iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 Reveals GMail Archive Feature

 Apple's upcoming update to the iPhone OS version 4.0 highlighted many enhancements made to the mail app including a unified inbox, multiple exchange support, threaded messages and fast switching. However, one highly requested feature has been the integration of Gmail’s “archive” feature into iPhone’s native mail app. Apple has finally added the Gmail Archive feature to the native Mail.app in iPhone OS 4.0. The feature is implemented for Gmail users the same way you would typically delete your message, by swiping your finger across the message you are interested in deleting, or in this case archiving.

In case you missed it, there were reports that in Beta2 – users are unable to save screenshots and photos in the Camera Roll, that’s why the image above was taken with an HD camera instead.

Google Mobile Services Updated For The iPad

Google wanted in on the iPad craze and they have just announced a complete compatibility and a new layout for their Services on the iPad. Gmail, will now appear in a two column layout and uses all HTML5 which ensures a seamless, clean display. Other services include YouTube – which works with iPad sans issues – and the Google Mobile App. The Google Mobile App has been made bigger to accommodate the iPad’s larger screen. Even if enmity still flows between Google/Apple it’s nice to see Google’s developers hold no grudge against their tablet-toting counterparts.

You can, trick Gmail into thinking you're on an iPad with some tweaking. All you need to do is change the browser's user agent, which can be made possible with just a small amount of effort on some browsers. Here's how to do it in three of them (in order of easiest, to most difficult.)

Safari:

(Mac + PC) This works on both platforms. Just go into Safari's "preferences" menu, click on the "advanced" tab. Go all the way to the bottom, and check the "show develop in menu bar". Close the menu, this will allow you to find a new "develop" option in the main menu. On the Mac this can be found as one of the options on the top of the screen. On the PC, it's a on the page-looking icon next to the Safari settings button on the top right of the screen. In either case, find the develop menu, then go to user agent, then pick "other." You will get a menu to type a custom user agent string. Just drop this (found at blog Digital Inspiration) in there: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10. Easy now you're done headead over to Gmail, log-in, and and that’s it

Firefox:

With Firefox, it's not that as easy to change user agents as it is in Safari. You will have to download an extension for it first. User Agent Switcher is the most popular one. And the good news, is that this add-on is good for many other things, like tricking certain sites into thinking you're on the browser they require. Once you've installed UAS, you'll find its options in the Tools menu at the top of your browser. A new option for "default user agent" will be there, go ahead and select that, then "edit user agents" in the sub-menu. Now you just have to opt to create a new user agent. Just clear out all the text boxes that are already filled out, then give it a name (like "iPad"), and drop the same user agent text that we used in Safari in the user agent box. When finished, User Agent Switcher should have already picked your new iPad setting as its default, meaning you're good to go. Just be sure to switch it back to the default for any other pages you're on.

Chrome:

Chrome is the hardest of the browsers to trick into thinking it's an iPad. For now, the Chameleon User Agent Spoofer extension does not work with the settings that was used for Safari and Firefox. Instead, you need to go into the guts of Chrome, and change the user agent settings with a hex code editor. It is a lot of work, but it can be done. Blog Labnol has a good how-to guide here. Just swap out the agent string at the end of step two with the same code we used for Safari and Firefox.

Android Users:

Users of the xScope browser on Android (QR download code on the right) might have noticed that an overnight update of the app added the iPad user agent option in the browser's built-in user agent switching. On Nexus One this kind of worked when holding the phone in landscape mode, though it was utterly useless when held in portrait mode. Still, this option was a whole lot easier than trying to tweak the user agent settings in any of the mentioned desktop browser, even if it's just as useless.

HTC Desire "Black Edition" Coming Soon to Orange in UK

HTC Desire also called the Google Nexus One look-a-like smartphone was unveiled during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. TC Mobile a Taiwanese wireless cell phone manufacturer that has been making a splash with the introduction of interesting new Smartphones in the past few years. HTC is known for its remarkable technical specifications such as HTC Desire. It’s slim-line designed is equipped with a fast 1Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a large, 3.7-inch format display.

The display remarkable in terms of format; the screen is a multi-touch AMOLED-type screen, so that the color saturation and contrast are immediately noticeable. There has only been two colors displayed a light grey and a white but now there is confirmation that a Black Edition Desire is available. Word from Conor Maples, Orange UK's PR guru, says that the operator will stock not only the standard-issue gunmetal Desire, but also the special Black Edition, which will be exclusive to Orange in the UK. The more familiar model will be on carrier's shelves some time early next month, with the darker, edgier Desire making an entry later next month.

