However, Google Voice isn’t coming to Google Talk, at least for now, because the focus was on the web integration. SMS is available in Gmail as a Labs feature, but isn’t part of this integration. It’s not rolling out in Google Apps today, but it will in the near future.

It’s not clear if Google Voice will be changing, or whether this new service is a completely separate offering. The user interfaces appear the same—for example, the same icons are used to label missed calls or placed calls — but Google Voice is not a VoIP service. Users of the new chat/phone call service aren’t required to have a Google Voice account, and calls placed to U.S. or Canadian numbers will be free, with discounts on international calls as compared to standard rates.

To get this new feature working, you’ll need to download install Voice and Video plug-in. Free calling is available for U.S. nationals to the U.S. and Canada for the rest of the year at least. Users based in U.S. can make calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan and many more countries at very low rates like $0.06/per minute (Rs. 2.80 approx.) right from their Gmail interface.

Google adds Phone Calling Option to Gmail; How it Works?

We wonder if this feature would be made available to Apple devices that use Gmail’s HTML5 based web interface. Google has already faced a cold war with Apple over Google Voice and we’re sure that all Android phones would be the first ones to get this feature.

According to the Gmail Blog, everyone should now be able to activate multiple accounts by heading to your Google Accounts page. Now, you can visit google.com/accounts and click the link next to “Multiple sign-in.” After you sign into your first account, you can sign in with up to two additional accounts from the new accounts menu in the upper right hand corner of Gmail, then easily toggle back and forth between them. You can even open multiple Gmail tabs — one for each of your accounts.

However, there are 3 caveats that Google quickly warns about, though:

1) Not all Google services support multiple account sign-in yet. For the services that don’t support it (like Blogger and Picasa Web Albums), you’ll be defaulted to the first account you signed in with during that browser session. So if you click a link from Gmail to Blogger, for example, you’ll be logged into Blogger with the first account you signed in with, even if you clicked the link to Blogger from your second Gmail account.

2) We’re still working on making Gmail and Calendar work offline with multiple sign-in. If you rely on offline access, you probably don’t want to enable this feature quite yet.

3) Multiple account sign-in only works on desktop browsers for now, so if you use Gmail on your phone’s browser you won’t see this option yet.

Since Google Apps customers can already sign in to their accounts at the same time as their personal Google Accounts, we won’t be adding this new feature to Google Apps until the new infrastructure is in place.

This is expected to boost company adoption of Google Apps because Gmail login had been a drawback. This has been a much-requested feature in Google products for some time. Most of us have at least two active Gmail addresses, especially those of us who use Gmail for both our work and personal lives. Previously, the only ways to access two accounts at once conveniently were to use a desktop client for e-mail, calendar events and feed reading (all of which partially defeat the purpose of using web apps in the first place) or to resort to browser extensions like the Google Account Multi-Login Greasemonkey script, which hacks this feature into Gmail.

1. Find the ‘Last Account Activity’ Section in Your Inbox:

2. Check for the login sessions for your Gmail account:

Clicking on the Details link next to the Last account activity line at the bottom of Gmail inbox page displays information about recent activity in your mail account.

Recent activity includes any time that your mail was accessed, using a regular web browser, through a POP client, from a mobile device, etc.

It gives the detailed information about,

- How it was accessed (Browser/mobile etc)
- Where exactly the IP address is (So you can do some further digging)
- When it was accessed

3. Don’t be afraid, if you see your IP from various countries:

If you use any 3rd party services which hook-up to your Gmail account, they will almost certainly show up in your activity log.  To do your own investigation, you can use various freely available DomainTools to identify the IP address. This will help you to identify any suspicious activity if your Gmail account is being hacked.

4. Suspicious Activity Monitoring by Google:

Google also does it’s fair share of monitoring, and will also alert you if it sees suspicious activity both in your inbox, as well as your recent activity log.  When this happens, and the IP addresses look suspicious, it is advisable to play it safe, assume your Gmail account has been hacked, and change your passwords immediately.

