The Problem The age of limiting file attachment sizes to 5MB or 10MB may be coming to an end. As of June of 2009, Gmail now allows file attachments of up to 25MB. This gives users of Gmail, and other services with similar high limits on email attachments, a great deal of freedom when attaching files of any type. Just because the freedom is available, does not mean it should be exercised. Email may not be the ideal solution for sending someone a large file.
Consider that MIME encoding is used when sending binary attachments. This causes files to expand up to 33%. This means a 15MB attachment may require up to 20MB or more. File expansion increases even further the more recipients to whom the message is copied. This tendency of file sizes to expand when sent through email ultimately means the best solution may be to upload large files to a single location. An ideal upload location would be secure, and allow users to easily download your files.
The Solution SADA Systems, Inc. offers one such solution to the problem of sending large files. SADA's solution is Send IT Global, a cloud-based file transfer service. Send IT Global meets the requirements for sending large files in that it is fast, secure, and easy to use. The process for sending a large file through Send IT Global is simple:
Enter your email address and the email addresses of people you wish to receive your file.
Browse your computer for the file you wish to send, you may attach any number of files up to 2 GB.
If you like, you can add a message to your recipients. We recommend, "This is a great, easy-to-use service. Check it out!"
Click "Send."
Your recipients will receive an email with a link to a page where they can download your file(s). This is the basic operation of the website. There are other options you can set before uploading your files, like:
Limit the number of times a file can be downloaded.
Set a password to download your files. Your recipients will receive this in a separate email.
Create a security audit-trail. This option will send you a notification when recipients finish downloading your file.)
In addition to the web service, SADA also offers a hosted solution for businesses, "Send IT Global Business Hosted." This solution gives businesses a Send IT Global page with their own branding and logo, and a URL where they can access their solution. This is a great solution for businesses that frequently need to send large files, but wish to avoid tying up network resources or email.
For more information about Send IT Global, or to try the service for yourself, visit the website, www.senditglobal.com.
Google Apps Update: Download options for Offline Gmail
You now have more options to configure offline settings and manage messages for offline use.
Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions
Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail Labs
How to access what's new:
In your Gmail settings, go to 'Offline' if you have offline enabled.
- In 'Download options', select the timeframe for messages you want to download for offline use e.g. 4 days, 1 month etc. The timeframe that you choose will then show under the options when changing offline label settings.
- Click on 'Change label settings' to modify which labelled messages you download for offline use. For a particular label, choose between 'All', 'Timeframe selected' or 'None'.
In a recent blog post about the Great Gmail Outage of last week, Kevin Kelleher makes some astute observations. Since we can’t possibly improve on his writing or insights with our own post we recommend you read his, posted here.
Following the recent downtime with Gmail this week, Google is making good on it's SLAs and is delivering three free days to Google Apps Premier users. Clients will find a three day extension to their current term.
Google says it was quickly able to identify the cause of the downtime and has put significant resources behind eliminating outages in the future.
UPDATE: Gmail is back up for, however Google continues to investigate the issue.
Gmail service has been down for some users Tuesday afternoon. Google states that they are "continuing to investigate this issue" and will provide an update by 2:16 PM PDT today. This issue appears to be affecting users who access Gmail via the web interface as well as mobile applications such as the Gmail App for BlackBerry.
Gmail can be access via IMAP or POP. You can find instructions for how to do this here.
I used to have a problem. People would ask me questions, over chat or email, and I'd have to leave Gmail to search Google for an answer. Then I'd have to select the answer, copy it, go back to Gmail and paste the answer into the chat window or my reply. Sometimes I'd get distracted and forget to go back to Gmail, and I'd have to go through it all again when I remembered what I'd been doing.
With the new Google Search experiment in Gmail Labs, my problem is solved. When you turn this feature on from the Labs tab under Settings, you'll see a new search box on the left side of your inbox, like this:
Type your search in, and a window (like a chat window, but a bit bigger) appears at the bottom of your screen with the first few search results.
You can click on a search result and it'll open up in another window (or another tab) so you can make sure it's what you're looking for. Once you're sure it's a result you need, moving your mouse over the result back in Gmail reveals a pull-down menu that lets you do stuff with the search result.
What's in the menu depends on what you're doing in Gmail:
If you're reading a message, you can start a reply to the message with the search result as the first thing in your reply.
If you're writing a message, you can paste the result, or just the URL into your message.
If you're chatting with someone, you can send the result via chat.
You can also always compose a new message to send the search result.
If you have keyboard shortcuts turned on, typing g and then / will take you to the search box when you're not composing, and Ctrl + g will do it when you're composing (that's ⌘ + g for Mac users).
Like all things in Gmail Labs, we're going to be tinkering with it, so let us know what you think.
Oh, and one other thing: with all the stuff we've been adding to Gmail Labs lately, the left side of your account might be getting crowded. A lot of the people who've been playing with this new feature have found it useful to turn on "Navbar drag and drop" in Labs so they can move the web search box up to the top where it's easy to get to.
To enable this feature go to the Gmail Labs tab, look for "inserting images" and select enable followed by clicking "save changes."
Once you've done that just click on the images icon on the Gmail toolbar while composing a message. You can insert images in two ways: by uploading image files from your computer or providing image URLs.
A couple of caveats from Google:
Make sure you're in rich formatting mode, or it won't show up.
Keep in mind that Gmail doesn't show URL-based images in messages by default to protect you from spammers, so if you're sending mail to other Gmail users, they'll still have to click "Display images below" or "Always display images from ..." to see images you embed.
