Gmail, one of WWD’s favorite web based utilities, has been put into the spotlight as Google opened the door on Gmail Labs.  This section of Gmail’s website will house new “beta” add-ins and features in an effort to gather feedback from users.  To get to Gmail Labs, inside your Gmail settings pane, click on the Labs tab.  Note: GMail is still rolling Labs out to users.  If your Gmail doesn’t have it yet, check back a little later. It appears that this is only available to @gmail.com email addresses and not Google Apps addresses.

Anything web worker useful here? Let’s take a look.

To break down the features, I’ll divide them up into useful and fun categories:

Useful

Quick Links: This can be a shortcut to any page in Gmail.  When I first saw this feature, I didn’t see at as being any different from a Label.  However, do you have a custom search you do on a regular basis?  Save it as a Quick Link. For example, if you want to see all the message from May 2008 with the keyword “Invoice” – you can now save it as a Quick Link for quick future access.

Custom Date Format: Outside of the United States, a date of 1/31/2008 might look odd.  Save your dates to show the date first or alternatively, turn Gmail’s clock into a 24-hour clock if you’re used to this formatting.

Superstars: Have you ever want to star an item, but have it be a different from all the other messages you already starred?  With Superstars, you can have additional star icons to display content with.  Use one icon for work contacts, one for family, one for action items and so on.

Fun

Email Addict: if you spend way too much time on your email and in chat, use Email Addict to have the system force you to take a walk, make a phone call or otherwise reach some work/life balance.

Hide Unread Counts: if you are depressed by the unread count of email being a constant reminder of how much work you have lying ahead, hide the counter with this Labs add on.

Mouse Gestures: some computer users love using mouse gestures to navigate around their software applications.  For instance, you can hold the right click button and move the mouse to the left to go to a prior conversation, or move the mouse up to go to the inbox.  While not for everyone, mouse gestures might be a key way you like to move around within Gmail.

What are your impressions – are there some new features in Gmail labs that you feel now you couldn’t do with out?

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Scribd

Using iPaper@Scribd is drop dead simple.  To get started, cc: ipaper@scribd.com in your outgoing email attachment and fire off the email.  As a result all your other recipients will receive a link to the Sribd hosted document a few moments later.  Alternatively, you can just email Scribd your document and forward on the link when you receive it back from your web service.

If you use the first option mentioned above, it may really annoy your email recipients.  This is because they’ll receive two emails – one with the original attachment and a second Scribd email with a link to their version of the document.

On another note, considering you’re uploading business documents to the Internet, we would not recommend putting up business sensitive documents that may contain proprietary business information.

Scribd has been used to display business documents on blogs for a while and I think it will be a great tool for people who wish to share documents in a very easy manner.

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Additionally, US cellular service providers over the last few months have been rolling out “unlimited plans” that offer an unlimited bucket of minutes for one flat monthly rate.  In most cases, $99 a month will give you unlimited chatters a way to talk all you want.  Sprint’s plan is very attractive because it includes unlimited voice, data, and SMS.

However, T-Mobile put a new spin on the unlimited plan by offering an unlimited family plan.  For example, if you have a $99 T-Mobile unlimited plan, you can add additional lines for just $49/month that will include unmetered national voice minutes, SMS, MMS, and instant messaging.

Small business owners may not know this, but this “Family” plan is not only usable by those who share genetic bonds.  This is applicable to small business because for about $250 (not including taxes), you can have unlimited wireless minutes to run your business with.  This type of value makes the offering very competitive and could be comparable to Internet telephony (VoIP) offerings.  However, the beauty of this T-Mobile unlimited family plan is that you have access to your minutes no matter where your cell phone happens to be.

For more information about the new plans, see T-Mobile’s website.

Would you consider running your small business on cell phones?  What tradoffs can you think of?

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Using LaterLoop couldn’t be easier.  Begin by signing up on their web site.  Because the service is built on Google’s App Engine (Google’s brand new application environment for web developers), if you have a Gmail (Google) account, you can just sign in.  Otherwise, choose a username and password as normal when signing up for a web service.

Next, install their Firefox Bookmarklet which is displayed on the right.  Now, while perusing the web, if you see a site you like and you want to save it for later, click the LaterLoop bookmarklet and the page will be saved for future reference in your LaterLoop account.

