vijay, Mani, prakash and my school friend dharma, sethu etc use to give laughing comments on emails which sometimes makes hard to understand as they type in English directly on Tamil words.

Eg: ena da pandra (What are you doing). 

May be they might have not noticed the gmail feature which allows us to type in English then it converts automatically into many Indian language just by enabling it. Let's see how to do the same.

• Click on Settings once you sign in
• Under General tab click click on "Show all Language options" under language.

• Now you can Enable which language you wanna by default (I choose as Tamil) and click on "Save Changes" at the bottom.

Setup is done, Click on Compose email you will see the language tab as shown below. Just click on that and start typing your body of the email in English Eg: Enna. Giving space after Enna will change to appropriate language that you have chosen.

Gmail Priority Inbox

All,

As i said you in one of my earlier post, i use to have atleast 10 email accounts for various purpose, such as leaving comment on any online page, newsletters, personal, job search etc. I know you might have raised a question to yourself on me like "How do i manage all these?" Simple!!! I check the emails everyday :) and clear my inbox. If i miss one day then it will make me to sit in the hell.

Among 95% of email users will not do as i did, i know. Maintaining one account and remembering the password itself is like waslking on a rope to cross two tall building. The point is you have only one email account but receiving 1000+ emails everyday(including deals, newsletters etc). And how do you ensure that you have read some important emails. Missing some important email chances are high if you handle your mail box like this.

Now what's the solution???? I left this question to Google! Finally they came up with a smart solution : Priority Inbox!!! Wow!

Priority Inbox is a similar kind of inbox but it will hold only some important emails as per your settings. Yes, we have filter option i agree but this is different with filters or we can call it as advanced filter technique :).

Mailes will be held for your special attention in your priority inbox and all you need to do is just check this priority inbox regularly. This way you will be having less time to spend on reading 1000+ un important emails.

Gmail by itself analyze your inbox and give some sugession to add the emails as priority inbox emails with respect to the existing and frequent emails flow from your inbox. All you need to do is click on +/- to move the emails to priority inbox.

Let's see how to configure the same.

• Once you login to your gmail at top right corner you will see New Feature Pirority Inbox.
• Click on that, Google will analyze your existing emails in your inbox and give it's suggesion to add some emails to importance. Incase if you don't want click on "-" sign on the window.
• Goto Settings-->Priority inbox  as shown below to change your settings. Incase if you don't like this feature and decided to hide the priority inbox just click on "Do not show priority inbox" radio button as shown below.

If you have some filters already you can either override that or else you can leave that existing.

• To add some emails quickly to priority inbox, just open the email and click on +/- button as shown below to add or remove from priority inbox.

Stop tracking your Voice & Video Chat by Google

Dear All,

Hope by now everyone might have started calling your friends of US & Canada by unlimited free calls feature offered by Google. Wow!!! Hope for this feature extension and more like this from google.

Gmail offers us to do video chat and voice chat to all it's existing & new users. To sever better google always have a tracking system by default to know about any discrepancy in it's services. In this way all your voice and video chat is tracked by google and In case if the system finds any poor quality or video transfer rate then it automatically set an alert to its system.

Google then investigates in the background to ensure there is no issues with this feature instead there could be other reasons like poor bandwidth, hardware issues etc., in your PC.

This feature comes as a default. If you don't like Google to trace your voice and video chat we can always disable this feature by 3 simple steps.

1. Goto Settings in your right top corner of gmail main window

2. Select Chat tab

3. Un-check "Report quality statistics to help improve Gmail voice and video chat"

Login Activity of your Gmail account

It's not an easy way for us to track the IP address and location from where our gmail id is accessed. Google has taken this responsibility on behalf of us and gives this feature to know our login activity of our account.

To know your last logon activity of your Gmail account just scroll down till the bottom of your gmail main screen where you usually see the % of memory used on your account.

You should be seeing a verbiage "Last account activity:" Click on the "Details" link to open up a new window on which you will get the details of IP address and location where you gmail account is accessed. This way you can make sure you are the only user who logs in. Google also notify us if there is any suspicious activity on our account. Click here to know more on that feature.

Extended Undo Duration in Gmail

Dear All,

I know i am late to show you this feature to all my readers, Sorry guys.

This post is regarding gmail's extension in sent items Undo duration. Yes, a couple of weeks before Gmail team has implemented this feature  to all its users.

Once you sent an email to your pals earlier it was like 5-10 seconds given to undo any sent email if you might have enabled that feature, but now it was extended to 30 seconds. Wow!!! We also wish Google to implement recall feature as like Microsoft outlook.

How do we use this feature?

1. Login to Gmail

2. Click on "Settings" on top right corner.

3. Under General tab you should be seeing an option "Undo Send".

4. Check the "Enable Undo Send" box and change the duration b/w 5-30 as per your wish or convenient.

Call to Phone from Gmail for Free

Happy days happy days for Gmail users. Yes, Google has announced that we can call to any US/Canada users for free from our Gmail. For any international calls like U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute

.

