GMail adds themes

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There’s a Firefox extension called Better GMail which Gina Trapani from Lifehacker has put together. It’s a compilation of Greasemonkey scripts that enhance various aspects of the service, from its looks to its functionality.

Google has a history of taking the best bits of the extension and adding them officially to GMail, and now they’ve added the popular ‘themes’ functionality. The themes look damn good – there’s giraffes, ninjas, the themes can change over time, or with the weather, and there’s even an old-skool ASCII theme.

The themes will be rolling out across GMail over the next few days. They’re not enabled on my account yet, sadly. Have they shown up on yours? Which is your favourite? Let us know in the comments.

Official GMail Blog)

Related posts: GMail adds voice and video chat | GMail adds yet more functionality – this time it’s SMS

GMail adds voice and video chat

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Yet more new features for everyone’s favourite webmail client, Google Mail. This time, the team has enabled video and voice chatting on the service, which joins SMS, OpenID, Calendar and Doc gadgets and emoticon support on the feature list.

Google’s going to be rolling out the new functionality over the course of today, so if you can’t get it yet, then try again a little later. To get to it, you’ll need to install a small plugin, which you can pick up here, and then it’ll appear in the bottom of your chat windows.

Let us know in the comments how it performs on your broadband connection, and how you think it compares to similar services, like Skype.

Google Video Chat (via Official GMail Blog)

Related things Google has added to Gmail recently: SMS | OpenID | Calendar and Doc gadgets | Emoticon support

GMail adds yet more functionality – this time it's SMS

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GMail’s really blitzing new features out at the moment – yesterday it became an OpenID provider, and earlier in the week they rolled out gadgets for Calendar and Docs, but today’s new feature is SMS.

If you’ve got phone numbers stored with your contacts then if they go offline when you’re talking to them, your messages will be sent as SMS instead. Best of all, it’ll give the person you SMS a number that they can email in the future to get messages to your GMail account.

The functionality hasn’t arrived over this side of the pond yet, but it’s a lovely little bonus feature, so I hope it shows up soon. It’s yet another reason why you should use GMail over Yahoo or Hotmail.

GMail (via GoogleWatch)

GMails adds gadgets for Calendar and Documents

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Just a quick one, this, but enormously useful. Google has added gadgets to GMail that allow you to view your calendar and your documents in little boxes to the left of your window. If you’re anything like me, then you have your Gmail window open at all times, so this is an enormously useful addition to the web app. To turn them on, go to the “labs” section, by clicking the volumetric flask in the top right…