5 Amazing Gmail Addons

It’s my pleasure to announce guest blogger, Darko Johnson. Darko is the author of an outstanding new site Mix The Net, which highlights some of the most useful tools and websites available on the net. The site is up-an-coming and one to keep an eye on in 2010.

In this post, Darko shares some of the best GMail Add-ons, which I’m confident you’ll enjoy – Brian

There are some amazing Gmail Addons (you can take a look at these Gmail tips too) to help you become more productive and turn Gmail into more than just an ordinaryweb  mail application. Here are the ones I found to be very useful:

1. GTDInbox

Here’s how Gmail looks when you install GTDInbox (a Firefox addon):

And here is what you get when you open a single message:

As you can see, you have many new features here:

a) You can easily manage labels with only one click. Previously, you needed to first create a filter. Now you can create
and put a message in a label with just one click.

b) GTDInbox also makes use of labels so it turns Gmail into a simple project
management platform where you can create hierrarchical labels of things to do.

2. Prism from Mozilla Labs

You can use Prism not only with Gmail but with almost any web application. However, we’ll focus only on how to use it with Gmail
this time.

With Prism you can turn any web application into a desktop application. Here’s what I did with Gmail:

So what’s the use of this? At first sight, this looks like an old version of Internet Explorer 6.

The main use of it in my opinion, especially for Gmail is PRODUCTIVITY and ORGANIZATION. Let’s face it, it’s easy to get lost in the browser.
With just one click you immediately go to another ‘time wasting website.’ This won’t be the case if you’ve created a desktop
app out of a web app. Try it out and see if this approach will improve your productivity.

3. Gmail Notifier

If Prism is the ultimate productivity improver then Gmail notifer is the ultimate TIME WASTER (if you don’t used it smartly). You can check multiple Gmail accounts for new mail directly from your browser. That’s the primary function here. I recommend you use it carefully though. If you want to get things done then installing this add-on may take your procrastination to a whole new level. But if you use it smartly, for big project notifications and so on then you can benefit.

4. Gmail Drive

They claim this is a file storage add-on. I’ve tested it and it works perfectly for files smaller than 25 MB. So if you plan to use it, then separate the file into 25MB chunks.Kinda hard to get used to, though. But pretty powerful.

5. Better Gmail 2

REALLY useful Gmail extension for Firefox. It has some really neat features you can choose from like hiding things you don’t normally use (chat, invites box), hide spam count, Folders4Gmail and so on.