So far, LaterLoop doesn’t look all that different than the other bookmarking tools.  However, to set itself apart, LaterLoop:

• Is optimized for mobile phone users.  So far similar services have released iPhone versions.  LaterLoop takes it a step further by optimizing their service for BlackBerries, Nokias, and Windows Mobile devices as well.
• has a great social feature.  If you want to share a bookmarks, star it and it will then appear in an RSS feed you can publish out to your blog or simply share the RSS feed with your friends.
• features an Airplane mode: this will allow you download a ZIP file of all your links for offline access.
• allows you to grant granular permissions.  You can set all of your bookmarked pages to be public, or just your starred ones.
• supports the Firefox Scrapbook extension.  This is an established Firefox extension that allows you to save sites on your computer for future reference.

After using LaterLoop to bookmark a few sites, it appears to be very functional.  The offline capabilities make it an attractive offering as I travel to sites where Wi-Fi access can be hard to come by.  Also, the mobile site looks fantastic on my Nokia phone.

LaterLoop has put together an attractive offering that is worth taking a look at.

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In the meantime, the ongoing adoption of 3G broadband and the inclusion of Wi-Fi in many high-end phones is drawing a growing amount of attention to mobile VoIP services. Indeed, research firm Disruptive Analysis predicts that the number of VoIP-over-3G users will top 250 million by the end of 2012 — from virtually zero in 2007.

We at GigaOM are constantly tinkering with these mobile services, so we’ve put together a list of seven mobile VoIP apps that we think you’ll find handy.

Skype Options

Service: Skype Mobile
Platform/Network: Java-based application that works on 50 popular phones from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung. Can be used on numerous cellular data networks.
Cost: Free
Features: Chatting (including with a group), presence settings (offline, online, do not disturb), and Skype-to-Skype calls (including SkypeIn).
Our Opinion: If your phone is supported, Skype Mobile is a great way to add Skype chatting and calls to it. Though it would be nice if the Skype application weren’t written in Java, as these applications are often sluggish and unstable.

Service: 3 Skypephone
Platform/Network: Uses a specialized handset. Currently available in the UK, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden.
Cost: The phone costs £49.99 (about $98) and can be used on a pre-paid basis. Calls cost nothing if they’re made from Skype.
Features: Free Skype-to-Skype mobile calls and the ability to conduct Skype IM conversations, all without touching your computer.
Our Opinion: The 3 Skypephone is best suited for those who need a few monthly mobile minutes and wish to talk/IM to their Skype friends along the way. The pre-paid feature makes it an attractive and inexpensive option for Skype chatters in the geographies it serves.

Service: iSkoot
Platform/Network: Mobile handsets such as BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Mobile and Palm OS models. Also works on GSM networks.
Cost: Modest to expensive, based on usage. Because iSkoot is a hybrid VoIP/GSM service, it uses SMS and mobile minutes when making and receiving calls or Skype IM messages.
Features: SkypeIn and Skype-to-Skype calls, Skype IM messages.
Our Opinion: iSkoot is a good option for keeping in touch with your Skype contacts. However, I would look at other software applications that just use data to send Skype SMS and Skype voice traffic.

Mobile VoIP Players

Service: Truphone
Platform/Network: Nokia handsets
Cost: Incoming free calls while on the Truphone network, low per-minute rates while on a GSM network. Outgoing calls are billed at very low per minute rates.
Features: Truphone offers free calls, SMS and voice mail while logged into the Truphone network via Wi-Fi. Otherwise, Truphone forwards calls to your mobile handset and you pay a low per-minute charge.
Our Opinion: With its smart forwarding options, Truphone is particularly useful for international travelers. Whether you’re on Wi-Fi or just your normal GSM network, you can be reached via your Truphone number no matter where you are (charges apply in certain cases, see their site for details). For times when Wi-Fi is not available, Truphone just released Truphone Anywhere, which utilizes local gateways for outgoing calls at low per-minute charges. I have trialed the service by forwarding calls from my Truphone number to my cell phone and the call quality was fantastic; voices were indistinguishable from any other cell phone call. A Truphone-to-Truphone VoIP call yielded even higher voice quality.

Service: Fring
Platform/Network: Nokia/Symbian handsets, Widows Mobile, iPhone (pre-release beta)
Cost: Free
Features: Allows you to make VoIP calls on any SIP network, Skype or to other Fring users. Additionally, Fring is a multi-protocol IM client that will allow you to chat with your buddies on Skype, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, Twitter, AIM and Yahoo.
Our Opinion: I have used Fring to make SIP and Skype voice calls, and over EDGE the call is choppy and hard to understand. However, Wi-Fi provides enough bandwidth to make Fring calls clear and understandable. I wouldn’t say the quality is fantastic, but it is very comparable to a normal cell phone call.

