Be sure to "middle click" on the post links to open them in a new tab. Kids get your mom or dad to approve all the news feeds, some may be PG-13 or higher.
People tell us all that time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean—here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.
Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn't outright junk but isn't very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this "bologna" from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.
Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”:
As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)
After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.
Rich text signatures have long been one of our most widely requested features. Some of you have tried your own solutions, including Greasemonkey scripts, browser plugins, and even using canned responses from Gmail Labs. Others have simply lived with frustration of not being able to change the colors or font size of your signature, or insert images and links. Either way, you'll be happy to know that today we're launching the ability to write your own rich text signatures right in Gmail.
The next time you log in and visit the Settings page, you'll see a rich text editor in the signature section. Here, you can customize your signature by adding pretty formatting, links, and images — or decide to leave things nice and simple.
Gmail also now supports a unique signature for each email address associated with your account. So, if you send mail using a custom "From:" address, you can use a different signature for that address. From the Settings page, you can edit the signature for each account by changing the email address that appears in the dropdown menu.
Currently, only the latest desktop version of Gmail supports rich text signatures and multiple signatures. The older version and HTML version of Gmail, along with the mobile versions, use a plain text version of your primary account’s signature.
Video chat, voice chat, and group chat have all been available for some time within Gmail, but they’ve been curiously tucked away. Getting them up and running required fidgeting with a little menu at the bottom of each chat window. Starting today, all of these features will be just a single click away.
One of the more subtle benefits to surfacing these chat options is that it’s easier for people to get started who don’t yet have the voice and video chat plugin. If your chat buddy doesn’t have the plugin, clicking on this icon in the chat window will invite them to install it. As soon as they’re done, you can carry on with a face-to-face video chat. Since we launched a similar feature on iGoogle and orkut a little while ago, we’ve seen a dramatic uptick in people using video chat.
Finally, you’ll find oldie but goodie features such as “Go off the record,” “Block”, and “Send SMS” in a more aptly named “Actions” menu of each chat window.
Labels are more flexible than folders because a given email can have several labels but can't be in several folders at the same time. A highly requested feature for labels, though, comes from the world of folders: the ability to organize labels hierarchically.
If you think this might be useful to you, go to the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, look for "Nested Labels," enable it and click "Save." You'll then need to name your label with slashes (/) to make it the child of another. For example, let's say you wanted to create a simple hierarchy with a "Home" label, and inside it a "Family" and a "Vacation" label. Just create three labels with the following names:
Home Home/Family Home/Vacation
You can then create "Home/Family/Kids," "Home/Pets," etc., to get something like the screenshot on the left. If you had the parent label "Home" before you don't have to create it from scratch.
You can create complex hierarchies of labels if that's the way you like to organize your mail, and you can expand/collapse labels to save space. You'll always be able to tell whether a given label contains unread messages in its collapsed child labels by looking at whether it's bold or not.
Please note that this lab doesn't play nicely with the "Hide Read Labels" lab. You might not get exactly what you expect if you have both labs enabled; for example, the collapse/expand icons won't always appear when they should.
Another highly requested feature is the ability to preview messages to get a glimpse on what they contain and maybe take immediate action without opening them.
This is exactly what "Message Sneak Peek" does. After you turn it on, right-clicking on a line in your inbox shows a preview pane with the message in it.
You can also use keyboard shortcuts for a faster sneak-peeking flow (enable keyboard shortcuts in Settings first if you haven't done so): hit 'h' to open a sneak peek card, then navigate with 'j' and 'k,' and dismiss the current card by pressing "Escape." Messages you peak at will stay unread (or it wouldn't really be a sneak peek, would it?).
Posted by Anna de Paula Hanika, Android Product Marketing Manager
Not only does the just-announced Nexus One have a beautiful display, snappy processor, and five megapixel camera complete with flash and geotagging, but you can also buy it online with or without a service plan. Plus, it runs Android 2.1, which adds a couple of new features to the native Gmail application:
Quick contact badge: Press the contact status icon within Gmail, and a handy box shows all of the ways you can reply to a contact — including email, chat, SMS, and Facebook.
Voice input: Swipe the keyboard, then just speak to select contacts or write an email, complete with punctuation. Period!
Nexus One also features the Gmail updates of Android 2.0, including:
Multiple Gmail accounts: Sync multiple accounts to the same device and switch between them without leaving the app.
Undo: A handy 'undo' link makes it easier to retrieve messages when you hit archive or delete by mistake. (Note: you can't yet undo send as you can with the desktop version of Gmail).
