Tag: Email »

Google today released a big update to the GMail app for iOS. A whole new design that closer mimics GMail on Android and most requested feature, multiple sign-on support has been added.

What's New
- Multiple account support
- App redesigned with a new, cleaner look
- Search predictions as you type
- Infinite scrolling inbox
- Respond to Google Calendar invites inline
- Interactive Google+ posts support
- New welcome experience

Cloud + magic = Cloudmagic.

Cloudmagic allows you to search across many of your cloud based services, all in one place. It amazes with how quick it is as well. Connect your Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, and other services. Then you can search across all of them in one place.

Remember part of a name but not where you saw it, search in Cloudmagic and it will find where you saw it, quickly, easily. Very impressive. Give it a shot, let us know what you think.

Putting young children together with the internet is always a dicey proposition. On the one hand as parents, we want to give our children every opportunity to use new technologies and to become familiar with them at an early age. But on the other, the internet is simply not a safe playground, even for teens, much less pre and grade schoolers. Still, connectivity in an age where grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, even parents often live thousands of miles apart, is too hard to resist. Just check the average parent’s Facebook wall. We try to control the situation, but let’s face it, kids understand these new technologies intuitively and gravitate towards them as they do presents under a Christmas tree.

Enter Maily, a new email client for iPad that takes aim at nervous parents and their digitally eager offspring with an app that’s one part safety-oriented contact manager and one part creative composition tool. Using text, drawing tools, stamps, photos and a kid-friendly touch interface, children can send pretty much whatever they can imagine in two dimensions inviting even pre-writers to start emailing. Parents manage the contact list and add photos of each recipient to make inbox management easy for pre-readers. Parents also have power of approval before a message from anyone, beloved or otherwise, is read and of course, they can screen what their kids are sending.

For users of Google accounts, iOS provides a built-in way to access mail, calendars, and notes from Google. However, for users looking to get their email pushed to their device, or to synchronize their contacts, this built-in method doesn't work. But there is a way to do this, though, via Microsoft Exchange on iOS. This will allow for email to be pushed to the device, and for contacts to be synchronized to the iOS device. With iOS 5, it is also possible for notifications to appear in Notification Center, unlike in the official Gmail app, which only plays a notification sound.

This is a better method of contact synchronization with Google than doing it through iTunes. This means that contacts will be directly synchronized to and from Google when they are updated. This is great for those who have an Android device to go along with their iOS devices. This method also only synchronizes the main contacts; iTunes has been known to add all people that have ever been emailed. This method is safer and smarter.

Here's how to enable this feature on iOS.

Open up Settings. Tap on Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Tap Add Account. Select Microsoft Exchange.

Enter the email address to be synchronized. The username is the same as the email address, and the password is the password to the account. The description can be anything the user wants. After submitting this information, a new Server option pops up. Enter m.google.com for this field.

If all the info has been successfully submitted, then the ability to enable/disable Mail, Contacts, and Calendar is available.

After all the information synchronizes, contacts from this Google account should appear in the Contacts app. Make sure that for new contacts to sync to the Google servers, set the Default Account in Mail, Accounts, and Calendars to the Exchange account. Multiple Exchange accounts can be synchronized, but only one account can have contacts added to it at a time.

Google does note that there are some drawbacks with Exchange sync versus standard account setup, but these drawbacks are well worth the trade-off for the enhanced feature set.

We all love technology, but while it has made life so much easier it has also made driving a lot more dangerous. While folks simply talking on cell phones pose enough of a safety risk, those sending text messages or checking email are even more dangerous. Now, when it comes to email at least there's a solution, as Email’nDrive allows you to send and receive messages without taking your eyes off the road or hands off the wheel.

Email’nDrive will read emails received aloud to drivers, which allows you to keep up on important messages while maintaining your focus at the wheel. The pro version of the app also supports composing messages via voice, so you can put together a response without ever having to touch your iPhone. It's a wonderful concept, and one which does a great deal to enhance vehicular safety. The program is designed to work with popular email servers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and more, and can be configured to work with Exchange if you know how to configure IMAP.

Though the app has the potential to be truly revolutionary there are still some bugs which needs to be sorted out first. Many users are reporting crashing issues, so there's a chance after you download the app that it won't work properly. Also, Email’nDrive must be actively running in order to work properly, so you can't just have it sitting in the background while doing other things. Of course, if you're driving you probably shouldn't have other apps open anyway, but the type of person who is willing to email while driving is also likely the same type who will be doing all sorts of other distracting things rather than paying attention to the road.

