Google (
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The company already lets users click on the Google Labs tab and try new services the engineers have developed, but that aren’t yet ready for mass consumption. Now, they can click on the tab and check out the latest Gmail features.
Users can click “settings” in Gmail, where they will see the Labs tab. The company starting rolling out the change June 5 at 6 p.m., but said it could be hours or day before every Gmail user has it.
There are 13 tweaks to the Gmail, from a change in the way your signature appears at the end of messages to an expanded way to mark messages to a setting called “Email Addict,” which lets users block Gmail and chat for 15 minutes.
One new feature, Superstars, lets users mark messages with different colored stars and other icons, such as a check mark or exclamation point, to prioritize and sort them.
Another feature, Quick Links, is a way of bookmarking any page within Gmail. Users can link to an individual email message, and also do a search and bookmark that search. They can also go back to it again and the link will display any new messages that fit the search criteria.
Signature Tweaks is a feature that let’s users put their automated signature above the quoted text when responding to a message, instead of all the way at the bottom of what someone else wrote.
Email Addict allows users to click a link at the top of the window and lock themselves out of their account for 15 minutes. But they can get back into their account anytime, by refreshing the page. Also, Random Signature appends a random famous quote to the end of your e-mail.
There’s already a thriving community of people using Greasemonkey to change the look, operation and features of Gmail. In fact, some of the early Gmail labs features are copies of ones that a Greasemonkey coder has already created.
Eve Sullivan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Eve’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
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