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Hotmail
Hotmail was the most used email service till few months ago and still has a whopping 450M users. We now support searching through email, contacts and calendar in Hotmail as well as other avatars, viz. MSN, Live and Outlook.com accounts.

Yahoo
Yahoo is one of highest requested services. Although we attempted to support it a while ago, we faced throttling issues from Yahoo’s servers and had to put it on the back burner. Now with those issues ironed out, we are delighted to let you search your Yahoo mails.

With the addition of Hotmail and Yahoo, we now support all major email service providers. No matter where your email is, it’s just a second away.

SkyDrive
We also saw a huge number of SkyDrive requests. Some even withheld their star ratings on the App Store, because we didn’t support SkyDrive! You asked, we delivered. You can now search through files and folders stored in your SkyDrive account.

Exchange ActiveSync
We are also rolling out complete Exchange ActiveSync support. Although we supported Exchange through EWS and IMAP, not all Exchange servers support them. Additionally, the fact that ActiveSync is the protocol of choice for mobile devices makes it very important. With this addition, we should now be able to index 100% of the Exchange mailboxes.

We are super excited about this release, tell us what you think. We also have lots more that we’re always working on, so keep telling us what you’d like to see next!

Cheers,
Team CloudMagic

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Hello and a very happy new year to all!

We launched CloudMagic back in 2010. Since then, we’ve been continually adding support for more services and rolling out apps on different platforms to make universal-search a reality. CloudMagic has always been free but were often asked how we intend to make money. We didn’t really have an answer till date, now we do. We now charge a small fee for power users and yet have an awesome free plan that would work for most. Here’s what it looks like:

As a token of appreciation for being with us this far, we’re giving all our wonderful users 3 months of CloudMagic Pro for free.

• How do I claim the 3 month complimentary CloudMagic Pro subscription?

  Nothing. The complimentary subscription has already been added to your account. Navigate to ‘Plan Details or My Subscription’ section on the CloudMagic apps/extension/website to see the credit.

• What happens after my complimentary subscription expires?

  You can buy a CloudMagic Pro subscription or choose to continue with CloudMagic Free.

• Will you delete my indexed data after the complimentary subscription expires?

  No, you’ll be automatically switched to CloudMagic Free which will keep all your data intact.

• Is there any limitation on the number of accounts/services I can add in CloudMagic Free?

  No. CloudMagic Free only limits the number of previews to 50 in a month. There are no other restrictions.

Have more questions? Feel free to drop a comment below.

Cheers,

Team CloudMagic

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Firstly, a big thank you to every single one of our wonderful users for an amazing 2012. The year started with our mobile apps launch, then we launched support for a host of cloud services with Cloudmagic 2, and now we end the year with a way to combine CloudMagic search results with Google search.

Earlier today, we announced (the TechCrunch review here) the launch of our new browser extensions, which show CloudMagic results right next to Google search results. All you need to do is install the extension and a box will appear next to Google search results, showing matches from your personal cloud data. Links to the latest extensions:  Chrome | Firefox | Safari

It’s never been easier to search through all your data with CloudMagic. We hope you love it. It’s been an awesome 2012 and 2013 is already looking infinitely more awesome. Stay tuned.

Happy New Year, happy holidays and happy searching! As always, talk to us, we love it – feedback@cloudmagic.com or comment below.

Thank you once again.

All of us at CloudMagic

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When we redesigned CloudMagic, an important task during the design cycle was to redesign our app icon (on both iOS and Android). A task we assumed was simple enough, took us weeks! During which, we argued, fought furiously, contemplated going back to the old icon, and finally arrived at a great new icon.

Here is a perspective as to why sometimes we have no choice but to reject great looking icons. Here is the design process from the old icon to our new one, and things we learned along the way:

The Old Icon

What was wrong with the old icon?

• Gave an impression of being faded when seen on devices, looked dull and dated.
• We wanted to highlight search capabilities, not evident from the existing icon.
• The gloss effect on icons is dying. Take a look at icons of popular apps – Facebook, LinkedIn, Flipboard, Instapaper, Instagram, Dropbox, clearly gloss had to go.
• Creating a new icon for a redesigned app is advisable as users expect the redesign from the start of their experience.
• Of course, all the above while retaining Apple’s iOS Icon Guidelines

The Redesign Begins

Icon-ic frustration!

