Arguably one of the best things about Google is that they build virtually all of their software to be open-source. From the Chrome browser to the new Chromium operating system, Google relies on plugins, extensions, and add-ons, both in-house and user-created, to make software that evolves to suit the user’s changing needs. And for one of the best examples of how this kind of open-ended design can inspire a devoted community of users, one needs look no further than Gmail.
If you’re one of Gmail’s 146 million users, then you’ve probably heard of Gmail Labs, the testing ground for new features, gadgets, and tools that are experimental and not quite ready to become standard Gmail features. (For those of you unfamiliar with Gmail Labs, it can be accessed by clicking the green science beaker icon in the top-right corner of your screen after logging into your Gmail account.) These add-ons remain in Gmail Labs until sufficient user data has been gathered to determine that the feature should be added permanently or dropped. Many are aimed at making the user’s email experience more efficient while others are simply for fun. Personally, I think the best features are the ones that save a forgetful Gmail user from making the kinds of embarrassing mistakes that are all too common.
With fifty-eight features currently available in Gmail Labs – and many more user-created gadgets popping up around the web – it helps to know where to begin. Listed below you’ll find over twenty of my favorite Gmail Labs features, sorted by purpose, and ready to help improve the way you use Gmail – or at least help you keep your digital dignity intact.
Increase Productivity
1. Canned Responses – As I mentioned above, many of the Labs features help you work more efficiently. There’s nothing quite as efficient as not typing out the same email a dozen times a week. If you begin to feel déjà vu as you type your third identical response of the day, simply save the message as a canned response and avoid the repetitive motion strain.
2. Superstars – Gmail gives you the option to “star” a message as important normally; Superstars lets you use four different icons to delineate important message from one another. Useful for separating important business messages from important personal messages.
3. Message Translation – Whether doing business with non-English speaking clients or doing business with intellectuals who love to pepper their missives with mots étrangers, the message translation feature can translate virtually any language into any other. It even has the ability to auto-detect the language from which you’re trying to translate.
Connect With Friends
By enabling the “Add Any Gadget By URL” feature in Labs, users gain the ability to add gadgets from anywhere on the web by providing the appropriate URL. This opens up the ability to add social networking/bookmarking gadgets like those listed below. These gadgets are created by programmers who aren’t affiliated with Google and while the gadgets aren’t particularly full-featured, they are definitely usable and appear conveniently in Gmail’s sidebar. The gadget URLs listed below are the most popular for their respective site and can be entered into Google via the Gadgets tab, under Settings.
4. Facebook Gadget– http://www.brianngo.net/ig/facebook.xml
5. Twitter Gadget – http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml
6. FriendFeed Gadget – http://friendfeed.com/embed/googlegadget/spec
7. Digg Gadget – http://digg.com/goog/ig.xml
8. Delicious Gadget – http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/delicious/delicious.xml
Avoid Embarrassing Gaffes
9. Forgotten Attachment Detector – How many times have you written a note to accompany an invoice, document, or photo and then forgotten to include the actual attachment? This feature alerts you when you have written words that indicate your intention to attach a file and then don’t follow through. If you’re like me, it might become your new best friend and save you the embarrassing “Ha, it helps if I actually attach the invoice” follow-up message.
10. Got The Wrong Bob? – This feature was created to help avoid sending messages to an individual with a name that is similar to your intended recipient. It keeps track of groups of people you frequently email as a group and when you have included a potentially erroneous address, it helpfully asks if you have perhaps included “the wrong Bob”.
11. Mail Goggles/Undo Send – Aimed at preventing you from sending messages you may later regret, these two features may help save your relationships, your job, and your dignity. Mail Goggles ensures you are in the right state of mind when sending a message by asking you to solve a few rudimentary math problems within a short time limit. Undo Send provides an “Undo” button that lets you recall a message up to ten seconds after you’ve sent it.
Preview Content
12. YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Yelp, and Google Docs Preview – Gmail now provides in-line preview support for some of the most popular sites on the web, by way of these five independent features. When enabled, these features create a footer at the bottom of the email message that contains a preview of a link’s content: YouTube videos are embedded, Picasa and Flickr galleries can be browsed, Yelp reviews are neatly summarized, and Google Documents of a wide variety can be previewed with just a click.
Generally Helpful
13. Gmail Offline – The offline feature lets you take Gmail with you, regardless of connectivity. It requires you to enable Gears, but you can compose drafts, search, add attachments to messages and manage your inbox without an internet connection and it will all synchronize the next time you connect.
14. Authentication Icon For Verified Senders – A ploy that many spam and phishing emails use to fly under the radar of your spam-blocker is to change the domain suffix of their address to that of a trusted site like PayPal or eBay. This feature places a special key icon next to the subject line of messages from “super-trustworthy” senders, meaning messages that have been verified by Gmail as originating from the domain that matches the one in the sender’s “From” field.
15. Inbox Preview – Logging into Gmail takes only a few moments but the loading bar can seem like it’s crawling when you’re expecting an important message. This feature shows a simple, static preview of your inbox while everything loads.
16. Filter Import/Export – While creating mail filters is a relatively simple task in Gmail, each one still needs to be done by hand. This feature ensures that this time-consuming task never needs to be repeated by allowing you to import and export some or all of your mail filter settings.
17. Title Tweaks – The title tweak feature rearranges the title sequence so that you can still see the inbox unread message count number when your web browser is minimized to the task bar.
Experiment With Labs
This list consists of my top picks from Gmail Labs, but there are many more features available to try that might suit your particular needs even better. Google encourages users to suggest and try out new Labs features, which helps Gmail evolve along with the needs of the people who use it the most. And while Gmail Labs may be a little further into the settings than some users like to tread, users who do will find themselves rewarded with some great features and contributing to make one of the top webmail services even better.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Email Marketing, Chris Hoke. Chris Hoke said: Gmail Labs: 17 Best Features and Gadgets: http://bit.ly/8BcmER [...]