For more information on Nexus One visit google.com/phone. To learn more about Gmail on this and other Android devices, check out the Gmail page on mobile.google.com/android, or watch this video:
After over a million downloads of WordPress 2.9 and lots of feedback from all of you, we’re releasing WordPress 2.9.1. This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts. If any of these issues affect you, give 2.9.1 a try. Download 2.9.1 or upgrade automatically from the Tools->Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area.
Rested up from the holidays? I hope so, because the new year has begun and a lot is going to be happening with WordPress in 2010, and you definitely want to be a part of it. Later this week the scope for version 3.0 (featuring the addition of MU functionality to the WordPress codebase) will be decided in the IRC developer chat*, based on feedback provided by users like you. But it’s no fun to live by IRC alone, which is why we love WordCamps. Attending a WordCamp gives you a chance to meet people in your local community who are working with WordPress, as well as core contributors, theme designers, plugin developers, Codex writers, support forum moderators and other WordPress volunteers who’ve made WordPress what it is today. Add this New Year’s Resolution to your 2010 list if it’s not on there already: Attend a WordCamp, meet at least 5 new local people, learn something new, and if you have the chance, buy a drink for someone who’s volunteered their time and expertise to the WordPress open source project. To help you keep your resolution, here is a list of the upcoming WordCamps for the next three months, followed by what I know so far about each one.
January 8–9: WordCamp Atlanta. First WordCamp of the year, and it’s already sold out — twice! They changed to a bigger venue based on demand, from Georgia Tech to the Atlanta campus of Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). They’re still letting people onto the waitlist, if you’re interested. A guaranteed way to get in would be to sponsor the event, and they’re taking last-minute sponsors right now. Atlanta will have sessions on Friday evening and all day Saturday. I’ll be opening the Saturday program with WordPress Resolutions: What to Expect in 2010. After a day of design, development and content track sessions, Lead Developer Mark Jaquith will take the closing slot for a Town Hall-style Q&A. The attendee list (follow link, scroll down) includes a number of WordPress core contributors, theme/plugin developers, and support providers as well as proof that Atlanta has a strong WordPress user base.
January 23: WordCamp Boston. I think WordCamp Boston is trying to one-up every WordCamp the organizers have been to, including the awesome NYC from November, and it looks like they might succeed. From Doc Searls and David Weinberger as keynote speakers to the multiple-track, unconference and Ignite sessions to the sweet-looking venue and the party plans, this one has got it going on. I credit it in part to the fact that they are one of the few WordCamps to follow the advice of having an organizing team of more than just 2 or 3 people, so the work is better distributed. I see a number of familiar names on the attendee list, but even more that I don’t know, so I’m looking forward to meeting the Boston WordPress community. They’re still selling tickets, so if you’re in the northeast, you should try to make it. I’ll be at this one also, talking about how the merge with MU will affect the WordPress admin (by then we should have started figuring it out!).
March 27–28: WordCamp Toronto. The last two Toronto WordCamps have been really good. I heard there would be one in March, but their site right now is just taking emails for notification. I’ve contacted the organizer to see what’s up, and he says the site will likely go live this week. They’re looking for volunteers to help organize this year’s event, so if you’re interested, it would be a great opportunity to get involved. Believe me, volunteering at a WordCamp is one of the best ways to make sure you meet a lot of other attendees.
ASIA
January 30: WordCamp Indonesia. WordCamp Indonesia will be in Jakarta again this year. I love how they worded the beginning of their sessions page. “Come in, we’ll get you breakfast and coffee, you’ll register, there’ll be networking. It’ll be great.” There will be a single track of sessions, but there are several time slots set aside for ad-hoc discussion and breakout sessions.
February 27: WordCamp Fukuoka. WordCamp Fukuoka is just getting its site up, too, so check back periodically a little later for more information. One of their visiting speakers will be Noel Jackson, developer of the Press This bookmarklet as well as themes like P2 and Monotone/Duotone.
EUROPE
January 30: WordCamp Greece. WordCamp Greece will be held in Thessaloniki, and they expect about 100-150 people to attend.The program includes regular sessions on the usual topics (how-to, programming, SEO, multi-language sites, etc) as well as “QuickRounds,” which will showcase Greek projects based on WordPress. I’m especially intrigued by the “WordPress vs. Expression Engine” session. Whenever people compare different publishing platforms, it’s interesting to see which features they highlight. I hope someone gets video from this one and posts it to the WordCamp section of WordPress.tv.
