If you use Google’s Gmail service and find yourself a tad-bit annoyed by the fact that you have to leave the Gmail interface to search for something, check you Labs tab at the top of your Gmail page for a solution. 
Rather than leaving Gmail, searching for a link, copying the link, switching back to Gmail and pasting the link in your email – you can turn on the Search Box feature. The feature adds a Google Search box to the left side of your Gmail interface. But that’s not all. When you perform your search, a drop-down menu is available next to the link of each search result allowing you to send the link via Google Chat or an email.
Tagged: Google
Gmail adds progress bars to attachments
One of the things that has always irked me with regards to Gmail was that it was never painfully obvious when you could actually send an email with all your attachments, or how long it was going to take to attach those files. You either sat and waited for the name to appear, or stared at the sending notification. Neither very productive. 
Thankfully, Google has added progress bars to the attachments area of Gmail. So now you can select multiple files, or one giant one if you wish, and know exactly what the progress of the attachment upload is. Gmail keeps getting better and better!
5 things to do with Google besides search for other sites
We all know Google is the king of search, free Web-based email, and Web-based RSS feed readers. But there are a lot of other things you can use Google for which most people don’t know about. Here are just five useful things you can do with Google that I use fairly often: (more…)
Friday link blitz
Photo by amrufm @ Flickr
Google adds more control to Gmail IMAP
Google recently announced the addition of more IMAP control to their popular Gmail service. Gmail IMAP Controls, a Labs feature, now allows you to choose which labels to sync in IMAP-enabled desktop email client software like Apple’s Mail application. You can enable the new features by visiting the Labs tab in your Gmail Settings and ticking the enable radio button for Advanced IMAP Controls. After enabling the feature, visit the Labels tab and checking which Labels you wish to show up in your desktop email client software. 
Turning off “All Mail” in particular will cut down the amount of time (and amount of email) that your email app of choice takes to sync with Gmail’s servers. This also has the desirable result of having less email to search through and keep track of. There are a whole lot of feature additions at your fingertips via the Labs tab in your Gmail Settings, so make sure you check in there every once in a while to see if there’s something new and useful.
Photo collection of Google offices around the world
The lobby of the Zurich, Switzerland office are among the many photos on display of Google’s offices located around the world over at Hongkiat tech blog. Go ahead, tell me you wouldn’t want to work in a place like some of these! Google is one of the few companies who truly understands that one’s surroundings can make a profound impact on productivity, loyalty and employee retention.
Using Google wildcard feature to answer questions
It seems like every other day Google releases something new, or you learn something about the #1 search engine that you didn’t know about before. Today, I hope to have something for you in the latter category. It seems like every other day Google releases something new, or you learn something about the #1 search engine that you didn’t know about before. Today, I hope to have something for you in the latter category. Google offers fill-in-the-blank searching (also known as wildcards), in it’s search engine. You can ask simple questions in your search and use an asterisk to indicate the “answer” you’re looking for. For example, in the screenshot below, I’m searching for the name of the CEO of Apple. 
As you can see, I worded my question simply and used the asterisk in the proper location. 
In the screenshot above, you can see that I got the answer to my question. The feature works quite well, though it may take a time or two to figure out the best way to ask the question. Sometimes simply re-wording the question can bring about completely different answers.
Cool Web site: Montage-a-Google
Montage-a-Google is one of those sites that isn’t immediately apparent how fun & useful it can be, but that should change fairly quick. Of course you could do this sort of thing manually, this Web-based application written by Grant Robinson makes it a bit more fun, and a little less work. As you can see by the sample above, I used the keyword “bikini” – a favorite subject matter of mine! I can think of a few projects I could have used this for, simply for a background image. Just remember, you don’t own the images used in the montage, it’s perfectly legal to use the images for personal use, but you might want to avoid using them in an ad for a national client!