smart computer use?

Interesting. I leave my computer for just a few minutes and all of the sudden gmail grew some buttons.

I had to check some other themes just to make sure it wasn’t the theme I was using only. It does seem to be all themes. I also see some search inputs in the drop down boxes for “Move To” and “Labels”. Good stuff.

I haven’t noticed any updates to Gmail recently that visually grabbed me like this one. Maybe it’s just cause it’s such a commonly used interface component that has been given the new looks.

What the hell is Fmail?

I’ve a got a story for you.

Recently, I tried to punch in “gmail” in the Firefox address bar, thinking that since Firefox is smart it’ll just automatically take me over to my Gmail account.

Well… I typed Gmail wrong and instead typed in “fmail” and hit the Enter key.

Nuts. After watching the screen trying to load some web page, and watching in awe realizing that I had typed in “fmail” instead of “gmail”, I figured “What the heck. I’m just gonna sit and see what happens”.

Loading continues…

Fmail has a home page. There is a good ol’ landing page for Fmail.

It’s a Facebook email app. Nice. Alright, I guess I’m not really interested in email apps at this current time. After 8+ years of battling with trying to find the ultimate email app, I’ve ended up using a free web app provided by Google. Yeah, good times. I’m not going to even think about trying out Fmail, even though I ended up their by accident.

Cripes. I gotta be more careful when just entering simple keywords in the Firefox address bar.

Back to the World Series. Go Rays!

Alright. Maybe I was too harsh. I’ve quickly noticed that Fmail appears to interface with Gmail in Facebook. Props. That is a good platform to work from for Facebook, bringing in Gmail and all. I was too harsh. Yeah I like Fmail. I should maybe log into Facebook more often.

I guess you could say that I’m rather new to the Blackberry smartphone craze. Up until I got a Blackberry Curve, I really didn’t use a phone for much more than anything but making phone calls. I have a few months of Blackberry use under my belt now, and I have 4 blackberry apps that I find to be very useful, meaning that I use them frequently to good effect.

Gmail for Mobile

This is the single most usefull Blackberry app for me. I pipe all my email accounts into Gmail and use Gmail as my main email interface. This is because I use 3 different computers on a day to day basis and need to keep my email organized and accessible on a common platfrom from all three computers.

Gmail just makes handling my email so easy.

So… the first thing I did when I got a Blackberry Curve was to download the Gmail for Mobile app that allows me to use Gmail right on my phone. Brilliant!

It helps me to keep on top of my communications while on the go. Good stuff. Plus I like it a lot better than the built in email on the Blackberry Curve.

Google Maps for Mobile

Another Google product? Yes!

Google Maps on a Blackberry smartphone is just flat out useful. I rarely use map services on my computers because I’m kind of an on-the-fly traveler. When I’m out on the go, that is when I need to access map services, and being able to use Google Maps right on my Blackberry is very handy for finding places quickly.

Flickr for Mobile

This little app from Flickr allows me to upload photos right from my phone to my Flickr account. I can add descriptions and tags easily too. This is a useful app mainly because I like to take a lot of random photos with the camera on my Blackberry and then I can just upload them straight to Flickr and move on.

Flickr is nice too because I can set up photo streams on my blogs. What I am easily able to do is this:

1. Take a photo on the Blackberry
2. Upload it to Flickr and tag it properly
3. Watch the photo automatically get put into the photo stream on my blog

Great!

Yahoo Instant Messenger for Mobile

Being a web developer, I have a lot of contacts that are not local who use Yahoo Instand Messenger as a primary way to communicate with me.

Having this little chat app running on my phone allows me to communicate with my Yahoo contacts easily, without needing to be in front of my computer.

It’s very nice to be able to give direction to a programmer on a web project through my phone. It makes me more accessible to the developers and programmers that I work with and allows me to in turn let them work efficiently because they don’t need to sit around and wait for me to get back in front of a computer to chat with them for on-the-fly types of situations.

Bridging the gap

One thing that I noticed about my list is that all my most useful apps are allowing me to mimic actions that I would typically need a computer to do. This just goes to show how smartphones in general are starting to bridge the gap between what computers and phones can be used for.

Interesting.

There’s plenty more

There are a lot more useful Blackberry apps out there, I’m just scratching the surface here with my little 4 point list.

I hope that you might find this information useful, feel free to share any apps that you find useful on a regular basis.

I’ve recently run into an issue with Gmail (only on one of my computers) where the font type changes after I click any link in Gmail after viewing my inbox.

When I load my inbox initially, I see this style of font, the standard Arial Gmail font at it’s normal size:

But, after I click on anything… viewing a message, archives or anything else, the font style changes to what looks like Tahoma:

As I mentioned this only happens on one computer, in FireFox. I’m not sure what is causing this. I’ve cleared my cache a few times, tried messing with FireFox font style settings, and also restarting my computer. No luck yet.

Hopefully I figure this out before it drives me nuts… Any input would be appreciated if you happen to run across this blog post and happen to know what I am running into here. But that occurence would be a great coincidence, right?

Have you been a big fan of saving and organizing your emails into folders? Have you ever pondered this question? If not, you maybe should. Organizing emails into folders has long been a standard. There is now finally something that will allow us to break from that folder-use standard, and it is provided courtesy of Gmail.

Introducing Labels.

(cue the audience cheer track)

From Gmail Tips – The Complete Collection:

Labels. Gmail lets you assign a Label to a message and then view all messages assigned to that Label. Sounds a lot like the typical “Folder”, right? Well, almost. Unlike Folders, you can assign multiple Labels to a message letting the message span multiple categories. To better understand how Labels differ from Folders, consider the the real-world counterparts, and it should become clear.

Read the rest of the article to get a better explanation and tips on how to use the labels. It’s a fascinating yet kinda obvious concept. One of those things that just makes you wish it’d been available widely before. Before you got the folder system etched into your habits.

If this is a new concept to you, and your excited, wait til you see this: Colored labels. Look at that screen shot. A brilliant way of organizing email. Good stuff.