My email is full of links: my friends send around YouTube videos to try and get a laugh, we share Picasa and Flickr albums with photos from last weekend’s camping trip, and we email around the Yelp reviews of restaurants we’re considering going to next Friday night.

The truth is, I’m pretty lazy. That’s why I like YouTube previews in Gmail chat — why open a new tab when I can watch the video my friend sent me right there? Gmail currently automatically detects package tracking information, addresses, and event information and shows quick links to delivery status, maps and directions, and Google Calendar. So why couldn’t Gmail automatically detect links in emails and show videos, photos, and ratings right inside these messages as well?

We built some new Gmail Labs features that do just that. For our first set, we picked stuff that often shows up in email: YouTube videos, Picasa and Flickr links, and Yelp reviews. Turn on Picasa previews from the Labs tab under Settings, and rather than having to click on a Picasa album link to see the photos it contains, you can see photos right in the message itself:

Same for Flickr:

Enable Youtube previews, and you can watch YouTube videos from inside your email:

And whenever you receive a Yelp link in an email, Yelp previews show you ratings, phone numbers, and other listing information right there:

Source:  Official Gmail Blog

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Only a few days after the launch of its new task manager, Gmail has introduced a new feature allowing users to send free SMS messages through its integrated Chat. To activate the feature, visit the Gmail Labs page and scroll down until you see the appropriate listing (you may also want to activate a few of the other nifty features while you’re at it).

To send a message, just type a phone number into the search box at the top of the chat window on the left side of the Gmail interface, and hit ‘Send SMS’. Numbers can be associated with contact names so you don’t have to keep manually entering them. Recipients of these messages can respond by simply hitting ‘reply’ on their cell phones to send their own SMS message (Gmail ties a unique phone number with each of your contacts).

According to the Gmail blog post, the site is currently testing out the service with US phones only for now (messages can be sent from abroad, they just need to be directed at a US phone).

Gmail first toyed around with the feature in October, but wound up pulling it from Labs for a few weeks because of a number of glitches. This time, it seems like it’s here to stay.

This isn’t by any means the first chat service to offer free SMS messaging – major chat networks like AIM have been doing this for years. But it’s a handy feature, especially for the many people who use Gmail all day long.

DWT Link

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A recently-discovered flaw in Gmail is capable of turning Google’s e-mail service into a highly effective spam machine. According to the Information Security Research Team (INSERT), Gmail is susceptible to a man-in-the-middle attack that allows a spammer to send thousands of bulk e-mails through Google’s SMTP service without fear of detection. This attack bypasses both Google’s identity fraud protection mechanisms and the current 500-address limit on bulk e-mail.

A flaw in Gmail that allows spammers to send a potentially unlimited number of messages is definitely a problem, but there’s another, external factor that could exacerbate any potential spam attack. As the volume of spam has risen—it currently accounts for 95 percent of all e-mail traffic—many e-mail providers have adopted whitelists and blacklists as a first line of defense against the flood. An e-mail from johdoe@awinnerisyou.com (or the corresponding IP address block) may be automatically blocked by any given e-mail service, while an e-mail from a trusted, authenticated source such as Gmail is automatically allowed through the gateway. E-mail providers regularly use multi-level filtering services, any of which might detect that the forged Gmail missive is actually spam, but the message has cleared a substantial hurdle that would have otherwise barred it from delivery.

E-mail that originates from Google, it seems, is particularly well-regarded by both Yahoo and Hotmail. The INSERT team tested the degree of trust between the three major e-mail providers by sending spam messages to Yahoo and Hotmail using two sources. In the first test, messages were sent from personal systems whose IP addresses had been blacklisted by Yahoo and Hotmail. The second test consisted of sending the exact same message via the Gmail flaw that INSERT discovered.

The difference was significant. E-mail sent to Yahoo and Hotmail from a blacklisted IP didn’t even necessarily reach the account’s spam box, while forged e-mail sent via Gmail always arrived in the intended account’s inbox. The goal here is not to condemn trusted-source filtering as bad, but to emphasize how a security flaw in a single product or service can ripple through an ecosystem. Google will likely act quickly to close this particular loophole, but Yahoo and Hotmail might want to read their Russian proverbs a little more closely. Doveryai, no proveryai (trust, but verify) remains an eternally good idea.

Credits

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