Two new Gmail features: Account activity, Google Gears integration

Update1: Google officially integrated “account activity” in gmail

Last account activity: Clicking the Details link next to the Last account activity line at the bottom of any Gmail page shows information about recent activity in your mail.
Recent activity includes any times that your mail was accessed, using a regular web browser, through a POP client, from a mobile device, etc. We’ll list the IP address from which the access was made, as well as the time and date.

How to use this data: If you’re concerned about unauthorized access to your mail, you’ll be able to use this data to find out if and when someone gained access. It’s information we’d use to troubleshoot unauthorized account activity, and now it’s available to you. Does the Access Type column show any unusual access? If you don’t use POP to collect your mail, but your Recent activity table is showing some POP access, it may be a sign that your account has been compromised.
The IP address column is also useful. If you always or most often sign in to Gmail using a single computer, your IP address should be the same, or start with the same two sets of numbers (for example, 172.16.xx.xx). If you’re seeing an IP address that differs greatly from your usual IP address, it could either mean that you’ve recently accessed your mail from a different location, or that someone has accessed your mail. Your current IP address is displayed below the Recent activity table.

Concurrent sessions: If your mail is currently being accessed from another location, we’ll list the other session(s) in the Concurrent session information table. This could mean that you simply have another browser window open with Gmail loaded, or that your home computer is logged in to Gmail while you’re accessing your mail from work. If you’re concerned about any concurrent access, you can sign out all sessions other than your current session by clicking Sign out all other sessions.

More info: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&answer=45938

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• View account activity

Have you ever had the suspicion that someone has been logging into your email account? Or do you just want peace of mind knowing that you are the only one accessing your account? You will soon be able to see how many computers or browser sessions are currently in your account and their IP address. In addition to real-time account activity, it appears you will be able to see past account activity too. Here are some of the snippets of text that will be used: “This account is currently being used in {number} other locations”, and “Last account activity: at IP [details]”.

Gmail is due for some serious updates — it’s been too long since anything has changed on the service, and you know its developers aren’t sitting around wondering what to do. I don’t have any guesses as to the timeframe for the release of these features or Gmail 2.0, but this is definitely a promising sign of good things to come.

• Google Gears integration

It was hinted at in recent reports, but there has been no hard evidence of Google’s plans to integrate Google Gears with Gmail until now. Two snippets of text are in the translation queue that, to me, prove beyond any doubt that Gears will be a part of Gmail. The two snippets of text are “Gears not installed” and “Disable Local Store” as seen in the screenshots below.