For the people who have been using Google Maps or Reader, Google Profiles might be an old news. Today I was trying out the new Google Mapmaker and was surprised to find my Profile page was revamped. There was also a seperate link for my profile page. Looks like Google is going to consolidate all their services to reflect on a single profile.

According to Google,

A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you’re all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you’d like.

For now Profile is visible in Google Reader, Google Maps and Google’s Shared Stuff. Google has already announced these profiles would be searchable.

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With the everybody getting ready for Firefox 3 release tomorrow, Google silently seems to have updated their Toolbar extension to accommodate the latest version. Even though according to the version info in the official site is still carrying the old version number of 3.0.20070525, the version that is being offered for download is 3.1.20080605W

There has been no significant changes in the layout or any new features in this release but still for those who jumped the wagon with Firefox release candidates and had been handicapped without this, it would be a relief.

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Google kept up its word about releasing new features for Gmail today. A few experimental features for the web interface have been introduced under the banner of Gmail Labs. According to the official Gmail Blog, some of these features might be incorporated permantely or retired based on their usage. For now there are 13 features which will be expanded slowly. You can activate these features from your Gmail settings Labs tab. In case of any problems you can revert back to the original Gmail interface via a URL. Presently these are available for US and UK editions and other local editions need to wait I guess.

Some of the features worth checking out are

• Quick Links : A box in the side menu which can hold any Gmail URL. It can be useful for your constant searches or views. Something like “in:inbox is:unread” search would yield all unread messages in inbox.  It can be done for all the labels and different search queries.
• Random Signature : Can be used to load signatures randomly from an RSS feed.
• Star Icons : For those who star their conversations a lot, this will be very handy. After enabling this feature remember to add the extra icons in the setting menu.
• Mouse gestures : You can use your right mouse button and a upward mouse gesture to go to inbox and left to go previous conversation and right gesture to next conversation.
• Snakes Game : For who love the classic snake game just press “&” to bring up the game.
• Custom Key Shortcuts : You can map your own keyboard shortcuts which can replace the present forgettable default key shortcuts.

There are also few other features which one can check out provided you have switched over to Gmail. If you enable these features and if something goes wrong, you can temporarily disable Gmail Labs and enter in safe mode by visiting http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0.

via : [Official Gmail Blog]

Update on 17th June 2008 : Acccording to the Official Gmail Blog today, there is a Labs discussion forum where one could discuss and give feedback about the labs feature in Gmail and even suggest new ones.

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It’s been a long time since Google Talk got any attention from Google… For regular users who are accustomed to using the invisible mode in chat widget inside Gmail now it has been ported to Google Talk Labs Edition and Talk Gadget for iGoogle.

So hopefully we can see this feature in full fledged GTalk application too. Would be helpful for all those GTalk addicted “worker drones” aboard all the cubes…

For those who use Google Calendar regularly try the Labs edition which has the reminders and notificaitons with Snooze options. For Orkut users you get scrap notifications (Not for those who are stuck up inside UAE’s “moral” proxies)