March 6–7: WordCamp Ireland. WordCamp Ireland will be in Kilkenny, and for such a geographically small country, it’s got an impressive list of speakers, including Donncha O Caoimh, lead developer of WordPress MU. The program includes three tracks: Intro, Blogger, and Developer, and I think this will be the first WordCamp I’ve heard of that is deliberately family-friendly, with on-site child care. They’re also going to have a charging station for mobile devices, which is clever. It’s not confirmed yet, but I think I’ll be at this one, too.
If you want to attend a WordCamp but don’t know of one near you, check out WordCamp.org for the official list (updated frequently). That’s also where you would start if you wanted to organize a WordCamp in your area.
*Developer chats are held Thursdays at 21:00 UTC in the #wordpress-dev channel at irc.freenode.com.
Thanks to everyone who tested 2.9.1 Beta 1. We’re following that up with Release Candidate 1. RC1 contains a few more fixes, bringing the number of fixed tickets up to 23. If you are already running Beta 1, visit Tools->Upgrade in your blog’s admin to get RC1. You can also download the RC1 package and install manually. If all goes well, 2.9.1 will be here soon.
Merry Christmas! One of the things that was discussed at the core commit team meetup was release scope (and scope creep). Now that 2.9 is out and it’s time to start thinking about 3.0, we think it would be appropriate to stop and take a breath before diving in, and make a plan in advance. What winds up happening is that during each release cycle a few new features are selected for inclusion, but then right up until feature freeze (and/or beta cycle), people keep adding feature requests, patches for enhancements, and ongoing bug reports. This means each release winds up getting pushed out later than planned, and with so many things going in per release, it becomes harder to catch new bugs.
The as-long-as-we’re-not-in-freeze-yet model isn’t working. People wind up waiting months longer for new features they want, like Trash and Image Editing, because we’re still adding other things and then we need to test them all. If we kept the releases smaller feature-wise, we could push out the new stuff sooner (3 releases per year is the goal) and have more focused beta testing, making the releases themselves better. It’s hard, because everyone has their pet features and fixes, and if there’s a patch, why not get it in this release rather than waiting? Sometimes people complain that a patch has been waiting to be committed for weeks or months, but what no one ever seems to bring up is that sometimes patches introduce new bugs, and the more we add at once, the harder it is to keep it all well-tested on various platforms, in different hosting environments, etc. So. What’s our proposal?
We take a page from the world of project management and we make a project plan before we jump into the dev cycle. We let everyone propose features and enhancements, and we choose a limited number to include in 3.0 (in this case we need to be especially stringent, because the merge of WordPress and WordPress MU will automatically mean a lot of work) and set a realistic release date that we stick to. We create a tentative set of features for the next two releases, to be re-evaluated at the beginning of the next cycle, so that people know the community is committed to certain features, as opposed to the vague “future release” label we now use for everything not included in the current version. We fix bugs that are reproducible and affect a large number of users before focusing on edge case bugs or bugs that haven’t been well-described or reproduced. We stop diverting our attention from agreed-upon goals when a “squeaky wheel” decides we should all be focused on something else. There are always things that pop up unexpectedly, but we need to do a better job of restraining ourselves when it comes to trying to sneak things into the current release (I include myself in this, of course…as a UX person I always wish we could do everything all at once!).
As an open source project, we accomplish more when we work together than we do following individual agendas, and we need to keep our project focused on commonly-agreed-upon goals instead of following tangents whenever a community member starts to take us on one, regardless of whether it’s to follow a cool idea that everyone loves or a suggestion based on a personal agenda, and regardless of whether it’s a newbie who doesn’t know any better or a frequent contributor or committer who has a strong opinion and a loud voice (so to speak). The issue here is that it’s easy to get distracted, so we need to create a structure that will help us keep moving forward instead of getting sidetracked. We need to keep Trac clean for the current dev cycle so that it includes confirmed features and bug reports, and all new feature suggestions go into a different milestone.
We think it’s at least worth a try. When we re-start the weekly IRC dev chats in 2010, the first meeting will be to talk about the scope of 3.0. When we’ve got a general agreement about what will be included, we’ll create the appropriate Trac tickets, and punt tickets for non-3.0 feature requests/enhancements to a future release so we can stay focused. New bug reports will still come in to the current milestone. It’s going to be hard. There are at least a dozen new features that I feel like we’ve pushed back multiple times that I’d like to see in core, but for this experiment, I’m just going to keep reminding myself, “You can do that with a plugin!”