Service: Talkonaut
Platform/Network: Available for Java-based phones, Symbian and Windows Mobile
Cost: Free
Features: Talkonaut offers free VoIP and IM chatting. For instant messaging, the application supports Google Talk, ICQ, AIM, and Yahoo. Talkonaut can also use SIP for VoIP calling.
Our Opinion: Talkonaut is a Russian offering and is still very new. The application was quite unstable on my Nokia N82 handset. With iffy performance and a very rusty user interface, I would recommend looking at other applications for this functionality, namely Fring.

Service: Nimbuzz
Platform/Network: Java program, Symbian; an iPhone version is coming soon.
Cost: Free
Features: Allows you to engage in IM conversations and conduct VoIP calls, as well as to share media such as photos and video. Nimbuzz also allows for client-to-client calls and has widgets enabling calls to originate from Facebok and MySpace. Compatible with Skype, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook and Jabber IM networks.
Our Opinion: The Symbian application is very responsive and easy to use. A VoIP call originating from my Facebook page to Nimbuzz over a Wi-Fi connection sounded good — just as good as any call over a GSM network.

Service: Gizmo5 (formerly Gizmo Project)
Platform/Network: Nokia Symbian handsets, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Nokia Tablets
Cost: Free for VoIP calls, low per-minute charge to call landlines and to SMS to mobiles.
Features: Gizmo5 allows you to conduct voice calls to other Gizmo5 users and grants IM conversations with friends on Gizmo5, MSN, AIM, Yahoo and Jabber.
Our Opinion: Gizmo5 is a great competitor to Skype, just not as established or well-known. They have wisely developed their client software for many platforms including numerous mobile phones, and on both Mac and PC. VoIP call quality is stellar when calling between clients, as well as to landline/mobile phones.

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1. Create an AT&T Wi-Fi account
2. Have a Starbucks card (that can have as little as $5) on it and you must have used your Starbucks card once in the last 30 days.
3. And agree to be emailed (spammed) by AT&T up to 4 times a year.

Not a bad deal: get a Starbucks card and an Americano and you can have 2 hours to use their professionally managed and speedy Wi-Fi.

As another option for free Wi-Fi with your morning coffee, check out your local coffee shop and of course Boingo is also an option.

For more information on AT&T’s Wi-Fi Service, see their FAQ.

(Photo credit: Flickr User visualpanic)

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A mobile VoIP company called Truphone is attempting to make international calling very inexpensive for travelers and other users of their service.  Truphone is a program that runs on your Wi-Fi enabled mobile handset used the Internet to cheaply send and receive phone calls, much like to Skype on your PC.  Truphone allows for cheap calling from your mobile phone when signed onto Truphone via Wi-Fi.

Truphone Anywhere is a new feature of the 4.0 version of their software.  When you are out of range of a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can use Truphone Anywhere to take advantage of Truphone’s inexpensive international calling rates.  To use the Truphone Anywhere service, dial an international number.  TruPhone will use a call-through mode by using a domestic phone number as a bridge.

Truphone will first see if there is Wi-FI available and if so, will route the call accordingly.  Otherwise, the handset calls your local Truphone gateway (depending on which country you’re in currently) and passes the dialed number for connection to the internet via the local gateway.

TruPhone Anywhere works in many countries including most of Europe, North America, and some Asian countries.  For the full list, consult Truphone’s website.

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This content separation leaves a space that aggregation services are trying to fill.  Sites such as FriendFeed (covered before), Tumblr, and the new Strands.com (covered by parent site GigaOm.com) are all vying for your attention.  These aggregation websites create what are called activity streams or life streams, and combine all your online media into one place (and one RSS Feed) for your intended audience.  You have complete control as to which sites are combined and aggregated in the services.

Tumblr

Tumblr was the among the first aggregation services and allows you to create a tumble-log.  Basically a tumble-log is a variation on a traditional blog that is allows you to publish many different types of media to it.  Tumblr wants you to put your photos, videos, blog entries, message boards onto their service, no matter where these media items exist.

Tumblr tumble-logs feature an RSS feed, giving users easy access to stay up to date on all the items you include in your tumble-log.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is the current web 2.0 darling site with lots of usage among bloggers.  To get started, head over to their homepage and complete the sign-up process.  Adding your services is as easy as giving your various account names for that service or simply the RSS feed.  For example, to add your Flickr photostream into FriendFeed, just supply FriendFeed your Flickr username.  The web service will handle the rest.

FriendFeed recently announced the inclusion of “Rooms.”  With this feature, you can create a room based on an interest, event, company name, or whichever topic you chose.  A company or group might want to create a room for their business or topic area to give users a way to particpate in creating an online home for their area of interest.

