Gmail’s built-in filters, labels and the recently launched Priority Inbox help users who receive a boatload of emails on a regular basis to easily organize and manage their Gmail Inbox. However, there are still instances where the built-in features aren’t enough to organize and keep track of the emails you send and receive. Boomerang for Gmail offers a few more features that users can use in addition to the current tools to better manage their Gmail account.

I first found out about Boomerang for Gmail via a Facebook wall post from Buffy, a friend of mine and one of the regular readers here in JaypeeOnline. So what is Boomerang for Gmail? It’s a Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome plugin/extension that lets users control how and when to send and/or receive email messages. This works for all Gmail accounts including Google Apps/Hosted Gmail email accounts.

To better understand what Boomerang for Gmail is and how it works, check out the video demo:

Screenshots:

Manage scheduled messages

Choose when to receive an email

Choose when to send an email

With Boomerang for Gmail, users can choose when to send and/or receive emails, enabling them to send and/or receive their emails on the right time. The options that Boomerang for Gmail offers used together with the built-in features of Gmail will definitely help users to better organize and manage their emails. Scheduled emails is a feature that Google should come up on their own and implement on Gmail. I’m guessing that it won’t be long until we see this added to the list of Gmail’s built-in features but for now, we’ll have to thank the good folks of Baydin for coming up with Boomerang for Gmail.

Boomerang for Gmail is currently in closed beta so you’ll need an invite if you want to try it out and use it. I got my invite a couple weeks back but I wasn’t able to try out and use Boomerang until today. If you want an invite, you can sign up on this link or follow @baydinsoftware and tweet that you want an invitation. They”ll DM you an invitation code within one day.

If you already have an invite code, just visit the official Boomerang for Gmail site and enter the code. Once you entered the code, you’ll be brought to a download page where you can choose between a Mozilla Firefox extension and a Google Chrome plugin. Download the right plugin/extension for your browser and install it (Firefox users have to restart their browser). Once Boomerang for Gmail is installed, just login to your Gmail account and you’ll see the options added to the interface (see screenshots).

Btw, if you’re already using Boomerang for Gmail you can view and manage all your scheduled emails by clicking on the Manage Boomerang link found on the upper right corner of your Gmail account. I hope that Baydin would also create a Mozilla Thunderbird extension that will let Gmail users like me use the Boomerang for Gmail features on Thunderbird.

So what do you think of Boomerang for Gmail? Anyone else tried or are using it already on their Gmail account? What are the things you like or dislike about it? What other options would you wan to see the Baydin team add to it? Please share your thoughts.

It was exactly two years ago this month, when Google released the first beta of Chrome, their version of the web browser. Since then, Chrome have accumulated numerous features, browser themes, password manager, better privacy controls, built-in Adobe Flash Player, HTML5 capabilities and over 6,000 extensions.

For Chrome’s 2nd birthday, Google is celebrating this momentous occasion by releasing a faster and more streamlined stable version – Chrome 6.0.

Today, we’re releasing a new stable version of Chrome that is even faster and more streamlined. Chrome is now three times faster than it was two years ago on JavaScript performance. We’ve also been working on simplifying the “chrome” of Chrome. As you can see, we took the already minimalist user interface and stripped it down a bit more to make it easier to use. We combined Chrome’s two menus into one, revisited the location of the buttons, cleaned up the treatment of the URL and the Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme of the browser to be easier on the eyes.

Screenshots of the Old and New versions of Google Chrome.

Old Chrome – first beta

New Chrome – latest stable release 6.0

Personally, I still use Mozilla Firefox as my main web browser because of the different extensions/plugins that I use for work and which I can’t live without. However, I always install and keep a copy of Google Chrome on every computer that I have as an alternative/backup web browser and for testing purposes.

You can upgrade to the latest stable version of Google Chrome directly from the browser by clicking on the wrench icon on the upper right corner and then click on About Google Chrome. You can also download it directly from http://www.google.com/chrome. If you’re having a hard time downloading/installing from that link, you can try the offline installer.

If the Wibiya Toolbar isn’t your thing or it doesn’t work for you but still want a way to make your blog/website more interactive and provide your readers an easy way to share your content then you might want to try out the AddThis Sharebar, a website toolbar from the creators of the popular AddThis Social Bookmarking Sharing Widget.

The AddThis Sharebar is a different way of making your content shareable using the AddThis platform. As a persistent utility at the bottom of your pages, the Sharebar keeps your users’ favorite services front and center to help increase sharing.

The AddThis Sharebar is fast, the file is less than 20k and the script and images it uses are hosted on a CDN. It is convenient because it works on virtually any page on the Internet including javascript frameworks (jQuery, Prototype, Closure, Ext and YUI). It also correctly overlaps Flash movies/ads when viewed on Firefox, Chrome and Safari. The AddThis Sharebar is personalized and customizable because it will display first all the services that your users/readers use and it includes a modular system for adding new features. The toolbar will automatically use existing AddThis menu settings when used on the same page. You can read more about the customization options in the documentation.

The AddThis Sharebar is safe because all javascript codes are kept inside a closure, with only one variable exposed to the DOM. It will not interfere with items that are already displayed on your page like Flash animations/movies (ads). All CSS tags are dynamically generated to prevent overlapping tags on your website.

