gmail on S Anand

Using Gemini to create slides

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:24:03 +0530

On Friday, our data & analytics client-facing teams connected Gemini to their Drive and Email:

Open Gemini
Make sure you see a “Pro” icon on the top right. (Some already had access. Some enabled it by clicking stuff.)
Go to Settings & help > Connected apps. Turn on “Google Workspace” and approve access.
Select “Pro” as the model (instead of “Fast” or “Thinking”).

Then they ran this a prompt like this:

Go through my Google Drive and find out what are the recent sales proposals we’ve picthed or new clients we’ve won.

⭐ Gemini searches all your files (even shared ones) and emails (even attachments) and shares a summary.

They tried using it to gather material to respond to client requests (potentially attaching documents):

Share all relevant material to respond to (details of topic) from my Google Drive / Email.

⭐ Gemini is as smart as a good business analyst at scanning files and gathering material.

They went further, and prompted it to convert it to a slide deck:

Convert this into a beautiful slide deck, McKinsey style. Make the slides content rich, i.e. clear and self-explanatory with enough detail to help the audience understand without a narrator. Use iconography, typography, stock images, etc. as appropriate.

⭐ Gemini can create reasonably good slide drafts that you can export to Google Slides and edit.

In 30 minutes, several people had created beautiful slide decks with no support! So now they can:

Create a first version, show it to analysts and say “Build something like this. But change …”
Create half a dozen drafts and pick what they like

But what excites me more is when we:

Create and share the deck overnight. Lightning-fast turnaround with no support!
Create the deck during a client meeting. It’s like we came prepared reading clients’ thoughts!
Create with the friendly client something they are happy to take to their bosses!

Software update

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 19:33:36 +0000

Time for the annual update on software I use. This time, I’ve got Wakoopa to help me with the relative usage as well. Here’s the top 100 software / web apps I’ve used recently, and how long I spent on them.

Gmail 186361 seconds
Notepad++ 130641 seconds
Google Chrome 79879 seconds
GitHub 43780 seconds
Windows Command Prompt 40967 seconds
Microsoft Excel 32578 seconds
Microsoft Word 27067 seconds
Microsoft PowerPoint 27059 seconds
Windows Explorer 20902 seconds
Google Docs 17989 seconds
Foxit Reader 17001 seconds
Microsoft Outlook 15855 seconds
Internet Explorer 15830 seconds
Google Search 15616 seconds
Skype 14423 seconds
Media Player Classic 14159 seconds
Google Groups 7061 seconds
Google Calendar 5531 seconds
Wesabe 2814 seconds
Google Analytics 2665 seconds
TeamViewer 1985 seconds
RGui 1875 seconds
LinkedIn 1528 seconds
YouTube 1400 seconds
Stack Overflow 1167 seconds
Acrobat Connect 964 seconds
Kongregate 914 seconds
HTML Help 871 seconds
PicPick 790 seconds
Zoundry Raven 684 seconds
Mockingbird 657 seconds
Twitter 655 seconds
iStockphoto 590 seconds
7-Zip 584 seconds
Buzznet 552 seconds
Inkscape 516 seconds
Bitbucket 499 seconds
Microsoft Visio 496 seconds
Paint.NET 474 seconds
IrfanView 461 seconds
Tableau Public 436 seconds
µTorrent 435 seconds
HandBrake 422 seconds
Check Point Endpoint Security 411 seconds
Windows Task Manager 385 seconds
Microsoft Project 372 seconds
IETester 347 seconds
Google Maps 340 seconds
eBay 310 seconds
Spokn 270 seconds
Firefox 269 seconds
Google Calendar Sync 259 seconds
Windows Calculator 247 seconds
PayPal 246 seconds
JsonView 220 seconds
Windows Live Writer 184 seconds
Junction Link Magic 152 seconds
WinDirStat 142 seconds
Kindle 139 seconds
XAMPP 127 seconds
Wakoopa 105 seconds
Dropbox 100 seconds
Office Help Viewer 99 seconds
PrimoPDF 94 seconds
PuTTY 84 seconds
Python 80 seconds
Flavors.me 75 seconds
Google Sites 71 seconds
Process Explorer 70 seconds
Windows Volume Control 63 seconds
Wikipedia 58 seconds
Nitro PDF Reader 57 seconds
Management Console 47 seconds
PythonWin 45 seconds
Windows Based Script Host 45 seconds
WinDiff 45 seconds
VLC Media Player 39 seconds
ClipX 35 seconds
Windows Installer 35 seconds
The Internet Movie Database 32 seconds
ImageShack 31 seconds
WordPad 25 seconds
TeraCopy 22 seconds
Skype Portable 22 seconds
Picasa Web Albums 20 seconds
Syncplicity 17 seconds
Google Reader 16 seconds
Google Talk 15 seconds
VirtualDub 12 seconds
Adobe Manager 10 seconds
FreeCall 10 seconds
Notepad 8 seconds
Codebase 5 seconds
eTrust ITM 5 seconds
Google Checkout 5 seconds
GDI++ Tray Notifier 5 seconds
ImgBurn 2 seconds
Virtual Desktop Manager 2 seconds
Tesseract201 2 seconds
TortoiseHg 0 seconds

Comments

Somnath 1 Mar 2011 4:38 pm: More time on Gmail than browsers - how are you accessing Gmail then?
S Anand 6 Mar 2011 8:51 pm: @Somnath, mostly breaking through proxies – see http://goo.gl/6wyg0 and http://goo.gl/DNtui. @Thej, no idea I’m afraid, but before I used Wakoopa, I was using https://gist.github.com/857652 which worked just fine, except that it wasn’t social and didn’t have the pretty charts. You might want to tweak that for Linux.
Thejesh GN 5 Mar 2011 5:29 pm: It doesnt run on Linux (only PC n MAC). Anything for me?
Shankar V 28 Feb 2011 3:10 am: hi Anand how do you generate this list? Wakoopa is blocked at Infy. So could not check that one out. Also, surprised to note that you are a Chrome user against FF. I have used both and my preference is still FF.
S Anand 28 Feb 2011 6:38 am: I work out of client sites – so sites aren’t blocked. Plus, it includes software from my home laptop. I shifted to Chrome a while ago, even for development, mostly because it’s faster than FF. The only thing I miss is Firebug, really.

