I was getting annoyed (for no reason at all) by the fact that I had to get on GMail to check my mail or leave it open at all times to find if I had mail. Well, the boys and girls at Google have done it again and solved that annoyance by creating GMail Notifier. It is a neat little application that sits in your power bar and logs in to GMail on its own and lets you know when you have mail with a notification similar to Microsoft Outlook’s power bar notification. All without having to go online and get through the GMail logon. After you see the notification you just click on it to open the mail or let it disappear for later reading. The app will autolog you into your mailbox when you are ready to read said mail. Pretty neat!!
Oh and if you are annoyed by the fact that you have to keep the GMail site open to chat, you can also download the GMail talk application that is listed in the sidebar for GMail notifier as well.
Also found a great “hack” to make Google Talk work with any other chat program. I used jabber.no instead of ursine.ca to get the transports as the ursine one is closed down. I now have my Google Talk hooked up to AIM and Yahoo. Add in the fact that I get the mail alerts and this is great!
Keep it up Google!