Gmail contains a feature named Google Labs where the company’s staff show off their latest creations and ask for user feedback. To get into Google Labs you can simply click on the green symbol (which represents a science lab beaker) and try out the new features you can simply click on the green symbol (which represents a science lab beaker) next to your email address at the top right of Gmail. If this isn’t available, click on Settings and then choose Labs.
Potentially the most useful idea currently in the lab – and one I’ve been longing for for years – is the forgotten attachment detector. This will warn you if you attempt to send a message containing particular keywords (such as ‘attachment’ or ‘I have attached’) but don’t attach a file.
Another one worth trying out is ‘Canned responses’. This allows you to set up a range of standard responses to common e-mails, which will then be available to put into the body message in the same way as a standard signature works.
For example, a magazine editor could set up one to acknowledge receiving story ideas, one for complaints from reader and one for students enquiring about internships. What makes it particularly neat is that you can even set Gmail to automatically send these replies to any message which fits certain criteria such as containing a keyword in the subject line, or comes to a particular address. You can also test out how this would have worked with past messages in your archive, which may help you refine your settings to avoid sending auto-responses to the wrong people.
There are many other Labs features ranging from useful to pure gimmick. One which is much closer to the latter is Mail Googles, a feature which won’t let you send e-mails late on Friday and Saturday evenings until you’ve answered some arithmetic questions to ‘prove’ you are sober!
