Webware

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Tuesday's release of a much-improved Web client for Gmail on the iPhone and Android handsets was nice, but it's still got me salivating at the idea of a native application for the iPhone. Over the last year we've hounded the Gmail team on whether one was on the way, and the answer is--in typical Google fashion, that there will be no discussion of products that have not been announced.

But that doesn't mean one isn't in the works.

So let's take a look at what a native Gmail application could give us over what Apple is currently offering and is set to release in the upcoming 3.0 firmware.

1. Push delivery/Push notifications
Gmail for Android does something no other client of Gmail does: push notifications. This means that the second you get a message it lets you know with a pop-up. The fastest you can set the iPhone's Mail application to refresh Gmail is every 15 minutes. So could a native iPhone application do the same thing as Gmail for Android? Probably.

An official Google spokesperson told us that no other platform has this push service (including desktop clients), and the other official Gmail native apps simply auto-refresh every few minutes. With the upcoming firmware 3.0, Google could offer the push notifications of new messages through Apple's push data stream either in the form of a badge that updates on the app's icon, or with a small preview that pops up with the first line or two of the message.

2. Offline/Gears
The new version of Gmail for Android has offline reading and composing, meaning you can go through your mail and get work done even when you don't have a connection. While the iPhone's Mail app lets you read, save, and compose messages, it doesn't download a big chunk of your in-box or all of the attachments that come with it, which means you can be out of luck if you can't get online to view a work document or spreadsheet. Which brings us to...

3. Attachment handling
The attachment viewing of Gmail on the desktop can be an absolute joy. PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and PDFs can be viewed in an HTML viewer that cuts down on the start-up time and the requirement for any special software. While the iPhone can natively view these, it doesn't include search or the option to save the file locally. A local app could offer both.

Likewise, when composing an e-mail in the native Mail app, adding attachments is limited to photos, which with the upcoming firmware is much simpler with systemwide copy and paste. However, if you're using the Web client, it's incapable of accessing your local files, which means you're stuck using the native app if you want to add or take a quick photo as an attachment.

4. Smarter archiving
Not all Gmail users archive their messages, probably because they don't understand what it does. Archiving takes a message out of your in-box while keeping it in your account, letting you search for it later. It's a handy feature, yet the iPhone native mail client gives the impression that we're deleting messages we don't want to see in our in-box, something which goes against the very principle of having 7GB of mail storage.

If you've set up Gmail using the iPhone's Gmail setup wizard you can in fact archive messages by selecting them and moving them to your "All Mail" folder. Alternately, for native app users who have set up Gmail using the special IMAP instructions the delete function does not actually delete the message but archives it. Confused? A native Gmail app might make a better differentiation between the two, and let you control what you want deleted and archived from the get-go.

Gmail's task list

5. A standalone task list
Gmail's task list is not the most full-featured to-do list app out there, but it's simple and handy. Having it as part of a native app would let you access it and make edits when offline. Google could even give users the option to create hard due dates for each item, which could be synced up to your phone's calendar and give you a buzz when they had to be done.

6. Combined contact look-up
Here's a problem: I have one contact list on my phone and another on Gmail. Sure Google has an official solution that will sync up both and combine them into one massive contact list, but what if I want to keep the two separated to keep my iPhone's phonebook a little smaller?

A native application would help sort that out by making use of the contacts I have on my phone and giving quick auto-complete-as-you-type suggestions for people on my Gmail contact list. Right now, typing addresses from the native iPhone will only bring up auto-complete suggestions if that person is on my contact list, or if I've recently sent them a message.

7. Built-in chat
Chat has become a big part of Gmail's desktop version, yet on the iPhone it's relegated to a finger-friendly browser version that will sign you off when you close your browser or switch tabs. That's not a good solution. Why not build it into a native version of Gmail on the phone like there is on Android?

(Credit: Apple)

8. GPS and location awareness
Location is becoming an increasingly important part of mobile apps, and Gmail is no different. When Google puts advertising into the mobile version of Gmail you can bet there's going to be a play on location. Contextual information from inside of your e-mails is one facet, but if Google can figure out where you are and offer something more targeted, you can bet it will.

More importantly, it will open things up for some fun extras, like being able to announce your location in your signature. This is a feature that's available in the desktop version, but would be a whole lot more useful when your messages are coming from a mobile phone.

These are just a few reasons the iPhone is long overdue for its own native Gmail app. If you've got any of your own, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Update: Made a clarification about archiving items in the native iPhone client.

Earlier this week, I sat down with Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson to talk about the future of the service and to find out what's been keeping the team busy behind the scenes. Here are five tidbits from our meeting you might find interesting.

1. More Themes are coming--including ones designed by you.

No new Gmail Themes have been added since the feature launch in late November, but Jackson says more of the skins are coming. "We want to keep adding Themes. People like it. We don't know exactly how we'll do that yet. The 30 Themes that we chose were hand-designed to look great in Gmail."

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Jackson says the team was split on whether to open up the design process to third parties, like what's been done on Google's customizable start page, iGoogle.

"We've thought about continuing to do it the way we did, and we thought about opening it up for other people to (design them)." Most of the hesitation has centered around Gmail's design, which makes skinning tricky business. "Gmail's structure is an application that's written all in JavaScript. It's a different beast. The detail level we did on Themes--we went pretty deep."

