ReadWriteWeb

Since Google introduced "Gmail Labs" to the users of their popular, web-based email application, they've been adding new features constantly, all of which you can enable or disable with the click of a button. Some of those Labs features are "gadgets" - aka small widgets that you can add to your Gmail sidebar. A few of the top gadgets in Labs include things like Tasks, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. But did you know that there are a ton of other gadgets you can add, too? It's true, but you won't find them in Labs - you have to add them yourself by URL.

Fidelity, one of the world's largest financial service institutions, has just launched the first iGoogle secure banking gadget for use by their tens of millions of customers. With the new Fidelity Secure Gadget, customers no longer have to visit Fidelity.com or NetBenefits.com in order to check their account balances - they can now do so right from their own iGoogle homepage.

When Google Labs launched its Gmail gadgets for Google Calendar and Docs last week, there was actually a third gadget that they included in the release. But we didn't cover that gadget because it was a little too cryptic to explain without an example of how it might work.

Luckily for us, Remember The Milk was hard at work creating a gadget that would help us do exactly that. Now we can finally explain the third Labs Gmail gadget and check that task off our list - from within Gmail. All thanks to RTM.

Google today updated its iGoogle homepage by improving its integration Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance. These gadgets can now make use of iGoogle's canvas feature, which allows a gadget to take up the whole screen. This is especially useful for the Google Reader and Gmail gadgets, which now bring almost all of the features of the actual services to iGoogle.

Google has also updated the iGoogle interface and a number of content providers have updated their gadgets to make better use of the canvas view as well.

If you had a 'clean sheet' opportunity to create the ideal digital office environment for you and/or your business, what would you buy? What hardware and software would give you a productivity advantage, while being fun and affordable? Here is what we did in our London based marketing agency.

This is Part 1 of a 5-part series in ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel. Part 1 covers everything from a physical perspective. What, ideally, you need to have to make the digital office run. In subsequent parts, we will cover browser, web apps, mobile, and more.

Chumby Industries, makers of the Wi-Fi video and widget displaying device, the Chumby, have just announced $12.5 million in Series B funding today. The company notes that this new financing is going to be used to "accelerate growth of the company, and expand and broaden the Chumby Network to other screen-based Internet connected devices." How did this little gadget get so popular? And why would you want one? Read on to find out.