A quick report on 6 latest Gmail features

Google Inc, the biggest search engine and a Giant is having a reputation of adding more bells and whistles to its Gmail in order to prove its supremacy over longtime leaders including Yahoo and Microsoft.

Some of the latest features of Gmail are Tasks which is like a To-do list, video chatting. These features are not only exciting, they are adding great value to Gmail's functionality which means several exciting features right inside your mailbox.

Lets have a look at some of these 6 new features in Gmail.

Tasks

Google is into testing of a new feature known as "Tasks" which will help users to keep track on their day to day activities.

This "Tasks" or "To-do list" will help Gmail users to create their daily activities. Just like "Chats", "Tasks" sits in a similar kind of window. Hence it remains visible even when users read their emails, make some searches or any other tasks. This feature is still into the testing phase.

Now in order to enable "To-do list", navigate to Settings-->Labs tab. Select enable checkbox just next to "Tasks". Finally click on the "Save Changes" at the bottom. Gmail will automatically refresh and then you will see "Tasks" link on the left side just under the "Contacts" link. Click on it to explore the features.

Now lets see how to create a new task. Just click inside the empty part of your list and type anything. You wont find any buttons to save as it is saved automatically. Hit the return key on your keyboard and gosh..... you are done with your first task.

An exciting feature of Gmail is that it is possible to convert your emails into Tasks. To do this, select the emails, navigate to Actions--> Add to Tasks and you are done.

Twitter Gadget

Following the huge success of twitter, Gmail added a Twitter gadget to let users tweet directly from their inbox supporting some icons as well. With this exciting gadget, users can start Tweeting right from their Gmail inbox.

This TiwtterGadget lets user to toggle on/off some of the display element like timestamps, message sources, thumbnails. We can even set the refresh intervals between 3-30 minutes or it can be set to manual also. To view additional information about the user, just move your mouse to the thumbnail image.

To get TwitterGadget into your Gmail, go to your Gmail labs which is a green icon on top and then turn on the Gadgets tool. After doing this, Gadgets tool will be a new lab icon on the top of the Gmail page settings. Click that icon and provide http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml into the edit box and thats it, you are done. Hit the Save button. Signin again and start tweeting right inside your Gmail.

Turn your email into Google Docs

Google Inc is planning to give yet another exciting feature which will convert your email into Google document in a single click.

It means, Google is avoiding copying and pasting text from inside the email and then converting to document. With this tool, we just have to open the email we want to convert and then click on the 'Create a document' link on the right. With this, now you have a new document which you can edit and share anytime.

Now to enable this feature, navigate to Gmail Labs inside Settings, select 'enable' just next to 'Create a document' link and click 'Save Changes' link at the bottom.

Gmail Video

Recently, Google launched a very exciting feature which enables Gmail and Gmail App subscribers to chat with their friends on a video screen along with simultaneous Instant Messaging right inside the Google Chat box. You can even pop out the video screen out of the chat box anytime which can be moved anywhere on your screen. It is also possible to change the size of the screen and expanding to display in full screen size though it will be done almost in rarest of scenarios.

The only pre-requisite required with this is that both the persons should have their webcameras on along with microphones. Businesses who bought the enterprise version of Gmail will also receive this feature for no additional cost.

PDF Viewer

Google has finally provided the support to view PDF documents right inside your Gmail. Now if users will receive an email with a pdf file as an attachment, they will also see a "View" link right inside their mail to open this pdf on the web itself without the need to download into their computers.

Click on the "View" link and it will display your pdf document right inside your another browser window with so many formatting options to play with like we have in Google Documents. There are two options to view the PDF: Either you can view the PDF as an HTML file as well as in the new viewer. However, you can still download the PDF.

I am pretty excited with the launch of this particular feature.

Gmail gadget for Google Desktop

Though you can not say this feature strictly as a Google Gadget, rather it is a very handy utility for the Google Desktop users. It allows the users to search emails, read emails or even send new messages right inside from Google Desktop. Their is also a provision to star your messages and using keyboard shortcuts.

James Yum who is the Developer Programs Engineer, Google Desktop, said in a blog post, "You can Star messages, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and we didn't forget about contact auto-complete. It doesn't take up much space in your sidebar or desktop, and you can also resize it to show as few or as many messages as you'd like."

This application can be used only on Windows as of now and requires Google Desktop version 5 or more.

On delving inside history, Google desktop was released on October 2004. The main purpose of this application is make searches inside your PC very fast and easy just like searching over the web. Google Desktop provides users full-text search over the email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail and WebPages viewed.

The application also contains some other gadgets as well that allows users to see new emails, weather forecasts, pictures and some personalized news.