Tasks, Notes and Bookmarks with GMail

Gmail latest Priority Mail remained me again how I love and enjoy using Gmail every day. It is a great piece of technology and Google constantly improving it – excellent way to keep loyal users’ community.

I’m using Gmail for my private e-mails only while at work I’m using MS Outlook for everything else: work correspondence, notes, to-do/tasks, contacts, calendar etc. Both Outlook and Google web apps have separate solutions for keeping your records. Attempts have made to integrate for example task and calendar, but IMO they mostly insufficient or too complex to implement and follow on the daily basis.

So here was my original problem: How to keep track of my private notes, bookmarks, tasks etc. without installing too much software, accessible everywhere, simple to use.

I liked Google’s Tasks that is already embedded into Gmail however it still gives very limited functionality. I want much more! How come that I cannot search my task?! And even if there is an option to do so, since I didn’t find it yet, it is irrelevant :-) Missing text reach formatting, tagging and other already basic features make it premature. Maybe next release will close this gap, hopefully…

I try some other Google products: Notebook (discontinued), Wave (discontinued), Google Docs, Calendar and iGoogle. None of them were up to the challenge. Although I liked many features, again I looked for an integrative solution.

Back to the Gmail, my weapon of choice: e-mails, search, labels, filters, chat, contacts and most importantly I’m already using it every day, all day! It is just there and it is always ON.

So, the next question was how to adopt Gmail for handling tasks, notes and bookmarks. Developing a sidebar gadget looks promising but due to the time constraint I choose to look for a quicker alternative. The solution I found here uses bookmarklets for creating in-context e-mails and managing them in Gmail with filters and tags. It is very simple and effective. You can use the original solution or adopt mine enhancements as described below.

Disclaimer: no support is guaranteed. All the below examples were tested in FireFox 3.6.9 on Windows XP.
Modifications:

• encodeURIComponent – solves the problem of passing the plus sign ‘+’ in the e-mails with format like ‘yourgmail+bookmark@gmail.com’
• to_type – script parameter, for easy update, you can copy working bookmarklet  and update just this parameter at the begging of the script
• simplified versions for Note and To-Do, pop-ups the e-mail form with the relevant TO: address without putting a subject or context

Now, you can drag the links (GBookmark ,GNote, GTo-Do) to the Firefox bookmarks toolbar, modify the 'yourgmail' to the username you have and this is it!

GBookmark - opens an e-mail form with yourgmail+bookmark@gmail.com as the destination address, use the page name as its subject and copy the URL and the selected text.

javascript:to_type='bookmark';popw='';Q='';x=document;y=window;if(x.selection)%20{Q=x.selection.createRange().text;}%20else%20if%20(y.getSelection)%20{Q=y.getSelection();}%20else%20if%20(x.getSelection)%20{Q=x.getSelection();}popw%20=%20y.open('https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to='%20+%20encodeURIComponent("yourgmail+")%20+%20escape(to_type)%20+%20escape("@gmail.com")%20+%20'&su='%20+%20escape(x.title)%20+%20'&body='%20+%20escape(Q)%20+%20escape('\n')%20+%20escape(location.href)%20+%20'&zx=RANDOMCRAP&shva=1&disablechatbrowsercheck=1&ui=1','gmailForm','scrollbars=yes,width=680,height=510,top=175,left=75,status=no,resizable=yes');if%20(!x.all)%20T%20=%20setTimeout('popw.focus()',50);void(0);

GNote - opens an e-mail form with yourgmail+note@gmail.com as the destination address

javascript:to_type='note';popw='';popw%20=%20window.open('https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to='%20+%20encodeURIComponent("yourmail+")%20+%20escape(to_type)%20+%20escape("@gmail.com")%20+%20'&su=&shva=1&disablechatbrowsercheck=1&ui=1','gmailForm','scrollbars=yes,width=680,height=510,top=175,left=75,status=no,resizable=yes');void(0);

GTo-Do - opens an e-mail form with yourgmail+todo@gmail.com as the destination address

javascript:to_type='todo';popw='';popw%20=%20window.open('https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to='%20+%20encodeURIComponent("yourmail+")%20+%20escape(to_type)%20+%20escape("@gmail.com")%20+%20'&su=&shva=1&disablechatbrowsercheck=1&ui=1','gmailForm','scrollbars=yes,width=680,height=510,top=175,left=75,status=no,resizable=yes');void(0);

Links to the used resources:

• http://dep.posterous.com/how-to-turn-gmail-in-to-the-ultimate-social-b - original post that triggered my investigation
• http://contrapants.org/blog/2005/07/gmailthis.html - original GMailThis, includes many practical Q&As in the comments section
• http://nikak.blogspot.com/2005/12/txt-gmailthis-modified-for-bookmarking.html - additional GMailThis mod with some ideas that I reused.
• http://www.firefoxfacts.com - nice blog about Fire Fox tools, add-ons etc.