Recent Gmail Outage

Fortunately I don’t rely to heavily on Gmail for my personal emails, I am still somewhat tethered to Microsoft Outlook for my emails that run through our Plethware premium email solution but for some of my friends, and a few folks I spotted at Starbucks this afternoon, Gmail was down and they were aggravated.

Here’s a little bit about the outage that I spotted on CNET a little while ago regarding the outage.  This is the month apparently for web-based email outages, fortunately our clients haven’t reported any issues with our service. If you are interested in providing premium email solutions for your company, please don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss your needs. For just a few bucks a month you can rest assured that your email will be accessible via the web, outlook, or your mobile device…

Google’s e-mail service went on the blink for a “small subset” of users, Google said Thursday, but Google said it’s on the mend.

“We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail,” Google said in a status message at 2:16 p.m. PDT Thursday. By 3:29 p.m., the company said, “Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 1 hour.”

Twitter users, often an indicator of the latest waves propagating across the Internet, griped about the problem with the tweets using the #gmaildown hashtag.

‘Tis the season for flaky Webmail. Already this month, outages and problems have surfaced at Comcast, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail.

Gmail outage afflicts some users | Webware – CNET

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Gmail Labs Ideas (‘undo send’)

Ran across this article on CNN this morning and thought that it was a pretty interesting look at how ideas get birthed into actual software at Gmail Labs.  The ‘undo send’ application alone is something that I think users are going to embrace as the “next big thing” but there are several other ideas that they are working on that I think will be just as big down the road…

(CNN) — Most of us have done it. Instead of hitting "reply" to an e-mail, we accidentally push "reply all," sending a potentially embarrassing or insulting message to those we didn’t intend to see it.

To address this problem, Google Inc.’s Gmail Labs has launched an experimental feature called "Undo Send" that gives users a chance to rewrite their message, correct settings or simply fix typos.

When a Gmail user who enables this feature sends an e-mail, a button that says "Undo" will pop up on their screen for five seconds. If the user hits the button within that time, the service will retrieve the e-mail in draft form — allowing the user to make changes or cancel the message altogether.

"Sometimes … I send a message and then immediately notice a mistake," said Michael Leggett, a Gmail Labs designer and the creator of the "Undo Send" feature, in the Gmail blog. "I forget to attach a file, or e-mail the birthday girl that I can’t make her surprise party. I can rush to close my browser or unplug the Internet — but Gmail almost always wins that race."

Leggett added that he’s had "Undo Send" turned on for a while "and it’s saved me several times."

This may be good news to Gmail’s tens of millions of users as people in the digital era look to connect with others over the Web in a more efficient manner. "Undo Send" is also just the latest example of the dozens of creative — and sometimes downright wacky — online features developed at Gmail Labs to address common e-mail problems.

Launched in June, Gmail Labs is an optional program. It offers an assortment of tools, ranging from a service that stores e-mails onto a user’s desktop so the user can access mail offline to a feature that prevents users from firing away drunken e-mails during late-night hours.

Gmail users can enable the Gmail Labs settings by going to their settings tab. Then they can customize their account by turning on features of their choosing.

Since the Gmail Labs program began, the features have grown in popularity among users, Google officials said. The number of lab features has more than tripled, to more than 36, as Gmail celebrates its fifth birthday next week.

Google’s Gmail Labs also typifies the Mountain View, California-based company’s reputation for innovation and brainstorming. At Google, Gmail engineers can allocate 20 percent of their workweek to their own projects, which can include creating Gmail Labs features.

Google hopes the labs create an environment that will find out what Gmail users like and dislike. "There is no screening process," said Todd Jackson, a Google product manager. "It’s up to whatever people want to build internally."

Jon Perlow, a Gmail engineer, introduced the practical idea of "Mail Goggles" to help users, including himself, stop sending "mail you later regret." Perlow created the function last fall when he found himself sending messages to an ex-girlfriend — late at night — asking to get back together.

With Perlow’s Mail Goggles, users can specify which hours they would like to enable the feature. If a user tries to send an e-mail during the self-selected time — say, midnight to 3 a.m. — a screen pops up forcing the user to solve a series of simple math problems before the message can be sent. Theoretically, this gives time for the intoxicated or emotional e-mailer to reconsider.

Gmail Labs also recently developed a feature that helps users who forget to add photo or document attachments to their e-mails. Users can turn on a "forgotten attachment detector"; if the program finds the word "attachment" in the e-mail text, a box pops up reminding the user to add an attachment.

Gmail engineer Michael Davidson was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day last year at a bar when he came up with a feature to help e-mail addicts. Davidson realized he was wasting valuable work time checking e-mails.

"Someone joked that it would be a great feature of Gmail to keep you from checking e-mail," Davidson said.

So he created a program that locks people out of their Gmail accounts for a set period of time. After spending two afternoons coding it, Davidson launched the "E-mail Addict" feature, which forces users to take a break from e-mailing by blocking Gmail for 15 minutes.

