Gmail finally works as advertised for BlackBerry

For years BlackBerry BIS users have had to put up with a very sub-par experience with their Gmail.  Read / unread status didn’t sync between your Gmail and your phone, deleted emails could take hours to sync (if they synced at all) and you couldn’t use labels to organize your email.  Well rejoice BlackBerry fans, your time has come!  As of now you’ll be able to do nearly everything with your Gmail account that iPhone, Windows Phone, Android, and Palm WebOS users currently enjoy.  Many BlackBerry users have been using the Google Mobile App (from m.google.com) to check their Gmail on their phone of choice, but now that the built-in email client has made these changes you can expect a much better experience than you’re used to.  There is one big caveat, this update did not apply to BES users, which means most corporate issued BlackBerry phones are going to be left out in the cold for now.  We’ll let you know when that changes, for now just enjoy the long overdue update from Waterloo.

Remove Duplicate Contacts easier in Gmail and Google Apps

While not quite as popular as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail a lot of you rely on Google for your email needs.  Most of our small business clients use Google Apps (free or paid) to manage their email. calendar, contacts and tasks for up to 50 people.  So you can imagine how important it is to have only one “contact” for each person you’re in touch with.  A contact list can easily get out of hand when you have different entries for someone’s email, home/work address and multiple phone numbers.  After listening to enough complaints Google has now made it easy to merge duplicate entries with the touch of a button.  Just click on “Contacts” when you sign into your Gmail or Google Apps Account and then click “Find Duplicates” in the center of the page.  That’s it!