Getting more from Gmail
I placed my first telephone call from my Gmail account a short while ago. That's right. Gmail is new and improved, as in it now includes telephone service.
Why type when you can talk, right? And, if two parties have the Gmail chat plug-in installed and both parties have a webcam, you can talk and see the person on the other end. Sounds like Skype. The difference with Gmail phone is that all calls to the United States or Canada are free. With Skype, only calls going Skype-to-Skype are free.
Calls coming from my Gmail account show up on Caller ID as coming from an Escondido, Calif., number. That means I'll need to tell people that it's OK to pick up a call from that strange locale. I'm not sure yet how much I'll use this new calling feature, but I know it's there and I know it works.
I have friends in rural Pennsylvania who have had outages with their telephone land line recently. They live so remotely that there's no mobile signal available on their property. I'm guessing we can chat via Gmail instead of waiting for the phone company to fix the problems. I'll let you know how it goes.
Google announced another enhancement to Gmail today, but I can't find it for the life of me. It's called Priority Inbox, and it’s supposed to filter messages from addresses it deems more important than others into a special inbox. The feature is still in beta testing, so perhaps my account will see the new inbox in the next couple of days.
An AFP story on Yahoo said: "Priority Inbox in Gmail divides incoming messages into one of three categories. An automated program separates "important and unread" messages from those that are "starred" and "everything else."
Why is Google doing this? The story cites a Google source saying there are about 294 billion e-mail messages sent every day. The average inbox receives more than 150 messages a day. I get about twice that many across the three accounts I monitor daily.
I'll let you know if the Priority Inbox helps me any. That is, once I have it.
Read the full story: Gmail prioritizes messages to fight e-mail overload
http://yhoo.it/gminbox
