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Tips for deduping Android contacts

The contacts app on your phone is the most boring, neglected app ever created. I don't care how much you love your phone -- the only reason you're reading a blog post about contacts right now is because things have gotten out of hand.

Are there people listed in your phone three or four times? Do you have 500 contacts, but only 10 of them have phone numbers? Well, then, it's time to take out the garbage.

The video above has all of my best advice, but I'm going to use this blog post to distill … Read more

First Thunderbird, now Sparrow? We need e-mail clients, please

Today the small e-mail app company Sparrow announced it's getting acquired by Google. I hope this will be good news, but I am not convinced. With Mozilla ceasing development of Thunderbird features, things look bad for users of desktop e-mail software.

I'm a paying user of the Sparrow OS X application. I love it. I find it provides both a simple view to my GMail accounts, and a very fast interface to blast though messages. Google's GMail Web app gives me more features and better searching, and Thunderbird and Postbox are better for bulk operations, but for … Read more

Google snatches up Sparrow team to work on Gmail

Google has acquired e-mail software startup Sparrow in a move that brings its team to work on Google's Gmail product.

Sparrow's chief executive Dom Leca announced the news on the company's site and Twitter account this morning, as well as in an e-mail to existing Sparrow users.

Leca says that the company will continue to make Sparrow available, and keep it up and running with support, however the two versions of the product will not gain any new features.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Citing sources, The Verge suggests the deal came in at &… Read more

Password-protect e-mail on your iPhone and iPad

After last week's post describing two apps that keep your iPhone and iPad data private, a reader posed this question:

Is there any app that allows you to use it like the 'mail' app on an iPhone etc., but has a password lock facility? Else children will be reading all my mail.

I'm sure Apple had a reason for not allowing iPhone and iPad users to require a passcode to access the device's mail app, but I don't know what that reason was.

I came up with a free workaround that requires creation of a send-only … Read more

How Google products go from creepy to cool

On April 1, 2004, Google announced its new and capacious Gmail service and said it would serve up contextual ads, a move so radical that people initially thought it was an April Fool's joke. It wasn't.

At the time, more than 30 civil liberties groups urged Google to suspend Gmail, arguing that targeting people with ads in their e-mail was setting a dangerous precedent and letting the "proverbial genie out of the bottle" for privacy abuse. California Sen. Liz Figueroa drafted a bill aimed at restricting this use of Gmail (later dropped), privacy groups asked the California Attorney General to investigate … Read more

Gmail iOS app gets push notification, finally

After a rough start, Google's Gmail app is finally trying to improve itself.

The latest update out yesterday adds long-awaited support for push notifications. That means iPhone and iPad users can receive a notice each time a new message hits their Gmail inbox.

Like other apps with Notification Center support, a new message can trigger an alert or a banner and also appear even if the screen is locked.

A couple of other enhancements grace the latest version, according to a Google blog post.

Users can configure Gmail to use an alternate send-as address instead of their Gmail address. … Read more

How to create custom themes in Gmail

Themes in Gmail are a good way to quickly differentiate between multiple Gmail accounts, as well as adding a little flair to your account. Until now, you were limited to the selection of themes provided by Google. Within the next few days, Google will have completed rolling out the capability to create custom Gmail themes, using your own background photos.

To check if the new themes have been pushed out to your account, go to your Gmail settings and select themes. If the feature's been pushed to your account, you'll see the Light and Dark themes in a … Read more

Germany's 'Googlemail' finally becomes 'Gmail'

After years of being forced to use "@googlemail.com" addresses, Google's users in Germany can now join the rest of the world and embrace "@gmail.com."

"As a German working on the Gmail team, my friends and family back home often ask why they have a @googlemail address instead of @gmail.com," Google engineering director Mark Striebeck wrote today in a company blog post. "Today, I'm happy to announce that is no longer the case: Google Mail is becoming Gmail in Germany."

Google's e-mail troubles in Germany date back … Read more

State-sponsored attackers likely used IE exploit to target Gmail accounts

Microsoft is warning of "active attacks" using a hole in its XML Core Services technology that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if a user was enticed to open a malicious Web page using Internet Explorer.

Microsoft has a Fix it tool that blocks the attack vector for the vulnerability, but has not issued a security patch yet. Computers running Windows, Office 2003 and Office 2007 are affected.

In its security advisory on the issue, Microsoft acknowledges the Google Security Team for working with the company on the MSXML Uninitialized Memory Corruption Vulnerability. Microsoft … Read more