If you're using Gmail and have not played around with the new Gmail Labs options, you're definitely missing out on some cool features! Why aren't these out of beta yet, you might ask?
Who knows! It usually takes Google a long time to move from their Labs to standard feature, even if people have used those features for years. Anyway, here is my list of ten cool and useful features in Gmail Labs that you should enable.
You can get to Gmail Labs by clicking on the green flask icon at the top right of your Gmail window:
You can also click on Settings and then click on the Labs tab. Either way, you'll then see a long list of experimental features that you can try out. Here are the 10 I like best:
Offline – Using Google Gears, you can access Gmail while you are offline. Click on the previous link to read my post on how to enable offline access to your Gmail account. You can then read and write emails even if you are not connected to the Internet.
Tasks – Another really useful feature is the to-do task list. You'll see a new item called Tasks on the left menu and when clicked, a small box will appear in the bottom right.
Canned Responses – If you have a business, you probably write a lot of the same stuff to different clients. You may even do this with your friends and family! Either way, canned responses save time and energy.
Forgotten Attachment Detector – Ever sent an application for a job online and forgot to attach your resume! Happens all the time! If you mention attaching a file and don't, Gmail will prompt you.
Google Search – Ever need to search for something on Google when you were reading an email? Maybe to look up something or get some more information about a topic? You can do it directly in Gmail now!
Multiple Inboxes – Want to see more emails in one view rather than just the Inbox? You can add starred messages, drafts, or any type of email search as another Inbox in the same window! Very cool!
Undo Send – A perfect option for those who click the Send button too fast. Forgot to write something in the email or wrote too much? Just click Undo Send after sending an email to get it back.
Inserting Images – One thing I had always hated about Gmail was that you could not insert images directly into an email. If you enable this option, you now can! Finally!Just click the Insert Image button.
Gmail Superstars – If you like to categorize your emails with something more than a single yellow star, superstars is for you! You get a bunch more star icons to choose from for marking emails.
Overall, those are my favorites out of the many lab features. You can also try out the rest, such as YouTube previews in mail, Picasa and Flickr previews, Yelp preview, custom label colors and lots more. Enjoy!
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Aseem Kishore (digitalfingerprint: a59a56dce36427d83e23b501579944fcakmk1980 (74.125.44.136) )Post from:
Top 9 cool and useful Gmail lab features
