UPDATE 2: The unbelievable – new gm-notify version out in the near future?
well guys, I promised it many times, and I tried it many times: Writing a new backend for gm-notify which works more reliably than the current one. But every darned time, when I was almost finished, there was some freaking sort of bug which prevented everything from working flawlessly.
But now I just pushed a new version onto Launchpad which features a new google-talk backend – so we don’t need a CheckInterval any more 
If you want to go ahead and do some alpha testing (yes, it’s not feature complete and there are many known bugs) – here are the instructions:
sudo apt-get install python-twisted-mail python-twisted-words
sudo apt-get install python-indicate python-gnome2 bzr
bzr branch lp:gm-notify
cd gm-notify
sudo cp data/gm-notify.desktop /usr/share/applications/
python gm-notify-config.py
python gm-notify.py
When configuring your credentials please make sure to use your complete mail address with the correct extension (the correct address is displayed in the header line of the google homepage if you’re logged in).
Known Bugs:
- When applying config settings there is an error – ignore it
- Credential checking is not very useful and correctly working
- sound does not work
if you find more bugs I would be glad if you could report them here as a comment And now happy testing – so that I might push it to a final during the next weekend 
UPDATE 1: You’ll find revision 41 on Launchpad which now has a much more stable connection handling… The gm-notify process itself should work perfectly – please let me know if not. Config will be done in the near future so we can release . To update your already obtained copy go into its directory and type those two commands – have fun:
bzr pull
bzr update
UPDATE 2: Released See http://bleedingpaper.com/2010/04/21/release-gm-notify-v0-10/
Alex
I’ve followed your instructions (I had to install python-gnomekeyring in addition to the listed packages), but when I get to the last step and run „python gm-notify.py“, after a little while, the following error occurs:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File „/build/buildd/python2.6-2.6.5/Modules/pyexpat.c“, line 656, in EndElement
File „/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/twisted/words/xish/domish.py“, line 797, in _onEndElement
self.ElementEvent(self.currElem)
File „/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/twisted/words/xish/xmlstream.py“, line 107, in onElement
self.dispatch(element)
File „/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/twisted/words/xish/utility.py“, line 317, in dispatch
callbacklist.callback(obj)
— —
File „/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/twisted/words/xish/utility.py“, line 107, in callback
methodwrapper(*args, **kwargs)
File „/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/twisted/words/xish/utility.py“, line 27, in __call__
self.method(*nargs, **nkwargs)
File „/home/jesse/gm-notify/gtalk.py“, line 94, in send_callback_handler
callback(data, **kargs)
File „/home/jesse/gm-notify/gtalk.py“, line 193, in gotLabel
self.queryLabel()
File „/home/jesse/gm-notify/gtalk.py“, line 160, in queryLabel
if self.mails and self.cb_new: self.cb_new(self.mails)
File „gm-notify.py“, line 168, in new_mail
self.player.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING)
exceptions.AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘set_state’
If I have new mail when running the above command, a notification appears, but no further new mail notifications appear after the error message is shown. If it helps, I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2. Thank you for all the hard work!
ok
please remember to file bug reports at Launchpad… This time I did it for you and it’s fixed now (bug #567740) 
Do you know if the new mail checking method will work with Google Apps domains, or just gmail?
yes – this will work with Google Apps, too – because I think they offer gtalk?
Tricky. It’s entirely possible to have a google apps domain, but to have gtalk services disabled.
ok – in this case one has to enable gtalk
Questions:
1. Is this version compatible with Lucid?
2. Does this version support multiple gmail accounts?
3. Security: How and where is the password stored?
1. I hope so – but it’s not yet tested… 2. No 3. In the Gnome Keyring – so they are crypted if you set a password for the keyring