A couple of nice improvements were added to the Google Apps products during the month of February.

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New Saving Buttons are easier to understand:

A clickable save button "Save now" means your document has edits which haven't been saved yet and the timestamp lets you know when it was last saved. You can either wait for autosave to happen after a few seconds, or you can manually save at any time using the keyboard (ctrl S on PC, cmd S on Macs), save button, or by going to through the file menu.

A disabled button reading “Saving” means your document is currently being saved, and should complete in a second or two.

A disabled button reading “Saved” means all data in this document is now saved, and the timestamp tells you when the last change happened. You can safely exit the application or continue editing the document.

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New web clipboard allows saving clips into the cloud for a month:

A new icon has been added to the to the icon bar within the google apps - docs, spreadsheet, and presentations that allows the user to temporarily store clips for up to a month.  The user can then paste the clip into any of the other documents across the suite of applications.

When pasting, simply select the icon again and a drop down appears of the clip with a brief clip intro - hovering over the intro pops open a window with the full text of the clip.  Selecting the clip intro pastes the data into the current application.

A great way to grab and move data between multiple browsers or computers!

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Six Gmail Labs have graduated and are now features of Gmail

I just happened to have five of the following six turned on in labs (all but number 2) - these no longer appear in the labs menu and are now part of the continuous improvement that is Google Mail!

1. Search Autocomplete - Gmail will suggest terms to help you find your item more quickly - simply start typing in the search entry box at the top of the page and a list of possibilities will magically appear!

2. Go To Label - If you have keyboard shortcuts enabled, typing in the search box will autocomplete and suggest a label name - same functionality as number one, but will also display mail labels as well as content during your search.

3. 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 - my absolute favorite lab - has saved my bacon a number of times - glad to see that it "graduated".

4. YouTube Previews - If you receive a message with a YouTube link in it, you can now watch the video right below the message.

5. Custom Label Colors - Create your own custom label color.

6. Vacation Dates - Set your dates in advance, enable vacation responder and Gmail will turn it on when the date arrives.