For those interested the basic version of the app is available for free, or you can get the pro upgrade for $5. Enjoy and drive safe!

The long wait is finally over as Apple has officially announced that iOS 4.2 will be available for the iPod, iPhone and iPad today at 10am PST, 1pm EST. The new update brings features such as folders, multitasking and a unified inbox to the iPad, as well as AirPlay and AirPrint to all devices. For a full rundown of all the new features make sure to check out the tutorials we posted last week.

Specifically in relation to the iPad, Apple head honcho Steve Jobs said “iOS 4.2 makes the iPad a completely new product, just in time for the holiday season. Once again, the iPad with iOS 4.2 will define the target that other tablets will aspire to, but very few, if any, will ever be able to hit.”

One of the less publicized but still incredibly important features is the fact that Apple is extending the Find My Phone service to all users for free. The feature, which allows users to track down lost iOS devices remotely, was previously restricted to MobileMe subscribers. The feature is great for those afraid of losing their device and having sensitive data exposed to the world, as Find My Phone allows you to locate your device on a map, lock it remotely and even wipe data if it's been compromised. Granted, most of us don't really need such a service, but it still makes our lives feel just a little more like a James Bond film, and that's always awesome.

At any rate, we're mere hours away from Apple's next big major operating system update! How excited are you? Are you planning a party to have all your friends come over and you'll all eat snacks and download the update together? We'll bring the dip, but if Susan makes that awful casserole again we're totally leaving right away and will just keep running 4.1 until we get home.

[via MacRumors and Apple]

The 4.2 update for iOS devices is rumored to be launching this week, and perhaps no machine is getting more fun new features than the iPad. While many of the additions merely bring the iPad in line with capabilities already possessed by the iPhone and iPod Touch, no one seems to be complaining. Here's a quick rundown of what's coming in the update.

AirPlay - Owners will now be able to stream their pictures, videos and music directly from their iPad to their Apple TVs and AirPort Express, as well as to other AirPlay-compatible devices from third-party vendors.

AirPrint: With AirPrint you'll now be able to wirelessly print from your iPad by allowing iOS 4.2 devices to discover printers on the local network. The only catch is you seem to need the newest version of Snow Leopard to make it work.

Multitasking: Possibly the biggest new feature in iOS 4.2 is multitasking. Just like on the iPhone and iPod touch, a double click on the home button brings up a bar at the bottom of the screen with the last six apps opened. This allows users to switch between apps without having to go to the home screen first.

Folders: iPad users can now finally organize their apps into folders, with up to 20 apps in each folder.

Game Center: Now you can track Achievements and friends on any iOS device and brag about your amazing score regardless of what mobile device you're carrying. The app is pretty much the same as what's already available on other iOS machines.

Also just like on the iPhone, swiping to the right on the multitasking panel brings up screen brightness and volume. Apple turned the orientation toggle on the top right of the device into a mute switch, so this area of the multitasking bar now lets you lock your iPad into the desired orientation.

Safari: The '+' button for bookmarking sites is gone and has been replaced with a share button that includes the bookmarking functionality, but also allows you to compose an email with a link to the current page and to print the page with the help of AirPrint. The tab button now also shows how many open tabs you currently have.

Also new is the ability to search for text inside a page. The search feature in Safari now doesn't just display search suggestions but also tells you how often your search terms appear on the page you are currently looking at. After clicking on one of these results, a new bar appears at the bottom of the browser screen that allows you to jump to all the instances of this keyword and also to refine your search.

Unified Email Inbox: See all your email in one inbox, even if you sync multiple email accounts with your iPad. Gmail accounts can also archive messages rather than deleting them, but if you do want to delete a message it requires going through a couple extra menu screens in order to do so.

So plenty of new toys available for iPad users to check out, now we just have to wait for Apple to throw the switch and make the update live. Once 4.2 is in the wild we will be sure and let you know so you can download it immediately.

[via ReadWriteWeb]
[inbox image source: TiPb]

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Yahoo had a big day on Tuesday. Yahoo pulled the curtain back on a fresh new HTM5-optimized version of Yahoo Mail. The kicker is this newest optimization is for the iPad.