Supersonic Phone Dubbed HTC Evo; First 4G In US

 

Sprint dropped a bombshell on day 2 of CTIA event, by unveiling the most powerful Android powered smartphone, the WiMAX-powered EVO 4G. The HTC EVO 4G is extremely similar to the HTC HD2. Both share the same dazzling 4.3-inch touch screen and basic size. The EVO 4G is slightly thicker and has a rounder back. Less metal is used and more plastic is in its place. The HD2 feels of higher quality, but the EVO 4G is not that far off in that respect.

The phone features:

• Android 2.1 on a 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8650 chipset.
• 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM, which is assisted by a MicroSD slot supporting up to 32GB cards.
• It swaps between EVDO Rev. A, WiMAX and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g on demand.
• The phone is dominated by a 4.3-inch, 800-by-480 65,000-color TFT LCD capacitive touch screen.
• There's an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3-megapixel unit on the front.
• The camera also records and streams 720p, high-def video, which it can play through an HDMI out port at the bottom. And it even has a kickstand for full enjoyment of the HD video.
• The Evo 4G weighs 170g and measures 120.5 mm by 67 mm by 13 mm.

The form factor of the phone is not what's most impressive on this device. The software really sets it apart. Because it is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, it absolutely flies. In fact, say it is the fastest Android handset ever. It has the newest version of HTC's Sense UI concept on board, which features a friend stream, improved widgets and other nifty features. Widgets provide easy access to social media content, bookmarks, and other phone resources. You can update your “status” on several social media sites using HTC’s social widget. The EVO is a “with Google” phone and supports Exchange, Gmail, POP, and IMAP email accounts — although you can only have one Exchange account configured to the phone. We prefer having support for multiple Exchange accounts, but for most users this won’t be the end of the world.

The announcement of the EVO, in combination with the recent addition of the Nexus One to their network, also puts Sprint in an unusual position of hardware leadership. In just a few weeks they've gone from a middling smartphone line-up to having arguably the two best Android phones on the market. EVO 4G is expected to hit the market this summer.

Gnome Gmail: Gmail and Linux Integration Made Easy

If you are a savvy Linux user, and you use Gmail as a preferred email app - you might be one of the many who are annoyed with the minor snags that make the app unappealing, like - no coverage for right click file sending and complex mail links. Gnome Gmail does a much better job of integrating Gmail on Linux platform.

Download a DEB (Ubuntu/Debian) or RPM (Fedora/openSUSE) package from the site, install it, and then head to your Preferred Applications preference (in Preferences, under the System menu in Ubuntu). Set Gmail as your "Mail Reader," and now it should really respond like a desktop client—on email links in every browser, when you right-click a file and select "Send to," and with full functionality when email links include cc: or pre-written subject lines.

Google Apps users, you're not left out in the cold—hit the Configure link when you're asked to sign into Gmail on a right-click Send To action, and you can add your Google Apps login and make it the default.

Gnome Gmail is a free download for Linux systems running a Gnome Desktop.

Is Gmail Too Slow? Google's Working On It

At SXSW in Austin at Google's Panel, Jonathan Perlow (a Gmail team member) asked the attendees to raise their hands if they thought Gmail was too slow and surprisingly a fair percentage of the audience members raised their hands . Basically Gmail slows down when there is a power user with hundreds of thousands of messages (most of which are usually junk) but Perlow had a response. He confidently said "we are fixing it" but didn't exactly elaborate but Google's always improving Gmail so hopefully we'll see some improvements for power users.

Gmail currently has hundreds of millions of users (although they would not give an exact number), and it ranks as the third most popular email service (behind Yahoo Mail and Microsoft's Email, both of which have been around much longer than Google's Gmail.) Google has come a long way since it first started the project and has experienced success. Fixing issues especially those that concern speed will definitely give Google a leg up against their competition. What do you think of the whole ordeal? Have you experienced slow loads on Gmail? Share your thoughts and comments below.

BIS 3.0 Upgrade Scheduled for March 14th (EMEA Only)

RIM announced the upgrade of BIS service for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and, Africa) for March 14th. As announced earlier, this upgrade will be bringing 2 way Gmail sync along with features like Open Office and WMA support.

During the time of the upgrade BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers may be unable to send or receive messages, use the BlackBerry Internet Service web site, or perform activities such as creating new accounts, accessing their Internet mailbox, integrating third-party email accounts, or viewing email attachments during the maintenance.