Unfortunately, the recent 2.9 release triggered a bug in certain versions of PHP’s curl extension. With these versions of curl, scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly. To fix this problem as well as a handful of other, lesser issues, we are quickly releasing 2.9.1, the first maintenance release of the 2.9 line. Help us get 2.9.1 ready to go by testing 2.9.1 Beta 1. The easiest way to test Beta 1 is to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, elect to get on the point release development track, and then perform an automatic upgrade via the Tools->Upgrade menu. You can also download the Beta 1 package and install manually. Fourteen tickets have been fixed in 2.9.1 Beta 1. Since the curl problem and a couple of other problems are dependent on specific hosting configurations, any and all testing help is greatly appreciated.
Posted by Jason Toff, Associate Product Marketing Manager
Ah 2009...turning five, finally shedding that beta label, and adding more than 40 new features. As we wind down after a busy year, here's a look back at a handful of our favorite additions to Gmail. We hope you enjoy trying them out as much as we enjoyed building them.
The coolest new stuff from a user point of view is:
Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).
2.9 provides the smoothest ride yet because of a number of improvements under the hood and more subtle improvements you’ll begin to appreciate once you’ve been around the block a few times. Here’s just a sampling:
We now have rel=canonical support for better SEO.
There is automatic database optimization support, which you can enable in your wp-config.php file by adding define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);.
Themes can register “post thumbnails” which allow them to attach an image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
A new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts, so you can now expand greatly what you can do in the comment framework.
Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)
You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
We’ve upgraded TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing and Simplepie.
Sidebars can now have descriptions so it’s more obvious what and where they do what they do.
Specify category templates not just by ID, like before, but by slug, which will make it easier for theme developers to do custom things with categories — like post types!
Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.
The XML-RPC API has been extended to allow changing the user registration option. We fixed some Atom API attachment issues.
Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)
The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.
Custom taxonomies are now included in the WXR export file and imported correctly.
Better hooks and filters for excerpts, smilies, HTTP requests, user profiles, author links, taxonomies, SSL support, tag clouds, query_posts and WP_Query
2.9 has been an exciting development cycle, and I must say it has whetted our appetite for 3.0, which is coming next (probably this spring) and will include at the very least the merge of MU with the WordPress core, and a new default theme. We can’t wait to start working on it. But first, some Carmen McRae tunes and a beer. Join us!
Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it's no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. You've been able to merge contacts one-by-one for a while, but now we've added a single button that merges all your duplicate contacts at once. To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the "Find duplicates" button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the "Merge" button.
If you've been considering getting all your contacts into Gmail or syncing your Gmail contacts to your phone, now's the time to do it. As we've written about previously, you can sync your contacts to a wide variety of devices (including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, SyncML, etc). So if you were dreading spending hours getting your contacts in order, now you can do it with a couple clicks.
Posted by Maya Moufarek, Regional Marketing Manager
Recently, I reunited with some colleagues in our Moscow office (the same team that brought you this Gmail art video last year) on a set of animated videos showcasing some of Gmail's features: messages grouped into conversations, great spam protection, built-in video chat, offline access, and themes. Some of the humor in these videos may be uniquely Russian — they revolve around a character who imagines what the world would be like if everyday objects worked like Gmail, like this video that compares unthreaded conversations to a mess of laundry:
In case the Russian version is too confusing, we've translated all the videos into English here.
I subscribe to a lot of really active mailing lists. Oftentimes, an email in my inbox will get dozens of replies before I get a chance to start reading it. If I only have a few moments to look at a particularly long and interesting discussion, I'd like to start reading it then; later, when I have some more time, I'll pick up where I left off. However, if I mark the thread as unread, it will return to its previously read state without updating to show what I just read. When I come back to it, I'll have to search for the last thing I remember reading. If I star the first message I still want to read instead, I might not remember that it needs to be read when I'm in my inbox later (and when I do read it, I'll have to expand lots of messages before I can read the conversation properly).
There's a new feature in Gmail Labs that will help with this. When you enable Mark Unread From Here from the Labs tab under Settings, you'll see a new "Mark unread from here" option in the drop down menu found in the upper right-hand corner of messages.
Clicking this option on a message tells Gmail that you want that message to be the first one you see when you reopen the thread later, with all messages after it open for easy reading. So, when you leave partway through reading a long thread, figuring out where to start reading again is easy. Give it a try and share your thoughts.