5. Avoid Mistakes. Log out from all Gmail sessions:

If you are worried you did not sign out of a public computer, you can ‘sign out all other sessions’.  This won’t fix any hacked Gmail accounts, but it will resolve any careless mistakes. This is also useful if you happen to lose your mobile phone and you want to ensure your email is not read by others.

What to do if your account has been really hacked?

Immediately change your Password and security question at the first place. Opt for the most secured choices. Follow tips from Google for the same. For example in the case of security questions:

- Choose a question only you know the answer to – make sure the question isn’t associated with your password.

- Pick a question that can’t be answered through research (for example, avoid your mother’s maiden name, your birth date, your first or last name, your social security number, your phone number, your pet’s name, etc.).

- Make sure your answer is memorable, but not easy to guess. Use an answer that is a complete sentence for even more security.

Gmail added support for a HTML5 feature that has been recently included in Firefox and Google Chrome: selecting files using drag and drop. If you use Firefox 3.6+ or Chrome 4+, you can now add attachments by dragging the files from your favorite file manager to Gmail. By reducing the main window, it is now possible to drag a file directly in the email. Then simply drop it in the green zone which is created automatically, and displaying the message “Put your files here”. We obviously can select multiple files simultaneously and drag them simultaneously.When you drag the files, Gmail shows a drop zone where you need to place the files.

Suppose you want to attach some files to an email, and you already have a folder open containing those files.

We used to have to click “Attach a file,” find the photos, click them, etc. Starting today, if you’re using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6, you can just drag and drop the files to attach them — easy as pie.

Isn’t this cool? The nice thing about this feature is that it no longer uses the Flash uploader, which isn’t very reliable. If you disable Flash in Firefox 3.6 and don’t use drag and drop, you can only attach one file at a time.

Another new feature in Gmail: the ability to integrate an e-mail a Google Calendar event to invite friends. This is a nice follow-up to the experimental rescheduling feature the company introduced to its Calendar product just last month. Under the entry window “Object” is now marked “Insert: Invitation.”

When you click it, a small window appears that displays your availability as well as that of the people you’re emailing provided you have permission to see their calendars.

Once the mail sent, the event is integrated into the calendar. The message is addressed are amended their agenda if they accept the invitation. You can check your invitee’s availability without going into Google Calendar to compare times. When you’re finished, a preview of the invitation will appear in your email message. After you send the email, the event’s automatically added to your calendar and your friend’s calendar.

Between the two, the drag-and-drop attachments is really the new, killer feature in Gmail. For those users on Chrome or Firefox (with Mozilla’s Prism installed) who are running Gmail as a standalone desktop Web app, this adds a whole new layer of functionality, and one that more closely resembles a real piece of software. It’s a good day for any Gmail user. What do you think?

A feature playfully dubbed “Got the wrong Bob?” is designed to warn people if it appears they may be about to send a Gmail message to an unintended recipient, according to Google engineers Ari Leichtberg and Yossi Matias.

“When’s the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, ‘Are you sure you meant to send this to me?’ and promptly realized that you didn’t?” Leichtberg and Matias asked in a joint blog post.

“Sometimes these little mistakes are actually quite painful. Hate mail about your boss to your boss? Personal info to some random guy named Bob instead of Bob the HR rep? Doh!”

The new feature from Google Labs can be turned on by modifying Gmail Settings. The software identifies groups of people Gmail users most often send messages to, and then alerts senders when they deviate from patterns.

“Gmail will try to identify when you’ve accidentally included the wrong person, before it’s too late,” the engineers said.

In the spirit of the new tool, Google has renamed a “Suggest more recipients” feature to “Don’t forget Bob.”

Gmail goof-prevention tools include “Undo Send” that recalls freshly sent email messages and “Mail Goggles” intended to thwart drunken messaging by only sending late-night emails after basic math problems are correctly answered.