a nursing informatics toolbox

Hack-A-Day #6 How to Give More Meaning to the Word “Sidebar” in Gmail

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Rolando Cabral • 287 Comments

rapportive sidebar graphic

I believe most of us uses Gmail as our personal email provider right? If you don’t have it yet, you better get one STAT! Google Mail loads fast, they have better spam control, huge space, access to a calendar and tons and tons of other features. But wait! There’s more. What if I tell you that we can also get rid of that useless sidebar on the right side of your Gmail window?

Instead of that annoying ads, we can instruct Gmail to dig deeper about our contacts. What I mean by digging deeper is for Gmail to provide us a more detailed information about our friends and acquaintances. Let say somebody sent you an email. When you open that message, an information box from social media applications like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn will appear on the sidebar.

You will see your friend’s recent Tweets, updates, etc.; giving you a better perspective about them.

Is it free? of course it is! Courtesy of Rapportive.

Rapportive is a Gmail plugin that can be installed as a browser addon. It supports Firefox, Chrome, Google Apps Mail, Opera (as a bookmarklet). It is very easy to install; just download and follow the prompt. Connect to all your social media sites and grant Rapportive permission to access it. It can link to almost all social media applications available today.

After installation, you will be prompted to restart the browser, then it’s done.

So what are you waiting for. Run to their website and start downloading it and you will never see Gmail the same way again.

 

Filed Under: Hack-A-Day