To get started, here’s a short video from the meetup discussing some of the topics and 2.9. In the opening pan, you’ll see (L-R) Andrew Ozz, Mark Jaquith, Jane Wells, Peter Westwood, and Ryan Boren, followed by Matt Mullenweg as the first person talking. Tip: go full-screen in HD to feel like you were there.
Last week, I posted about the fact that Trac would be quiet for a few days while the core commit team met in person for the first time to talk about some goals for WordPress in the coming year. That prediction wound up being a little inaccurate, as having everyone together inspired a Trac sprint to get us closer to shipping 2.9. As of this morning there are only 11 tickets left against the 2.9 milestone. Yay! I’m sensing a Release Candidate in the near future.
I’d planned to write a summary post to encapsulate the discussions we had over our 3 day meetup, but to be honest, all-day (and night) every-day meetings creates a ton of things to summarize, and the post would be a novella. So instead of one long post, I’m going to split it up into a series and post a summary of the discussion on one or two topics per day until I’ve posted them all. Think of it like a WordPress advent calendar. For today’s post, enjoy the video above and I’ll list the topics we covered to give you an idea of what will be included in the upcoming summary posts.
Topics: Direction for the coming year(s), canonical plugins, social i18n for plugins, plugin salvage (like UDRP for abandoned plugins), WordPress/MU merge, default themes, CMS functionality (custom taxonomies, types, statuses, queries), cross-content taxonomy, media functions and UI, community “levels” based on activity, defining scope of releases, site menu management, communications within the community, lessons learned from past releases, mentorship programs, Trac issues, wordpress.org redesign, documentation, community code of conduct.
You can see why I didn’t want to try to cram it all into one post, right?
Just to make sure it’s clear in everyone’s minds, I want to reiterate that these discussions were just that: discussions. They were not secret meetings ending in hard and fast decisions. The idea was to 1) get the core commit team on the same page in order to improve workflow efficiency and communication, and 2) come out of the meetup with a long list of things we know we want to work on in the coming year, and from there to work with the broader community to determine priorities/strategies before starting the work of getting it all done. As I finish off 2009 by posting summaries of the meetup conversations, I hope you’ll all plan to start 2010 with enthusiastic participation in one or more of the projects that will take these conservations from concept to reality.
Almost a year ago, we launched Offline Gmail in Gmail Labs. By installing Offline Gmail, you're able to use the normal Gmail interface to read and write mail, search, and organize, even when there's no internet connection. And Flaky Connection mode speeds up Gmail when your connection is slow or unreliable.
Since we first launched in Labs, we've heard from a lot of you who tried Offline Gmail, and your feedback helped us make a lot of improvements. Aside from fixing bugs and making the whole offline experience smoother, we recently added two frequently requested features: an option to choose which messages get downloaded for offline use and the ability to send attachments while offline. Offline Gmail has proven particularly useful for business and schools making the switch to Google Apps from traditional desktop mail clients -- they're used to being able to access their mail whether or not they're online, and Offline Gmail brings this functionality right to the browser.
Now, we're happy to announce that Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail. If you're already using it, then you're all set. While you'll no longer see it on the Labs tab, you can tweak your settings and turn it on and off from the Offline tab under Settings. If you'd like to get started with Offline Gmail on your computer now, here's how:
Click the "Settings" link in the top-right corner of Gmail.
Click the "Offline" tab.
Select "Enable Offline Mail for this computer."
Click "Save Changes" and follow the directions from there.
Thanks for all of the feedback over the last year -- and for putting up with the occasional bug or two. We're going to have a little toast, and then get right back to working on more improvements for 2010.
P.S. We received some interesting pictures in response to our call for photos of people using Gmail offline in our last post. Our favorite so far came from Ugo, who is at a Saharawi refugee camp in south Algeria, where he uses Gmail offline most of the time and connects via a satellite phone to our servers just once a day.
Three weeks ago we made extra storage for Gmail and Picasa Web Albums more affordable, and now we've partnered with Eye-Fi to make it even easier to get your photos into the cloud. Eye-Fi offers WiFi-enabled memory cards which make your existing camera wireless, so it's easy to upload photos and videos right to Picasa Web Albums or to your computer -- no cables required. For a limited time, when you buy 200 GB of Google paid storage for $50, you'll get a free Eye-Fi card (a $95 value).
