Gmail Labs continues to make an awesome product even better. Tonight the site has introduced ‘Sender time zone’, a feature that allows users to quickly tell if their contact is likely awake or sound asleep, based on the time zone their Emails are being sent from.
The feature takes advantage of the time zone data often included in Email headers, showing a green light for contacts that are probably awake and a red one for those that are asleep.
For those of us who live and die by our inboxes, it can be tough to keep track of the contacts that are abroad, which can lead to some awkward phone calls (I’ve accidentally called CEOs of startups located in the UK at around 4 in the morning, their time). The feature is also helpful for determining how quickly you can expect an Emailed response from your contact (again, I’ve sent urgent messages to PR representatives who were based abroad).
As with all Google Labs features (other notables include a Panic Button and Multi-Pane Viewing) users can access the feature by enabling Google Labs through their Gmail settings, then selecting ‘Sender Time Zone’.
Gmail is going crazy with lots of updates..m loving it
even so there are still new updates i would like to see
its the small details that makes a product great!
Awesome!!!
It would be really cool to know about our friends’ time zone and expected status just by a glance at their ids.
Gmail RoCkS!!!
Very cool feature. I like it. They seem to understand what users really want.
“Big Brother Is Always Watching” lol
This is one of those improvements that when you read about it you think “Why didn’t they have this earlier? This is genius.”
I new something like this was lurking near by. It’s funny and yet amazing what will become of email messaging in the future~!
…gmail …oh how I love thee…
dont know what u guys r smoking…
i have been using MS Unified Communicator for 2 years…
dont copy and take the credit… grow up guys…!
I’d like to know what parameters they actually use for this. If they assume that someone will be asleep 10pm to 6am in their local timezone, that’s not going to work for a lot of people I communicate with, as they are mostly asleep 3am to 12pm.
And no, I’m not going to use it as an excuse to call them an hour after they hit the hay because “Google said normal people are awake at 7am”
How does it work? Is this only with GMail addresses cause I dont see how they are able to where the contacts are.
They could have registered with saying there in the UK but could be in Japan or are they monitoring ip addresses or where the emails come from.
Gmail is going crazy and I am lovin it …
Can someone explain to me what order gmail puts lab features in? I’m so sick of hearing about a brand new lab feature and not being able to find it in the list without studying. I guess it might be on purpose so people will read about other lab features?
That’s a pretty cool if not completely obvious feature to have implemented.
I find gmail far more engaging than orkut & facebook. The email & chat tool combined with search & other equally brilliant features make it one of the best things I use.
I am loving it.
cheers,
Marvin
Cool they need to connect with us and our alarm data
Well goodnight I have to get up at
http://www.sleep.fm/7am
Cool i just clicked link and it set the alarm clock – does it work on the iPhone?
Not yet …. at least for now alarm links only work on devices with Flash capability.
Though solutions for all net devices are coming!
Any friendly reminder that will let me know when I might be able to expect an email response (such as the recipients timezone) will be very helpful in my opinion!
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Hi
Nice use of the time and date function already in the email headers. Anyone who knew where to look could always have used that information. Also makes me wonder if I should keep my Yahoo Mail address and if the age of desktop email clients are over.
The killer feature will be scheduling a draft email to automatically send out at a future time/date.
This was in my wish list for a long time, and happy to see it finally. Better late than never.
I was wondering if Gmail (or any other web based free email service)
has an email application client that allows you to set reminders for
reply and follow up after a certain period of time.
I often get emails that require replies, but I forget to reply from
time to time.
What I would like to do is to tag the email (or whatever works best)
for re-reading or replying after certain number of days (easily set by
me). When the day arrives, I should get a pop-up, reminding me to
reply to those emails.
This is for replying to emails received.
Now when sending out an email myself: I want to be reminded to do a
follow up on the email I did sent out. Again, I set up the duration
from the sent folder.
Not sure how all this will be tied up with the built-in calendar, but
it makes sense to make some relationship with the calendar.
If after reading an email, you are unable to send a reply right away,
you may forget to do it for a few days, and it may be too late to
reply if a deadline has come and gone. But if designate that email as
“reply after 12 hrs or 3 days” for example, then it will remind you to
reply.
I can always make a calendar entry for each of these things, but it
would be too much work because I may need to do this to a dozen or
more emails every day.
I looked at a few applications outside of Gmail. They tend to be more
for event reminders. I need something where I can simply click and
designate action items right from where the email is.
I found one add on called G-Alerts, but it only works with Gmail
Classic although lots of manual entry is required.
Is Gmail planning to add this feature? This will help improve many
people’s lives, certainly mine.
Please help!
Have you tried the Tasks lab feature in gmail?
RememberTheMilk.com is also quite useful. Integrates nicely with gmail if you use firefox add-in.
have you checked out http://gosnoozemail.com/
It was launched last weekend as part of a SF StartupWeekend.
Why?
It’s email – The recipient doesn’t have to be awake to receive it, and it won’t wake them up if they’re asleep.
I presume for privacy and accuracy reasons they are only using the TimeZone offset values in the email headers to come up with with this data. Thing is, this leads to a situation where if one is one the move, the time zone info is calculated based per mail and not on a per user basis. So I have this friend who mailed me from home, same TZ as me, and then went back to his country of work which is in another TZ. His icon in a particular email conversation is still shown as if he is in his home and my TZ. Of course to do any better they will have to use IP addresses and that is neither a good indicator of privacy protection nor is it accurate if gleaned from email headers.
This will be a great time saver. Grunties, I see your point about it being email (it doesn’t wake anyone) but it seems like a great way to keep track of EVERYTHING else – video chat, setting up meetings, webcasts, etc.
Nice feature. It will be cool if we are able to embed flickr/picasa photos in the message box to share photos with others thru mail. Also for embedding youtube videos in our messages.
Gmail is truly a NextGen web 3.0 portal
That was always my favourite feature in Skype. So not really earth-shattering news. However, if the time zone in the header is the information then it really does not mean that I am awake was I might be travelling and my server is still in the other country. A real measure would be to use the geolocation of the sender before the mail gets sent.
I simply don’t get it. If I am sending an email to a contact, why would I care if they are potentially asleep or awake? At best this is correct with a margin of error of +/- 2 hours. Another useless feature like the beer googles feature. Google is wasting time on such foolishness.
Most likely my important contacts are already connected via IM, which has a more accurate status.
This just goes to show that way too many of you would drink whatever coolaid that Google pours or spills.
true …. its google effect
blindly praising everything
Have u guys noticed… this feature is based on Email header so its useful when someone has sent u a mail. In gmail contacts are added from orkut as well if u have enabled that feature. There is no way to get the Time zone of those contacts who hasn’t mailed u.
sorry for my poor english
its started showing “Not a good time for call” from 8:00 pm IST.
Sounds kinda cool, but I don’t think this is a feature that very many people will actually utilize. After all, it is e-mail……people don’t need to be awake to receive it.
u r missing a point … its not about email. its about whether u should call that person at that time or u should just mail him as he may be sleeping.