New GMail features in Google Labs!

There are some cool new additions to the Google Labs section of Gmail!

A quick summary:

Google Docs previews
Starting today, you can preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation right in your Gmail inbox.

Got the wrong Bob?
When’s the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, “Are you sure you meant to send this to me?” and promptly realized that you didn’t? Sometimes these little mistakes are actually quite painful. Hate mail about your boss to your boss? Personal info to some random guy named Bob instead of Bob the HR rep? Doh!

“Got the wrong Bob?” is a new Labs feature aimed at sparing you this kind of embarrassment. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings, and based on the groups of people you email most often, Gmail will try to identify when you’ve accidentally included the wrong person — before it’s too late.

Google Voice messages in GMail
Google Voice helps you manage your communications with a unique phone number that rings all your existing phones, a single voicemail inbox with online access and automated transcription, and lots of handy features like the ability to block spammy calls and easily record personalized greetings for your callers. Think of it as Gmail for your phone calls and text messages (watch this video to learn more). Google Voice is currently available via invitation, which you can request here.

For those of you who already use Google Voice, you’re probably used to receiving voicemail notifications via email. A couple of minutes after someone leaves a voicemail on your Google Voice number, you’ll receive an email showing who called, an automated transcript of the voicemail, and a link to play the message. You can click the link to listen to the message right from your computer.

Previously, clicking “Play message” opened a new page in your browser, but starting today, you can play voicemails right in Gmail. Just turn on the Google Voice player from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings and whenever you get a voicemail notification, the player will appear right below the message itself.

Hide read labels
A lot of people want to see their labels in order to see which ones have unread messages, but they don’t want a long list of label names cluttering up the left hand side of their inboxes. To help out with this, we’ve made a Gmail Labs feature called “Hide read labels.” Turn it on from the Labs tab under Settings and all your labels without unread messages will be hidden under the “More” menu. Labels with unread messages will automatically show up, unless you’ve explicitly chosen to keep them hidden.

This is particularly handy if you use your inbox as a to-do list where unread messages are the outstanding things you need to take care of. If you use that method along with labels like “Home” and “Project X,” it’s easy to see all your to-dos in context. With this Labs feature on, labels with outstanding to-dos will be bold and have a number next to them; everything else will be hidden in the “11 more” section:

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