There have been a lot of references to “canonical plugins” over the past year, especially at WordCamps by Matt, but we haven’t really posted anything official about the idea, nor have we really made much progress beyond discussions about how awesome it would be to have canonical plugins and how good it would be for the community. But what are canonical plugins, you ask? Well, that’s one of the many things the core commit team has been talking about over the past few days, and everyone agrees that we need to prioritize this aspect of the project sooner rather than later. So, here’s a super high-level description of how we’re currently thinking about canonical plugins, which we’d like to use to initiate some focused community discussion on the topic.
Canonical plugins would be plugins that are community developed (multiple developers, not just one person) and address the most popular functionality requests with superlative execution. These plugins would be GPL and live in the WordPress.org repo, and would be developed in close connection with WordPress core. There would be a very strong relationship between core and these plugins that ensured that a) the plugin code would be secure and the best possible example of coding standards, and b) that new versions of WordPress would be tested against these plugins prior to release to ensure compatibility. There would be a screen within the Plugins section of the WordPress admin to feature these canonical plugins as a kind of Editor’s Choice or Verified guarantee. These plugins would be a true extension of core WordPress in terms of compatibility, security and support.
In order to have a system like this, each canonical plugin’s development community would probably need similar infrastructure to WordPress itself, including things like Trac, mailing lists, support forums, etc. These things will be worked out within the development community over the coming months, but in the meantime, we really need a better name for this. Many people have no idea what canon/canonical means (clearly, they are not Dr. Who fans!), and having to define the word distracts from discussing the core ideas behind the concept. So, we thought we’d do a community poll to see what people think we should call canonical plugins. We brainstormed a few dozen ideas yesterday and whittled it down to our top handful. Based on the definition of canonical plugins given above, which of these terms do you think best describes them? I’m including a short description of our thoughts on each.
Standard - Implies that these are the standard by which all other plugins should be judged, as well as the idea of them being the default plugins. Core - Makes the close relationship to core WordPress development very clear, and has the implication of bundled plugins (even though we don’t need to actually bundle them now that the installer is right in the admin tool). Premium – Identifies these officially-supported plugins as best-in-class and of the highest value, and could potentially disambiguate the word Premium as it is currently being used in the community (to refer to anything from commercial support to licensing terms to actual code quality). Validated - Focuses on the fact that the code is reviewed for compatibility with core and for security. Official – Makes it plain that these are the plugins officially endorsed by the core team as being the best at their functions. Canonical – Maybe once people get used to it, canonical wouldn’t confuse so many people?
Cast your vote in the poll below to have your opinion considered during the decision-making process. And if you can think of a word that we haven’t listed here that you think is better, please submit it in the poll! The poll will remain open until 11:59pm UTC Thursday, December 10, 2009.
Just a heads up that Trac commits will be pretty low over the next couple of days, as all the core committers are in Orlando: Matt, Ryan, Andrew, Peter and Mark. We all came for WordCamp Orlando (fun!) and are staying a couple of extra days to discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year, the merge, canonical plugins, the WordPress.org site, community stuff, and all the other things that are important but that we never seem to have time to address. Since when things like this come up in the IRC dev chat or in various forums there’s inevitably a point at which someone says, “We really need to have [insert a core committer name here] here to make a decision,” we thought it would make sense to get together and figure out where everyone stands on all these ideas so that we can move forward a little more efficiently. Also, not all the committers had met in person before (and I’d never met Andrew or Peter), so it’s also a chance for us to just get to know each other a little. Watch this space around Tuesday or Wednesday for a post summarizing the things we’ve discussed, and the beginning of planning for how members of community can get involved in (or spearhead) the things that interest them.
Posted by Jason Toff, Associate Product Marketing Manager
Every year around this time I start thinking about the annual holiday email I send to friends and family members. I usually email my mom, dad, sister, friends and co-workers. But the one person who appreciates my season’s greetings the most — my grandma — is stuck in the pre-digital age of snail mail. Of course, I could go to a store, aimlessly wander through the aisles, choose a card, wait in line to pay for it, go to the post office, pick up some stamps, etc., etc. — but wouldn’t it be so much easier just to fill out a form and have Gmail handle the rest?
This holiday season, as a token of our appreciation to our most enthusiastic fans, we’ll snail-mail a free holiday postcard on your behalf. Yes, through the mail and everything.
To send a card, visit gmail.com/holidaycard. We’ll only be able to send cards to US addresses and to a limited number of people (due to limited Gmail elf availability), so be sure to request one soon.
And if you’re headed home for the holidays, consider spending some “computer time” with loved ones who aren’t as up-to-date with technology. With some luck, maybe this time next year you’ll be able to email them a holiday card instead!
