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The Gmail team has updated its Web app for Chrome with settings controls for its HTML5 offline main storage. Users can now set it to store 7, 14 or 31 days of past email offline. Email work done offline - on an airplane, for example - is synced next time you connect.

Today's update also stores attachments for offline use, enables Gmail keyboard shortcuts offline, improves performance and fixes bugs. The Gmail offline app is available in the Chrome Web Store, and existing users will be updated automatically.

Gmail has updated its fraught iOS app with some new features. It now supports custom signatures for mobile messages and a vacation responder. It also improves the display of nested labels. For users of Apple's newest iOS 5 operating system, the push notification sound has changed to make it distinct from other notifications.

The update also adds an unexpected feature that allows users to scribble with colors on a canvas and attach it to a message. It's a basic paint application that takes advantage of the touch screen, rethinking the way mobile email apps work. Unfortunately, some of the most requested features are still in development. Maybe the ability to scribble will tide users over...

Google announced today that the free phone calls through Gmail added in 2010 have been extended for another year. Domestic calls in the U.S. and Canada are free, and international calls have a low fee schedule starting at $0.02 per minute. Users can also choose to link this to a free Google Voice account to receive inbound calls.

It's no surprise that Google has extended this service, since it just added it to Google+ Hangouts two weeks ago. Google has made several changes to Gmail chat to unify it with Google+, and this voice calling extends the reach of Gmail and Google+ to vastly more users.

The Google Gmail team announced that Gmail and Google Contacts will start seeing Google+ integration over the next few days. With the update, users are going to be able to add people to their circles directly from Gmail, filter mails by Google+ Circles, and share photos to Google+ directly from your inbox.

Probably the most interesting feature out of this update is the ability to filter mail by circles. If your contacts are on Google+ and you have them in your circles, you'll be able to view mail that's just from those circles.

The native Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users is back in the App Store. The app was first released on November 2, but it shipped with an unfortunate error that greeted new users with an incomprehensible error message. Shortly after releasing it, Google pulled the app from the store. The problem was caused by broken push notifications, and that bug has been fixed in today's release. The update also improves handling of images in HTML messages.

Unfortunately, users' more substantive concerns with the app have not been addressed. The Gmail team's blog post says that multiple account support, improved notifications and mobile-specific signatures are coming, along with "many more" features. But for now, little has changed about the app that many panned as insufficient for a native Gmail app.

Google's continuing its push for OAuth 2.0 in its Google Web APIs by providing a "playground" for developers to test OAuth interactions.

Basically, Google's playground is a way for developers to walk through OAuth interactions from start to finish.

Gmail's redesign may come with a bunch of spiffy new themes that look great in screenshots, but the actual usability of Gmail is in steep decline. For business users, Gmail is going downhill fast. It looks like Gmail is trying too hard to be a "social" application, and not hard enough to be an application for reading and responding to email quickly and effectively.

I've been using Gmail now almost since its release to the public. Its clean interface, keyboard shortcuts and relatively responsive Web interface have made Gmail my go-to mail client for years. While I've had some gripes with Gmail for years (not being able to sort by subject or sender in my inbox, for instance) the latest redesign has me considering going back to Thunderbird. Considering Thunderbird has improved very little in the last five years, that's a sad reflection on the state of Gmail.

Those of us who have used email alot, (see my email memories story here) have often wished we could know if our recipients have opened and read our messages. And while there have been read-receipts on various email services for many years, until now there hasn't been a general-purpose tool that can track when someone actually opens your messages. Enter Zendio with their plug-in for Outlook. And while it works, it is probably the creepiest solution that I've seen.

Scott Berken's book, Mindfire, is free until November 3, 2011. All of this and more in today's Daily Wrap.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we thought it might be helpful to wrap up some of the most talked about stories. Assuming this goes over well, we're going to give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus as well. This is a new feature at ReadWriteWeb so we covet your feedback. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments below or reach out to me directly at robyn at readwriteweb.com.

Google released the first native Gmail app for iOS this morning, but it didn't go over well. Not only was the app lacking in some desired features, like multiple accounts, but one of the new features didn't even work and caused a rough first launch. The app showed a big error message upon opening caused by broken push notifications.

Well, a "Googla culpa" has been issued. Dave Girouard - the "apps guy at Google" - said on Google Plus this morning: "Sorry but we pushed a bad version of our iOS app for Gmail. More info shortly - we're working on it." The app has now been pulled from the store.