Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Let’s say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it’s waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers — you can."

Google Cloud Print lets you print from Gmail in any current web browser, desktop or mobile. You need a Windows PC connected to the printer your want to print to right now but they're going to add support for Mac and Linux machines as well. Just go into Gmail from a browser and you will see a "Print" option in it's drop down menu near the top right. Besides just printing your messages it supports the printing of some attachments like .doc and .pdf files. Give it a try! Does this solve a specific printing need for you?

"Google has announced this week that it has removed another barrier that prevents some users from taking advantage of Google emails service. Some users like the Gmail interface, others want to use Outlook to get email. Google has announced a new feature called Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook that lets users continue using Outlook to manage their email and other functions like calendars and still take advantage of Google's cloud-based email service."

If you are interested in moving to Gmail, but can't bring yourself to totally cut the cord from Outlook, take a look at the new features Google has added to Gmail.

"Since launching back in 2004, Gmail has set the gold standard for webmail clients, offering a large amount of storage and a highly usable interface, free of charge. But for many people it has remained out of reach - no matter how appealing Gmail might be, they’ve racked up thousands of messages on other services that they simply can’t give up. Today, that changes. Gmail just released a new feature that allows users to import their Email archives and contacts into their Gmail accounts effortlessly."

You would think with all the press about Twitter, Facebook and other social applications, email should be put out to pasture. It seems as if Google still thinks that email is of enough interest to invest some development dollars and come up with a tool to help you migrate everything from other webmail providers. Sure, if you had some time and knew something about rocket science, you could do this yourself, but Gmail's new import option makes moving email addresses a snap. By lowering the barrier for migrating, Google is definately threatening other webmail providers because while email is not hot anymore, it does contain one very important and valuable thing for Google, personal information. The more Google can host services for you, the greater it knows about your life which to them is gold. I'm not a Gmail user though not for privacy reasons. I'm the kind of guy who likes owning his own data so that should a company decide to flip a switch, I'm not blocked for all my stuff. Regardless of who you use for webmail make sure you always backup your contacts and email regularly. If you've got all your eggs in one basket, like Google, for email, documents, spreadsheets, bookmarks and your first born you might find yourself cut off from your own life one day.

A few years ago, I wanted a robust email service for my domain name. After comparing several alternatives, I picked Runbox. It has a lot of great features - virus protection, spam filter, very large email limits and it collects email from other sources including Gmail, Hotmail and my ISP's. I have been very happy with it and it has never let me down. But now, Google offers Gmail for domain names - and it has a free version. After comparing the two, Gmail has a faster webmail interface and has better IMAP support. Plus, Google backs not only incoming email, but outgoing email too, even if you use another program to send it (like Outlook). And, all your email is instantly searchable via Google desktop search. With all that, I have to wonder, will Google eventually take over?

"We hear reports that many users don't archive their email. If you don't regularly click on the "archive" button or never even thought about it, here are some reasons you might want to get in the habit. Archiving just means moving mail out of your inbox and storing it for safekeeping. Your messages will be waiting for you when you click All Mail or search for them."

For all you Gmail users out there, Google lists 9 great reasons to "archive" your mail rather than deleting it. I usually use the Archive button sparingly, but these are some good reasons to start using it if you haven't thought about it before. I can really relate to #8: Procrastination.