Google Desktop - Only One Gmail Account
Posted on December 23, 2006
5 Comments
I installed the latest version of Google Desktop today as I was curious to see how it handles monitoring multiple Gmail Accounts.
It doesn’t handle that well. It’ll manage only one. It’ll even index it for you. But you only get one.
I searched through the desktop gadgets but didn’t see anything there either. What a bummer.
Are there really not many people with more than one Gmail account? I have 3 that I monitor, 2 via the Google for your Domain and one regular ol’ Gmail address. I use a Firefox extension that works great, but rather ties me to having Firefox up all day if I want to keep an eye out for new mail. I’d prefer to be a bit more browser independent.
When I last wrote about this topic I thought Netvibes had a pretty decent answer, but it doesn’t quite work out. Works fine as a notifier, but things break down when launching Gmail from it — not always sure which account I’ll end up with. Close, but no cigar.
I stumbled over this .NET Gmail API project earlier today… maybe I’ll try and roll my own in my infinite free time. A simple little tray app is where I’d like to be. Or are there other free or open source options that I’ve not found yet?
Oh, and all whining about the Gmail notification thing aside… Google Desktop is pretty cool. In fact, with a very little effort it can become a decent little application launcher. Perhaps an alternative to Launchy that Rich was pimping recently.
Tags: .NET, API, email, gmail, google, google-desktop, hosting, launchy, lifehack, open-source
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5 Responses to “Google Desktop - Only One Gmail Account”
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Because of course the footprint of Launchy is so much larger than google desktop’s… who ARE you and what’ve you done with cycle-watching-psycho-solo?
Touche’!
GDesktop is indeed cool, but after running it for a day… I suspect I’ll have no problem living without it. I was really hoping it would give me an option for the multiple email stuff. (It is rather cool though!)
For Windows users, there is DynAdvance Notifier. I have been a Mac user for the last year and a half, so I can no longer use it. Its the best I’ve seen, I’ve never been able to find something comparable for mac (i may just be picky).
My solution for checking multiple gmail accounts is a small ruby script I wrote that runs from cron every 5 minutes or so. It sends a growl notification if there are new messages including how many, and who they are from. Then in firefox I have bookmarks that log me directly in to each account so there is no need for typing passwords. Wouldnt be good if other people use your computer.
Its still not as nice as DynAdvance Notifier, but its better than all these widgets and other things I’ve tried.
Hey Joe, thanks for that. I may have to give it a look.
For now, the Netvibes approach has been working out. I have the multiple notifiers there, ready to run in any browser/machine that I’m at. Then I have a Netvibes bookmarks module on the same tab that has links to the two different ways I access gmail.
That app though, would be nifty on the home machine…
I didn’t like how it handles gmail too, so I wrote my own plug-in.
If you are interested, take a look: http://malexeyev.googlepages.com/gmailnotifier