Gmail Adds Gadgets & Google Reader Adds Subscription Stats

The Gmail Blog announced a new labs option that gives Gmail users the ability to add Google Calendar, Google Docs and other gadgets directly on their Gmail interface. Plus, Steve Rubel reports Google Reader has added subscription statistics, which I find to be awesome.

Let me explore both features below.

Gmail Gadgets:

You can now add the Calendar and Docs gadgets to the left hand side of your Gmail screen, next to the Chat and Labels area. Plus, you can add any Google Gadget to that area, although it isn’t all that easy to add random gadgets. To get started, go to Gmail > Settings > Labs and turn on either the “Google Calendar gadget” or Google Docs gadget or both. Then, if you want to reorder those items on the left navigation, turn on the “Navbar drag and drop” option in the same labs section.

What if you want to add other gadgets? Currently, the last option in the labs section is for “Add any gadget by URL.” You can enable that and then copy and paste the Gadget URL, typically ending in .xml, into the add box. Google does warn that “not all gadgets are fully compatible with https, so if you’re connecting to Gmail via https, you may see mixed content warnings caused by parts of the gadgets being served over http. We’re working on fixing this where we can.”

Google Reader Subscription Statistics:

Google Reader has added detailed statistics for your subscriptions. To see the details, all you need to do is click on the “show details” link at the top right of the subscriptions name. Here is a picture:

Once you click on that link, it will open up and show you three options for charts.

(1) Last 30 Days of posting activity for that subscription:

(2) Posting activity by time of day for that subscription:

(3) Posting activity by day of week for that subscription:

Do not forget that you also have Google Reader Trends, which shows your activity as a consumer of that content.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.