ddubb industries

Hot New Tricks With Gmail

December 20th, 2008 creative, technical

Next month, I start a brand new job at Mailtrust, a locally-created email hosting company in the University Mall, recently bought by Rackspace of San Antonio, a household name in web-serving. Since accepting the offer, I’ve been taking more notice of the features so many of us have come to love in Gmail. They just rolled out a few amazing upgrades through “Labs”. If you click on the green test tube beaker thing at the top of your Gmail screen next to your login name, you should be able to scroll down and turn these on:

1. Send SMS text messages to cell phone numbers through Google Chat - Dec 10 - Especially hot for me to be able to send love notes to my hot wife since our plan charges 50c per message. I mean, of course she’s worth 50c, but why pay if you don’t have to?
2. To-do List - Dec 8 - In addition to making nested to-dos, you can convert email messages into to-do list items with a click and assign due dates to items.
3. Styling themes - Nov 19 - I like the ninja.
4. Google calendar now syncs with Outlook and iCal - Nov 25 - Not exactly a Gmail labs feature, but related in the category of being awesome. See next item.
5. Display Calendar and Docs in sidebar - Oct 27 - Another important step in synchronizing the fully integrated online office. Can’t wait until MS Office totally disappears.