To enable this feature, head to Labs (via the little green flask icon next to your email address at the top right), scroll down to “Move Icon Column,” click the “Enable” button, then scroll to the bottom and hit “Save changes.”

What’s your favorite Labs feature?
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Here is the current lineup of hacks and extensions available in Calendar Labs:

Background image. Enabling this feature lets you choose a background image for your Google Calendar. You can choose which image to use from your General Settings page.

Attach Google Docs. This feature lets you attach a document, spreadsheet, and or presentation you create in Google Docs to any event you create in Google Calendar. You must share the documents you attach to a Google Calendar event in order for others to view them. If you are on a project team that uses Google Docs then this could be a very useful feature as you will able to attach media agendas and other project documentation directly to a Google Calendar event for review by the team.

World clock. This Labs feature places a reconfigurable world clock on the right-hand side of Google Calendar, with adjustable settings that let you choose the World times you want to appear in your calendar view. With many colleagues spread out across the world, I set up World Clock on my Google Calendar so I can get a better appreciation of my colleagues’ time zones.

Jump to date. Enabling this Labs feature lets you jump to any date with ease.

Next meeting. This feature provides a countdown to your next Google Calendar event.

Free or busy. Enabling this Labs feature lets you view which of your friends are free or busy (note: you and all your friends must share your Google Calendars in order for it to work). If you are on a project team where members use Google Calendar, this experimental feature should come in handy to help better communicate everybody’s availability for conference calls and meetings.

What features do you want to see join Google Calendar Labs?

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Prior to Gmail, I used Outlook for email, which has a less-than-optimal search capability. In other words, if I didn’t file an email into the proper folder, my chances of ever finding that email again were slim. When I first started using Gmail, I brought this filing behavior with me, and I obsessively tagged and labeled everything. I ended up with a bunch of labels that I probably didn’t need. At some point, I realized that Gmail’s search facility is so amazing that labeling and filing every email became unnecessary. Now, for most emails, I read them, respond if necessary, and archive. All without bothering to give them labels.

Now, to contradict myself. I also make extensive use of Gmail’s filtering capabilities to automatically add labels to some email. However, I reserve this capability for the really important stuff, like client email — you know, the people who pay me money to do stuff. I want to keep careful track of those emails.

When I get a new client, I create two separate filters for that client. The first one looks at the “from” address and applies an appropriate label (for example, “coolclient”) to any email coming from its domain (“*@coolclient.com”). The second filter looks for anything in the “to” address that matches the same “*@coolclient.com”. Now, I can click on the “coolclient” label and see all of my correspondence with that client.

Like most people, I also have an issue with too much email overflowing in my inbox, and I don’t want to miss any of those important emails from clients, so I need to have the client email stand out. Gmail lets you apply colors to labels, so for  important clients, I make the label bright green to make sure that I can see all of my client email at a glance.

I handle my big list of labels by using a keyboard shortcut that lets me go directly to a label without having to scroll for ages. To do this, you have to enable keyboard shortcuts under “Settings”, and then go to Labs and enable the “Go to label” feature. Now, I can hit “g” then “l”, type in my label, and get dumped right into that label. Again, it’s important to embrace the chaos of having too many labels and use this feature to avoid scrolling through them.

The key to using Gmail effectively is to embrace the chaos: Let Gmail’s search handle most of the organization, and keep labeling to a minimum. By only labeling my client email and a few other important categories, I’ve simplified my labels down to a manageable level.

How do you organize your email?

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Recently I discovered a new Labs feature that makes me love Gmail even more: the “Send & Archive” button.

I rely on email as my main line of communication with my clients, and I have a whole system worked out. I use my inbox like a to-do list. Clients email me tasks, and as I complete them, I move the message out of my inbox. Whatever remains in my inbox are the tasks that I need to complete; the goal is to have an empty inbox.

My old method was to reply to emails and then manually move them out of  my inbox with the “Archive” button, a laborious two-step process. That was until I discovered the “Send & Archive” button! Now I just click one button to send my response and archive the email out of my inbox.

To enable “Send & Archive”:

1. Click on the “labs” beaker
   
2. Scroll down to the “Send & Archive” feature and click the “Enable” radio button
3. Click “Save Changes”

Now when you compose messages you will have a fancy “Send & Archive” button seated very nicely right next to your now-archaic “Send” button.

I hope this method helps keep you organized. As a freelancer, I am often juggling multiple projects and like to make my life as simple and streamlined as possible.

What Labs features do you use to streamline Gmail?

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First up, there’s a feature I know I’ve wished I had many, many times. And generally, when I found myself wanting it, my career was somehow involved. Basically, Gmail now has a take-back button for undoing a “Send” command. It actually holds the email for five seconds after you’ve pressed the send button, so it can’t actually reach out and steal a sent email back from the receiving server, but that five seconds is often all I need to realize that I’ve forgotten an important attachment in a client-facing email.

They’ve also added new preview features for a variety of services. This might not seem like a big thing either, but the cumulative time-savings the previews offers amount to a potentially significant productivity boost. Gmail now automatically detects YouTube, Picasa, and Flickr links, and also Yelp reviews, and gives you the ability to preview the associated content without leaving the page or opening a new tab or browser window.

In all cases, that means you no longer have to go clicking links and possibly getting lost along the way when dealing with these kind of potentially distracting emails. Yelp integration is especially handy if you’re trying to set up a lunch meeting or sales call, as long as all parties are using Gmail.

These new features aren’t enabled by default, so if you want to take advantage of them, go into your Settings and activate the options under the Labs tab. They’re available now for all users, including Google Apps account holders.

What are your favorite Gmail Labs features?

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Have you tried Multiple Inboxes? What do you think?

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