Feature

GMail: “Priority Inbox” To Help You Focus On Important Emails

Often time we get a lot of email in the last minute before going to a meeting or exam! But we are unsure if its just another autoresponder mail or a genuinely urgent as well as important.

Check above video – its a very good animated video explaining Priority Inbox neatly.

To solve this problem, Google has introduced a new feature called Priority Inbox. This is a separate section in your email and will automatically separate your important mails, based on which email you read and reply to.

And ofcourse it has some filters to manually mark someone’s email as important or as unimportant.
And Like most things, Priority Inbox isn’t perfect, so it needs your help to get more experience in knowing what is important to you. So it has a + and – symbol to mark any email(either in ‘Priority Inbox’ or regular ‘Inbox’) important or unimportant.
Priority Inbox is in Beta, and will be enabled to all GMail and Google Apps users in 1 or 2 weeks time.

Source: Priority Inbox

Recover Your Google Account Password Using Text Message

If you are hooked to internet for more than one year, you will surly know or experienced the difficulty of remembering the passwords.

Google has a wide range of service, and many people are so much addicted to these wide services. So its very important that we remember our Google Account password. If we are on a world tour and need to stay away from internet for long time. Then, when we are back to work and try to access our GMail and wonder, what’s the password! And we might have forgot the password of the alternative email ID too!

So Google has introduced yet another useful feature, using which you can recover your Google Account Password. To do that, you need to connect your mobile number to your Google account first.

Google Account Password Recovery Option
Source: Gmail Blog.

Log into your Google account, click on the Change password recovery options . And enter your country, mobile number, a security Q&A and save it. You are done. No mobile number verification! As Google may be thinking that, you won’t enter your friends mobile number by mistake 🙂 But if you ask me, a verification (mobile number verification by sending a verification code etc) is a good, secure way. Because if someone enters a wrong number by mistake(Many time we do typo or it just happens, that’s why it is called by-mistake!), and we will be in the illusion that our account is safe and now there is no worry of forgetting the password, only to realize later, that we had entered a wrong number.

To send yourself a recovery code via SMS:
1. Enter your username on the password-assistance page. After completing the word verification, you’ll receive confirmation that a verification code is sent to your phone. Keep this page open so you can get to the page where you enter your code.
2. Check your phone for a text message from Google.
3. Enter your recovery code and click Submit recovery code.
4. Type your new password.

Caution:
Note that there’s a limit to the number of recovery code requests you can submit in one day. If you think that you’ve exceeded this limit, wait 24 hours and try again. We are not sure about the exact limit though. Knowing that there is a limit, itself helps!, be careful.

Anyway, nice feature, if made use of properly. Next time you forget your password, enter your username on the password-assistance page, and Google will text you a recovery code. No need to check another email account!

Gmail feature, to track login sessions and some more details

Want to know, the timeings of your last login(like in your AdSense account) ?

Are you afraid or have doubt that, somebody else at office is accessing your Gmail ?

Want to know the Browser, mobile, POP3, etc and the timings and the Ip address of your previous logins ?

Gmail has all these features in one click….Most of us have surly missed to notice this very important security feature of Gmail.

Many of you have seen all the options present in Gmail Settings tab. And you might be thinking, where the hell could this option be present?

You might have missed this because, this option is at the end of the Gmail page(footer).

Here are the screen shots…
last-login-gmail-detail

When you click on the “Detail” link…you can see the details of the last 5 login sessions. And you can also see, if the same email account is being used at the same time in some other places. And importantly, you can “Signout all other login sessions”.
Sessiona-gmail-Ip-log-login

How to use this data

If you’re concerned about unauthorized access to your mail, you’ll be able to use this data to find out if and when someone gained access. Does the Access Type column show any unusual access? If you don’t use POP to collect your mail, but your Recent activity table is showing some POP access, it may be a sign that your account has been compromised.

The IP address column is also useful. If you always or most often sign in to Gmail using a single computer, your IP address should be the same, or start with the same two sets of numbers (for example, 172.16.xx.xx). If you’re seeing an IP address that differs greatly from your usual IP address, it could either mean that you’ve recently accessed your mail from a different location, or that someone has accessed your mail. Your current IP address is displayed below the Recent activity table.

Concurrent sessions

If your mail is currently being accessed from another location, it would be listed in the Concurrent session information table. This could mean that you simply have another browser window open with Gmail loaded, or that your home computer is logged in to Gmail while you’re accessing your mail from work. If you’re concerned about any concurrent access, you can sign out all sessions other than your current session by clicking Sign out all other sessions.

If you think your account has been accessed by someone illegally
You’ll need to change your password and your security question. The first step is to read our suggestions on choosing a good password to make sure that your new password is secure. Then, follow the instructions in How do I change my password? to update your password.
disable-gmail-chat
In the first screen shot, you can also spot another small link “Gmail view: standard | turn off chat | “. You can click on the “turn off chat” link to sign out of chat inside your Gmail. But this can be done at the chat box window itself(so, its not an important, must have option).