How do I get that icon when I get new emails?
written on Sep.20, 2006
I’m trying to live the totally uninstalled life. One thing that I miss when turning to Windows Live Custom Domains or GMail in Google Apps for your domain is: How do I get informed that I got an new email? It feels like a waste of time having to logging into my e-mail service provider all the time.
Many of you probably recognize the Outlook e-mail icon ni the activity task bar: 
So what I want is whenever I receive an email I want the same kind of notice. I don’t want to install anything on my desktop, I don’t want to have an open browser since for example Gmail already have: 
– but to get that, I need to start a browser and keep it open!
But how do I get it without installing anything and without keeping my browser logged into my email provider? Anyone knows for Gmail for example? As you undestand on my blog – I’m looking at it from the users perspective. I simply want to see a notification when I receive a new mail with the minimal amount of fuss and without installing anything – is that so hard to fix?
Yes – I know there are add-ons for Firefox such as Gmail manager, Gmail Notifier, E-mail notifier Toolbar and many other tools and add-ons to install but they break the first rule of My Uninstalled Life – install nothing on your desktop.
September 21st, 2006 on 10:07 am
What’s the big deal? Just open the browser, or download Google Talk, which was a new GMail notifier.
September 21st, 2006 on 12:20 pm
Well, that’s kind of breaks the philosophy I have – uninstall everything. First, I don’t want to install anything. Second, it’s not very practical to keep browsing to my e-mail supplier all the time just to see if I got a new e-mail. I know it’s those little things – but there’s something I miss trying to live my uninstalled life.
October 9th, 2006 on 11:48 pm
So..what you want is an installed app on your computer….that isn’t installed…that alerts you when you have mail….without the app ever running?
Sounds like nonsense.
October 11th, 2006 on 6:58 am
Thanks for commenting! It doesn’t have to be installed. It’s just that people’s philosophy is that “you need to install an application for that”. 10 years ago nobody ever thought you could run MS Excel over the web – “you have to install it” – now you can.
Outlook Web Access is an example of a webmail that will give you the small icon by the clock without installing anything. So why wouldn’t other be able to do it? I understand it might need some ActiveX component which has to be run but I still don’t need to install it.
November 8th, 2006 on 6:20 pm
This is a feature of all the new browsers. Simply LiveBookmark (Firefox) or RSS Bookmark (Safari) your e-mail’s Web site, presuming that your provider pushes it out via RSS. G-Mail does, for example.
You _do_ phrase it in an impossible manner.
ActiveX components, for the record, *are* installed, in the sense that it downloads and activates a program.
It sounds as if you’re simply looking for a web-launched EXE file that stays resident even after the web browser is closed, but that doesn’t officially have to stay on your hard drive.