Archive for August, 2010
Ultimate Mac/iPhone Gmail Integration
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
We’re big fans of Google services around here, using Google Apps hosted services for all of our email and document handling.
Recently, I’ve spent some time working over my Gmail/Apple Mail/iPhone integration to try to get a seamless, realtime through the cloud system for keeping everything in sync. Doing this can be a bit tricky, because Google’s concept of labels doesn’t always play nicely with folders in other mail clients, but with a bit of tweaking and changing settings, you can get a nice system running.
First thing to do is set up Apple Mail using IMAP. Make sure that IMAP is enabled in your Gmail settings:
Then launch Apple Mail and configure your email account using IMAP by following the directions Google has posted here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12806
Once your account is set up in Mail, to get a good integration you’ll need to do some tweaking. First, switch to the Mailbox Behaviors pane of your Mail settings and adjust your settings to match ones shown here:
This will ensure that every message you create also gets stored on the Gmail servers. Also, since Gmail provides a ton of space, there is no need to ever delete anything – which will make sure that all your messages are always available for reference.
Next, load up Gmail in your web client and browse to “Settings” and click on the “Labs” tab. Browse through the list of Labs extensions to locate the “Advanced IMAP Controls” Labs feature. Enable this feature, and click save changes.
Now, go to the “Labels” tab in the settings. You’ll see a new option by each of your Gmail labels to “Show in IMAP”. I recommend unchecking “All Mail” and “Starred” so that they will not get synced to Apple Mail over IMAP.
These two Gmail labels are actually used by the system for specific purposes, and if you sync them via IMAP, it will give you inaccurate unread message counts in Apple Mail at times, as well as showing duplicate results in Smart Mailboxes and search results. By leaving these out of the sync, you’ll get a much cleaner integration.
The final step to tie everything together nicely takes place in Apple Mail. Locate the IMAP folders in the left hand sidebar of Mail, and expand the folder list under your IMAP account. You should see a list of all your Gmail labels, with the name of your account represented as a folder with brackets at the top (e.g. [Gmail]). Expand this folder to find a list of the Gmail default labels that are being synced. To get a nice seamless integration, you need to map Apple Mail to use these default Gmail labels instead of its own custom labels for storing sent message, trash, etc. To do this, select the label to map (e.g. “Sent Mail”) and then choose from the “Mailbox” menu “Use This Mailbox For” and select the appropriate option in Apple Mail where the Gmail label will be mapped. This will cause Apple Mail to put everything in the correct locations on Google, and prevent you from having two folders with sent messages, deleted messages, etc. I will note that I’ve not had much luck binding the Google “Spam” folder to the Apple Mail “Junk” folder. For some reason this doesn’t seem to want to stick.
At this point, you should have a nice integration between Apple Mail and Gmail. Adding an iPhone to the mix is relatively simple. Just choose whether to use IMAP on your phone (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77702) or Google Sync to get instant notifications with push email (http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740&topic=14252). The iPhone maps itself to the Google default folders automatically, so all the work is done for you.
Once you’ve completed all of this, you should have a complete, seamless solution where changes made anywhere, whether on your iPhone, the web, or your computer via Apple Mail are updated and synced in real time, over the air, and in a consistent fashion. Enjoy your new, free, seamless mail solution!
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IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a BlackBerry user, these settings will cause your handheld to be flooded with email coming from your Apple Mail client, due to the way that BlackBerry Enterprise Server interacts with Gmail. I would recommend exploring the various settings in Gmail and Apple Mail to find a combination that keeps your email as seamless as possible without overloading your BlackBerry inbox.
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UPDATE: As of late September 2010, the Google Sync integration for iPhone has not been working well. I began to have problems with deleted email from my computer remaining on my phone, drafts getting mixed up, and other issues. I switched my phone settings over to using IMAP, and have become a big fan. It is utterly reliable, and as a big plus, supports syncing Notes between your Mac and your iPhone. It also integrates the Google Calendar settings, making setting up your Google Calendars super easy. And on top of that, the IMAP integration tracks replies and forwards from Apple Mail, so that you can see what action you’ve taken when on your iPhone. The only downside is no push mail notifications, but who really needs that anyway? 
Posted in Magento | 4 Comments »
Ameds Featured on Official Magento Blog
Monday, August 16th, 2010
Ameds.com Home Page (click image to go to Ameds home page)
I won’t lie. We like being noticed. That’s why we’re named Classy Llama Studios.
But we like it even BETTER when our clients are noticed. Recently, Ameds.com, one of our Enterprise clients, was featured on the Magento blog.
Magento said the following about our work on Ameds:
“The migration of 40,000+ SKU storefront from a proprietary code base to Magento Enterprise Edition 1.8 was achieved successfully by minimizing risk of adverse effects on pre-existing marketing campaigns, traffic and customer base… [and] migration and integration of all customer data (including passwords and order history), as well as retention of thousands of old URLs via systematic URL rewriting patterns allowing for preserved natural search engine rankings, in addition to continued operation of PPC & CSE campaigns with virtually no changes.”
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Magento Developer’s Paradise
Friday, August 6th, 2010
As of today, we are officially going to be attending the Magento Developer’s Paradise in Mallorca, Spain! Myself (Erik Hansen) and David Alger, one of our lead developers, will be attending the conference. There are a number of really informative-looking sessions planned. We’re excited about learning all that we can, but just as importantly, we’re looking forward to meeting some of the brilliant engineers behind the Magento platform as well as the different European partners that will be present. I’m sure there will be many things that we’ll be sharing with you after the conference, so stay tuned!
Posted in Magento | 5 Comments »
