A few good Google + Gmail updates.

Google has always had a very special place in my browser heart, and for that reason, I thought I’d do a little update post on some new Googly things out in the wild.

GMail Inbox Preview
First of all, for those of you who use Gmail, you know it can be a real pain in, well, a pain, when it comes to loading your inbox, which for you geeky folks, is nothing but the entire AJAX like program for your mail.

There’s simply nothing as slap-on-your-face-ish as waiting for 4 minutes to load your Gmail inbox, and then only to realise that you have only 2 emails, one from a free Colon Cleaner and some other mail with a whole lot of Chinese (Ok, I’m kidding, they’re in my Spam).

Anyway, Google has blessed us with a new Gmail Labs feature called Inbox Preview.

Here’s how it works: Right after you sign in, and you start getting that Loading Gmail progress bar, during which time you usually leave the room to make some hot tea and come back, you can now see the latest 10 of your emails. You can now decide within nanoseconds (Ok, I exaggerate), whether or not you want to continue.

“I want it, how do I get it?”:

1. K, first of all, you need to endure that Gmail loading thing (I promise, just this once).
2. Go to Settings (that’s in the top right of your screen)
3. Go to Labs. You’d need to enable the Labs features to continue.
4. You’ll see a whole lot of Labs features, which will probably change the way you look at Gmail.
5. Anyway, scroll halfwayish till you find the Inbox Preview option (its right above the Multiple Inboxes, look for the big red M with little child M-lings on the right)
6. Enable, and then scroll down and save.

There you go. If you want to test, I’m going to advise you wait until the next time you need to check your mail.

Also, while we’re here, if you always use the same computer for checking your mail, you might consider Gmail Offline, which installs itself into the browser, allowing you to access your mails even when offline, and spare you the downloading time.

Google Chrome 2
For those of you who like fast things (Lamborghini, ASUS Graphics Cards, me running towards chicken), you certainly won’t be disappointed in the brand new Google Chrome 2.

Features:

• Holy crap, middle mouse scrolling. Yes!
• Full Fullscreen. Press F11. Go ahead, I dare you. Yup. Now thats Real Fullscreen alright.
• Its still super hyper fast at loading up. Its still like opening up notepad. And that, I like. 🙂
• It loads things faster. Uhh…thats what they said here. (Times like these when I don’t feel like doing an independent javascript benchmark suite, I take their word)

Chrome really is super fast. In fact, its javascript engine (the part of the browser that does cool animations and stuffs), is hyper fast. So fast, that in fact, there are some javascript programs that can only be run in Chrome.

Check out more wierd, fun, and useless things you can do with Chrome at the ChromeExperiments.com site (yes, thats the site)

Click here to go to the Google Chrome Site.

Otherwise just be seated in your comfortable seat and click here to download the complete installer here. This is probably what you want if you are downloading at your friend’s (with unlimited broadband) place.

Google SMS Channels

Alright, this may be old news to some, but I‘ve only just heard about it, so I figure since nobody mentioned this to me, then nobody I know knows about it. Or something like that.

Anyway, Google India has launched, quite recntly, a pretty nifty (and free) service: SMS Channels.  With this, you can now receive (free) SMS updates from various live feeds that have been created, or you can create yourself.

So check this out, I’m now getting (for free), a couple of sms everyday, from the latest Google News Technology updates, another set from BBC International News (yes, its true, shoot me). There’s a whole lot of other channels for other SMS jokes, etc, so be sure to check it out.

Useful? Well, its an Opt-in service. This means that while you can certainly address a large group of people for free via sms, and even automate it through smsing an RSS feed, you need to get people to sign in and subscribe first. Just an little initial setting up difficulty for some, but otherwise cool.

Check it out here.

A Good Night

Found any of the above useful? Found anything betterly useful? Please do let me know in the comments.  : )