After a few days if heavy speculation, Google has announced “Google Buzz”, a social platform to take on Twitter. Google Buzz is integrated into Gmail, and offers users a quick way of sharing stuff.

Further details and a launch date have yet to be announced, but it seems like a viable competitor to Twitter, unlike Google’s real Twitter-clone, Jaiku.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook is redoing their messaging platform and will soon be relaunched with a fully fledged webmail client. Facebook internally calls it “Project Titan”, but most can refer to it as a serious competitor to Gmail. Facebook Mail will have most of the features that Gmail has, including full POP/IMAP support.

Do you use gmail as your email provider? If you do then are you aware of the great work around for gmail accounts that lets you use multiple email addresses but only have to manage one account? If you are like me you often sign up for free information, downloads etc. but the downside of doing that is you receive a lot of spam mixed in with some good information.

To combat this I have several email accounts, unfortunately I don’t always get around to checking them all as I mainly use my gmail one for general communication. I recently discovered that if you take your gmail account and add either special characters or numbers to it. So for example if your gmail account is mickeymouse@gmail.com you can use mickey.mouse@gmail.com, mickey_mouse@gmail.com, mickeymouse+1@gmail.com all of these will be delivered to the same account. This is especially useful if you want to setup multiple accounts on a site that requires different email addresses - e.g. Twitter, Facebook etc.

Gmail has given you a lot of space for your emails. Too much space. With Gmail Space (also called Gspace), a Firefox extension, take advantage of the extra file space to store files on your Gmail account. The extension acts like an FTP application on your Firefox browser. After installing the extension, you can use it from the “Tools” menu or by clicking the little Gspace icon on the bottom-right status bar. The Gspace window will pop up ready to upload or download your files.

If you use the Firefox browser and have a Gmail account, Gmail Notifier is a must-have Firefox add-on. Gmail Notifier is…well, it notifies you for new emails without ever going to Gmail.com. When you get a new mail, the extension will show a number depending on how many new mails you get. After installing the extension, you will see it located on Firefox’s status bar on the lower right corner. The default preferences of Gmail Notifier checks for new mail every 5 minutes. Easily change this by right clicking the extension and selecting Preferences. From there you can set up the settings of Notifier including the intervals of when to check email. Mine is set to every 1 minute for a faster update.

Update: There is a Gmail Notifier not for Firefox, but for your Mac or PC. I personally like this one better so make sure to download it. When downloaded an icon shows on your PC system tray or on your Mac menu. It works just like the Firefox add-on but on your computer.