Gmail is one web app that gets better constantly. Despite being the third largest email service provider, Gmail holds the top spot in pampering its users with cool new features at regular intervals. The past few days have witnessed a couple of interesting additions and one in particular – Gmail People Widget – adds a social twist to your inbox.
The people widget showcases content from friends, family and colleagues who are in touch with you constantly, but are buried somewhere in the contact list. Add to it the all new Importance Markers, there is a very good chance your productivity might go up!
Overview
The Gmail People Widget has not been rolled out to everyone yet, but as soon it is made available, next to every email message you can see contextual information about the people in that conversation. In addition to that, a list of recent emails you received from them, relevant Buzz posts (who is using it by the way?), shared documents and calendar events are listed as well.
Gmail People Widget
The feature not only helps you stay on top of the past updates but to connect with them in a bunch of ways too. Quick access to a variety of ways to communicate with individuals – start a group chat or schedule a meeting with groups of people are readily available in the form of icons at the top.
How Useful and Original is it?
Initiating Group Chat
Depending on what type of work your are doing and how many people you interact with, the usefulness of the Gmail People Widget might vary. Right now, the feature looks more like Gtalk on steroids, but is a great start though. Another thing I couldn’t help but notice is the striking similarity with some other apps that provide similar functionality in Gmail.
Rapportive
A couple of plugins/apps offer such people and conversation centric communication widget and the one I have been watching for a while is Rapportive. I could not remember any instances of Google blatantly ripping of User Interface or features from a third party app, but in this case, it looks like they have slipped. Even if I ignore how many features of Gmail People Widget and Rapportive are strikingly similar, its the UI that looks like a digital clone that plays the spoilsport.
Social isn’t Google’s forte but the People Widget is well designed and is extremely user friendly. It isn’t intrusive and seems to only help in locating attached files and conversations. One thing that bodes well for Gmail People Widget is that you don’t have to install a plugin to get all these features unlike the competitors.
Importance Markers
Gmail also got another tiny new addition (it wasn’t even mentioned in the official Gmail blog) named Importance Markers. May be because they don’t do much! The markers works just like the Star feature, just open a mail and tap on the marker to let Gmail know it’s important communication. The same way, you can mark certain mails unimportant too. Later when mails from the marked sources arrive, Gmail automatically moves the ones that are important to the top.
Turning Off Markers
Feel that it sounds just like a stripped down version of the Gmail Priority Inbox? Looks like it is actually meant to be that way. If you want to turn off the feature, you will have to head over to the Priority Inbox tab under Settings to make the changes. Do note that this feature is turned on by default even if you have the Priority Inbox disabled.
Share Your Thoughts!
What’s your take on Gmail People Widget and the importance markers? Are they going to help boost your current productivity levels or going to be an additional source of distraction from work?