How to access Gmail even if it is blocked

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:00:00 +0000

If you just want to check if you have new mail on Gmail, use Google’s personalised home page and add Gmail to the homepage. This shows new mail and a few words as a snippet.

If you want to read your mail, and don’t want to forward it to another account, use Google Groups as a backup to Gmail. Create a private Google Group and forward mails from Gmail to it. Google Groups often is not blocked, even if Gmail is.

Comments

DufusMaximus 2 Apr 2007 7:36 pm: Or you can use an web-based IMAP client … http://roundcube.net/ looks like one.
Sundar R 3 Apr 2007 6:17 am: Or you can use http://www.netvibes.com and add the email module using email widget.
ma 7 Apr 2007 10:17 am: Anand, what happened to ur songs search page?
Danny 2 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: unblock anything with this. http://www.mysecureisp.com
anand 30 Oct 2008 1:06 am: Hi!

I am not still access gmail,blocked websense message comes on to screen.
give any other tips from where i can show mail from another way.

Pls help as early as possible.

thanks.

GTalk is more than a messenger

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Google Talk, Not Just An Instant Messenger. It’s used in Gmail, Google Desktop and Google Spreadsheets already. Google plans to use it in more of its services.

Gmail dots

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Apparantly, it doesn’t matter where you put a dot in your gmail address.

PDF to HTML via Gmail

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Convert PDF to HTML via Gmail. This is the only way I know of converting something from PDF into another format. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for GoogleMail in the UK.

Google Reader

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Google Reader. Gmail principles applied to RSS. You can subscribe to posts, label feeds and star RSS items. The reader suggests items from your subscriptions based on your interest.

Gmail Groups

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Creating Groups on Gmail.

Comments

Arun 31 Aug 2005 6:38 pm: lol! The things people do. :-)

Gmail is fast

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 12:00:00 +0000

As Jeremy put it, GMail is really damn fast. Faster than desktop email. I prefer it to Outlook, and hence to my work e-mail ID.

RSS Clustering

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000

RSS clustering is about doing what Gmail does on news sources, to RSS feeds of your choice.

Comments

Arun 28 Jul 2005 4:01 pm: How do you get to all these amazing links?
S Anand 29 Jul 2005 6:01 am: Mainly using del.icio.us these days.
Arun 29 Jul 2005 2:30 pm: Ah, okie… But there is so much crap there…You are darn good at filtering stuff then! :-)
Arun 29 Jul 2005 2:36 pm: btw, dunno if it’s a bug, but there is a problem with the cursor in this text book. If I leave the page and return to the text box after i start typing, am not able to get the cursor to refocus on the text box. It just disappears. In firefox.
RaM 29 Jul 2005 4:36 pm: Update the placement section also
RaM 29 Jul 2005 4:44 pm: Your Placement Section is static. Pls Update it. Your search tactics are very good
Dhar 30 Jul 2005 5:28 am: Arun, I too have had that problem with the cursor.
Howie 30 Jul 2005 7:56 am: few links are dead in Placement section
S Anand 31 Jul 2005 9:07 pm: Could you give me a step-by-step regarding the cursor problem? I couldn’t reproduce it.
Dhar 2 Aug 2005 2:50 pm: http://digg.com/spy has an excellent collection of whacky/interesting links. And they use Ajax too. Another nice place to pick up good interesting posts.

Google 2GB

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:00:00 +0000

You are currently using 18 MB (2%) of your 1101 MB. Gmail storage increases by 1MB per minute. They are planning to hike capacity to 2GB. Exactly 1 year after launch.

Google tricks

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 12:00:00 +0000

How to find MP3s using Google.

Create a montage using Google.

Add persistent searches to Gmail.

Get credit card numbers using Google.

Convert your desktop into a search engine.

All using Google.

Comments

Dhar 8 Mar 2005 10:17 am: Even more using Google: http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/index.php?module=prodreviews

Gmail file system

Thu, 14 Oct 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Gmail File System for Windows.

Using gmail for backup

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Interesting idea to use gmail for backup.

Gmail performance at 1GB

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Kevin Rose tests gmail performance at 1 GB.

3 gmail invites left

Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:00:00 +0000

I have 3 gmail invites available. Mail me if you’re interested (and WHY you’re interested in gmail).

No gmail invites left

Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:00:00 +0000

I have no gmail invites left. Please wish Rajneesh, Joseph, Kannan, Mark, Mohamed and Naresh all the best with their accounts.

6 gmail invites left

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:00:00 +0000

I have 6 gmail invites available. Mail me if you’re interested (and WHY you’re interested in gmail).

Bruce wants gmail

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Bruce deserves Gmail. Context: Google has invited active bloggers on Blogger.com to use Gmail Beta. Bloggers who joined post facto have not been invited. (I can empathise with what Bruce feels.)

Gmail gems

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Gmail Gems and GmailForums are discussions on Gmail.