My Gmail Feature Wishlist
Akshay Java, 1:00pm 1 September 2007Gmail is something that I would be happy to even pay for (yes! on a student stipend!). I still cant believe how I ever managed with a measly 10 MB quota (Sheessshh!).
As much as I love Gmail, I really think there are some low-hanging fruits that could easily make the experience a whole lot better. Probably folks at Google are already working on some of these. In any case here are a few things I would love to see:
- Gmail Search Spell Checker: This is a no brainer… what would all the word processor dependent psuedo-dislexik people like me do.. were it not for the spell check?
- Inline Tagging: Yes, I know the folders are like tags, but why not create it that way. It would be great if we could tag email (with possibly fewer clicks). If it is a folksonomy - perhaps it could be better served as one… by actually showing a tag cloud for instance.
- Google Gadgets Please: Google personalized homepage has it, Facebook has something similar, and it would be fantastic if users could add their favorite apps within Gmail.
- Mail Priority: I would really like some neat way to prioritize my emails. For example, prioritize messages from people I communicate with often. Over the years, I have landed up subscribing to various forums, mailing lists and groups. My way to handle the information overload is to use filters. But sorting/prioritizing in other ways would be great.
For each of these there are probably quantifiable ways one could validate the need for the feature. For example, across all the users’ searches for mail in gmail - how may returned no matches due to spelling errors? For the tags, how many people actually use this feature — is it comparable to the tag usage patterns and distribution in del.icio.us or flickr etc? Google gadgets are widely used across many homepages.
So whats your Gmail wishlist?
Oh! And while we are at it.. check out the cool Gmail video.
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