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Gmail users are able to customize their email experience as well as mail for almost any platform.  That and the free or low cost may be one of the reasons for Gmail’s ubiquity.  I even saw Gmail in use on Capitol Hill last year while visiting my Senator’s office. Gmail send and archive option

When I talk with Gmail users, however, few discuss the extended Labs function.  In a few rare instances, I’ve had to restart my email, but almost all of the Labs features I’ve used are time savers, utility enhancements or even solved a problem I didn’t know I had.

The Send and Archive feature falls into all of those categories. You know that person who spent too much time in the ’90s categorizing their email?  Yep, that was me.  But with virtually unlimited storage, I don’t even mess with tagging or other features any longer.  Instead I make use of the Send & Archive feature.

The feature adds another button next to the boring old SEND button.  Once the mail is sent, Gmail places the thread in the “All Mail” area. No muss, no fuss, and if you need to find something later, just remember a phrase to narrow your search or look at all the mail you sent during that time or to that person.

If you’re using Gmail and your inbox has more than a few pieces inside, do yourself a favor and check out the SEND & ARCHIVE feature now.  All you need to do is click the LABS icon in the upper right corner that looks like a beaker (labs, get it?) and scroll down.  And a friendly hint:  add only one new labs feature at a time.  You’ll thank me for that advice later.

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We blog about honesty in small business a lot.  When you boil everything away, a small business is all about the team bringing a product or service to market.  If integrity is an issue for any reason, the business will not survive.  That’s not speculation.  I’ve been involved in a number of startups and assisted countless others.   When the company’s integrity — with employees, with vendors, with customers, with anyone — was gone, word spread like wildfire and the company was either soon gone or sold for a fraction of its previous worth.

Individuals have the same issues.   Individual integrity is what transfers to the organization.

Baseball writer and guru Peter Gammons covered this year’s Hall of Fame vote at MLB.com.  Gammons joined all MLB.com writers eligible to vote in releasing ballot details.

McGwire hit more home runs than all but 7 other men in baseball history. He is currently tied with A-Rod, the infamous Alex Rodridguez, with 583 career home runs. Look at the home run chart on Baseball-Reference.com, and you’ll see McGwire’s name ahead of names like Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle and very, very close to names like Babe Ruth.

But when Congress was investigating performance-enhancing drugs, Mark McGwire gave this testimony.

His non-answer might have been legally smart, but it was professional suicide.  For four straight years, the Baseball Writers of America have denied McGwire, once considered a shoo-in during his first year of eligibility a place in baseball’s Hall of Fame.  Gammons voted for him and wrote an impassioned defense of the case.  But only one other of Gammons’ 12 colleagues at MLB.com joined him in voting for Mark McGwire.  Indeed, Mark McGwire has yet to receive 30% of the votes necessary for Hall of Fame enshrinement.   And with a total of 5 of the top 15 home run hitters of all time linked at least indirectly to performance-enhancing drug use, the trend is likely to continue.

Former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is another example of integrity.  This middle-aged women scrapped and fought her way to run one of America’s largest cities.   Late last year she was indicted on twelve criminal charges, including perjury, theft and misappropriation of funds.

  • The charge that stuck and eventually resulted in a conviction: misappropriation.
  • The amount: about five hundred dollars in gift cards.
  • The intended recipients: poor people via charitable organizations.

Dixon has resigned.  Her last day as Mayor of Baltimore is next month.    Baltimore’s citizens are not pleased. She is a pariah in her hometown, a place she has lived for over 50 years, where she taught school, where she served on the City Council, where she was the mayor.

These are celebrity examples, but they underscore a critical point.  The minute you start losing your integrity is when your entire life’s work can be diminished.    Honesty is the only successful long run policy.   Anything less than that invites disaster.

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phone booth
Not a smartphone.

This is a long time coming, and boy, is it big.  Yes, this is Google news related to telephones, but we won’t talk about Nexus One (still).

Google is launching pay-per-call advertising.  Now.

There have always been variants of pay-per-call available, but this shows how serious Google is about invading the local search advertising space.  The program, announced today via email before Google’s other announcement, is arguably more important and profitable in the long run.  Here’s how it works:

  • A business will get a 5th line in a Google advertisement that shows a local phone number on smartphones (or as Google calls them, “high end mobile devices”)
  • Google says they’ll check the phone’s location and show the phone number for a nearby business.
  • The searcher simply has to scroll to your number and click.
  • Advertisers get the full range of analytics and metrics associated with keywords, this time with a telephone call as the conversion.

The best part for advertisers is the cost.  Pay-Per-Call has traditionally cost a much higher rate than a click to a website.  For now, anyway, Google is keeping the rate the same.  That’s quite a bargain for advertisers.

Meanwhile, the infighting with Microsoft continues.  Google described the covered phones as “iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS”, but didn’t mention Windows Mobile.  I asked Brandon Miniman, the CEO of leading smartphone site pocketnow.com, about the omission and the future of Windows Mobile in an Android and iPhone world.

“Windows Mobile is becoming less relevant because version 6.5 offers no big innovations and is mostly unchanged from a decade ago. That said, Microsoft has been working on Windows Mobile 7 for many years. When released in 2010, it could finally bring Microsoft back into the smartphone arena,” said Miniman.