Gmail voice calls remain free for 2013

Were you even aware that if you have a Gmail email account that you can talk to other Gmail users via voice and video? You certainly can using Google's VOIP service within Gmail. See photo to the right, the little phone handset symbol toward the lower half of the picture allows for both voice and video chatting similar to Skype.

It will remain free of charge for calls within the United States and Canada in 2013. A note on the Gmail blog announced this on December 26, 2012.

There are several clients that can utilize the Google Talk feature on moble phones, for instance Vtok for iOS allows me to make a VOIP call to anyone in my Gmail address book. It would be considered data usage so be sure to check what your data plan limits are.

I am glad Google is continuing to provide this feature for free, it allows for calling long distance relatives much cheaper then using a long distance service provider.

-Ubu out

Gmail users can now send 10GB Files

Google announced Tuesday (November 27, 2012) that it will be integrating Google Drive into Gmail. This will allow a Gmail user to send files up to a massive 10GB in size over email.
There's a new button in Gmail's compose window that will give the user the ability to attach a file from their Google Drive account rather then attaching the file directly, which we all know a lot of email services have very restrictive file size limits.
Once it's attached, Gmail will ensure that your recipient has permission to view the file in your Drive account or will prompt you to grant that permission and then it sends the message.
The feature works for links to items stored in your Google Drive account as well as the files you attach. Since this is essentially you sharing a link to the file in the cloud rather then the file itself, you can continue to update it and those updates will show up for your recipient as well.
Each Google Drive user is granted 5GB of free storage from Google. In order to store and send files larger then 5GB users will be required to purchase additional Google Drive storage space. You can purchase 25GB for $2.49/month or 100GB for $4.99/month. Do you use Google Drive? If not you should!

-Ubu out