Top 10 Killer Google Labs Apps for Enterprise
Google Trends
This Labs application allows users to view how often a particular term (such as “Microsoft Windows 7”) has been searched for, what media outlets are mentioning it, and the regions, cities and languages citing it most often. Useful for gauging how well a product or service is being disseminated in the wild.
Google Code Search
Developers can use this page to search through public source code, using a traditional Google search interface.
Google News Timeline
Of increased utility to media workers and researchers is the Google News Timeline, which organizes news graphically and chronologically into a scrollable and much-hyperlinked timeline. The timeline is searchable by term (such as “Obama”) or by date.
Offline Gmail
Perhaps in a bid to compete against competitors Yahoo and Microsoft, which offer offline functionality for their e-mail programs, Google integrated an Offline Gmail feature into Gmail Labs, allowing users to read e-mail and compose responses even when they are without Internet access.
Gmail Tasks
This application adds a task list to the Gmail window, allowing the creation of a granular (and editable) to-do list.
Multiple In-Boxes
This Gmail Labs application lets the user configure and maintain extra lists of e-mails within the in-box, a more granular interface perhaps most useful to small and midsize businesses that rely on Google’s cloud e-mail service.
Google Calendar Gadget and Google Docs Gadget
These two gadgets add Google Calendar and Google Docs, respectively, to a box in the Gmail window, allowing Calendar and Docs to be searched for documents, events, locations and details without the user needing to navigate away from the e-mail page. The gadgets can be enabled and disabled separately.
Forgotten Attachment Detector
It happens to everyone: You send an e-mail about a document and realize 30 seconds later that, in your haste, you forgot to attach the document in question. This application deals with that problem by scanning your e-mail, noting that you’re likely to attach a document to it and then warning you if “Send” is clicked without the relevant attachment.
Google Code Labs
This is a page for developer products still under development, subdivided into sections. APIs for Google programs such as Blogger and Picasa are featured here under a “Products in Labs” divider, while other APIs (such as for AJAX and Maps) are official graduates of Labs.
Google Audio Indexing
This page utilizes speech technology to find spoken words within YouTube videos, allowing the user to search out video clips. As with Google Trends, this could be a useful tool for following a particular message or product as it spreads through the Web.