WebMail

E-mail Service Guide breaks down e-mail plans

If you're contemplating switching to another e-mail provider, but have been too lazy to do a feature comparison of the competition, there's a new tool that might be of assistance. Aptly named E-mail Service Guide takes more than 100 hosted e-mail providers, and lets you comparison shop by feature.

This is handled gracefully with a search tool that lets you plug in which options you want, like whether the service has POP3 and IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) support, or customer service by phone or e-mail so you can talk to an actual human if something goes wrong. … Read more

Hotmail gets more Bing with new quick add menu

Microsoft has updated its Hotmail Web e-mail service with more Bing search integration. Hotmail's quick add menu, which was introduced to a limited number of users earlier this year, lets users do a quick Web searches for things like maps, movie times, restaurants, images, and videos. Previously this used Windows Live search, but starting today it's grabbing results from Bing.

Just as it worked before, search results stream in on the right inside of the window, and can be inserted inside of outgoing messages or replies. Maps and videos can be quickly resized, and in the case of … Read more

GeeMail puts offline Gmail on your desktop

GeeMail (download for Windows|Mac) is a standalone Gmail client that runs on Adobe AIR. It looks and feels exactly like Google's Gmail, or at least how it did before the introduction of labs last year. It's big feature is that it lets you view and reply to Gmail messages while offline. Messages are then sent the next time the application detects you have a connection.

Unlike Google's official offline solution that uses Gears, GeeMail is quite a bit faster. It grabbed 1,500 of my most recent messages in just a couple of minutes. This speed, … Read more

Preview: AOL's Web mail with a dose of Silverlight

We were lucky enough to get a chance to play with one of AOL's works-in-progress, a version of the company's popular Web mail service done entirely in Microsoft's Silverlight. It was briefly shown off at Mix '08 last week, but is not due to get into your hands for another month or two--where it will be an opt-in alpha before going out to everyone else when Silverlight 2.0 leaves beta.

In its current form it doesn't look a whole lot different from the regular version of AOL's mail. The big difference is in the … Read more

GlideFree Web mail gets an 'A' for effort, a 'B' for everything else

High on my list of New Year's resolutions for 2008, no joke: e-mail friends more often. Since time is a major constraint, I want my e-mail interface easy to get around, an enabler for quick composition. Write it up, send it out. These are the greatest drawbacks to GlideFree, Glide's beta Web mail release, which has over-enthusiastically swaddled some useful and even clever functionality in unnecessary layers.

For example, GlideFree simplifies the attachment process by bringing attachable multimedia options to you in a drop-down menu, rather than making you embark on the usual hunting and pecking expedition for the files scattered all over your directory. Bravo! Then it ruins the fun by forcing the recipient to open three separate browser tabs just to view an attached video.

And why, for instance, is there no field for simply typing in a destination address? Why must you click into the address book and add even one-time recipients, and then navigate an additional drop-down menu each time you select a repeat contact? In another head-scratcher, there's a short drop-down list of symbols in the beneficial built-in word processor--math symbols. Somehow it was determined that users would favor the 'not equal' sign and Greek 'beta' to accents, tildes, and trademark symbols.… Read more

Forward your Gmail to Outlook or Thunderbird

Last Friday I described how to receive messages sent to your ISP mail account in your Gmail inbox. Lots of people prefer the sorting, contact lists, and other features of their client mail program, so today I'm going to turn things around and tell you how to forward mail sent to your Gmail address in the Outlook or Thunderbird inbox for your ISP mail account.

Start by logging into Gmail, clicking the Settings link in the top-left corner, and selecting Forwarding and POP/IMAP. If your ISP uses POP3, choose Enable POP for all mail if you want to … Read more

Centralize your e-mail on Gmail.

I haven't checked my ISP mail inbox for about six months, but that doesn't mean I'm out of touch. I get the messages delivered to my Gmail account automatically, which allows me to read the mail on any PC with an Internet connection. I can even reply or send new messages in Gmail as if they came from the address my ISP supplied.

Start by logging into your Gmail account, or if you don't already have one, sign up here. Click Settings in the top-right corner of your inbox, and then choose Accounts. To receive mail … Read more

Is a Gmail update coming down the pipe?

Gmail may be getting a long overdue user interface (UI) update soon. Gmail's interface has been essentially the same since it launched more than three years ago, so it should be interesting to see how the update looks.

According to Garett Rogers over at ZDNet, Google has been asking users to translate snippets from the new UI through their Google In Your Language program. The users were asked to translate the phrase, "Newer Version," for a service called Gmail UI.

There aren't any specifics on what exactly we will be seeing in the upgrade yet, but … Read more

Offline version of Gmail in the works?

According to the Hindustan Times, Google plans to release an offline version of Gmail. I think that it's safe to assume that it would run on Google Gears, much like Google Reader's offline feature does.

Obviously, the lack of offline e-mail reading is the one huge downside to using Web mail. If Google implements this correctly, it could be a pretty big deal, but we will see if the functionality of a browser-based offline solution can compare to an actual desktop client.

It should be noted that Windows Live also currently has its Live Mail Desktop client available … Read more