Gmail Labs has really kicked it up a notch with some of its offerings of late, allowing users to trade the minimalistic simplicity of the core Gmail platform for a wide variety of partially tested tweaks and improvements. For those who rely solely on web mail, it brings a lot of versatility that power-users sometimes find themselves craving. It is not perfect, but there is something in there to please most people.

The top 11 tweaks of Gmail labs are listed, in no particular order, after the jump.

Canned Responses

By enabling the Canned Response option in Gmail labs, you can prepare a set of responses to meet certain situations that tend to crop up again and again. If you use this for your personal emails, it won’t win you too many friends, but if you handle work or business communications via Gmail, it can save you from writing the same thing again and again. For such situations it is quite common to use a pre-prepared response, using Canned Response these are always on hand.

Tasks

Tasks gives you a simple pop-out task list. If you have a ton of things to do and are the forgetful type, it is a useful addition. If you have keyboard shortcuts enabled, you can create a task by pressing SHIFT-T. True, with calendar info displayed, you effectively get the same thing, but a task list takes a lot less time to write.

Superstars

Superstars is a labs function that I have started playing with recently. I have a rather intricate filtering system, which takes care of most of the organizational side of my account management, the original stars system was way too limited, but a good selection of superstars brings a whole range of new sorting options.

Forgotten Attachment Detector

The Forgotten Attachment Detector scans the text of your document for words that might indicate that you should have included an attachment and alerts you if you have not. As a frequent offender in this department, it is a very useful addition. Note, if you create a template for these types of emails in Canned Response, you can make sure that you include a few words that are likely to trip the detector.

Custom Label Indicators

If you have a ton of different labels and you want to visually distinguish them from each other then Custom Label Indicators let you do so with a color palette of your own choosing. It is another good addition for people that have to deal with an enormous volume of mail.

Create a Document

Some email deserves to be preserved, and being able to turn it into a Google Document with a single click is a good little touch. I don’t use Google Documents all that much, but it does have a place and is extremely useful for collaborative work.

Google Docs Gadget

The Google Docs Gadget is a handy function for anyone that uses Google Documents, no matter how infrequently. The gadget displays the most recently edited documents and the person who last edited them, great for collaborators.

Google Calendar Gadget

I don’t use Google Calendar because I am too lazy to be so organized and the Tasks function gives me all of the time management that I need; I do, however, see the utility. It places your upcoming events into a list.

Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat

Some of the good ‘ol chat clients of yore used to offer free SMS to anywhere in the world, people got greedy and now it is something that you have to pay for pretty much wherever you go. I stick by my conviction that SMS is an backward technology no place in a world where every phone can and should have email, but a lot of people still use it and being able to contact them for free from a computer is a pretty cool thing.

Mail Goggles

Mail Goggles kicks in at times when users are more likely to be under the influence of one poison or another. It requires a person to perform a few calculations that before sending an email. It is sure to save a good number of people from drunken mailing mishaps, but a bit of Dutch courage is sometimes what is required to get the ball rolling. An unsend button would be better.

Video and Voice Chat

Technically this is not a Labs function, but it must be enabled, so it gets tacit approval here. Enabling video and voice in your options gives Google Chat some of the functionality that has made Skype so popular. Sure, it is limited to communicating with other Gmail Chat users, but there are plenty of those to be found.

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