Gmail Labs features you should be using

Gmail has been around for nearly 6 years and is one of the most popular web-based email clients. It already offers some unique features that similar mail services don't, but most people probably aren't aware that Gmail is capable of even more.

As with many of their products, Google has given Gmail a "labs" page, where users can turn on and off experimental extras that add some pretty cool features.

To access the labs page, click on Settings at the top of your Gmail page, then click Labs across the top colored bar. There are dozens of labs features you can turn on if you want to, and I highly encourage you to read about each one. There are too many to go over them all, so I'm just going to discuss a few of my favorites.

Chrome Extensions!

Yesterday was the day Google flipped the switch to officially enable extensions in Chrome. You can now browse a surprisingly large selection of extensions and install them in your Chrome browser, assuming you're using either the beta or dev version. There isn't much more to say on the matter, so let's take a quick look at some of my favorite extensions so far:

Gmail Checker - shows unread count, provides a preview of messages, and even lets you delete, archive, etc. right from the preview.
Google Voice Checker - provides unread count for Google Voice
Google Wave Notifier- provides unread count for Google Wave
Sidewiki - finally the cool, social sidewiki service for Firefox comes to Chrome, read about it here.
bit.ly - a super simple extension that immediately shortens whatever page you're on using bit.ly
Google Quick Scroll - really interesting search helper extension that shows up when you need it.
RSS Subscription - adds a button in the omnibar whenever an RSS feed is detected on a site, allowing you to subscribe using your favorite feed reader.

Those are the ones that I use, but there are tons more, including mouse gestures, Aviary, Picnik, ad blocking, twitter, facebook, etc. And more are being added every day. Definitely check it out if you're a Chrome user (and if you're not, you should be). :-)

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Get the most out of Chrome

So now you've got Chrome installed and you're using it as your primary browser. There are a few little tricks you can use to make it function even better. I'm going to share a few of them with you here:

Upgrade to the Dev Channel
Chrome comes in three flavors: the public version, the beta version, and the developer version. Any updates to the browser are first deployed to the dev version, then trickle down to beta, then once they've been throughly tested, they make it to the public build. When you simply download Chrome from the main download site, you're getting the standard, public version. If you want the beta or developer versions, you have to hunt them down.