Google’s Inbox is A New Email App From The Gmail Team Designed Not To Be Gmail

Google has introduced a new email app, from the same team that builds Gmail, but intended as something completely different from Gmail. Inbox is the app, and it looks like it might owe some inspiration to Mailbox, and to Google Now.

The new Inbox app is available to a limited user group only, and will be expanding its user pool via an invite system similar to the one that Google used for Gmail. It is available cross-platform, however, as an app for iOS, web and Android. You can also email Google at inbox@google.com to request access, if you don’t like your chances of getting an invite from a friend.

What Inbox does differently than Gmail is present you with your information in a way that’s aimed at making content contextually relevant, instead of just presented as it comes in. Email’s evolution has resulted in an unwieldy system – what began as system for occasional correspondence from a single virtual location is now something with take with us everywhere, with a volume that can baffle users.

Inbox has a number of features to try to help email users stay on top of things, including Bundles (a way to group similar types of email together automatically, for instance all receipts); Highlights, which brings up flight information, event details, and media from close friends and family so you don’t miss them; and a variety of Google Now type features listed as Reminders, Assists and Snoozes that act as a built-in todo list, complete with contextual information finders, like listing opening hours next to a restaurant when you have a meeting there booked.

Inbox looks like a project with some promise, but it begs the question of why this needs to exist outside Gmail proper. Perhaps it’s a bit too experimental, and Google is worried about these features turning off longtime users, so it’ll keep experimental bits in this sandbox before rolling them back in.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the document

Clip & Convert Your Video Faster With Quicktime X & The New Handbrake 64-bit [Mac]

Recently a friend of mine asked for my help to find a video of a good presentation to be shown to one of his classes. He also requested for it to be iPod friendly as he would also distribute the video to his students. Three things came to my mind: Steve Jobs, Quicktime and Handbrake . Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote. First step: The Cutting To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard). I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu ( Command + T ). Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position. To increase th

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a

Kiran Upadhyay

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