Company officials say the best lab ideas will eventually become standard features in Gmail. For example, the idea of Google Maps started as a lab concept.

"The best thing you can do is to put your product and team in a position where you can move fast and get feedback from users to find out what sticks in the marketplace," Jackson said.

Gmail is the third most popular e-mail site, following Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Hotmail, according to Experian’s Hitwise.com, a site that tracks Web traffic. Google declined to comment on Gmail user growth.

Other e-mail services also are trying to enhance the electronic messaging experience. Windows Live Hotmail added a "What’s New" feed in February that allows users to see what their friends and family are up to as well as pictures or posts they may have added.

In 2006, Google added a chat feature. Last fall the company added a video function allowing users to see each other when they e-mail. Google officials hope to continue adding features regularly.

That’ll be good news to Doug Baruchin of Plainview, New York, who uses Gmail at least 16 hours a day between work and personal communication to family and friends.

Baruchin runs the Web company MyWorkster.com, a professional development portal for colleges and universities, where his 15 employees are required to use Gmail. The video and chat functions also help workers stay connected when they are traveling, he said.

Where ‘Undo Send’ and other Gmail ideas are born – CNN.com

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Gmail Service Hiccup

In case you didn’t hear, Google’s Gmail service had a major hiccup last night and early this morning according to several websites.  I personally don’t rely on Google to get to my email but know a lot of people that do these days.  I am old school I guess in that I still rely heavily on Microsoft Outlook to pull in my corporate email, calendar appointments, and tasks. 

While I am not a heavy Gmail user, I do have my corporate account setup inside of my Gmail account to pull in my business emails in the event that I am traveling, etc.  Expect everyone to give Google a hard time today, Here’s an article about the outage on ITPRO this morning:

Google’s popular Gmail service, went down this morning, preventing millions of users from accessing their email, justifying the service’s beta tag that remains several years after it was first introduced.

The outage occurred at approximately 9:30am GMT and appears to be worldwide. Some users have reported that Google Docs has gone down too, although this does not appear to be the case for everyone.

“A number of users are having difficulties accessing Gmail. We’re working to resolve the problem”. Google told IT PRO in a statement.

“We know how important Gmail is to our users so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologies for the inconvenience. We encourage anyone having technical difficulties to visit the Gmail help centre at mail.google.com/support, where we are posting status updates on the situation.”

IT PRO contacted Google to clarify the situation and was provided with the statement over the phone. “I’ll have to read it to you if that’s OK -I can’t email you, obviously,” a spokeswoman said.

Not surprisingly, many Gmail users were alerted to the issue via Twitter, and the range of comments made it clear that the issue was worldwide.

However, not everyone was upset at the outage. “Enjoying the fact Gmail is down so I can get some work done and not be held hostage to my inbox,” commented one user. Meanwhile a Google Premier Apps user pondered how long the service would have to be down to break Google’s SLA. This was an issue raised in our recent review of the Google Premier Apps service.

At the time of writing. the Gmail service had been resumed, but only for some users.

Last month human error at Google caused every single website that appeared on its search engine to be flagged as malware.

Gmail service takes a break | IT PRO

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Mailtrust Sync for iPhone

I am on the board of advisors for Mailtrust, which is a division of Rackspace (RAX).  Mailtrust is probably one of my favorite SAAS solutions on the market today.  My partners and I partnered with Mailtrust years ago before they were actually called Mailtrust, or even before Rackspace acquired their company.  Our premium email solution is reflective of our partnership with Mailtrust.

Today I got an email notifying me that Mailtrust’s Noteworthy product line had launched their Synchronization tool for use on the iPhone.  The tool can be picked up inside the Apple Applications directory.  I look for this to be a huge addition to their already popular Noteworthy product.  We have plans to make a similar announcement regarding our email solution along these same lines in the very near future.

When the iPhone was first released, we jumped at the chance to develop a tool on this great new platform. This happened at the same time that we were really focusing on building up our relationship with Funambol. So what better way to do both, than to go to Italy for two weeks and work alongside their developers on the project?

In April 2008, that’s exactly what I did. I spent two weeks in Pavia, Italy discussing with Funambol how we can work more closely. At the same time, I worked with their team on the core code base of the Funambol iPhone client. The trip was amazing. Since then, we’ve continued to work closely with Funambol on new and old projects.

When I got back to Blacksburg, we set to work customizing the iPhone client for our own users. After many months, and intense coordination efforts with Apple, we’re finally ready to launch. This client is probably the easiest to use of all of our clients, and we are proud to give our valued customers the ability to sync their Noteworthy contacts directly with their iPhone or iPod Touch!

If you are a current customer using Noteworthy you can download the iPhone client from the App Store through iTunes or follow this link.

Launch: Sync for iPhone | The Mailtrust Blog | Mailtrust

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