Google thas updated Gmail with a new feature that makes it more interactive. Google will now show action buttons next to emails in a user's inbox that allowing them to take action before the even open the message. This feature only works in emails in which the developer has enabled this feature.

While all of the publishers involved in an eBook pricing antitrust case have settled with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Apple refuses to settle the case and continues to fight. Yesterday, the DOJ introduced an email exchange between Apple's founder Steve Jobs and News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch (News Corp. owns HarperCollins, one of the publishers involved in the suit), as evidence of price fixing. In the email, Jobs wrote to Murdoch that he could continue to have Amazon price eBooks at $9.99 or "throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create …

ZDNet columnist David Gewirtz understands the power of the email newsletter to reach subscribers, but doesn't think working with email vendors is worth it. In a blog post on the site, he recounts the story of wanting to move his email newsletter program from an in-house system to a vendor. The move, he explained, increased their spam complaints and lost them a lot of subscribers. Frustrated he tried two more vendors before returning to ZDNet's own in-house mailing system.

Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh has created a personal system to deal with inbox overload. Instead of getting swallowed up in email messages, he is fighting back with a system that is centered on the idea, "Make yesterday's inbox today's to-do list." In a post on LinkedIn, he explained his system which involves responding to yesterday's email today (unless it just can't wait), and setting time to respond to emails that will take more than ten minutes to write in the same way you would set a meeting.

Ryan Christopher Fogle -- the junior diplomat from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that stands accused by the KGB of trying to recruit a Russian spy for the CIA -- apparently uses Gmail. He was allegedly caught with a letter that revealed one of the CIA's e-mail addresses: unbacggdA@gmail.com. The letter apparently encouraged the would-be spy to create a new Gmail account in a public place on a shared computer without any personally identifiable information exposed, and then email the alleged CIA Gmail address.

Google has combined the storage limits for Gmail and Google Drive giving users 15GB of free storage across both products. This means that instead of being limited to 10GB of free space in Gmail and 5GB in Google Drive, Google users can split the free space across both depending on how they use these services. "For example, maybe you're a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2GB in Gmail. Now it doesn't matter, because you can use your storage the way you want," explained …

A National Labor Relations Board judge has dropped charges against five scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and told the organization to rescind disciplinary actions against these employees who shared emails at work about a Supreme Court decision on background security checks for JPL employees. Dennis Byrnes, Scott Maxwell, Larry D'Addario, Robert Nelson and William Bruce Banerdt were accused of sending unsolicited emails. The judge compared their email forwarding to employees that use email to sell Girl Scout cookies to each other.

Japanese developer ChatPerf has developed a new app called Scentee that lets iPhone users email or text smells to each other. The app requires the sender and the recipient to have a scent tank -- a plastic piece that plugs into the dock of the phone. When a scent message arrives, a red light lights up and then a mist of spray comes out. Each scent tank has only one fragrance, but the user can swap out different scents.

Earlier this week, the ACLU revealed that the FBI allows its agents to read the emails of citizens without getting a warrant. But some of the biggest email providers including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter are pushing back. These companies will only provide emails to the agency when the FBI provides a probable cause warrant.

Email marketing services company Silverpop has a new feature to help marketers render messaging based on the device that consumers open their emai lon. The feature, called Email Insights, lets marketers test preview what an email will look in up to 30 different apps across multiple devices. The tool also includes analytics about which devices and email apps are being used to open those emails to that they can use that data to create emails that are customized to a user's "preferred device." Last month, the company announced $25 million in new funding.