Everything works just like our normal dial pad and VOIP features.  You should be having Google Voice phone# to access this feature and that # will be going as your caller ID. Gmail is working to enable this feature in batch. So everyone will be getting in next few days as "Call Phones" under Chat option in your Gmail.

Stop using any other crap services and let's raise our hands together n say "We love you Google"

Search Mails and Docs in Gmail

Gmail has added a new lab feature which allows us to search the mails and any of google docs which matches the keyword in our search result.

To enable this goto Settings  --> Labs and click on "Enable" under Apps Search option.

Once you save the new feature you should be now seeing a new search button as shown below. Bingoooo... Start enjoying this new feature.

Gmail New look and change in Contacts

Dear Readers,

I am not sure whether you got any chance to look into the new look and feel with your Gmail account, if not please check it right away.

With the improved pixels and new look; Gmail team has introduced us with recent changes in its existing feature on Contacts.

New look has:

• Replaced "compose mail" with a button.
• Mail, Contacts, Tasks moved to top from bottom.
• Select All, Read, Unread other options are moved under a small drop down button which is adjacent to Archive box.

Updates to Contacts:

• As like email, we can now group/un-group contacts + key board shortcuts works with contacts.
• Sorting contacts with last/First name.
• Custom labels on phone#'s but synchronizing with your smart phones are not possible with this feature.
• Undo contacts actions, Structured maintenance,Auto Save and Merging bulk contacts are now easy.

Drag and Drop attachments from gmail to desktop directly

Dear Readers,

Let me not write any stories for this post as it's self explanatory.

From now on you can directly drag and drop your attachments from the incoming emails on Gmail to your desktop. Once you receive any emails just drag the attachments to the desktop location where you want to save it for further use.

Happy surfing with Google.

Multiple Sign-on with your Gmail ID

Dear Readers,

I should be having at-least 10 different g-mail account for various point of contacts. I use filters in other accounts to forward other account emails to single account thru which i can manage all the 10 different accounts. We cannot blame on IE/Chrome/Mozilla for not allowing us to login with multi sign-in facility, it's purely with the email provider like Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail. 

Now it's time for me to say once again "I Love You Google!"

Gmail team has work around with various techniques and finally it's out with this feature. We are now allowed to switch between multiple id's that we have with Gmail. We need to turn the multiuser signon option.

Let's see how to setup?

1. Click on "Settings" on the top right corner.

2. Click on "Accounts and Import" tab.

3. Click on "Google Account Settings"  link near to "Change account settings"

4. Now select "Change" under "Multiple Sign-in" option and read the instruction carefully.

Not all the features are allowed to use. We have restriction with Offline & Calender option which are rarely used by many users.

Chat History of a buddy in Gmail

Dear Readers,

Google has introduced a new feature in Gtalk ie., to know the past chat history of a particular buddy. There are some scenarios that we might have came across to get the chat details of particular contact for some reason. But we may need to search in gmail search box where you will end up with all the emails and other stuffs of that buddy and it will be tough time to get the info thats required.

For this we have a two alternate choice.

1. In Gmail search box type "Chat example@yahoo.com" to get the chat information of that buddy.

2. Alternatively in Gtalk open the chat window of that buddy and choose the option "View Past Chats" as shown below.

shva in Gmail

Dear Readers,

I am not sure whether you have noticed this or not. If NO then check it right away. If you are Gmail user then when you login to your account you might notice this as shown below. This is unique for everyone.

Have you every wondered what is this? Is it an acronym? Or Is it a secret word if so why it's unique? Many questions raises if we start thinking. Let's pause and see what exactly it is. 

As per Mike Sego ( Gmail Frontend Engineer, 2005-2007) "shva" is an acronym for "should have valid authentication"

Upon successful authentication of your credentials shva is populated.

Rich Text Signature in Gmail

Dear Readers,

Thanks for your continuous reading. Your suggestions and feedback triggers me for more post. Today's post is about Google which we all loves madly.

Recently Google has introduced rich text signature to all users. Previously we have plain text signature but now we can add images and other stuffs to our Gmail signature.

Goto Settings --> Scroll down to Signature and add your pictures or weblink etc.

Detect Suspicious Log ins

Dear Readers,

I know you all love Google as like me :). Yes, We all love you badly Google.

Mostly these hackers are targeting to access our email accounts to know our personal informations. Google has taken many steps to prevent these types of attacks and keep you secured. Few months back Google has launched a new features for Google account holders. Yes, this feature is to secure your Google account from hackers.

This feature will trace your login information and report to you on any suspicious activity on your account. What is suspicious here is  it will notify you with a message when someone log's on with your credentials in various locations. How does it works is as per the IP address provided by us the automated system @ Google tracks your login credentials in different location and alerts you incase of any suspicious activity.

For Eg: If you are have registered your IP address in New Jersey, then Google starts tracking your accessibility of account information in various location and if some one tries to login in with your credentials in another 30 mins in Canada obviously which is not possible then you will be notified with a message from Google. It will prompt us to report as an abuse and we can change the password immediately. 

If your spouse or any authorized person uses then you can skip it :).