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As you may know, Google Gmail gives it’s users ample space to store mail messages with disk space hovering around 7GB these days. And even though the Gmail web interface shows the total amount of space used you may still wonder how much space is being used by mail archived to Labels.

To view this information you will also need to setup the OSX Mail.app to retrieve Gmail via IMAP. I have my Gmail account setup in Mail.app so that I can use the account within OSX and so that I can use the Mail.app on the iPhone to receive, view and send emails with Gmail.

Once you have your Gmail account setup in Mail, all you need to do is either Control-click or Right-click the Gmail mailbox in Mail and choose “Get Account Info“.

Once the Account Info window is open you will see your Gmail account Quota Limits which will show the message count and size of each of the Labels as well as the total space allocated and how much is being used.

As you can see, I have a bunch of Labels setup in Gmail but within this window you can also sort the information by Label name (Mailbox), Message count or Size. The color bar graph is also a nice visual indication of how much of Googles disk space you’re currently using. As you can see, I’m not using very much even though my total message count is over 7000 and Currently used is 330MB.

Now, go give it a try!

In this How To I’ll show you a method of removing the DRM protection from purchased music from the iTunes music store. I have not tried this on any other DRM protected media but I don’t see why it would not work.

In order to remove the DRM protection from purchased music in iTunes you will need iMovie HD 6, which is a free download on the Apple web site. Once you have iMovie HD 6 installed on your system, follow these steps to remove the DRM:

1. Open iMovie HD and create a new project. The project name can be what ever you’d like since the project can be deleted once the process is complete.

2. Select the Media tab in iMovie and then click on your iTunes Library in the Audio browser window at the top of the interface. You can search for the song to make it easier to find.

3. Once you’ve found the song you want to convert, drag it to the audio time-line at the bottom.

4. iMovie will now import the file.

5. After the import is complete you need to add an image to the time-line or else the project will not export. To do this click the Photos tab above the media browser and select an image from either iPhoto or Aperture. The photo does not matter as it’s only used to allow the project to export. Disregard the Ken Burns Effect pallet as it will go away once the photo is rendered in the time-line.

6. Now the project is ready to be exported. To do this, click the Share menu and choose Quicktime. In the Compress movie for: drop down, select Expert Settings and then click the Share button. This will open the Save exported file as… window. From here you can choose where you’d like the exported file to be saved, I use the default Movies folder in my Home Folder. You’ll want to select the Export: drop down and choose Sound to AIFF as the export format. All other settings can be left at default. Then click Save and the project will save and compress the project.

7. At this point you can browse the Finder to the location you’ve saved the file and drag the .AIFF file into your iTunes Library.

8. Once the file is in your iTunes Library, you can change all the file info to match the Artist, song title, album and so forth. You can even drag the album art from the original file in iTunes out to your desktop and then drag the same file into the newly created DRM-Free file. You’ll also want to convert the new file to AAC by selecting the file and control-click or right click the file and choose Convert Selection to AAC in the context menu.

9. At this point the original song file has been stripped of it’s DRM and converted back to an audio AAC file that can used by GarageBand to create a ringtone for the iPhone.

Stay tuned for a How To on creating ringtones in GarageBand.

Disclaimer: The sole purpose of removing the DRM from purchased iTunes music in this How To is to allow the file to be used to create ringtones for the iPhone. These files are not being redistributed in any way.