So, what has been making rounds in the GMail activity center. These people are in the hub of action and have been rolling out some really cool stuff. First things first- Multiple Inbox. No, it is not what it sounds like.GMail still doesn’t allow associating different GMail IDs to one. Multiple Inbox enables users to access different tabs of Inbox in the same page. Hence, you would be able to check your Chats, Sent Messages or your favorite Labels all in the same page. Just have a look at the Screen below.
The number of messages that are to be displayed, and even the position of the ‘Inbox’ can be configured in the Settings section for Multiple Inbox. To enable Multiple Inbox, go to the Labs section of GMail and Enable it. Further, to change what is to be displayed in your Inbox, you can do this by changing what is written against Pane 0, Pane 1 etc. For e.g. for my label “Blogosphere” to be displayed, I have written in the text box beside Pane 0 as- is:blogosphere. Further, the position of the Multiple Inboxes to be displayed can be adjusted conveniently to -right of Inbox, above or below the inbox. For peeps not using a Widescreen Monitor, I believe that Above or Below the Inbox is more neat and tidy. [ via GMailBlog ]
Also announced is the new feature to sync your GMail contacts and calenders in your phone. A new version of Google Sync has been released which enables syncing easier for iPhones and Windows Mobile. For the entire list of instructions please visit the GMail Blog post.
GMail has been using Labels for quite some time now. Labels are an alternative to Folders used on other mail services. The difference between a Folder and a Label is that a mail can have one or more Label, but it is not possible in case of a Folder. e.g. a mail about my WordPress blog from a friend of mine, could be labelled as “WordPress” as well as “Friend”.
For the uninitiated users of Labels on GMail, GMail has just introduced Auto-complete and “Move-to” actions. Gone are the days of Apply Label and ”Archive” to move out of your inbox. The new button “Move-to” does both the function of Applying Label and archiving. The buttons at the top of the inbox would show like the following.
There are also keyboard shortcuts for the same. l (lowercase L) for Label and v (lowercase V) for Move to. But keyboard shortcuts have to be turned on for these functions to work. Read the official GMail post here.
GMail offline is here. For everyone troubled by not being able to read emails due to no connection on the move (in subways, during flights, no wi-fi zones et al) GMail Labs has the solution. Of course, it only makes for someone who cannot do without GMail and has a flurry of mails flowing in to the inbox. GMail Labs uses Google Gears to make GMail offline possible. Once the connection is lost, GMail offline ( needs to be setup by installing Google Gears in the browser, please read the Official GMail Blog post) detects when you are offline. It then caches your e-mail so that you can read it, respond to it, search it, star it, or label it. When you are connected to the Internet again, it sends all the messages. Check out the pretty neat Intro video below.
Reading, Stars, Labelling, Opening attachments, Composing and Saving as drafts work. However anything which requires a connection like adding attachments won’t work. Another point, available only for US and UK and shall be rolled out soon for other regions.
Google gets inspired by Yahoo Messenger this time. Right into GMail chat, if someone pastes in a YouTube Link (which we often do), you’d be able to play the video link, right then and there- No opening of new tabs or windows. GMail Blog says that it is just because they want the friends of the GMail users to remain on the same page while they chat and not leave their friends waiting for ages to respond to the chats.
The folks at Google have been really trying to enhance the user experience. What more do we need from Instant Messaging? We got new emoticons, Video Chat inside GMail, and now it’s YouTube.
And oh yeah..only Google Videos and YouTube. And this feature doesn’t work on the Client, but only from within GMail. This makes me think if Google is closing down GTalk as a whole. Any predictions on the next step of integration in Google? How about some mail integration with YouTube videos? i.e. if someone sent a YouTube video link in GMail, you could be able to stream it from your inbox itself. Just a though! Cheers to Google.
Google gets inspired by Yahoo Messenger this time. Right into GMail chat, if someone pastes in a YouTube Link (which we often do), you’d be able to play the video link, right then and there- No opening of new tabs or windows. 
