Why YOU Need To Use Gmail

Gmail Themes

Customization is a huge perk these days. We’re all different and completely narcissistic. Our email accounts should represent us, not the designer. Gmail recently added themes for its users to choose from. The amount of themes is still pretty small, but new ones are slowly being added. You can choose from a simple theme with a different color background or you can get crazier and go with a Ninja or Graffiti theme. There’s something for everyone.

Contact Control

Gmail is smart. No, really. It used to be that any email address you sent 4-5 emails to was automatically placed into your contacts list. Since then Gmail has wised up and now places those emails into a Suggested Contacts list. This lets me see who I’m emailing often and isn’t already in a separate list. I can later decide where I’d like to place them.

I also like the organization of the lists. I can separate contacts into groups, such as family, friends, bloggers, etc. Later when I’m writing emails, instead of entering each individual family member’s email, I can just click on the Family group in my contact list and eliminate some unnecessary work.

Gmail Labels

I don’t know where I’d be without labels. Gmail provides you with a handful of colors to assign to your emails. You can set up a filter so an email containing a certain email address or word will have a specific label assigned to it. That way when new bill notifications come in, they won’t get lost in the mess of messages. The bright red (for example) label helps it to stand out, thus helping me not get stuck with a late-fee!

Gmail Labs

The geniuses at Gmail come up with new ideas every day. Gmail Labs is where they unleash their ideas and try to get user feedback about the new ideas before officially unveiling them as a standard Gmail feature. Because they’re not ready to be publicly released, they can change, break or disappear at any time. You can enable a feature, try it out and if you don’t like it, disable it.

Multiple Inboxes

Finally! To find out more about Gmail’s multiple inbox feature, click here

Wisestamp

You can even create multiple signatures, one for personal emails and another for business-related emails. You can switch between the two by selecting the stamp icon in the lower right corner of your browser’s window.

Why backup? Because at some point you are going to want to find an email you sent or an attachment that was sent to you. You’ll search through your old mail, archived mail and trash. Then you’ll remember that during your fit of cleaning fury you trashed it. Now what? Luckily Gmail offers a backup service that allows you to keep copies of your messages and attachments. Trust me, this WILL come in handy. Now if I could only practice what I preach!

Remote Sign-Out

Think of all the places where you sign into your Gmail account: the library, a friend’s house, your SO’s house. Even if you close that X, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re signed out. So when you friend goes to open Gmail, guess who’s account opens up? Yours! A GREAT feature Gmail offers is the Remote Sign-Out. At the very bottom of any Gmail inbox you’ll see a text line showing where else the account is open, along with a list of sign-in times and IP addresses. Also? A button that signs you out of everything but the browser you’re in right then. Wee it’s magical!

Consolidate Email Accounts

Some of us have separate email accounts for our job, school, blog, whatever. I know that it can be annoying logging in and out of one account just to check another. With Gmail, you can consolidate your accounts so that all emails are routed to just one account.

Instead of logging out and into another account when wanting to send an email, when you click on compose, a drop-down menu will appear so you can select which account you’d like to send it from.

Free Gmail Stickers

Send stickers to your Gmail contacts. All you have to do is send a self-addressed and stamped envelop to the address below and they will send you the standard Gmail m-velope, complete with glitter, and a sheet of keyboard shortcut stickers intended as a tool to help people learn Gmail’s shortcuts.

Send your envelope to:
Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420

Unfortunately this guide was made in Jan. and the cut-off date to request stickers was Feb. If another opportunity pops up, I’ll be sure to update this!

Firefox add-on: Gmail Manager

If you use the Gmail Notifier add-on with Firefox, you’re going to love their latest Gmail add-on: Gmail Manager. For those of you who sync multiple accounts to one inbox, this add-on is going to make your life much simpler. The Gmail Manager allows you to monitor all synced accounts right from the GN toolbar. You can receive new mail notifications along with viewing account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.