Gmail Labs Says …..

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If you access Gmail via a phone or email client using POP, you may be frustrated by the fact that any action you take, such as reading, sorting or deleting, doesn’t sync with your Gmail account. You may have read and sorted all your new mail on your phone, for example, but when you log back in to Gmail using a browser, you’re presented with a full inbox of unread messages that you have to re-read and re-organize. What you may not realize is that you have another option that solves these problems: IMAP.

It can be a little confusing to learn about different ways to get email on your phone or in an email client such as Thunderbird or Outlook, but this breakdown of the key differences between POP and IMAP should help you decide which way to go.

There are two ways your devices and clients can communicate with Gmail:

1. A one-way communication path (POP). Your device asks us for data and pulls it from our servers — but that’s it. Things you do on your device have no effect on the server. If you read a message on your phone, then log in to Gmail, you will see that same message marked as unread. It may start to feel like Groundhog Day.

2. A two-way communication path (IMAP). Unlike with POP, your devices talk back to our servers and sync your changes automatically with IMAP. When you sign in to your Gmail account in a web browser, actions you’ve taken on your email client or mobile device (like putting a message in a ‘work’ folder) will also appear in Gmail (your message will already have a ‘work’ label on it). This all happens automatically once you set up IMAP, so you don’t have to read or sort all your mail twice. This is really helpful when accessing Gmail from multiple devices.

Here’s a quick rundown of the key differences between IMAP and POP:

As you can see, the benefits of IMAP clearly outweigh those of POP. To set up IMAP, just follow these steps.

Source :- Gmail Blog

Google Says ….

We hear reports that many users don’t archive their email. If you don’t regularly click on the “archive” button or never even thought about it, here are some reasons you might want to get in the habit. Archiving just means moving mail out of your inbox and storing it for safekeeping. Your messages will be waiting for you when you click All Mail or search for them.

9. Phone numbers and addresses
You never know when you’ll need a phone number someone emailed you or an address that was in a signature.

8. Procrastination
Sometimes you want to get a message out of your inbox, but you don’t want to deal with organization, and you don’t want to trash it.

7. Posterity
Just because you’re not famous now doesn’t mean that in forty years (or fifteen minutes) you won’t want to write your memoir.

6. Winning arguments
“But on May 5, 2005 at 8:43pm EDT you said….”

5. Mailing lists
Do you really need to know what Clintobamccain is doing every day? Auto-archive* their messages until you want to donate again.

4. Birthdays
Search for “grandma birthday” and voila, find the message you sent her last April. Aren’t you glad you archived instead of deleted?

3. That guy
Remember that guy you thought you’d never need to get in touch with ever again?

2. Because you can
May as well use the free storage space. Plus, clean inbox = clean mind.

1. Fate-tempting is bad. You just never know
Thirty-one days after you send that message to the Trash and it gets permanently deleted, you’re going to need it. Don’t tempt the fates.

*To auto-archive, create a filter with the action “Skip the Inbox (Archive it).”

How do I use it?

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view.

Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You’ll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born — crazy talk.

How does it work?

Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).