[This post is by Nadav Aharony, a product manager on the Android team — Tim Bray]
We're rolling out new developer features for the Gmail Android app: It now includes a public ContentProvider that you can use to retrieve label data. You can use this to access up-to-date unread counts for specific accounts' inboxes and labels.
To use the API, the Gmail app needs to be at version 2.3.6 or higher on Froyo or Gingerbread; 4.0.5 or higher on Honeycomb and ICS. Before using it, be sure you first check the Gmail app version; we've provided a handy GmailContract.canReadLabels(Context) method to help with this. Your app will need the com.google.android.gm.permission.READ_CONTENT_PROVIDER permission.
Finding the Gmail accounts set up on the device
The Labels API needs a valid Gmail account to build a query for per-label information. Assuming the GET_ACCOUNTS permission, the AccountManager can be used to fetch this information:
// Get the account list, and pick the first one final String ACCOUNT_TYPE_GOOGLE = 'com.google'; final String[] FEATURES_MAIL = { 'service_mail' }; AccountManager.get(this).getAccountsByTypeAndFeatures(ACCOUNT_TYPE_GOOGLE, FEATURES_MAIL, new AccountManagerCallback() { @Override public void run(AccountManagerFuture future) { Account[] accounts = null; try { accounts = future.getResult(); if (accounts != null && accounts.length > 0) { String selectedAccount = accounts[0].name; queryLabels(selectedAccount); } } catch (OperationCanceledException oce) { // TODO: handle exception } catch (IOException ioe) { // TODO: handle exception } catch (AuthenticatorException ae) { // TODO: handle exception } } }, null /* handler */);
Getting and accessing existing labels
Once you've got the email account, you can get a ContentProvider URI to query against. We've provided a simple support class called GmailContract.java for constructing the URI and defining the columns and relevant constants.
You can access any label, predefined or user-defined. The predefined labels include (you have to use symbolic constants rather than these strings, see below):
Priority Inbox
Starred
Chats
Sent
Drafts
All mail
Spam
Trash
To obtain a Cursor with information for all labels in an account, your app can either query this URI directly or use a CursorLoader. Here's an example:
Cursor c = getContentResolver().query(GmailContract.Labels.getLabelsUri(selectedAccount), null, null, null, null);
You can query and watch for changes on a single label by storing the URI value in the GmailContract.Labels.URI column from the cursor data.
The NAME value for pre-defined labels can vary by locale, so don't use GmailContract.Labels.NAME. Instead, identify pre-defined labels like Inbox, Sent or Drafts using the String value in the GmailContract.Labels.CANONICAL_NAME column. Here's an example:
// loop through the cursor and find the Inbox if (c != null) { final String inboxCanonicalName = GmailContract.Labels.LabelCanonicalName.CANONICAL_NAME_INBOX; final int canonicalNameIndex = c.getColumnIndexOrThrow(GmailContract.Labels.CANONICAL_NAME); while (c.moveToNext()) { if (inboxCanonicalName.equals(c.getString(canonicalNameIndex))) { // this row corresponds to the Inbox } } }
If you choose to use a CursorLoader, it will keep the label counts up to date as they change over time.
Sample App
You can find a sample app that makes use of the new API here. The app provides a basic readout of label and message-count information.
People care about their incoming mail; we're looking forward to seeing what you do with access to this information. We're also open to suggestions as to how to improve and extend this new API.
La versión 5.1 del sistema operativo móvil de Apple se acerca a pasos acelerados, y a raíz de aquello es que comienzan a aparecer filtraciones que nos revelan qué habrá de novedoso en el nuevo software, saliendo ahora un reporte que nos indica la introducción de un botón para el rápido acceso a la cámara fotográfica en el iPhone.
You may know this; a week back Reuters gave information to many news sites about a Michican woman who is suing Microsoft for collecting location data without the user's permission. As Windows Phone always demands for permission, in case of any personal queries about the customers, this issue makes most of them feel more disgusting. 