Also, wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers during the maintenance

Estimated downtime listed for 4 hours, of course unless there are problems.

BIS 3.0 Rumored to Release Next Week?!

Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) is the platform that connects RIM devices to the web, without going through a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). BIS is used by wireless carriers, while BES is used by corporations. Anyway, version 3.0 of BIS is rumored to come out next week, according to Blackberry fan sites.

For GMail users, things will be much better as BIS 3.0 has 2-way read/unread sync, including label support. A later 3.1 version will be even more Google-friendly, with Calendar sync (support for Yahoo and Hotmail is also rumored). Hopefully, more improvements will happen while we wait in anticipation.

Free Yourself From Google

So you're fed up with Google, and you've got a litany of reasons. You don't even have to explain—I'm just here to help you crawl out from under the shadow of the big G, step by step.

You don't have to be ready to commit to a full overhaul of your online lifestyle to understand why someone might want to yank their data from Google's servers, and hand it off to someone else: You've got Google's CEO deafly rehashing deceptive arguments about privacy—"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know about , maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"— hesitating on a drawback; you've got contextual advertising that seems just a little too closely tuned to that sexy love letter your girlfriend sent you while you were on that business trip; or you've got that violently insane ex husband who now knows where you are because of Google's clumsy Buzz rollout. Most of all, you've got no privacy and plenty of reasons to change,  are you're ready for change?

The decision to close your Google account has to be carefully considered—after all, this is the place that stores your email, documents, contacts, photos, news, and even your health records. This level of investment to one service is as good a reason to leave as it is to stay: If looking at your Google Dashboard, which lists all the services you use, the amount and type of information you store on them, doesn't make you feel a little uneasy, then hell, what would?

Anyway, I'm not here to make the case for anyone to drop Google altogether—it's not something I'm prepared to do, for a start—I'm just here to tell you how to do it. Here's everything you need to know about life after Google.

Search

It's easy to forget that there are other search engines in the world, because Google has been so plainly dominant over the last few years. But they're here, and they're actually great.

The best alternative to Google, by a long shot, is Microsoft's Bing. It's an evolution of the Live search engine, and it's offers a distinctly different experience than Google: it's far from minimalist, with a colorful interface, content-tailored results pages, and emphasis on reducing clicks, rather than reducing clutter. Coming from Google it can be visually jarring, and the fact that the results for common searches are different—it could be better or worse—meaning that at first, you'll get the feeling that it isn't working right.

Be patient give it some time, you'll realize that it's pretty damn good. And even if search isn't perceived as the biggest threat to your privacy, it's important to make the switch anyway—after all, it was Google search that was the gateway to all the other Google services, which you're now trying untangle yourself from.

Email

Back when it launched in 2005, Gmail lured users with insane amounts of free storage space: One gigabyte. Impossible. This caught the dominant services of the day completely off guard, and made their free webmail seem utterly ancient.

Today, that one gigabyte has grown to nearly seven, and on the surface not much has changed about old' Gmail. Meanwhile, the companies that were blindsided back in 2005 have had plenty of time to play catch up, and in some cases, exceed Google's offering. Here's how to make the full switch:
Backing up your Gmail: There are a number of ways to do this, but one stands out as the easiest: The email client method.

1.) Download Thunderbird, a free email client from the same people who make Firefox (Download for Windows, OS X)
2.) Enable IMAP access on your Gmail account, by clicking the Setting link in the top right of your inbox, navigating to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, and selecting the "Enable IMAP" radio button

3.) File -> New Mail Account

4.) Enter your name and Gmail address, after which Thunderbird should find your mail settings automatically,
and set itself up as an IMAP client:

(If this doesn't happen, consult Google's guide for a manual setup.

5.) Once the account is set up, open Thunderbird's Account Settings panel, and navigate to the Synchronization and Storage tab. Make sure "Keep messages for this account on this computer" and "Synchronize all messages regardless of age" are both selected.

6.) Wait for your messages to sync to your computer—this could take hours, especially if you're near your Gmail storage limit.

What you've done here is imported all of your Gmail messages into a local client—Thunderbird—which lets you browse them, search them, or back them up to an external hard drive for posterity. And if you switch to another IMAP-based service, you can import these old messages into your new account simply by dragging them from your Gmail inbox folder in Thunderbird to your new account's inbox folder.
Contacts are a trickier question, but at the very least you can use Gmail's contact exporting tool (under your Gmail inbox folder list) to create a CSV file or or VCard, for importing into a client like Thunderbird.

