Geek4Eva

Here is a real cool feature if you’re a Gmail user!!

How often it happens that you click on an email link on a website and it tries to find MS Outlook or Outlook Express or some other external email application to send the email. Quite often I guess! And if you’re using Gmail’s web interface for your emails then you have to manually copy the link, open Gmail and then paste the email address – quite a cumbersome process I must say!

How cool it would be if you’re using Google Chrome and you could use Gmail web interface without going through this long process? Pretty cool aye?

Now you can with a little bit of extension magic.

Getting Chrome Ready for Extensions

The first thing that you will need to do is prepare Chrome to use extensions if you have not previously done so. Locate the shortcut(s) for Chrome and right click on them. Select “Properties”.

Once you have clicked through, you will see the “Properties” window with the “Shortcut” tab displayed.

In the address area for “Target:” you will need to add the following command to the end of the target path making certain to leave a single space in between the final quote mark and the enable extensions command.

Here is an example of what the the target path should look like…

Once you have that finished, click “Apply”, then “OK”. Now you are ready to add your new extension!

Installing the Extension

Once you have gone to the link provided below, click on the link as shown to access the .crx file. Once the file has finished downloading, you will be prompted about the installation.

When the extension is ready to install, you will see the following message window. Click on “Install” to add the extension to Chrome. Now you are ready for all those new e-mails!

Whenever you click on a mailto link, Gmail will open up just like this…the entire window will be focused on letter composing only (nice!).

Conclusion

If you love using Gmail for all of your e-mail needs, then this extension is certain to be a perfect addition to your browser!

Links

Download the GmailDefaultClient extension (Chrome Forums)

Note: The download link is approximately two-thirds of the way down the page.

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Some techy news from today – 2 September, 2009

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Gmail suffers widespread outage

The popular Google email service is down for most of its users

“We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail,” reads an alert posted at 3:53 pm US Eastern Time in the Google Apps Status Dashboard.

In that dashboard, Google offers performance and availability information about the online services included in its Apps collaboration and communication suite, such as Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites.

EBay to sell majority stake in Skype for US$1.9 billion

Investor group picks up 65 percent

EBay has reached an agreement to sell a 65 percent stake in its Skype internet telephony, video conferencing and instant messaging unit for US$1.9 billion in cash to an investor group led by Silver Lake.

In addition, eBay will receive a note in the principal amount of $125 million from the buyers, which also include Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the company said on Tuesday.

Click on headlines for detailed news.

This happened almost 2 years ago when I had called one of the local council services to reserve a community center. On being asked for my email I gave her my Gmail address and the response from her was something like – ‘oh never heard of that one before!‘. Fair enough – I don’t blame her for that. Gmail wasn’t and still isn’t that popular with non-techy people.

In the meantime Google has been advertising its cloud service a bit lately and has also dropped its ‘beta’ tag from Gmail which was causing some hesitation for companies to use Gmail as their corporate email solution.

As per the latest report released by InformationWeek, Google’s Gmail has just overtaken AOL’s email service. I think earlier Gmail used to be only a kind of geek’s-choice, but lately it is getting quite popular with rest of the people as well.

Personally I use Gmail but I think it has a bit of a geeky user interface and not really easy-to-use for someone not that tech savvy – unlike Yahoo and Hotmail. Though it’s changing lately and may be thats one of the many reasons why Gmail is getting more user base. Whereas Hotmail used to be most easy to use interface for a long time – but now with increased features (most of them are useless flashy features) it has compromised on the usabiltiy side.

Anyways I’d just like to end with ‘may the best one win’. And hope that consumer is the winner at the end’.

If you’re not on Gmail – then click here to get it.

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