Installation:
Just copy and paste the following code into your website/blog template. The AddThis username is only required if you want to have tracking/analytics.

[javascript]
<script src="http://sharebar.addthiscdn.com/v1/sharebar.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<div class="addthis_sharebar_config" style="display:none;">
* username: your AddThis username
</div>
[/javascript]

AddThis Sharebar Browser Compatibility

• Firefox 3, 3.5, 3.6
• Google Chrome 3, 4
• Safari 4
• Internet Explorer 7, 8

Unlike the AddThis Social Bookmarking Sharing Widget, the Sharebar is an AddThis Labs experiment so it doesn’t have the same level of support. However, if you decide to use Sharebar you can provide feedback by sharing what you like or dislike about it, how you use it and/or features that you would like to be added to Sharebar. Btw, if you’re a Google Chrome user, you might want to try out the AddThis Sharebar Google Chrome extension. Thanks to bea, I found out that they also have an AddThis Sharebar Firefox extension.

I haven’t tried the AddThis Sharebar here on JaypeeOnline yet so I can’t really do any comparison with the Wibiya Toolbar or say which one is better. Although it is not that popular as the Wibiya Toolbar, I’ve seen several blogs who are using Sharebar.

Anyone here using or have tried the AddThis Sharebar on their website or blog? What are the things you like or dislike about it? What features would like to see added to it in the future? I’d also like to hear from those who’ve tried both the Wibiya Toolbar and AddThis Sharebar.

I use several websites or online services to ping my blog and one of them is Ping-O-matic. For those of you who might not be familiar with what a blog ping is, here’s a little info from Wikipedia:

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated.[1] An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.

By using online ping services like Ping-O-matic, you notify different online services that keep track of weblogs that your blog’s content has been updated. Once notified, these services crawl and index your site and later on publish your blog content which increases your blog’s popularity.

Anyways, talking about Pingomatic, the site recently received a makeover or redesign as you can see from the screenshots below.

Previous Ping-O-Matic design

New Ping-O-Matic design

The new look is definitely better than the old one and even the new logo looks really nice.

However, since Ping-O-Matic got its new design, I’ve been having problems accessing it with Firefox (both Windows and Ubuntu). Some parts of the page mysteriously don’t show up. (See screenshot below)

Firefox

Firefox + IE Tab

I’ve tried opening Ping-O-Matic using Internet Explorer 7, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari 4 and had no problems whatsoever as they render the page well. I also tried accessing Ping-O-Matic with Internet Explorer on Firefox using the IE Tab plugin and I experience the same issue. So the problem is really with Firefox. I’m running the latest version – Firefox 3.0.6 and I have no clue as to what causes the problem. I don’t know if its a conflict with one of the plugins/extensions I’m using. The thing is, I’m also experiencing the same problem with Firefox on Ubuntu which only has a few extensions installed on it. I still have to figure out what’s causing this and how I could fix it.

Anyone else experiencing this issue when accessing Ping-O-Matic with Firefox? Any ideas what could cause this problem? If you know the solution please share it with us. Thanks!

Tokyo-based web software company Lunascape Corporation recently released a web browser called the Lunascape 5 Alpha. This Windows-only browser is the English version of their popular Japanese version (downloaded 10 million times) released back in 2001. What makes Lunascape unique is that it’s the world’s first hybrid engine web browser that uses three rendering engines – Internet Explorer’s Trident, Firefox’s Gecko, Safari and Chrome’s Webkit.

With Lunascape you can choose which rendering engine to use and there are two ways to do that. First, by right-clicking on a tab and second by clicking on the engine switch button located at the bottom left of the browser. Lunascape also has a “auto engine switcher” function which remembers the rendering engine you last used and uses that engine the next time you load Lunascape.

According to the November 21, 2008 Sunspider Javascript Benchmark, Lunascape is the fastest browser around beating other popular browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari and even Google Chrome. (see chart below)

To the average user, Lunascape is just another browser. But for the power users like geeks and web developers, Lunascape is more appealing because of its features. Lunascape 5 Alpha’s features include: Rendering engine switcher, crash protection, mouse gestures, tab browsing, support for RSS feeds and podcasts, form auto saver, skins and plugins which at the moment are only available in Japanese.

The Lunascape browser is ideal for web developers who would like to test their work on different engines using only one browser. No need to open Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Chrome individually which will save the user a lot of time and use less of the computer’s resources.

Checking out my blog using Lunascape

After trying and testing out Lunascape, I’ve noticed that the startup time was a bit faster than Firefox 3 but slower compared to Google Chrome. When it comes to page loads, Lunascape was quite fast but you can’t really tell the difference from Firefox 3 more even with Google Chrome (did tests using same rendering engines). Lunascape also hung or crashed on me a few times. Since Lunascape is still in Alpha testing, this bugs and issues are expected.

I’m not sure how much of the current global browser market share they can get but if they can add support for Firefox addons and include plugins in English, they might just be able to snatch a good number of users from other popular browsers. I think when their user base increases, we would also see an increase and improvement in the current list of available plugins and skins.

Lunascape 5 Alpha is free to download and use.

What is your current default web browser? Have you tried the Lunascape web browser? Would you consider switching to Lunascape or use it as an alternative? Do you think that it is the world’s fastest browser? If you were to change/add something to it, what would it be? Please share your thoughts and thanks for your time!