The best alternative service: As long as it's been since Gmail showed up on the scene, the webmail scene hasn't seen many exciting new players—Google has a knack of preempting new competition when it moves into a product category. So, for the best remaining alternative is a veritable oldie: Yahoo mail. Consider the facts:
• It's still free
• It offers unlimited storage
• POP access is available in the free version, and with a little fiddling, so is IMAP access
• Free text messages in certain countries
• The interface doesn't look like it was designed in 1999, like certain other webmail clients.

The matter of Buzz: Now, when you ditch Gmail, you'll also be losing Google Buzz, which is a sort of location-aware status update system that nobody has really had the time to get into yet. Don't worry: Buzz was a response to other services, not a trailblazer, so you'll be served just fine sticking with Twitter (which lets you update you status with geolocation), FourSquare (which lets you alert your friends as to which particular establishments you visit, and see what other people think of said establishments), and Facebook (for posting media and accepting comments on it). Buzz didn't have time to become vital, so switching away from it should be easy.

Calendar

Exporting your Google calendars: This one's easy. Just:

1.) Navigate to your GCal settings page, and click on the Calendars tag.

2.) Export calendars to an ICS file, like so:

3.) That's it!

The best alternative: Yahoo calendar is fine, but in the spirit of spreading your vital info around, let's go with Windows Live Calendar. One you've created a Live ID—you pretty much need one of these nowadays—you're automatically given a Live Calendar account. To import your Google Calendars, just do the following:
1.) Open Live Calendar
2.) Click "Subscribe"
3.) Import the ICS file you exported from Gmail, like this:

Photos

Not that many people use Picasa, so this one should be easy. Plus, there are some obviously superior alternatives.

• Flickr doesn't stop at being a great photo sharing site, it's also an amazing resource for photographers, both expert and amateur. Storage is limited with a monthly upload cap.
• Photobucket is a simple gallery service, with an emphasis on sharing over archiving. Storage is limited to 1GB.
• Shutterfly is another super-simple service, with unlimited storage (Google doesn't even offer that for free)
• Facebook shouldn't be counted out—its photo compression may be aggressive, but it does allow you to upload and tag a virtually unlimited number of photos.

Documents

A lot of people find themselves using Google Docs because it's just so damn convenient—you receive a document in your Gmail account, and suddenly, hey, it's in the Google Docs service! That's how they get you. And interestingly enough, despite Google's acquisition of Writely and subsequent improvements on in the Docs service, there's still an objectively superior online document editing service out there.

ZoHo Docs is a full online office suit (among other things) which does virtually everything Google Docs can do, and often more. It offers deep document editing, offline editing (!), and collaborative editing. Document compatibility on ZoHo is absolutely tops, and the formatting and editing options far exceed Google Docs. There's a text editor, a spreadsheet editor and a presentation editor, to name a few.

Pulling the Plug

So, you've migrated what you can, and settled into you new services nicely. Now, it's time to close your Google account out, once and for all? Are you ready? Are you sure? Ok.
For any grievances you may have about Google's privacy practices, you have to give them credit for making the process stupidly easy.
1.) From any Google page, click the Settings link in the top right, then Account Settings from the submenu.
2.) Next to "My Products", click the "Edit" link
3.) From here, choose to delete individual services, or close your Google Account altogether.

4.) Confirm that you want all of your data deleted.

5.) DO IT.
Feels strange, doesn't it? For anyone with enough spite and motivation to follow this guide, though, I suspect "strange" could be replaced with any number of more gracious adjectives. So, ex-Googlers: Do you feel better now?

Google Acquires reMail iPhone App, and Hire's Developer

Google has acquired the reMail iPhone app and the developer is joining the Google after discontinuing the iPhone app.

“I’m thrilled to announce that Google has acquired reMail! I will be joining Google in Mountain View as a Product Manager on the Gmail team.”

reMail is an application on your phone. reMail downloads email directly from your email provider to your phone, and your personal information, passwords, emails are never sent to or stored on our servers. Now that reMail is discontinued for iPhone, if you already have purchased it for iPhone it will stay there. You can still get support until the end of March.they have even enabled all paid reMail features for you: You can activate these by clicking “Restore Purchases” inside the app. reMail downloads email directly from your email provider to your phone.

Here's a video demo of the app -