New Labs Experiment for Gmail: Google Maps Previews in Mail

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 09 Jun 2010

A new experiment has been added to the lineup of experiments available in Gmail Labs. The new experiment is called Google Maps previews in mail and it, well, displays previews of Google Maps right within your inbox. With a name like “Google Maps previews in mail”, what did you expect it to do?

The one to come up with this experiment in his 20% time (the one day per week when Google software developers are allowed to work on something that is not necessarily in the job description) is Mark Knichel.
Here
is what he had to say:

“I often receive emails containing addresses in them — where to meet for dinner, the location of my friend's new apartment, etc. To find out where these places actually are, I have to copy the address, open up Google Maps, and paste it in. Today, we're making it easier to see maps of all the addresses you receive in Gmail and Google Buzz. Any time you receive an address or a Google Maps link in an email, a preview will appear containing an interactive Google Map of that location. Any Google Maps URL will work, but we currently only extract US addresses (we're working on making addresses around the world work).”

If you would like to turn on Google Maps previews in mail, here is what you have to do (a simple 3-step process):

1. - Go to Gmail (click here – a new tab will open), enter your login credentials and click Sign in. If you are already signed into your Google account, click this link and you can just skip step 2 in this tutorial.
2. - In the top right corner of the screen, right next to your user name you should be able to see Settings; click it. Now locate Labs and click it as well.
3. - Scroll down until you find a Labs experiment called Google Maps previews in mail. Select Enable, then click Save Changes (there’s a Save Changes tab at the top of the experiments list and at the bottom as well) and you’re done.


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