Strands.com

Strands.com, from the social music recommendation service company Strands, takes FriendFeed and adds on a layer.  Strands.com tries to improve upon FriendFeed by offering the aggregation functionality, but giving you suggestion as to what content will be of interest to you based the way you consume social media.  Strands.com knows your online contacts are fantastic filters for online content, and will use them to show you items you may find interesting.

For example, if you have a co-worker who is an expert in a particular field of interest, add them to your Strands.com contacts and when they recommend a video, online article, or other media item, you’ll be alerted through your Strands.com webpage.

As you can see, there are many sites that give you the ability to bridge your online assets into one functional website.

How do you keep people connected to your various online media items?  Does aggregation interest you?

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Then, reality set in.  Working from your home can be isolating and can result in feeling cut off from the working world.  Co-working is a new trend, as recently reported by CNN and others, which involves teleworkers gathering within the same physical space in order to have some social time while working on their tasks.  There are businesses such as CubeSpace and Citizen Space that make co-working easy by offering space for co-workers to gather, however what is a web worker to do if they don’t have this type of option close by?

Do It Yourself

Most teleworkers likely know someone who also works remotely from their office.  If you feel comfortable doing this, offer to host a co-working session at your house or other meeting space.  Much in the same way moms self-organize play dates, teleworkers will gain benefit by gathering to work together on an occasional basis.  In exchange for offering up your Wi-Fi connection and a making a few pots of coffee, you’ll be able to exchange ideas and make some potentially profitable business connections.  For example, by gathering with other bloggers or programmers, I often gain story ideas and other opportunities I would otherwise not come across.

Break Out Of Your Shell

If you see the same people routinely at your Starbucks, engage with them in a conversation to see if they’d like to make it a regular meeting time.  This might be a great way to meet teleworkers who don’t necessarily work in your field.  Additionally, by meeting at a Starbucks or your local pub, you can use the hosting business’ Wi-Fi and avoid the effort of hosting a co-working session at your house.

Tools to Aid You

To organize a group of co-working professionals, you can either:

• Start a website: build a web site to serve as the communication hub.
• Initiate a Google Group: Drop dead easy way to centralize communications, however everyone will need a Google Account
• Simply start an email mailing list
• Check out the Co-Working wiki page as it has many valuable resources.

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Not only has Apple has sold roughly 5.4 million iPhones to date, but it’s working hard to get the device into as many people’s hands as possible, launching it in country after country around the globe. At this point, it’s hard to gauge how large this market could become.

And with the iPhone SDK coming out in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, we’re about to see an explosion of apps being offered by mobile developers. Indeed, as the iPhone ecosystem continues to evolve, startups that offer tools such as Pinch Analytics are going to be really valuable.

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Strands

Through the taste profile, Strands intends to battle the information overload from services such as Twitter and FriendFeed by using your online social circle to filter out relevant content you will find pertinent. “Hot Posts” will show you which online media items, such as news stories and videos, are currently popular among your friends to help you discover new things.

The company recently raised $55 million in capital and reports sales of $12 million in 2007. When I asked Jason Herskowitz, Strands’ VP of Social Media, how the company plans to monetize its new offering, he said Strands is merely looking for eyeballs to drive sales of its other offerings, such as Strands Social Player and Strands Business Solution.

I’m skeptical about how successful the new Strands.com service will be — it’s yet another service to sign up for and adopt. However, if implemented correctly, the service stands to bring the signal-to-noise ratio of lifestreams down to a tolerable level.

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Nokia seems to be learning this lesson. A perfect example is Nokia Sports Tracker, which allows people to access statistics and other relevant information on their workouts. For instance, those who walk, run, cycle, or ski can track metrics such as average speed, total distance, altitude, and so on. By starting the application at the beginning of your workout, the program, through the use of GPS, tracks your positions and gathers statistics as you go. Sports Tracker’s latest version also includes the ability to include videos and pictures with your workout by attaching the media from your phone.

Nokia has also released a Sports Tracker beta web site that allows you to create a free account and upload your workouts from your handset directly to the web. There you can display a map of your workout route, average speed, elevation, and a host of other statistics.

But Sports Tracker isn’t just for fitness nuts. Travelers can share data about their trips with family and friends by way of a travel map accompanied by images and videos taken along the way. As Symbian-Guru has suggested, Nokia might want to consider a name change for Nokia Sports Tracker, something like Nokia Travels. Perhaps an integration with Dopplr is something the company should consider as well.

