LinkedIn reportedly buying contact manager Rapportive
Business social-media giant LinkedIn is acquiring Rapportive, a Gmail add-on that enhances contact information.
Sources close to the negotiation disclosed the news and said that LinkedIn is paying over $10 million to buy the company, All Things D reported. The final purchase price is undisclosed, no deal has been finalized, and both companies are keeping quiet about the details. VentureBeat reached out to Rapportive’s chief executive Rahul Vohra for comment and didn’t get a response.… Continue Reading
Google, Facebook, and PayPal team up to fight phishing
Tech heavyweights are coming together to stand behind DMARC, a new system announced today that could block phishing emails before they ever reach your inbox.
“We’ve been active in the leadership of the DMARC group for almost two years, and now that Gmail and several other large mail senders and providers — namely Facebook, LinkedIn, and PayPal — are actively using the DMARC specification, the road is paved for more members of the email ecosystem … Continue Reading
Google responds to privacy policy criticisms
Google is defending its new privacy policy, stressing that the company isn’t collecting more data, just collecting it in a new way.
“We’re making things simpler and we’re trying to be upfront about it. Period,” said Google’s policy manager Betsy Masiello in a blog post Thursday evening.
The company recently announced big changes to its privacy policy, posting notifications throughout its products that read, “We’re changing our privacy policy and terms. Not the usual yada … Continue Reading
Google Voice for iOS adds nifty new features, but it’s buggy (updated)
Google has released a feature-rich update to its popular Google Voice app for iOS, but unfortunately it also comes with numerous bugs.
The application catches-up the iOS app to where the Google Voice Android app was a month ago. The iOS app adds welcome features like group texting, multi-line text entry, one-touch copy and paste in the dialer and integration with Sprint phones. The Sprint integration is especially good because it lets the company’s new … Continue Reading
British Telecom targets more than Android in patent suit against Google
Yet another major company has jumped into patent squabbles with Google. British Telecommunications filed suit against the search giant on Thursday for infringing on six patents.
BT is aiming higher than most other companies targeting Google — which at this point include Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft — because it’s not just targeting Android; it’s targeting almost every Google service, including Gmail, Google+ and Google Docs, reports Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents.
“BT seeks damages — … Continue Reading
Gmail iOS app update adds custom signatures, Scribbles & more
Google has released an update for its Gmail iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch applications today that adds several new features requested by users.
The new features include a new notification sound for new email messages, access to the vacation responder and the ability to set custom signatures, which should be helpful for people who want to distinguish messages sent from a mobile device (e.g. “Sent from my iPhone, please excuse any typos.”). The update also … Continue Reading
Google keeps phone calls through Gmail free through 2012
Google will keep voice calls to the U.S. and Canada free into 2012 the company announced today, after indicating earlier it might charge for calls at the end of the year.
Google launched calling to standard phones from the Gmail interface in August 2010 and has kept it as an option ever since. This past August, the company expanded calling from Gmail to support 38 languages and four payment currencies.
While domestic calls to people … Continue Reading
Gmail update brings Google+ features to your inbox and contacts
Do you check your Gmail religiously, but can’t seem to make your way over to Google+ to see what your friends are up to? With the new Gmail and Google+ integration, you’ll be able to see friends’ status updates from your inbox, organize your Gmail by Google circles, and more.
Google will start rolling out some of its Google+ features for Gmail and Contacts over the next few days. The new Gmail goodies include filtering … Continue Reading
Google re-releases Gmail iPhone app, but it still needs work
Google has re-released its Gmail app for the iPhone and iPod touch, two weeks after the company botched the app’s initial debut and yanked it from the App Store.
The major bugs have been addressed — there’s no more error warning when you first start-up the app, notifications work and images embedded in emails scale down to fit the small screen.
Unfortunately, bugs were just a fraction of what was disappointing about the Gmail iPhone … Continue Reading
Google releases (then pulls) buggy, unimpressive Gmail app for iPhone and iPad
Updated: Google is pulling the new Gmail app, just hours after it was released. The official Gmail Twitter account posted this apology:
The iOS app we launched today contained a bug with notifications. We have pulled the app to fix the problem. Sorry we messed up.
