Alright, yes.  I love Sparrow and try to use it as much as possible BUT what am I to do when I'm working from Windows?  Truthfully I usually just head back to the web browser version of gmail.  The good news is that Google improved their already excellent webmail service this wee by adding desktop alerts similar to what you may have seen in Outlook, or with any mac application that supports Growl notifications.

Wait, there's more?

So first let me say that these HTML5 alerts are only available if you're running Gmail from Google's Chrome browser.  That's kind of disappointing if you're a fan of other browsers but Chrome happens to be my favorite across-browser so I'm set.  It's also worth noting that these updates aren't just limited to new email messages, you can also receive Google Talk alerts as well.  This is especially useful because I'm terrible when it comes to hearing the gtalk audio notification, so the extra visual cue is a big help.  Finally, if you're a fan of the priority inbox that is new to gmail you can set the notifications to only fire when a new high-priority message comes through.  Pretty cool!

Well, since today's post is admittedly light on words (because really how much can you say about email notifications) here is a video that's funny and has a catchy song in it.  Enjoy.