GOOGLE LABs!!

One of the most innovative companies in terms of the web based products/applications – Google encourages its employees to devote some of their working time to personal research and innovation. To make available, various applications generated under the umbrella of this idea, Google introduced Google Labs. Many of us who are not tech savvy are not aware of these features but they are quite interesting, high utility applications, save bandwidth umpteen times and make our life easier.

Let’s get down with the major ones:

Offline

One of the most impressive ones. You can actually localize your Gmail account and can read, create drafts and delete mails without internet connection. This feature saves all your mails on your hard drive, so it is recommended that it should be used on personal computers. Very useful tool for those who were used to outlook and stored their important content in PST files.

Undo Mail

Sometimes you click on send and then you realise that you could have edited the mail a bit more or you missed some detail or forgot to add an attachment etc. This option allows you to undo the mail you have send i.e. the mail hangs on for few seconds on Google server and you can see and option UNDO on the top of mail for few seconds after the mail was sent. Good attempt to match the “Recall” feature of Outlook but not that great if compared utility wise.

Mouse Gestures

This one is interesting. Once you enable the feature, just right click and move your mouse right or left to see next or previous mail respectively..... Quite a fun working this way.

Got the wrong Bob?

Good one...actually very useful for those who mail frequently (within minutes). Imagine sending ‘Miss u swthrt!’ mail to your boss sharing the same name with your girlfriend! It can be easily taken care of by this feature - Gmail crosschecks if you’re mailing to the right person or not depending on your frequency to mail to that person and then gives you an option to rectify your mailing list. Saves you from sending your personal information to wrong guys.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Just enable this feature; assign keys for frequently used actions like compose, reply, reply to all etc. and use Gmail faster.

Some less important but interesting ones -

Shared Folders

With this feature you can share a group of docs with your friends, co-workers or family, by sharing an entire folder with them

Creating a document

See...it is a different thing from Google Docs in the sense that you are actually converting your email conversation or a important information in email directly into a document.

Inserting Images

Want to embed images instead of sending them as attachments? Enable it!

P.S.: To view these features – got to Gmail->Settings- >Labs. Most of these features work best with Google Chrome.

P.P.S: Using ‘Utility’ word has become a habit after joining B skool so please bear with it!

Recommended link -
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

Gaurav is a student at IIFT, Kolkata. He has worked with Accenture as a software engineer. With his networking abilities he was able to squeeze a “work-(fun)-tour” for some time. He is also the Placement Coordinator at IIFT. He is cool, sanguine, gregarious and agnostic amongst various other brilliant adjectives. His hobbies include meeting new people, reading fiction, day-dreaming and smiling! (Oh and how could we forget his most favourite - Giving Gyaan!)