I want to go over Gmail Labs with you, my dear readers. I happen to love Gmail. It's revolutionized the way I see organization, not just in email, not just online, but in my whole life. I used to be stuck in a world of folders. Each item (remember, real world and online) could only go in one folder. Sure, I could have subfolders, but not all things fit neatly into folders. Gmail was my introduction to labels (also knows as tags in other places). Labels are the best of both worlds. They can be used as folders (there's even a Greasemonkey script to make Gmail's labels act like folders) but they can also be used to slap multiple organizational labels onto one email. For example, when my wife emails me, I have a filter set up so her email gets slapped with two labels automatically: "Becky" and "family." This way if I want to see all the emails that have come from my family, I can click on the Family label and there they are. Also, if I want to see all the emails from my wife, I click on her label and there they are. If I were using folders, sure, I could just have two folders, but then I would also have to have two copies of the email. So, labels are one of the many reasons why I love Gmail. Another is one of their newest features: Gmail Labs.
Ok, I'm intrigued. How do I check out the Labs?
The labs are where Gmail users can go to choose new pieces of functionality that the Gmail team offers up. I took some screenshots to show you which ones I use. Hopefully they spur you to take a look at your own Labs and see if there are any that would make your life easier (you are using Gmail, right??)
First things first: how do you get to Labs?
Go to your Settings in Gmail
Then click on the Labs tab:
Once you're there, you're golden!
What can I do with Labs?
It's hard to pick out a favorite, but the one I use most often is Send & Archive. One concept that is unique to Gmail that goes along with the labels is its archiving file system. Just like all other labels, "Inbox" is just a label. This can probably best be illustrated by showing how I avoid giving a new email the "Inbox" label to save me some headaches. If you're on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, you probably get a ton of bacn. Similar to spam, bacn is email that can get annoying, but it's something the user has asked to receive. If someone posts on my Facebook wall, I get an email. If someone follows me on Twitter, I get an email. That's bacn. I've set up a filter so any bacn I receive is slapped with the label "Social" and also kept out of my Inbox. I don't need that stuff clogging up my Inbox. It's not important and I usually just take ten minutes at some point in my day to sift through all my bacn in one swoop. So, I tell Gmail not to put the Inbox label on that email and it never shows up in my Inbox. I can always take a quick look at my labels to see if I have new bacn, but it doesn't show up in my Inbox, which cuts down on distractions.
The other feature I've enabled in that screenshot is Text Messaging in Chat. I can use Gmail's built in chat application to send text messages to my contacts. I haven't used it a ton, but it has come in handy a few times.
Two more Labs features I use are Quote selected text and Navbar drag and drop:
Quote lets me keep conversations tidier by selecting and pulling out exactly what I'm responding to from an email. Navbar lets me move around the gadgets in my sidebar. Most of this stuff is pretty geeky, so I'm not going to go into deep detail.
Speaking of gadgets I have also enabled the Google Calendar gadget and the Google Docs gadget.
The last Labs feature I'll show off is Inserting Images. Pretty self-explanatory, but definitely useful. Instead of attaching images that show up as attachments at the bottom of an email, this feature allows me to put images inline, exactly like I'm doing with this blog post. Imagine if all these screenshots I'm inserting were piled up at the bottom of the post and I had to say, "Scroll down to the bottom and look at the picture then scroll back up here." Tedious, right? With this enabled, emails with images become much more readable.
That's what I use Gmail labs for. I've got some other enabled, but I didn't want to spoil all the fun of discovery. Dig around and let me know in the comments if you find some great ones. And if you're not using Gmail, what are you waiting for?