VP of Apps, Dave Girouard, posted the following on Google+:
Sorry but we pushed a bad version of our iOS app for Gmail. More info shortly – we’re working … Continue Reading
New Gmail update offers cleaner design, improved search
Google has finally rolled out an update to its ultra popular email client Gmail today. The update features a simplified design, visually enhanced threaded conversations and improved search functionality.
We first caught a glimpse of the new Gmail changes about two weeks ago after someone at Google accidentally made a demo video (embedded below) of the update available to the pubic.
As I previously noted, the first thing you’ll notice about the new Gmail design … Continue Reading
A native Gmail iPhone app means one less killer exclusive for Android
Finally, iPhone users could soon get access to the rich Gmail experience that Android users have had since the beginning.
Google is close to launching a native Gmail app for the iPhone, MG Siegler reports. The app may already have been submitted to Apple for approval, and if so we could see it very soon.
This is big news for several reasons: Up until now, iPhone users who rely on Gmail have had a subpar … Continue Reading
Slice brings its ecommerce tracking smarts to Gmail
Shopping-tool startup Slice is available for for Gmail users today, the company announced, which opens up the ecommerce tracking tool to an additional 200 million users worldwide.
Previously available for Yahoo Mail users, Slice helps shoppers track their purchases from checkout, to their doorstep in one central location, as opposed to having to comb through their inbox for information about each purchase from sites like Amazon.com, eBay and Groupon.
Slice is available as a standalone … Continue Reading
Leaked Gmail redesign looks a lot like Facebook’s Message inbox
Google accidentally published a YouTube video today that introduced some big changes to its popular email product Gmail.
In the video, which is now marked as private, Gmail user experience Designer Jason Cornwell says, “We’ve completely redesigned the look and feel of Gmail to make it as clean, simple and intuitive as possible.” For the most part, this is true based on the images in the demo.
The overall design is largely taken from a … Continue Reading
New Gmail feature ditches message snipits for a preview pane
Google added a new preview pane feature to its popular email service Gmail today. The feature is visually similar to the interface that’s displayed when browsing from a tablet computer.
Users can enable the preview pane from the Gmail Labs settings page,. It doesn’t force you to adopt the new preview pane all the time. The team has added an option button to the Gmail toolbar that allows users to toggle the preview mode off … Continue Reading
Google expands Gmail calling to 38 languages. Now go call your mother!
You know that little green phone icon in your Gmail chat column? Ever tried it? You might today, since Google has expanded calling from Gmail to support 38 languages and four payment currencies.
Last year, Google launched the service making it possible to call any mobile phone or landline in the United States directly from Gmail. Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed within those countries will “continue to be free at least for the … Continue Reading
Google says Google+ integration for Gmail is coming; users sound off
Google’s popular email product Gmail is about to get much more social.
The company is forging ahead with plans to add a social layer to Gmail by adding integration with its new social service, Google+, according to Gmail engineering manager Mark Striebeck.
In a public message via Google+, Striebeck asked users for responses to the following three questions:
What email features would make it easier to interact with Google+?
How could we integrate Google+ features
Google on today’s massive Google+ spam influx: “We ran out of disk space”
Many Google+ users saw a massive amount of notification email messages from the service this afternoon, and now Google’s head of social, Vic Gundotra, has an explanation.
“For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications,” Gundotra wrote on Google+ tonight. “Hence our system continued to try sending notifications. Over, and over again. Yikes.”
The spam notifications seems to have affected users differently. I received a … Continue Reading
Gmail gets renovated with Google+ in mind
The Google team is gaga for Google+. Or at least that’s what the company’s recent tweaks and redesigns would suggest, including the new black toolbar that floats above all Google products. Next up: a makeover for Gmail.
“We’re embarking on a series of interface updates to help strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful,” wrote Jason Cornwell, a user experience designer at Google, in a Thursday blog post. “This … Continue Reading
Not a fan of Google+? Save everything with Google Takeout before you trash it (video)
Google has launched Google Takeout, a service that downloads all of a user’s saved information on Google’s servers.
Google users can download all the information stored on Google’s servers related to Google Buzz, Gmail contacts, the Google+ activity stream, Picasa photo albums and their Google profile. All the files are then compiled on Google’s end and wrapped up into a single file that users can unzip and peruse. Google gives users a quick glance at … Continue Reading