Google Now Allows Non-Unique Email Addresses in Gmail Contacts
You can now associate an email address with more than one contact in Gmail's contact manager.
Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions
Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail
How to access what's new:
Click 'Contacts' from your Gmail inbox, and select '+' to create a new contact. Enter your contact's information and click 'Save'. It is now possible to create another contact with a different 'Name', but same 'Email'.
Google Adds Multiple Inboxes to Gmail, Print Preview to Google Docs
The prolific team at Google Labs make new features available in Gmail, Google Apps adds print preview to Google Docs.
Google continues to drive innovation in cloud computing and web-based email. This week Google announced the availability of multiple inboxes in Gmail, and print preview to Google Docs.
Multiple Inboxes:
This feature allows you to create multiple inbox type views of the contents of your mail in Gmail. To activate this feature in your Gmail account only takes a few simple steps. To turn on Gmail's multiple inboxes you need to do the following:
Log into Gmail.
Locate and click the settings link.
When the page reloads, locate and click the labs tab.
Under labs locate multiple inboxes and change the setting to enable.
"Multiple Inboxes" then becomes a tab in your settings that you can use to configure your inboxes. You can set your inboxes with arguments including "is:" and "Label:". For instance, if you want to be able to see all of your starred messages in a single place you might create an inbox with the value "is: starred."
While you are viewing the labs tab you might take the opportunity to explore some of the other features developed for Gmail by Google Labs. Some suggestions for handy Gmail features include:
Offline: view your messages in Gmail even when not connected to the Internet
Tasks: create a task chat-window in your Gmail and add tasks directly from messages by selecting "More Actions" and clicking add to tasks.
Forgotten attachment detector: Gmail helps you to remember your attachments by reading your message. If your text refers to an attached file, but there is no attachment present, Gmail will remind you to attach your files (this author's favorite new feature).
Print Preview:
A feature in Docs that was notable for its absence for a long time was the ability to create a preview of what a document will look like once it has been printed. This functions somewhat like Print Preview in desktop applications such as Microsoft Word. When working with a document Print Preview can be used to see a document before it is printed, or it can be used to get a page count.
Businesses Embrace Google Apps as Cost-Effective Email and Collaboration Solution
In turbulent economic climate, companies save money with cloud solutions including Gmail
In a climate of economic downturn and general financial woes many companies are being hit with the prospect of dramatically reduced technology budgets in 2009. In this article SearchCIO-Midmarket.com reporter discusses Hamilton Beach Brands, Inc. CIO Jerry Hodge, whose operating budget was slashed from $2.1 million to $700,000. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that email has become an integral component of virtually every level of business, across virtually every business type imaginable. As the ubiquity of email has grown, so has its cost. This is due in large part to the increase in spam and malware, and the expense of filters to catch them. In this atmosphere of decreasing economic stability and increasing demands on technology, some companies are finding a compromise, and savings, in the deployment of Google Apps Premier Edition, and making use of Google's web-based email solution, Gmail.
The savings are so significant that a recent article Ars Technica argues that the cost of deploying the Google Apps Premier Edition, including Gmail, is about one-third that of a traditional email server. These findings are based on a report from Forrester Research Inc., "Should Your e-mail Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis." This report included some surprising findings. Among those most shocking are:
Some companies were paying over $25 per user, per month for their staff to have email accounts. By comparison, the cost of deploying the Google Apps Premier Edition and using Gmail as the office email service is around $8 per user, per month.
Out of 53 IT workers surveyed at major enterprise companies, around 85 percent were evaluating Gmail as a solution for moving their email services off-site.
Any company with under 15,000 employees would benefit from using some kind of off-site solution.
Although Microsoft Exchange Online offers significant savings over its locally hosted relative for organizations up to 30,000, the cost of deploying Google Apps came in at around half that of competing services. This is due in large part to the fact that Google's client software is any web browser, most of which are free.
For the full text of the article in Ars Technica, click here.
What does this mean to you? Although not many medium or enterprise businesses have made the switch to hosted applications for their document needs, a growing number of businesses have switched to a hosted solution (including Google Apps and Gmail) to provide their email service. In most cases this has resulted in not only a significant savings, but also the ability to redistribute both budget and man hours for other strategic projects. While there may be something of an adjustment period for some people as they learn the ins-and-outs of managing their email in a web client, the benefits are clear. From a cost and administrative perspective it may be that the time has come to switch to a hosted solution.
Additional Reading:
Searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com article "CIO's cost-cutting measures include move to Gmail", click here
Ars Technica article "Report: Gmail about one-third as expensive as hosted e-mail", click here
PC World article "Buy, Lease-or Move to Cloud Computing?" Click here
Previously, if you received a message in Gmail that had a PDF file attached to it, your only real choice to view the document was to install a PDF viewer to on your desktop or view the file as HTML which usually often did not include most of the original content.
The Google Operating System blog reports that Gmail has now adopted the PDF viewing functionality from Google Docs allowing users to view the PDF file (including zoom and search) within their browser. The only limitation at present is that the viewer will only display up to 100 pages in a document.
BlackBerry mobile device users who use Gmail just received some really great new functionality with the latest update to the Gmail client for the device.
Users at PinStack Forums report that a significant change with version 2.0.5 of the app is the ability for a user to store the credentials for multiple Gmail accounts and then switch between the in-boxes for those accounts without having to keep entering a password.
Another cool addition with this version is that you can now copy-paste text within the app.
logy budgets in 2009. In 