Finally!

Tips for (re)designing your app icon

1. Dedicate some time to it, its not a trivial exercise, and an icon is the first impression users get and it’s used every single time to launch your app, it is important.
2. Pick one platform to start with, and then ‘port’ the design to other platforms to retain consistency across platforms. We picked iOS to design the icon and then used the same design for Android.
3. Sexy icons look good but die soon, so keep it simple and suited to your positioning. If we were a ‘fun’ app, we might have created a funky icon. Find your desired positioning and stick to it in all parts of design.
4. Think about muscle memory – We included the magnifying glass into the icon because users associate it with search.
5. While redesigning a new app icon, you might have to retain some elements of your old icon, just to make sure the users don’t get scared away by the new-ness.
6. Useful links for app icon design -

• Apple Icon Guidelines
• Android Launcher Icon Guidelines
• Hunie gallery of awesome app icons

So tell us what you think of the new app icon, we’d love to know!

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Since our launch earlier this year, we received a lot of praise from you. You told us that CloudMagic is magical and that you use it everyday, that it is life changing, and some even said it is thunderbolt fast!

Everyone loved the simplicity and blazing speed at which they could search through their Gmail, Twitter and Exchange data.

You also however told us about the things you’d like CloudMagic to do further. The two most frequent requests were:

1. The ability to search through more data
2. An iPad app

As we set out to build more into CloudMagic, we realized that if we had to add the ability to search through your Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox etc. accounts, while continuing to retain the same speed and simplicity as earlier, we had to go back to the drawing board and work very hard.

We did just that and are thrilled today to launch CloudMagic 2 – completely redesigned with the ability to search through a lot more, and many new features.

What’s new in CloudMagic 2?

Search through much more

• Now you can search through Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, iCloud, AOL, mail.com, GMX, in addition to Gmail, Google Apps, Twitter and MS Exchange.

iPad App

• Full support for iPad 2 and iPad Retina, in addition to iPhone and Android apps.

New design

• Completely redesigned interface for enhanced usability

Many new features

• Snapshot view to see updates across all your data
• Richer previews
• More actions on previews
• Ability to forward emails
• Ability to view attachments

This new version brings us closer to our vision of providing lightning fast search across all your cloud data. Please visit cloudmagic.com to get access to the new website/browser extensions. CloudMagic 2 can also be downloaded from the iOS App Store or Google Play.

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Hi,

We are delighted to announce two big updates today:

• Support for Microsoft Exchange, and
• Support for Google Chat

Support for Microsoft Exchange
Why Exchange? Most work email is on Microsoft Exchange, and looking for an email using Outlook or your smartphone sucks big time. We guess every iPhone+Exchange user on this planet has been a victim of “Continue search on the server?” message (which still fails to fetch search results most of the time). CloudMagic eradicates this problem by introducing support for Exchange emails.

As always, with CloudMagic you’ll find what you are looking for in under a second! So stop remembering where ‘that’ email is and don’t worry if John’s phone number is in your GMail address book or Exchange address book, let CloudMagic find it for you.

Note to Office 365 users – You can also add your Office 365 account to CloudMagic and search through the emails, events, contacts and much more.

Support for Google Chat
Almost all Gmail users use Google Chat and we got a lot of requests to make chat conversations searchable through CloudMagic. Now you can search through all your chats using CloudMagic! If you have already added a Gmail account to Cloudmagic, follow these steps and you will start seeing search results from your chat conversations.

You can also login to your CloudMagic account and go to the “Add Services” page to add these newly supported services.

We are excited about this release and we would love to have your feedback. For frequent updates, you should follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Cheers,
Team CloudMagic

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Although you can use our service at CloudMagic.com, nothing can match the ease at which you can access your data when you add the CloudMagic extension to your browser. When you add the extension, a floating search bar appears in Gmail and Twitter pages. It’s right there when you need it the most. Keyboard shortcut and context menu further helps save time.

Today, we are happy to announce the availability of CloudMagic Extension for Safari. Download it here.

