Google Search from inside Gmail, now on steroids!

Google Labs has for months offered an optional add-on to Gmail that places a search window right there in the "Compose Mail" view of Gmail. Now they've added several powerful new features.

I posted an item over the weekend saying how some people got the Google Search feature without enabling it from the Google Labs page. But that appears to have happened only for a minority of users. For the rest of you, here's how to enable it:

1. Click on the green lab beaker at top right of the page when you're at Gmail.

2. Find the Labs item called "Google Search."

3. Click the "Enable" radio button.

4. Click the "Save Changes" button at the top or bottom of the page.

Now, whenever you're in Gmail, you'll see a "Web Search" item on the left of the page. When you're in "Compose Mail" view, you'll also noticed a brand-new button above the body of the message to the right of the highlighter tool. Click that button and a search box opens on the lower right of the page. The same box opens if you run a search from the new "Web Search" box on the left.

The great thing about this tool is that you can look stuff up without leaving Gmail. It's really well implemented. For example, when you go back to writing your e-mail, the search results stay on top, so you can see and refer to them as you type. It even stays there if you close the message. (You have to click on the close-window X in the upper right corner of the window to get rid of it.)

What's new is what you can look up. Here are the new features:

* Dictionary (type the word "define" without quote marks before a word to get the definition.)

* Spelling (this happens automatically like any other Google search. If you misspell a word, it will offer a correction.)

* Math (if you type in numbers separated by operators, such as plus, minus, an asterisk for multiplication, etc., you'll get the answer as your first result.)

* Locations (just type the name of the city you're interested in along with your search (pizza Sunnyvale) and you'll get results in that city.

* Weather (type the word "weather" without quote marks, followed by a zip code, and you'll get the weather in that area, including forecasts for the next four days.)

* News (when your search is related to something in the news, the first result will be a best-guess Google News hit, plus a link to "related articles."

* Site (when you want to narrow your search to a specific Web site, just type the word site, followed by a colon, followed by the URL. For example you could search for "mike elgan site:itworld.com" without the quote marks.)

* Unit Conversion (type in the unit you've got plus the unit system you want, and it will do the conversion. For example, type "100 kilometers in miles" without quotation marks, and it will tell you how many miles are equivalent to 100 kilometers.)

Some search features don't work. For example, Stock Quotes, Time, Public Data, Movie Showtimes and others aren't available in the Google Search feature in Gmail.

This newly enhanced feature is an incredible time saver for people (like me) who spend a huge amount of time in Gmail. Thank you, Google engineer Adam de Boor, for spending your 20% personal project time to bring all this new power to Gmail!

(Thanks to the Official Gmail Blog.)

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