One of Gmail's most popular add-ons has made the jump from experimental widget to fully baked feature.
Tasks, a simple to-do list for Gmail, is now part of the official Gmail experience. It was previously only available from within Gmail Labs, a sandbox for Google's engineers to publish and test out experimental Gmail features.
The Labs area of Gmail debuted over a year ago, and Tasks is the first feature to "graduate" from Labs and be incorporated into the default Gmail experience.
Since its launch in April, 2004, Gmail has grown from a bare-bones webmail client into a full-fledged platform. There's a contact manager and fully integrated text, video and SMS chat. Anyone who wants more can plug in one of the 50-odd widgets from Labs to extend it.
The best Labs features are the ones which enable cross-talk between Gmail and other Google services, like displaying lists of Calendar items or Google Docs in the Gmail window, showing video previews in e-mails that contain YouTube links and adding auto-complete suggestions to Gmail's search box. Of course, some Labs widgets just show pictures of your kids.
Tasks is an awesome feature. It lets you set up a number of simple to-do items, then check them off and delete them as you complete each one. For enthusiasts (like me) it's great for keeping track not only of work items, but also personal items. Like many people, I use Gmail both at work and at home. Tasks was also recently made available as a stand-alone mobile web app, and I have a bookmark for it on my iPhone's home screen.
Tasks is indispensable, and not just to me. Google says over 1 million Gmail users have installed it. There are tens of millions of people using the free service.
Gmail Product Director Keith Coleman tells Webmonkey that popularity was the primary factor in Tasks getting the nod. Coleman says others will follow soon. Any app being considered has to have behind it a commitment from the Gmail development team that they will continue to work on it and keep it fresh. Of course, there's a base level of stability required as well. "We want to make sure it's going to work perfectly for most people," Coleman says.
Labs has been such a success, Google is extending the idea to Calendar as well. Starting Tuesday, Google Calendar users will see a new page in their settings called Labs. Just like in Gmail, there will be some experimental features you can turn on. It's been seeded with a few selections from Google Calendar engineers, like a World Clock, and one I like called Next Meeting, which tells you how much time you can waste playing Kingdom of Loathing (or nuking wiki spam) before your next conference call.
There's also a new Calendar API for creating custom Calendar enhancements. This is primarily of use to those with Google Apps Premium Edition inside their companies. People can create custom fields for things like notes about which conference rooms have projectors.
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