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Gmail has been releasing a slew of new features lately via their new Gmail labs section. If you use Gmail a lot, you may want to check out some of the beta features that you can only try by manually activating them. If you use other Google features, check out my previous post on Google Calendar tips and tricks and Google Picasa tips.

One reason why I use Gmail as my main web email service is because I also use Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader, and Google Adsense ALL the time! When I log into my Google account, I can access all of these services with one click!

This is great and I didn’t think it could get any better until I read that Gmail now supports gadgets! So if you are always logged into Gmail, you can now add Google Calendar and Google Docs and ANY other iGoogle gadget to your Gmail interface!

How to add custom Google gadgets to Gmail

Here’s how you would go about doing it. First, click on the small green lab icon at the top right of your Gmail screen:

Now scroll down all the way to the bottom (there are a bunch of Gmail labs features) till you get to Google Calendar and Google Docs gadget.

Now click on the Enable radio button for both and you shall now be able to see all of your upcoming events, locations, and details from your Google Calendar in your Gmail sidebar. You’ll also be able to see your recent docs, starred docs and even search your docs stored in Google Docs.

So that’s how you can add Calendar and Docs, but what about all the other thousands of gadgets that you can access on your iGoogle homepage? Well using the “Add any gadget by URL” Gmail labs feature, you can add news, ToDo lists, quotes, RSS feeds, games and just about anything else from the Gadget Directory to Gmail.

First, go to the Gadget Directory, find the gadget you want to add and click on it. Now you’ll see the button to Add it now. DO NOT click on that. If you click on Add it now, it will add it to your iGoogle homepage, not Gmail. In order to add it to Gmail, you have to copy the URL for the gadget. In the address bar, you should see the URL after the text “$url=”.

Note that the URL ends in .XML all the time. So copy the part after the = sign all the way to the end. For example, above the part you want to copy is:

widgets.nytimes.com/packages/html/igoogle/topstories.xml

Now go back to Gmail and enable the Add any gadget by URL feature in Gmail labs. Now there will be a new tab called Gadgets when you click on Settings.

Now just paste the URL into the text box and click Add.

Note that you have to ADD the HTTP:// part to the URL in order for it to work, otherwise it will give you an error. Sometimes the URL that you copy does not have the HTTP part, so be sure to add it. You’ll see the list of added gadgets:

That’s it! Now when you go back to Gmail, you will see all of the gadgets on the left hand side bar. I’m hoping they come out with a way to organize the gadgets a little better since adding more than one or two will start to make the sidebar very long. Enjoy!

Source: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/

\\ tags: Gmail