Those of you already using Yahoo Web Mail on an iPhone will feel like you're visiting your best friend. The iPad version takes the improvements made for the iPhone, spruces them up, and optimizes them for the sexy screen on the iPad

The goodies don’t just stop at pretty layouts and HTML5 optimizations though. Through the miracles of modern caching technology, Yahoo Mail on the iPad will also cache user emails. This is great for those times when WiFi is completely unattainable.

This means that if you happen to be climbing to the top of Mount Everest and you realize you forgot if you were supposed to zig or zag at the fork in the path, you have options. You can open your Yahoo Mail on that iPad and do a quick search for what Jimmy told you to do. Thanks to that email cache, you can look at the map he scribbled on a napkin and emailed you earlier in the week.

This just shows us that more companies are willing to comply with the Apple enforced HTML5 standard than consumers give credit. Of course, the umpteen trillion iPods, iPhones, and iPads that are currently in use are probably more to blame than anything else is. It is still nice to see companies providing updates to their web services to cater to everyone. Are you reading this Google?

The new Yahoo Mail is available to anyone in the world with an iPad and access to the Internet. Just open that Safari app and point it to http://mail.yahoo.com. Yahoo will take of the rest from there. It might also help if you have a Yahoo Mail account.

We enjoyed Moe's Notes for iPhone which offers some unique features for taking rich multimedia notes that include audio, video, images and GPS coordinates and it's now available for iPad.

Moe's Notepad makes the most of the iPad's larger screen by using splitter bars to show different sections of the app that used to be spread across multiple screens. The updated UI allows users to customize the app's display as they wish while retaining the same functionality.

Without a camera in the iPad (although the team behind Moe's Notes believe one is coming) images are taken from the iPad's Photo's App with a number of editing options available within the app itself. Audio editing is also impressive with recording and trimming of audio as well as volume and speed settings available.

All media can be combined into an email and sent as attachments with more streamlined options coming in a future update that could include popular formats such as Evernote or GoogleDocs among others.

Users of Moe's Notes for iPhone should certainly invest in this iPad reworking and those that need a decent note taking tool will be hard pressed to find a more feature-packed alternative.

Moe's Notes is available now for $9.99

Having an iPhone on you is always handy when you want to snapshot something you need to remember, whether it’s a for sale sign, promotional poster or an advertisement. One of the drawbacks of this process is that once you’ve taken the photo you’ll need to fish it out of your Camera Roll where it’s taking up valuable space among your actual photos and there’s also a good chance that you’ll forget about it altogether.

QuickShot! aims to put an end to these issues by combining your iPhone’s Camera and Mail apps into one slick process. Once the app is setup you can simply launch it, take your photo and push a button to send yourself an email. The process is simple enough that it can take as little as three taps to complete.By default the image isn’t saved to your Camera Roll either so you won’t have to worry about clutter anymore. When sending the email, you can customize it as you wish and also scale the picture before you send. This strikes us as one of those apps you think you wont need until, of course, you actually do and is certainly worth a look. QuickShot! is available on the App Store for $0.99.

Remember the good old days when your dad would want to show off how cute you were. Whenever he could get the chance he'd whip out his wallet and that accordion style photo holder would flop out with a dozen embarrassing photos...well today's kids have it even worse. Think about it, with an iPhone the parents of today can walk around with over a decade of snap shots in their pocket just waiting to embarrass their 25 year old son with...no, I'm not bitter!

To make matters worse, not only can they whip them out at a moments notice but now they can share a copy of them with anyone on the spot simply via MMS or e-mail. If you're not familiar with this, it can be easily done from the Photos application. Clicking on the arrow in the lower left corner of the Album View will bring up 3 options. "Share," "Copy," and "Delete." Next you're able to select up to 5 photos and by tapping on the Share icon you're can choose either "MMS" or "Email." Quick, simple and to the point, right? But what if you have 12 or more photos you'd like to share, is your only answer going back and forth creating 3 separate e-mails? Nope, here's your trick: Copy.

By selecting the Copy option instead of the Share your iPhone will allow you to select as many as you like and paste them in a new blank e-mail all at once. This can be a handy little time saver but there are some restrictions. For starters it won't work for MMS and also the number of photos you can send in a single e-mail is limited by how large of a message your provider will allow you to send. Oh and BTW, this trick does not work with videos either.

Now if you're a parent, go forth and embarrass away with all of those priceless photos. If you're the victim...I mean child in this disastrous scenario well then I'm sorry. But do take some comfort in the knowledge that someday you'll probably be sharing your kid's holograms via text.