by Aaron Pek

9 Great Google Lab Applications You Can’t Live Without

Gmail, one of the earliest pilot projects by the search engine giant Google, has surpassed expectations by becoming one of the biggest contenders in providing email services in the face of huge competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo. So what’s so special about Gmail? One of its highlights is Google Labs, “experiments” which are technically still in the testing phase, but which have garnered positive reviews from critics. After years of using them, here’s my personal Emmy Awards for the top 9 Google Lab Applications that you just can’t live without.

9. Offline

Offline is a nifty little feature which allows you to save your email messages onto your computer. This can be useful if the emails you receive contain important or personal information which you’d like to keep at hand at all times, in case an incident like a denial-of-service attack or a tornado makes the Internet inaccessible.

8. Superstars

If you’re a Gmail user, you’ll probably have attached a gold star on some of your more precious emails for easy reference. Superstars allow you to add different kind of stars, so you can tag even more emails according to their categories. There are 12 different “superstars” for you to choose from, so you can have even more flexibility in arranging your messages.

7. Message Translation

Made a new friend in Istanbul? Got a lover who doesn’t speak French? With the new message translator, you don’t need to go for long, boring courses just to speak the language of love, friendship, or whatever. Google uses its extensive database of languages to translate your messages for you, and they’re surprisingly accurate. FYI, it’s one of the most useful features I’ve ever used in my 12 years on the Internet.

6. Custom keyboard shortcuts

Gmail has a nice interface, but what’s even nicer about it is that it even has keyboard shortcuts for really lazy people like me. For instance, I don’t have to grab the mouse, move it 3 centimeters in the general direction of 42^o North East and click the button anymore, I just have to press ‘C’ to compose a message? Seriously, how cool is that?

5. Canned responses

Ever received one of those annoying automated reply emails? Well, now you can send them too, almost. Canned messages allow you to save a message so that you can spam it whenever you want. Great for business people who need to send a certain request to a lot of people at different intervals, or for annoying your friends with those forwarded emails.

4. Mail Goggles

When it’s late at night and you’ve come home from a lousy day at work, it might be a great idea to send expletives to your boss congratulating him for not giving you any credit for that 10 million dollar project. That’s where Mail Goggles come in to save the day. Mail Goggles gives you time to reconsider whether you really want to send that email by making you count arithmetic sums first. If you still think it’s a good idea to send that message after crunching elementary school numbers, then it probably is.

3. Undo Send

Does exactly what it says; it gives you an extra button so you can undo the sending of a message. Probably the greatest invention of all time since sliced bread. However, it should be noted that the ‘undo’ button only appears for about 5 seconds before you can’t change your mind anymore. Still, it’s a great solution for all those ‘uh-oh’ and ‘oopsies’.

2. Forgotten Attachment Detector

The second greatest invention of all time since sliced bread. I’ve lost count of the number of times this little reminder has, well, reminded me that I’ve forgot to attach something when I should have. I’m not sure how it works, I think it looks out for words like ‘attached’ or ‘enclosed’ in your message or something. That’s one small step for email, one great leap for email-kind.

And finally, the winner goes to…

1. Multiple Inboxes
   

I’m sorry, did I say something else was the greatest invention since sliced bread? Well, this little app is greater than sliced bread. By itself, it doesn’t really do much – all it does is display the messages under a different label on your front page. But with a little tinkering under the hood, that label can become the inbox of another email! Yes, that means that you get to manage not one, but two (or three, or four…you get the picture) inboxes from different email addresses under one roof! To find out how you can manage 2 or more inboxes in one primary email address, you can find some instructions here: http://news.cnet.com/how-to-use-gmails-multiple-inboxes-for-extra-gmail-accounts/.