Ten Gmail Labs Widgets that are Worth Enabling

We are in the age of add-ons. Whatever we lay our hands on, we are probably more interested in its expandability and the plugins that it can handle. Nobody wants to have a gadget or an application that does just one specific thing. Firefox started the trend with its add-ons and has become the most popular browser off-late; even Google’s Chrome is unable to steal any shares away.

Coming onto the web mail arena, I do not believe that any other provider other than Google’s Gmail can compete with the add-ons; they just don’t offer it. Gmail’s Labs provide users the option to plug-in widgets. Sifting through the Labs widgets was easy, many are useless. I have picked the best ten of the available widgets which can be of some use.

To get to Gmail labs, from your Gmail account, hit Settings and then Labs.

1. Offline

This widget basically downloads all your emails and you can browse through your emails even when you don’t have an internet connectivity. Great for people who work on the field and for those on the mobility.

2. Youtube Previews in Mail

If you would like to see a Youtube video embedded in your mail as you would on a third party website, this one is for you. The sender needs to include the web address of the Youtube video and the widget automatically obtains the embed code and the video is ready to play in your mail. Pretty neat! Similar widgets are also available for Picasa, Flickr and Yelp previews.

3. Email Addict

This one is perhaps for most of us who spend tons of time in front of our computers and emails. This feature suspends Gmail and puts your web chat into invisible mode for fifteen minutes. It would have been nice if we could specify a time rather than go with a fixed duration.

4. Create a Document

This widget creates a new document from your emails or a blank document. It’s nice especially if you have some information in your email that you wished to get it transferred onto a word document for archival purpose. I generally write articles on the go and email them to my gmail account. This widget helps me in storing my articles in one repository.

5. Authentication Icon for Verified Senders

I am sure most of you have received phisher mails posing as Paypal and Ebay. I know quite a few people who have lost thousands of dollars through these mails. The mail asks you to update your account on Paypal and their link takes you to a clone Paypal site. Your login information is captured by them and is leveraged to suck all your money out of your Paypal account. Scary stuff! Anyways, this widget authenticates emails from Paypal and Ebay and inserts a small key logo in front of the sender which implies that mail is genuine. I find it quite useful to separate the rotten tomatoes from the good ones. It would be nice to extend this feature to other financial institutions as well or a customized one where we can feed certain email addresses.

6. Undo Send

Oops! I hit that send button before reviewing my content. Shit! I sent it to the wrong person. Yep, shit happens. You can recall messages through this widget. It’s similar to your Outlook Exchange feature but the only limitation with this widget is that it works for a limited time since you hit Send.

7. Google Calendar Gadget

This is my favorite widget. I can have a sidebar listing of my calendar for the day/week/month. It gives me an insight into my appointments and meetings. This is ideal if you are a busy person (like me) who likes to keep a tab on your schedule at short periods of time.

8. Google Docs Gadget

This widget is similar to the Calendar widget. It shows your most recent documents in your repository or the starred ones. You can even search for docs through this widget. The previous widget and this one provides a strong integration between different modules of Google applications.

9. Multiple Inboxes

I have started using this recently and I find it useful. This one displays multiple set of emails. The main one is your inbox and then you can customize it show mails that are categorized under a label or a set of emails under a particular search string and so on. Along with my inbox, I use a mailbox for my finance related mails and the other for job related emails. It helps me by putting my finance and job related mails right in front of my face, keeps on my toes really!

10. Vacation Time!

This is similar to your Out of Office tool on your Outlook Exchange; when you are on vacation it sends a customized auto-mailer stating that you are away. It is one step better than Outlook; you can key in the dates when you are returning and the vacation auto-mailer automatically turns off. This feature is available in Lotus Notes and now on Exchange 2007.

As I said earlier, it was easy for me to pick the top widgets. The widgets created by the Google team are not powerful by itself and don’t carry a personality of its own. I am directly comparing it with the Firefox browser where one can use the browser as a full fledged FTP engine or a music player.

Related posts:

1. New Features in Gmail
2. Google Upgrades Six Gmail Features, Cuts Five Others
3. Google adds extra encryption to Gmail
4. “Do Not Intrude” is Oxy Moron
5. Australian Held for Sending Billions of Spam Messages

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