Use Gmail for all your e-mail links with gAttach

If you're a Windows user you know full well the tight integration among Microsoft products that has made the operating system a little less than friendly when it comes to tying in various Web apps. E-mail in particular is one of those actions that will usually pop up Outlook or Outlook Express, forcing you to either install a third-party mail app like Mozilla's Thunderbird or go in and tweak your registry.

If you're a Gmail user, and looking to get that same level of integration in Office documents and elsewhere on your system check out gAttach (download). This simple program will append all your mail extensions, getting them to open up in Gmail instead.

One thing that's nice is that it'll simply tack onto whatever browser you've got open, or simply open your default one if you don't have it running. It'll also suck in multiple files at a time (up to Gmail's 20MB limit of course).

Yahoo mail users can also take advantage of a sister product called yAttach, which will do the same thing, although you can't have both installed at once.

Once installed you've got an easy way to tweak your mail settings in Windows to open up in Gmail instead of Outlook or other default programs.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Doing for Gmail what the MailTo link does for Outlook, the wonderfully simple gAttach is a small utility that reassigns Gmail as the default mail account from Windows documents. With gAttach installed, selecting Send from Windows Explorer, Firefox, and Microsoft Office automatically attaches the files to a Gmail composition instead of opening a new e-mail in your mail client.

Though effortless, we wish we could associate some file types with gAttach and let others default to the e-mail client. Also missing is a way for gAttach to automatically divide, where possible, e-mail compositions that breach the 20MB upload limit.

Thanx...