10 Cool Things You Can Do With Gmail

I was told that most Malaysians have already migrated from the "old school" Hotmail or Yahoo Mail to having Gmail accounts.

Having said this, not many have exploited the many features that Gmail has over its competitors. Yes, you can do more with Gmail apart from just sending and receiving emails.

These are the cool things you can do:

1. use the Gmail Labs experimental features
Gmail Labs has a long list of tools to increase efficiency. You can set up canned responses for standard replies, stop yourself from forgetting attachments, get your Google Calendar agenda and Remember the Milk tasks, get at all your various attachment types with Quick Links, and much more.

2. search power
If you have stored loads of emails and need to retrieve a specific emails. You can search for specific emails using keyword search (with filters).

3. keep your Gmail account on your desktop
With the latest Google Desktop Gadget, all the basic actions of email—read, star, label, delete, respond can fit into a corner of your desktop for easy accessibility.

4. organise and tag emails and bookmark links
You can create lists of emails you need to get back to, bookmark an important thread in your browser favorites, and save them for any other purpose or list.

5. consolidate all your email accounts
You can consolidate multiple email addresses into Gmail by importing emails from any POP or IMAP (web based) accounts. You can also send emails from your old email address, eliminating the need for your contacts to be updated with your new email address.

6. serve as a central, synchronized, smarter contact list
Previously Gmail puts everyone you sent 5 emails to into your contacts, but now, those oft-mailed but not well-known people are sent the "Suggested" contacts list until you confirm them as contacts. You can also synchronize Gmail with your Mac, iPhone, Blackberry and Thunderbird.

7. remotely sign out
If you forgot to "Sign Out" from where you've previously acessed Gmail, you can always "Sign Out" anytime and anywhere. At the very bottom of any Gmail inbox there is a text line showing where else the account is open, along with a list of sign-in times and IP addresses and a button for you to "Sign Out".

8. back up your email from any system
You can backup all your emails on your desktop with Gmail Backup. To back up another email account using Gmail's large storage space, you can always BCC: all your outgoing messages to your Gmail account to make sure you've always got an online searchable copy of your emails.

9. launch video and audio chats
You can do video conferencing with Gmail.

10. personalise Gmail's look to your selected theme
You can personalise Gmail's look to your selected theme through the Settings tab.

For more information on this, read the Top 10 Things You Forgot Gmail Can Do.

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