Posted by Darren Lewis, Software Engineer and Jon Kotker, former Software Engineering Intern
In the early days of email, messages were simple text meant to be read on a terminal. But with the growth of the web came the advent of HTML email, and overnight people began expressing themselves through bold and italics, colors and images, and whatever else their creativity inspired.
If you like to use a specific text style for your messages, you've had to change the font every time you're about to start typing out an email. Now, you can turn on default text styling from the Labs tab, then go to Settings and set your preferences just once.
Try it out and tell us what you think. If you live and breathe code, now you can set your default text style to a monospace font. If your life is purple, your email can be, too. But remember: whatever you see is what your recipients will see, so be nice to them and try not to clog the intertubes with ginormous bold italicized red script. ;)
Version beta-2 of WordPress 2.9 is ready for your testing pleasure. You can download it or use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin and auto-upgrade a test installation. See all changes since beta 1.
Thanksgiving was last week, and I thought about doing a post to thank the people who contribute to Wordpress core, since this is a group of people I’m thankful for on a daily basis. I started a draft, and then realized that with 2.9 in beta, we’ll have a release announcement sometime in the next few weeks (barring unforeseen complications, etc), and all the core contributors will be thanked then. Though I think it’s worth giving thanks every day for the people who make WordPress possible, I don’t like to clutter up anyone’s feed readers with repetitive posts, so I decided to wait until today for my post, and to focus solely on the other group I’d planned to include: support forum volunteers.
Forum volunteers don’t get a lot of flashy attention. There aren’t flame wars about whether or not the support forums should be commercial instead of free and community-run. There generally aren’t big arguments and debates over whose point of view is the right one. What the forums do have is amazing volunteers who give their time to help other WordPress users and developers learn. People who only know a little answer easy questions that maybe they’ve only recently learned the answers to themselves. People with more expert skills help troubleshoot larger issues. If someone offers advice that could be better, others will add their solutions to the mix. Of all the WordPress users I’ve met in person, not one person got started without visiting the forums. In many cases, people turn to the forums even before the Codex. In the support forums, I see a lot of what is best about our community, and almost none of that which is not.*
Without further ado, here’s my thank you to the volunteers who make the support forums work. Without them, we would be less than what we are today. I’m listing people by their Wordpress.org usernames, since that’s how you see them in the forums.
Official WordPress.org Support Forum Moderators
These are the people who’ve officially got your back and have been active in the past few months. See them at a WordCamp? Buy them a beer! Otto42, jeremyclark13, MichaelH, samboll, Chris_K. MichaelH suggested we also recognize Moshu, Podz, Kafkaesqui for past meritorious service.
The Honor Roll
These people are not official moderators, but their knowledge and activity levels have caught the attention of those who are. A big round of thanks to these folks for selflessly sharing their knowledge with other WordPress users.
Most active volunteers, nominated by more than one official moderator for recognition (for the reasons given): alchymyth – “Overall knowledge” apljdi – “Overall knowledge and programming skills” t31os_ – “Programming skills” whooami – “For her security responses” “Knows her stuff”
As we close out 2009 and get closer to 2010, it would be great for us to start thinking about some ways we could make it easier/more rewarding for people to be involved in the forums and other aspects of the open source project. I’ve started a forum thread to discuss some ideas with the thought that we can try a couple after the holidays and see what takes.
* I say almost because let’s face it, we all get caught in the traps of trolls sometimes, and patience can be hard to keep when someone is a jerk. So a reminder to all who use the forums: be nice to the people who are trying to help you!
P.S. While I’m at it, here’s another tip/request. Search the forums for your problem before posting; if it’s already been answered before (often more than once), you’re kind of wasting people’s time by posting it again without trying the previous solutions first. Please respect the time of the volunteers by searching first (and mention in your post what you’ve already tried).
One of the most requested features for Offline Gmail has been the ability to include attachments in messages composed while offline. Starting today, attachments work just the way you would expect them to whether you are online or offline (with the exception that when you're offline you won't be able to include inline images). Just add the attachment and send your message.
If you have Offline Gmail enabled, you'll notice that all your mail now goes through the outbox, regardless of whether you're online or offline. This allows Gmail to capture all attachments, even if you suddenly get disconnected from network. If you're online, your mail will quickly be sent along to its destination.
If you haven't tried offline access yet, visit the Labs tab and follow these instructions to get started:
Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
Click Save Changes.
After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline" link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.