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Additionally, there are those who embrace the utility of a soft phone.  A soft phone is an application that runs on your computer and allows you to send or receive phone calls, normally through a microphone headset.  Skype is probably the most well known soft phone, but a competitor of theirs called Gizmo5 (formerly known as Gizmo Project) can be combined with GrandCentral to give you soft phone capabilities.

This Gizmo/GrandCentral combination is made possible because of the two services’ use of SIP, a standard protocol for VoIP communication.  Using Gizmo and GrandCentral together will give you absolutely free calling inbound and outbound to your callers, absent of using any cell minutes or using a landline.

Follow this hands-on guide to enable Gizmo5 to be added as a phone in your GrandCentral set up.

First and foremost, you must have a GrandCentral account set up and ready.  Secondly, download Gizmo5 from their website and create an account. Gizmo5 is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Nokia Internet tablets.

Now that you have your two accounts on GrandCentral and Gizmo5 set up, it’s time to integrate them.  Log in to your GrandCentral account and click on the “Settings” tab.  In the Phones group, you can see where you have your various phones that GrandCentral forwards your calls to, according to your preferences.  It is here that we will put in our Gizmo5 ‘phone number’ for GrandCentral to use.

To find that Gizmo5 phone number, launch Gizmo 5 and under the Account menu, click on “My Profile”.  In this window, shown on the right, you’ll see your SIP phone number.  Write down this number, minus the 1 at the beginning and excluding everything after the @ sign.

Now, go back to GrandCentral and click “Add/Edit Number”.  In the dropdown, choose Gizmo, type in the SIP number found in Gizmo5, and assign a name of your choosing to the entry.  Lastly, click “Save” to commit the change.

Now, whenever you have Gizmo5 running on your computer, you have the ability to recieve phone calls without using your cell minutes or tying up a landline.  All voice packets are carried over the Internet from GrandCentral to wherever your logged into Gizmo5 from.

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Orange

When traveling abroad, travelers who want to take their mobile phones along for connectivity feel the sting with high roaming charges while overseas.  This is especially true with data enabled smartphones, as many European carriers charge by the kilobyte, where in the United States we are used to paying a flat rate for data usage.

Orange is offering a voice plan called Favourite Countries, whereby customers are charged an upfront monthly fee of 4 Euros with no hidden or additional charges.  Then, usage charges accrue at a low per minute rate depending on which country you’ve chosen.  For example, Orange France customers will pay 0.37 Euros per minute vs. the normal rate of 0.59 Euros.  Currently this offer is valid in France and Romania.  Later this summer, it will be extended to the UK, Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

As for a data plan, Orange offers their Travel Data Daily plan which involves paying a flat up front fee for affordable data roaming.  The plan costs 12-15 Euros for 50Mb of daily Internet usage within the European Union.  The plan is being rolled out in the UK, France, Spain, Poland, Belgium, and Romania.

Orange, while perhaps unfamiliar to Americans, is a major European mobile carrier that has 172 million subscribers over 5 continents.

How do you stay in touch when traveling abroad?  Do you use pre-paid SIM cards or does this type of plan from Orange offer you the most benefit?

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The BlackBerry optimized website is joined by an Outlook plug-in in an effort by Tungle to make usage as easy as possible.  Users can now schedule meetings with Tungle either through Tungle’s website in a conventional browser, use the Outlook plug-in, or using the BlackBerry site.

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Qipit works by taking the photo on either your camera or camera phone and loading it into their web service.  The image file can be sent to Qipit as either a multimedia message (MMS), mobile email, attached to an email from your PC, or loaded into their service using their website.  When Qipit receives the file, they quickly turn it into either a jpeg or Adobe Acrobat PDF file.

After a few trials, I have been impressed with Qipit’s service overall.  I have a Nokia phone with a high quality 5MP camera and handwritten notes and a printed memo were easily legible when I viewed it on Qipit’s website.  I also tried the Qupit service with a Motorola RAZR, featuring only a 1.3 MP camera.  Printed materials again looked good, however a whiteboard didn’t was not as legible when pictured and sent to QipIt.  In order to frame shot, I had to stand back.  The RAZRs lousy image sensor combined with the lossy compression used on the RAZR camera resulted in a PDF that was barely readable.

If you use Qipit to scan a document or handwritten note, the image will turn out on even an older camera phone.  However if you have a large document or whiteboard to capture, I’d recommend a digital camera that has 3 megapixels or more.  This is the only way to get a quality PDF out of the Qipit service.

Qipit allows you to share the scanned images with others by using their online file storage.  The service is worthy of being called “a poor-mans electronic whiteboard.”  It’s also exceptionally useful for scanning documents on the go, including receipts for those who are on business travel and don’t want to keep all those expense receipts in physical form.

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