This weekend I finally joined the massive number of people who forward all their mail to Gmail. The main reason I finally switched can be credited to the sidebar gadgets that were launched in October (but that I only found out about recently).
Although the Google Calendar and Google Docs gadgets are excellent, I also wanted a Google Tasks gadget shown in the sidebar as well. Unfortunately, there’s no such option to enable from Gmail Labs. I’m guessing because Tasks was just launched in December.
However, with a little poking around the tubes, I found out there is a way:
- In Settings on the Labs tab, enable the Add any Gadget by URL feature (if it isn’t already)
- Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page
- After the page reloads, go to Settings, then the Gadgets tab and enter the following URL and click Add: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/tasks.xml
When the page reloads, you should see a Tasks (Labs) gadget in your sidebar.
Although the main reason I finally switched to Gmail is due to the sidebar gadgets, I’ve found that I’ve been missing out on some other nice features as well like keyboard shortcuts, labels (instead of folders), global searching, and conversations. These features have intrigued me all along, for years, but I just couldn’t take the leap to Gmail for fear of losing control of my data. I guess at some point recently, the value of all the features overtook the fear.
