ReadWriteWeb

Google has just announced a new feature in Gmail aimed at helping us address the pain of the email inbox. It's a follow-up to some of the recent changes that Google has made to help tackle email overload, most notably with the addition of the Priority Inbox.

The new feature, only available in Labs at the moment, is called Smart Labs and it adds filters to your incoming email based on their type - Bulk, Notification, or Forum.

A recent build of Chromium, the open source Web browser which serves as the testing ground for Google Chrome, has been updated with a new feature: Google Chrome Labs. This internally accessed page is available by typing in about:labs in the browser's address bar. Currently, there are only two "labs" (that is, experimental features) available for testing - an option to use side tabs for Windows users and an option to see an expose-like tab overview for Mac users.

So how can you access this new Labs section, which is still off-limits to users of the standard Chrome browser? We've got the details in our latest "weekend project."

Google Maps has just launched an "experimental" section called Labs where you can find the latest prototypes and test features to try out for use with the company's online mapping service. As with other Google products, like Gmail for example, the Labs section lets users opt-in to features that - as Google describes it - "aren't quite ready for primetime." But some of the features in Gmail will never be mainstreamed into the email service itself - they're simply fun extras which some people love but others would hate...or simply have no use for.

So will the new Google Maps Labs be the same? Filled mostly with fun but ultimately minor upgrades among a handful of gems? Or will it truly serve as the testing ground where the next major features planned for Google Maps make their debut? We checked it out this morning and found a couple of options worth enabling right now.

Facebook just announced passing the 300 million active user mark. In early April ReadWriteWeb asked about the size of Facebook with the answer being - "bigger than the population of all but 4 countries in the world." As of today it's bigger than the population of all but 3 countries in the world and it's gaining on the US. Like any great nation, Facebook is asking it's citizens to pitch in. The company just launched Prototypes - a demo site for members to test early stage beta products. Similar to other lab environments, the company will offer users a chance to test new tools and give their feedback.

Google Labs added four new offerings to their already rich set of optional features you can enable in Google Mail. The new features arrive in the form of previews for different site content, specifically YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Yelp. The new Labs features all work the way you would expect them to, activating when a link to one of these services is detected and appending the message with a small gallery.

In the workaday world, it happens all the time. You get caught in a string of emails among colleagues, the thread grows and grows as everyone adds their two cents, and when the dust settles, you realize that you've managed to create a ton of good content. Unfortunately, you're now tasked with cutting and pasting all of that good content into a more formal document. If only you could press a button and turn that email into something more useful.

Now, you can. Thanks to Google Labs.