It’s been quite the busy month for Google’s Gmail team.
Mail Goggles left Google Labs to light up the blogosphere, saving people from e-mailing under the influence.
Two days ago, Google Labs launched its Canned Responses feature for people tired of responding to the same old questions. Yesterday, the Gmail team launched a faster version of Gmail for J2ME and BlackBerry phones.
Now Google has created and launched emoticons for Gmail. Unlike Mail Goggles and Canned Responses, you needn’t “switch” on emoticons.
Just go to your Gmail account, hit compose mail, and you’ll see a square smiley face in between the highlight color and link buttons on your Gmail toolbar.
Click the face button and you see 80 symbols you can click to insert in your e-mail and let your recipients know you’re doing anywhere on a broad spectrum from great to, literally, crappy.
This is completely frivolous. But for the tens of millions of Gmail users, 2008 may become known as the year Gmail got fun.