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New in Gmail Labs Location in Signature  (View post)

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
15 years ago4,917 views

Google add the addon Location in Signature to Gmail Labs. With it you can add your location to the signature in your mails

Arie [PersonRank 3]

15 years ago #

I activated it, and tested it both on my desktop and on my phone.. Nothing..

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Here are my moans about it:

1) You have to enable it twice. Once in the Gmail Labs page and then in the Settings page below your signature.

2) It lists my location as Sheffield Eng United Kingdom. Eng!?

3) It doesn't work from the mobile interface (because Gmail Labs features are powered from Gmail's AJAX front end which isn't available on most phones) which is a bit of a missed opportunity as that's what people generally carry around with them to different locations.

4) It doesn't use Google Latitude.

I understand that "teams" don't often talk to each other but surely they should have delayed the release of this until the developer had managed to hack that together. Releasing two different location-based features within a week of each other that don't cooperate just screams miscommunication to me.

Above 3 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Note: It also works without allowing Gears to determine your position. That's only used when wi-fi access point signals are available if I understand this correctly:

<< If you want more accurate location detection, make sure your browser has a version of Gears that supports the location module. That way, Gears can make use of wi-fi access point signals to recognize that you're actually in London. >>

Here's the Gmail blog post:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-add-your-location-to-your.html

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Thanks, yes, I had just changed the post some seconds ago...

Ananth Muralidaren [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

If you're using a proxy, remember that the local IP's being used to determine your location! i.e. If you're sitting in England(like I am) and your proxy's in the USA you're gonna end up with a 'Sent from : Plano, Texas' signature append!! Confusing, no?

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

---
TOMHTML
Sent from: Mountain view Ca United States.

No, it's not because my remote IP is "127.0.0.1" that I'm in Google's servers...

BTW, can someone explains me why it should work better with Gears? Gears only geolocalize you using your IP address, nothing else, right?

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

TOMHTML, the Gmail blog post says:

<< Gears can make use of wi-fi access point signals >>

More info:

<< The Gears Geolocation API can make use of network servers to obtain a position fix. The server determines the client's position using a set of data provided by the client. This data includes the client's IP address and information about any cell towers or WiFi nodes it can detect. >>

http://code.google.com/apis/gears/geolocation_network_protocol.html

Michael reitsma [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Strange why Google decided not to have the system use Google Latitude for determining the location.
That way you promote latitude and get better automatic positioning. Corporate users often have strange locations due to proxy's etc. But they do have cell-phones which can use Google Maps with Latitude to do the positioning.

xPositor [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

I also want to raise the point about Latitude. Having just tested this and seeing a location many, many miles away from where I am (presumably because that is the geoloc for my IP), it would make much much more sense to use your Latitude position (if you are Latitude enabled). Would work regardless of interface then as well, and of course – you can manually adjust your Latitude position.

J. McNair [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Seriously? No Latitude integration? I'll wait for ver 2.0. Besides, it's a Labs project, a cute one, but still.

John Smith [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Tony Ruscoe – "I understand that "teams" don't often talk to each other but surely they should have delayed the release of this until the developer had managed to hack that together. Releasing two different location-based features within a week of each other that don't cooperate just screams miscommunication to me."

Remember that this Lab was created by a single engineer in his 20% time. That engineer almost certainly started working on this before Latitude was publicly released so he might not have even known it existed (not every Google employee keeps up with every unreleased product), and very likely the Latitude team didn't know he was working on this either. Call that miscommunication if you want but I imagine keeping track of every employee's 20% project for possible overlap/integration is not worth the overhead.

*After* Latitude was released, then you could argue that maybe the engineer should have re-written the Lab/integrated it into Latitude. Perhaps he wants to see if there's enough interest before committing more time to it.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> Call that miscommunication if you want but I imagine keeping
> track of every employee's 20% project for possible
> overlap/integration is not worth the overhead.

You're right. But whoever decided to release this surely knew that Latitude has been launched and could have caught it at that stage to avoid any confusion about two location-based products being released so closely to one another. (Unless, of course, it had past the "point of no return" meaning it was scheduled to go live and couldn't be reversed, but I doubt Google is that inflexible given how quickly they've pulled features and services before!)

> *After* Latitude was released, then you could argue that maybe
> the engineer should have re-written the Lab/integrated it into
> Latitude.

I guess that's the point I was trying to make. And I'm not the only one.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Is there any chance that for a department to have a request like "I would like to see that info too" (say, Gmail team requesting that from Google Latitude team) there are different processes needed to green light this, due to sharing concerns? Also keeping in mind that you might have opted-in for Gears' to transmit data to www.google.com (?) when using the iGoogle Latitude gadget, but that mail.google.com is a different (sub-)domain? Technically, both is Google and they could consolidate the info points as you're using your Google Account, of course... just brainstorming here...

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Tony thank you

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