Gmail, don't give me any task!

As you might have read (or discovered for yourself) from the numerous sites giving Gmail wide coverage on their online real estate, Google has apparently decided to make the Labs Tasks feature that was a spin off from some remember the milk thingy a permanent fixture on the left Gmail panel. Yucks! When the Labs feature for Tasks first came out, I tried it but I didn't like it. To start with, it looks ugly. To me, it is not utilitarian - it's just ugly. And I don't find it useful personally. Yet right now, I am forced to endure this Tasks sitting there permanently, it being a real eyesore. To check what tasks you have, you have to deliberately go and click on that link to bring up the Tasks pane. The chance is high that if you have just those few tasks, you will likely remember them at the same time you bring up the Tasks Pane - so fat load of crap Tasks is useful for. On the flip side, if you have simply too many tasks, I strongly urge that you polish your task management skills. If you are talking about tasks with long time frames, you need e.g a calendar (such as Google Calendar), and not that weeny Tasks pane. That is really useful for the original remember the milk kinda tasks... you know, (1) Buy ABC brand milk on the way back (2) Wash my hands after using the toilet (oh plzzz....) (3) Pay credit card bills... the point is, you can try to exercise your memory by remembering such small things. You don't need Tasks unless you keep having small things to remember - and in that case, those are probably repeated tasks that are harder to forget than remember. Yes yes don't yell at me just yet. I know there are MANY people who swear by using Tasks or related tools. To each his own, I guess! :P I came across this fabulous post by MAMBOLERO here. He really sings the beats of my heart. I will post his words below verbatim for your "enjoyment". On a final note, I hope Google will allow us to disable this Tasks feature. This toggling on-off can perhaps be included under Settings >> Labels. If it's already done, perhaps the feature has not been rolled out to me yet. --- I wish I knew! Please, Google, will you STOP already with shoving more immovable "options" into the left-hand side of my Gmail page? Don't misunderstand, I like the Labs -- I like them a lot -- and I've enabled all but 4 or 5 of them. However, I also like the ability to choose WHERE/WHEN/& WHAT goes in that left-hand column. After all, wasn't that the whole point of making the chatbox, etc., movable? At the rate you're "helping" me, Google, last week by splaying all 30 of my labels at the top of the left column, now by tucking Tasks under Contacts, my Chatbox will end up buried in a flutter of clutter "below the fold". Now, just stop that! Yes, I finally figured out how to knock the labels down to my five most essential; I prefer the neat and tidy drop-down labels list, thank you very much. "Tasks?" Hard as this may be to take in, my Google-y hosts, NOT all of us want to put our grocery list alongside our inbox or our To-do list anywhere but on Post-It Notes, the kitchen calendar, or maybe, just maybe, in our heads. Thousands and thousands of us DON'T work that way; we're mobile, we travel light, we organize to the beat of a different drummer. Options? We love 'em. Orders? No, thanks! Put an Off/On switch to "Tasks".

Gmail's new Undo Send feature

Hey friends, check out Gmail's new Undo Send feature! I think this must be one of the coolest labs features ever added. Remember those times when you got too hyper and clicked on Send too fast or accidentally? Well, with this new feature (you have to activate it from Gmail Labs under Settings), you have a grace period of several seconds to Undo the sending. In a way, this is similar to the recalling message function of Microsoft Exchange. However for the Exchange, one important criterion is that your recipient must not have opened that email... so unless you are sending at an hour when your friend is asleep, tough luck there. Besides, both of you need to be on Microsoft Exchange. So in this aspect, Gmail's new Undo Send feature is better. I don't know how they are doing it but I guess they probably just delay sending for those few seconds till you are "ready". And so, this feature will work no matter what emailing solution your friend is using. I don't anticipate myself using this feature more than once in a purple moon but it is a handy one to have so I have turned it on. :)

Why does Gmail's attachment bug persist?

It has been so many days and I don't get it. Why does Gmail's attachment bug persist? Isn't Google supposed to be efficient? I know it is not "my" problem, that I might have screwed up my own computer. I have had similar feedback from friends during this period too. It is not some browser thingy instead. :P I checked up Gmail's known issues page and I don't see this issue reflected there. But it can't be that I am the only one who noticed this bug? As it is, every time I send an email with attachment, a mirror copy will appear in the trash. It doesn't actually affect anything except that the perfectionist me will have to manually delete this phantom email with attachment that is from an unknown sender. . . . Okay, so I just filed a bug report myself to see if Google has anything to say (if they are not too busy to reply :P).

Better to forget completely or remember wrongly?

One of my friends was remarking how a mutual acquaintance is currently in Philippines. Him: She's in Philippines now, didn't you know? Me: Eh... no. How did you know anyway? I didn't know you two are close... Him: Don't you remember that email she sent? She said she was in Philippines! OOPS. Did I forget something again? I quickly dug out *that* email and re-read the content. Hmm... she did mention she was in Philippines... how can I not recall this at all? But wait, the email says something else too... she was in the Philippines FOR HER SUMMER VACATION. So what happened was that while I completely forgot about the Philippines bit, my friend remembered a distorted version of it. My friend thought that she, an American, had long migrated to Philippines. What a big boo-boo if she reads this! :P Is it then better to forget something completely or remember it wrongly? Naturally if I get to choose, I would rather remember everything correctly. However in this case for instance, it is clearly better to forget completely than remember wrongly. Remembering part of it and knowing it is incomplete is fine - at least you have a general idea and know that you just need to verify it. But remembering incorrectly and thinking it is correct is disastrous! So in order of decreasing preference, I think it is better to: (1) Remember everything correctly. (2) Remember the gist of it and knowing your knowledge is incomplete. (3) Remember incorrectly and thinking you are right! That's why it is useful to store information you think you might need later on. Today, much of our communication is via emails. If you are using Gmail like me, you can take advantage of Gmail's inbuilt search engine. Say you had this conversation with someone offline and you think the information will come in handy. As soon as you get online, pen down all you need to remember in an email. Then very importantly, spend at least 5 to 15 seconds to put down all variations of keywords that come to your mind. It is worth pointing out here that if you can't find the email, it is as good as useless. Do be reminded that Gmail search is unfortunately still not as powerful as Google search vanilla. Where appropriate, I would suggest you put down both the plural and singular form of the word. And if need be, put down both the abbreviation and the long form. Stick to this "storing routine" and you will do just fine. :-)