Background Send is a new Google Mail feature that removes that restriction from Google’s web mail interface. Once activated, you can continue working with Gmail while the emails are send in the background.

That may not make a huge difference for users who send an email occasionally, but for users who send hundreds of emails it may be a difference like day and night.

You need to enable the Background Send feature in the Labs section of the Mail preferences. You can get there with a click on your name in the upper right corner and the selection of Mail Settings.

Switch to the Labs tab there and scroll down on that page until you find the Background Send listing.

Let Google Mail send your mail while you move on to more important things. Just be sure to stay logged in until it’s all sent!

Don’t forget to save the change before you leave that page. It becomes available immediately allowing you to navigate away from the Compose Mail screen after you have hit the send button.

Background Send has no effect on the composition part of things. It is for instance not possible to do something else in the Gmail interface while uploading a big file attachment.

Please note that you may not log out of the Gmail account during the sending of emails in the background. The mail will fail to send if you do. Gmail displays a “There was a problem sending your message” notification if problems did occur during sending. Options are provided to fix the issue right now or at a later time.

Send Background is especially handy for users who send out lots of emails throughout the day. (via Gmail Blog)

Today Google made the announcement that they have retired five and graduated six Gmail Labs applications.

That’s the biggest change in the history of Gmail Labs which in the past has only seen single graduations or retirements of applications.

The six applications that have been added to Gmail permanently are:

• Search Autocomplete – Start typing in the Gmail search box (English only for now), and Gmail suggests terms that might help you find what you’re looking for — from contact names to labels and advanced search operators.
  
• Go To Label – We’ve integrated Go To Label into this search box as well. If you have keyboard shortcuts turned on, type “g” then “l” and instead of getting the old “Go to label” pop-up, you’ll be in the search box with the “label:” operator filled in for you
• Forgotten Attachment Detector – Gmail looks for phrases in your email that suggest you meant to attach a file and alerts you if it looks like you forgot an attachment.
• YouTube Previews – Instead of having to clicking on the link and wait for a new window to load before you can watch the video, Gmail now shows YouTube previews right below the message
• Custom Label Colors – Why settle for a restrictive palette when you can choose from over 4000 possible color combinations to help distinguish and organize your labels? Just click on “Add custom color” from the regular labels interface.
• Vacation Dates – If you specify which dates you’ll be away in advance, you won’t have to remember to turn on the vacation responder when when you’re actually on vacation. Set your dates in advance, and let Gmail do the rest.

The five Gmail Labs add-ons that have been disabled are

• Muzzle
• Fixed Width Font
• Email Addict
• Location in Signature
• Random Signature

Retiring features is always a tough decision — we invest in building and maintaining them and we realize some of you are probably fans of some of Gmail’s lesser-used features. But Labs are experimental features, and from time to time they may break (that’s why there’s a quick way to disable them), or even disappear. Over the next few days, you’ll see Muzzle, Fixed Width Font, Email Addict, Location in Signature, and Random Signature stop working and disappear from the Labs tab.

Gmail users did receive the notification of missed calls previously with the option to see who called, read the transcript of the message or visit a new page to listen to the message left by the caller.

This has now been changed by the Google developers. It is now possible to directly play the missed messages in Gmail. The new feature needs to be enabled in the labs section of Gmail. Locate the Google Voice player from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings and enable it.

A player to play the recorded message will appear directly under the message in the Gmail interface after activation. The feature will also sync the status with the Google Voice application so that the message will not be played again when checking for new Google Voice messages.

The feature has to be activated in the Labs tab of the Settings before it becomes available. It is possible to change the language that the message should get translated to in the same menu. The translated email will be displayed in the same spot that the original email occupied without reloading the rest of the page. The quality of the translations is equal to those of Google Translate. A great way of testing the quality is to enter a text into Google Translate, translate that text to another language and translate that text back to the original language. The general consensus is that it is possible to understand the meaning of the original text in most cases.

But who needs the translation service? It might be interesting for users who receive lots of email messages in languages that they do not understand. But how likely is that scenario? The average Internet user receives the majority of emails in the native language and if that is not English then in English as well. It might be helpful in some cases, for example running an eBay auction and receiving an inquiry from a foreign language speaking user.

Verdict:

Yes, some Gmail users might find this new translation add-on handy. The majority of users on the other hand will most likely ignore it recognizing that the service is not as useful as it might sound.

You can use this as a jump start for searching, clicking on the result to open it in a new window, but you can easily add it to an email, by selecting “reply with result”. This will paste the whole result you selected into the email. This is a convenient, and pretty fast way of sharing search results. I find that it is fastest if I already know the answer to the question. For research I like big ol’ regular Google, but if I already know what I need I can get it very easily like this.

Another side-feature which is worth noting is that Gmail has a hundred or so more emoticons available in a labs feature called Extra Emoji. I pretty much hate all emoticons, so you won’t see me using this, but if you like the “no-end fun” these bring to your emails you might like to try them out. They have icons for wine, hurricanes, rabbits and whatnot, stuff I mention regularly in all my emails…

If you enter the Labs category in the options you are presented with a list of 13 new features that can enhance Gmail in numerous ways. One adds pictures of your contacts in chat, one lists all links that can be bookmarked and another adds the option to view messages in a fixed width font.

Each new function can be enabled and disabled separately. A rescue link is provided in case a new function is breaking Gmail. Visiting Gmail with the url http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 will disable all functions that have been previously enabled in labs.

Not all of the 13 available functions are really necessary, take the Snakes game for example. I see those 13 as a good beginning and hope that we will see new – better – functions pretty soon.