That complexity doesn't mean that the Gmail folks are beyond letting users design their own themes. When pressed if there would one day be a design-your-own Theme tool, Jackson said the closest thing users might be getting is a tool that lets them choose the colors of each Gmail element, similar to the color picker used for Gmail's labeling system.

As to when new Themes are coming, Jackson wouldn't say. However, I got a peek at a few rejects and early mock-ups, including several iterations of plaid that would get the lumberjack or golfer in all of us a little excited.

Gmail via Safari and Mail.app is all you're getting for now.

(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

2. No iPhone Gmail app in the works

For iPhone users who are fed up with Apple's built-in Mail application and wish that they could get a native Gmail application like the ones for Android and J2ME phones--don't hold your breath. "We could make one for mail, potentially," Jackson said, "but we'd also have to make one for Palm and BlackBerry. For each platform, it's time consuming."

Instead Jackson thinks the future of Gmail on phones centers around improved 3G coverage and new standards such as HTML 5 that will make using Gmail on your handset's browser less painful. "If we can design for the Web and give you the client-like experience that you're used to getting with Gmail on your browser, it's going to be a good experience."

Out of curiosity I pinged Google to see if the company would release usage numbers on the recently released themes and Labs add-ons in Gmail. The tools let users customize the Gmail experience in a number of ways, and all without the use of special browser add-ons or scripting hacks. More importantly, they let people custom tailor their e-mail experience no matter what computer they're on.

In other words, your theme and Labs add-ons can tell Google, or anyone else, a lot about why you're using the service.

While the company will not disclose the hard numbers on how many users are using each theme or Labs add-on, it did provide me with the top five most used in each category. You might find them interesting:

Themes (non-default):
1. Ocean
2. Planets
3. Mountains
4. Classic
5. Shiny

Labs:
1. Superstars
2. Pictures in chat
3. Calendar gadget
4. Attachment detector
5. Mark as read button

The planets theme is the second most popular non-default Gmail theme. Second only to the ocean one.

So what's the big takeaway here? People really enjoy nature. The earth-related themes dominate, with the classic, less blue look coming up just behind. Unsurprisingly, the terminal theme that emulates the look of a computer's command line interface, did not make the short list although I'd be interested to see how far it trails behind.

On the Labs side, the story is all about improving existing Gmail features. Superstars in particular is a response to people wanting to preserve some of the familiarity they're used to from Outlook. Stars are Gmail's equivalent of a flag in Outlook. With the Labs option activated they can be turned into red exclamation marks (or any color of star), then sorted accordingly, turning the feature into an alternate, and more visual way to manage e-mail.

Sadly missing from the top five are two of the goofier add-ons: mail goggles and old snakey. The first one keeps you from sending e-mails at odd hours without performing the virtual equivalent of a sobriety test, while the latter lets you play the classic time wasting game with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Google introduced Labs for Gmail back in early June. Since then none of the 30 add-ons has "graduated" to the main product. What's your favorite theme or Labs add-on?

If you're a user of the mobile versions of Google's Gmail, and Calendar, you'll know that they're incredibly useful if you're on a carrier with less than 3G data speeds. Not as useful as the full desktop browser versions, but great if you're out and about and need to check your calendar or inbox without having to rely on the sometimes clunky POP implementations on the built-in e-mail apps on some phones. Both services have received substantial mobile updates within the last few days, here's what's new:

Gmail mobile (http://m.gmail.com)

New this week is checkboxes--everybody's favorite way to sort through several messages at once, and do bulk actions like marking them as read or as spam. This is great if you're on the road and feel like doing some spring cleaning on your in-box. There's also a new view menu that lets you pick what you want to see when you visit the mobile version, from starred messages and drafts, all the way to labeled messages. iPhone users will also appreciate bigger, and more finger-friendly buttons.

Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com)

Getting even more of a face-lift is Google Calendar, which has been completely redone specifically for the iPhone. Users are now greeted to a weekly event roundup that's much, much easier to read, along with a quicker way to sort through which calendars you want to see. The difference between the old version and the new version is night and day. Unfortunately, the changes won't appear for other handset users who are still stuck with the eye-frenzy of chunky text. Also missing is a way to edit calendar entries, or switch to a month and week view--features which are often mission-critical. You can however, add quick entries, which will show up on your schedule right away.

[Thanks, Paul]

Google Calendar's new look for the iPhone compared to its current look on other mobile phone browsers. Which one would you rather use?

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Yesterday 37signals founder Jason Fried posted about the team's upcoming contact management app called Highrise. The goal of the app is to help you manage contact information in a better way than relying on Post-its or your current software-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Think of it like a Rolodex but with collaboration and more space to write things down. Many people can have access to the same records at once, and from the announcement, 37signals thinks they can do better than your current CRM.

In many ways Highrise is a solution for a problem with Web communication technology: we have these great contact management tools with services like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Plaxo to bring them all together, but no way to share them, and add notes or related items. There are a few Web-based CRMs out there, such asFunclient and absoluteBUSY, but none that have the potential to tie into a suite of highly successful Web apps (see Basecamp and Writeboard). I can also see a big use for this for keeping track of friends or colleagues as they move all over the place, more so than relying on LinkedIn or social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Fried made no mention of pricing or a release date in the Highrise announcement, but noted that the 37signals team is "very happy with it." We'll post something more in-depth as soon as we get our mitts on it.