To conclude, thank you all for overwhelming response for the last release. We are always asked if we are adding Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox, Tumblr, etc. to CloudMagic. We assure you again that all those requested services and many more are in our wishlist. We will keep you posted on their availability. For frequent updates please follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

Cheers,
Team CloudMagic

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A while ago we set out to solve the elusive search problem with personal online data. We asked ourselves a very simple question – why can’t we search our personal data on different services, with the same ease and speed of Spotlight? That’s when we introduced CloudMagic. In that pursuit, we continued development on CloudMagic – we added more services, we improved the search speed, we added a whole bunch of features, etc. etc. Everyone loved it. James Fallows from The Atlantic went on to say – “If you’re using Gmail, and not using CloudMagic, you’re shortening your effective lifespan, plus sapping the economy, by wasting your precious time.”

Bravo, now what!

“Searching on mobile sucks, is there something like CloudMagic for mobile?” We get that a lot. We ourselves missed CloudMagic while on the move and started working on CloudMagic for mobile.

We’re really excited today to launch CloudMagic’s blazing fast search across mobile devices. Now you can find anything in just a second from your smartphone. Embedded below is a quick intro video.

We have worked very hard to deliver search results under one second, we hope you enjoy the speed. Please give it a spin and let us know your feedback.

CloudMagic for Mobile – iPhone App Store, Android Market
CloudMagic for Desktop – Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons

Cheers,
Team CloudMagic

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Everyone has their stories of how helpful CloudMagic’s search for Gmail, Google Apps and Twitter has been. In this post, I’m summarizing how to get the most out of it, from my own experience and inputs from numerous users.

1. Search as you think, and don’t think too much

Don’t be shy to search for a phrase, partial address or an area code of telephone number that you know exists in what you are looking for. CloudMagic will instantly search through all parts of your Google Apps / Gmail (from, to, subject, body etc.). For example – I was looking for my hotel reservation email and the first thing that came to mind was the price of the room. So I search for ’319′and there I see my reservation details. Another example – I’m not good at remembering names of the people that I’ve met just once, but I recollect the company they work for and that’s what I search. You can also use advanced search operators (from:, to:, filename: etc.) to separate wheat from the chaff.

2. Add multiple accounts and services

Add all your Google Apps / Gmail / Twitter accounts, so that you can quickly search through all your content in one go. You’ll no longer have to remember where Charlie’s video was shared and you’d be surprised how the accounts you seldom use have very valuable information in them, which CloudMagic will pop up for you. (You can always choose to display search results across all accounts by going to Preferences > Enable Combined Search)

3. Use the various access interfaces CloudMagic gives you

You can search in various ways using CloudMagic. You should pick the one that suits you most based on what you search :

a. Search bar inside Gmail.com/Google Apps mail or Twitter.com – the most popular access method

b. Full page search – comes in handy when you need larger previews and less clutter

c. Chrome’s Omnibox – no matter what page you are browsing, type C, space in the address bar and start searching in CloudMagic. The results will start appearing in suggestions section of Omnibox. Keyboard shortcut fans love this.

d. Chrome’s Browser Options – similar to Omnibox, you can use this no matter which page you’re on.

e. Browser context menu – the good old right click thing

4. Place the CloudMagic search box right

The CloudMagic search box can be moved around, by simply dragging it. The default spot is most convenient for me, but if you want to move it to a better spot, you should. You could also simply replace your Gmail search box by clicking on “Replace Gmail Search” in the CloudMagic search box drop down menu.

5. Note to Firefox users

We are always building more into CloudMagic. Unlike Chrome, Firefox does not automatically update the add-ons. However, it will prompt you when there is an update. If updates are not prompted automatically, look for “Automatically check for updates” option in Firefox Tools> Advanced> Update.

I hope these tips will help you enjoy CloudMagic even more. Tell us if you have more tips, we would love to hear from you.

We are very thankful for the overwhelming response since we launched. This comment sums up the kind of feedback that we’ve received:“If you’re using Gmail, and not using CloudMagic, you’re shortening your effective lifespan, plus sapping the economy, by wasting your precious time.” – James Fallows, The Atlantic.

You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay updated

Cheers,
Rishit

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