Posts tagged email

iPhone App: GPush

By on August 18, 2009

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GPush is a simple app that fills a massive void in my life: push GMail on the iPhone. This app was demonstrated on July 7 by TechCrunch and has finally been accepted into the App Store (yesterday, July 17). This app does what it does by using GMail’s IMAP Idle function on the developers’ servers and uses Apple’s push notification service (which means that you need iPhone OS 3.0). When I originally heard of this App I pictured a separate GMail client that wouldn’t rely on the built-in Mail.app. Instead this app just requires you to open it once to type in your GMail credentials (and this also works for Google App accounts) and leave the icon somewhere visible on your iPhone. From then on you get a popup message when you receive a new message and an app-icon balloon notification to display the current unread message count (which is why you want the icon handy) and never have to open it again.

I am slightly unhappy that the notification doesn’t behave like the SMS app. If you have an iPhone then you’ve experienced how the “slide to unlock” on the home screen changes to “slide to reply” if there’s a new text message. After sliding and unlocking the phone then the SMS app opens and navigates to the new message, however possibly due to technical restriction, the GPush notifications don’t open Mail.app or Safari to your GMail inbox; it just gives you a heads-up.

This app is the best (and currently only) method to get the iPhone to do push GMail.

This app is available in the App Store for $0.99 and you can get more information about this app from the developers’ site.

**As of writing this, GPush is #15 on the Canadian App Store’s top paid apps and #1 on the top paid productivity apps in Canada.

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Office email policy: Part 1

By on April 15, 2009

With all of the latest micro-blogging and other short messages, I’m starting to realize exactly how out-of-date email really is. Especially after seeing Twitter’s success.

The question now becomes what does a good email include?

Here’s what I propose:

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  • To only the person it concerns
  • The subject is the task
  • the properties of what the receiver must do are clear (like XML or plist files)
  • is it safe to cut-out the vowels to save time? (as in ‘tomorrow‘)
  • keep the signature simple. If you must include a long signature, make it a hyperlink to a page on the business intranet which has all of your information.
  • keep it simple, as in plain text… or atleast without crazy, hard to read fonts and colors.
  • ... is not present: this is not okay and wastes time and dilutes the meaning.
  • keep it in as few lines as possible. If you need more then email is not what you should use.
  • ***as an organization you should establish a single set of ‘commands’ for the reciever, and a template.
  • encrypt the message, this will save the use of a really long disclaimer about how sensitive this email is.
  • define urgent. if it’s used in an email, it’s not. if something is actually urgent send me a voicemail or text message, or better yet–see me face-to-face.

(In the next part I’ll look at Twitter’s success using just 140 characters–and how/if it can be applied to inter-office messaging)

For more information from an actual productivity expert, see 43Folders.

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My GMail Situation:

By on March 23, 2009

Since GMail came into invite-beta I’ve had an account, and last year, when I finally got BradArsenault.com, I added a Google Apps domain which is connected to it. So now I have two email accounts. Back in August of last year I connected the email accounts together by fetching my BradArsenault.com email through Google’s POP download function and can send via the other account with a similar tool built into GMail.

The problem is that when ever I send a message it says in the from address: “(my gmail account) on behalf of brad(at)bradarsenault.com”. This is a problem because I want people to see only my bradarsenault.com address, and to hide my GMail account with it. So I have an idea!

I’m going to move all of my mail from my GMail to BradArsenault.com mail, using another Google tool I’ve heard about (the name slips my mind for some reason). But that’s not going to be easy, because I have a dream, yeah, another dream, to get an email address crafted to be awesome for an email address (thanks to Mark Christian for this [shinyplasticbag.com] @shinyplasticbag) br@darsenault.com or brad@rsenault.com… see, awesome!

Moral of the story: I need a better client because I will have to log-in to all of these accounts separately and manage my email in different locations. Unless that is, I give up the freedom of GMail and move….ewww… to a mail client (such as Mail or Outlook). That seems to be my only good, viable solution.

Sorry if this seems like a rant, but if Google would only remove that “on behalf of” (what I call) bug, everything would be happier and sunnier.

**I apologize for that: but I’m just not agreeing with GMail today.

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