Tag Archives: gmail

Re-activating gmail on Blackberry after setting up 2-step verification for Google

After reading this viral post, ‘How Apple and Amazon’s security flaws led to my epic hacking’ I decided to set up 2-step verification for my Google Account for good. If you are reading this, chances are you already know what 2-step verification for Google is and if you don’t, read this.

If you have integrated your gmail on Blackberry, after having set up that 2-step verification your mails will stop working on your phone.  Here’s what you need to do to fix it

Option 1: While you are on https://accounts.google.com/SmsAuthConfig, click on Blackberry link (on right) in the Mobile application section

On clicking Blackberry, you’ll see this

I couldn’t get to use this method as the authenticator link didn’t open on my phone, so in search of an alternate I discovered another way out(option 2)

Option 2: Open https://accounts.google.com/IssuedAuthSubTokens and generate password from here (You can use any name you want, say my BB)

After clicking generate password, you’ll see the application password. In another tab open the website for your blackberry internet service provider (https://airtel.blackberry.com in my case). While editing the email id, it will ask for gmail password. Once you validate that, it will again present you a screen to validate your gmail password.

Now instead of inputting your gmail password again here, you need to input the application password that was generated doing the step mentioned above (copy paste the generated password and click ok).  This should work just fine

 

Gmail now has ‘Undo Send’ feature

While this definitely isn’t a new update it’s a useful one and I am not sure if many people are aware of it.

For those who didn’t know, Gmail now has a undo button which can prevent you from sending erroneous emails. The way it works is that Gmail holds up your email for about five seconds(or more?) before sending it and you can undo sending of email in that time window by clicking the undo button

gmail_undo

But mind you this isn’t a default setting, you’ll have to work a bit to get this working. By default when you send an email you’ll be getting the same old message

gmail_sentTo incorporate this change go to Gmail settings(right top) and go to the labs section.

gmail_labs

Labs section is a collection of lots of new(and mostly useful) features that are in testing stage and haven’t been released for masses.  Look for the “Undo Send” feature there, enable it  and you are done.

gmail-labs-settings-undo

Though the Gmail Blog says the time in which you can do an undo is 5 seconds I’ve found it to about 9 seconds when I tried to time it a couple of times.

So what do you think about this feature ? Useful  ? Not Useful ?

Add your mobile number for Gmail’s password recovery

If you know it already, good, but if you don’t, here’s the thing

Now you can also add your mobile number as one of the password recovery mechanisms for Gmail

gmailaccountrecovery1

So now there’s another option to retreive your Gmail password and what’s cool about this is that you don’t need to depend on your seconday email anymore  . I think this should make life a simple in case someone looses their Gmail password.

Forgot your password ? Go to password assistance page and enter your username/email. Google will sms/text you a code on your mobile which you can use to get back on track.

Here’s a test for the new work flow

Step 1:

password_assistance

Step 2:
reset_pwd

I just added my mobile number and went for the recovery option.  Contrary to what Google says, I haven’t received any sms, though I did get an email on my alternate email account. So for now we can’t say it this option is working for India but in any case the new feature/change sounds good(and safe) and I think we all should  go for it

FriendFeed:To Mainstream or Not is the Question

Despite being a cool service with a solid team behind it, I’ve always looked with skeptism at any talk about FriendFeed going mainstream. Before talking about FriendFeed or any other service going mainstream it’s imporant to be clear about what going mainstream really means.
Crossing million mark for number of users ? Regular mention of the service in mainstream media ? Presence of brands and celebrities on the service ?

To each according to it’s own, for some a service is mainstream if all their colleagues have accounts on it while for some a service is mainstream if national daily/magazines talk about  it regularly but, for me the parameter that can help to decide if a serivce is mainstream or not would be by seeing what % of people who go online regularly( excluding the likes of those who check their emails  only when someone informs them over phone about a new mail) are using it. While fixing an exact % would be a bit hard, lets say roughly that a service that manages to get 1/5th of the regular web users is mainstream.

Coming back to FriendFeed, a service started by Paul Buchheit(creator of Gmail and the guy who gave Google it’s Don’t be evil motto) . No matter what it means to people, for me FriendFeed is an aggregator for various social services, a mighty good one at that. For the uninitiated , it’s a service that lets you store and share your activites across various social platform. Be it bookmarking on delicious, uploading a picture on flickr or posting an update on twitter, FF captures it all and more.

Whether FriendFeed will go mainstream or not is just one part of the problem, if FF does go mainstream when will it happen being the other. If this post by TechCrunch and this traffic comparison with twitter are anything to go by,
FriendFeed vs Twitter
the chances of FF making it big(at least in immediate future) are kinda bleak, here’s why

1)  Friendfeed is catering to a need that isn’t really there yet:
For most people who are still learning their ways around blogs, nings, and ims, an aggregator like FF is not really a need yet.  Don’t believe me ? Ask around. There are lots of reasons for this including the fact that most people aren’t on that many services that they need an aggregator, and not so interestingly using a service like FF increases the time needed instead of decreasing it. By opening another channel for my content I need to pay attention twice as much, which isn’t cool for many.

2) FriendFeed isn’t simple or intuitive:
Call me what you want but I honestly feel that the idea or the implementation(if it’s possible for such an app) isn’t for the simple minded. Getting people who can’t seem to get enough of poking or taking “what fruit are you quizzes” to start using FF is a mammoth task. Did I hear someone say, FF isn’t meant for them ?, that’s mainstream baby.

3) FriendFeed isn’t strongly positioned:
How a service is positioned in a segment/sub-segment is extremely crucial in determining if it will be BIG or not. The fact that it’s first in the game or that it doesn’t have to worry about other services stealing their thunder(traffic) is quite important in determing the course of action for its future. What features to add/remove, how to design/not design, what should be the core offering or target audience etc could be some of the difficult decisions if you have to look around before deciding anything. While FF might not agree but quite a lot of people think FF is trying to go Twitter way(at least in terms of looks) and in this pursuit might have hurt itself. The fact that after doing an upgrade users aren’t sure if the changes are useful or not tells a lot.

4) Information Overload:
Filtering might be the next cool thing but not for mainstream noobs. Look around, do you seriously think the guy sitting next to you or on the other side of Facebook/Myspace/Orkut would need to see what you are doing just on delicious and what your other friend is doing just on flickr, maybe that too with just a particular tag ? No, I don’t think so.
Most people (including me) stand a good enough chance to be overwhelmed by the amount of information that starts flowing on your home page. Now that you’ve invited the problem yourself, you are expected to fix it but either reducing number of people you want to subscribe or doing selective/service based subscription.

These are a few basic reasons why I think FriendFeed won’t be going mainstream in the immediate future.

What do you think ?