Now that you can send attachments while offline, we'd love to see pictures of you using Gmail in unusual places while you're disconnected from the web. Pictures of you using Gmail in an airplane, igloo, or submarine are all welcome. Email your photo to hikingfan@gmail.com and we'll post the most interesting ones here.
Gmail chat status (those green, orange, and red bubbles) indicates if your friends are online or not. But sometimes my buddies appear green when they're not really "online online" — they just have chat open on their Android phones.
Turn on Green Robot, a new experiment in Gmail Labs, and you'll see a robot icon next to people who are currently using Android phones. In the case below, Shirley is online with Android, Nicolle R. is using regular Gmail chat, and Chris I. is currently away but also on Android. Slatka is not an angry robot — she's online with Android but currently busy.
These icons can help you decide whether to tailor your conversation to the type of device that your chat buddy is using. For example, when you know the guy on the other end is using his Android phone, you may decide to send shorter, more concise chat messages.
When your chat buddies log into Gmail, their presence icons will revert to the traditional red, green, and orange status bubbles. In addition, if your chat buddy happens to be logged into both Gmail and Android chat then the traditional Gmail status icons will be shown. Try it out and let us know what you think.
I was very excited last week to learn that WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is a landmark for us, as it is the first time we’ve won this award, and it marks a shift in the public perception of WordPress, from blog software to full-featured CMS. No small contest, the Open Source CMS Awards received over 12,000 nominations and more than 23,000 votes across five categories.
As Hiro Nakamura said when he first bent time and space to land in Times Square: “Yatta!”
In addition to winning in the Overall Best Open Source CMS category, WordPress was named first runner-up in the Best Open Source PHP CMS category. This is significant because we weren’t even in the top 5 last year, and now we’re #2, ahead of Joomla! As is stated on the Award site, “WordPress made its way into the top five for the first time. The fact that it was outranked by Drupal by a very slight margin indicates how popular it has become with users as well as developers over the past year.”
Every day thousands of new people are embracing WordPress to power not just their blogs but entire sites and communities without compromising on usability or scalability (as would be the case with a legacy CMS). Every member of the WordPress community, from core developer to beginning user, should be proud to be part of this momentum: congratulations to us all!
WordCamp NYC was last weekend, and it was crazy awesome to have so many WordPress users and developers together in one place (final numbers to come, but looks like over 700). One of my favorite moments was right at the end, when someone suggested getting a picture of the core contributors (I’d asked them all to stand so people could applaud them when we were doing the closing remarks). Some of them were camera shy and kept out of the happysnap, but here’s a handful of the people who make WordPress what it is.
2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges. If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.
The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch. The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations. Thanks to Benjamin and Dawid for finding and reporting these.
When Gmail launched five years ago, it came with a gigabyte of storage space. A gigabyte doesn't seem like very much any more, and now every Gmail account comes with more than seven gigs of space (and growing). Still, some people manage to use up all of this (that's a lot of email...), so for over two years we've offered the option to purchase even more storage. This extra storage acts as an overflow that you only start using when you reach the limit of your free storage, and is shared for use between Gmail and Picasa Web Albums. Picasa has always come with a gigabyte of free storage to share photos, but people need even more storage as they start taking more pictures and moving full resolution backups of their photo collection into the cloud.
While storage costs have been dropping naturally, we've also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce costs even further. Today, we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage more affordable. You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year, twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. And if you need more than 20 GB, you can purchase up to 16 terabytes!
So if you're running out of space in your overflowing inbox, or want to keep full resolution copies of thousands of photos, visit www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage to see all the plans and to buy more storage.
or 
buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)
Just a heads up that Trac commits will be pretty low over the next couple of days, as all the core committers are in Orlando: Matt, Ryan, Andrew, Peter and Mark. We all came for WordCamp Orlando (fun!) and are staying a couple of extra days to discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year, the merge, canonical plugins, the WordPress.org site, community stuff, and all the other things that are important but that we never seem to have time to address. Since when things like this come up in the IRC dev chat or in various forums there’s inevitably a point at which someone says, “We really need to have [insert a core committer name here] here to make a decision,” we thought it would make sense to get together and figure out where everyone stands on all these ideas so that we can move forward a little more efficiently. Also, not all the committers had met in person before (and I’d never met Andrew or Peter), so it’s also a chance for us to just get to know each other a little. Watch this space around Tuesday or Wednesday for a post summarizing the things we’ve discussed, and the beginning of planning for how members of community can get involved in (or spearhead) the things that interest them.
