Today Google released a new design for the menu bar on Gmail to a small percentage of users. It looks nice, but sadly it also had the effect of breaking Rapportive for those users who had been randomly selected by Google.

Fortunately, we soon figured out what had changed, and within a few hours we had Rapportive up and running in the new design. This is what it looks like:

Just one thing to note — you need to update your Rapportive browser extension to version 1.2. In Firefox, you'll need to go to Tools → Add-ons in the menu, click "Install updates" and restart Firefox. Chrome and Safari should get the update automatically in a few hours, and after you reload Gmail. If you just can't wait to get your Rapportive back, here's how you can update right away:

Communicating electronically, be it via email, Twitter or anything else, is never quite as good as meeting people in person. Rapportive shows your contacts' happy smiling faces in your email, which helps a bit... but still, wouldn't it be better to just meet face-to-face?

With the new Lanyrd Raplet for Rapportive you can do just that. See which conferences your contacts are planning to attend — and if you're going to be there too, let them know so that you can meet up. You don't need to do anything special, because the Raplet shows everything right next to your email conversation.

Lanyrd's social conference directory also allows you to keep track of conferences in the past, and if any of your contacts have been speakers, you can check out their slide decks and videos.

How do you add this to Rapportive? Why, same as all Raplets — click the Rapportive menu at the top of Gmail, then "Add or Remove Raplets". Enjoy!