San Francisco — Not to be eclipsed by Microsoft Bing’s recent announcement related to the release of the SDK for Maps developers, Google on Monday announced a handy new addition to Gmail and Buzz that helps you save a few clicks and precious time: Gmail has now unleashed a new preview tool, which enables one to view an address on Google Maps right inside the Gmail and Google Buzz.
One of the nicest things about Gmail is that it has integrated preview for many of its products, which enables users to watch YouTube videos, view Flickr images, and so on. Now, this latest addition can end up saving them a lot of time, little by little.
“I often receive emails containing addresses in them — where to meet for dinner, the location of my friend’s new apartment, etc. To find out where these places actually are, I have to copy the address, open up Google Maps, and paste it in to find exact location. Today, we are making it easier to see maps of all the addresses you receive in Gmail and Google Buzz,” says Google software engineer Mark Knichel, explaining the motivation for creating this feature.
Google Maps in Gmail
For now, the feature, dubbed “Google Maps previews in mail,” can be accessed from Gmail Labs, like most of the other preview tools. This is designed to retain the Gmail interface clutter-free and to test the new feature before maybe including it by default, but it will probably limit its spread.
If you want to activate the Maps previews, go to the Gmail Labs tab under “Settings,” and scroll down or search for “Google Maps previews in mail.” Select “Enable,” and scroll down further, hit save and you are done. You can do the same to enable previews for Flickr and Picasa photos, Docs documents and Yelp reviews. YouTube video previews are now built into Gmail.
Google Maps previews in Gmail
Once it is activated, and when you receive an address or a Google Maps link in an email, a preview will appear containing an interactive Google Map of the location. Maps can also be sent directly using the Google Maps URL. Users can also now paste Maps URLs in Google Buzz, as well.
And if you are using Google Buzz to guide people to a location on Google Maps, you will notice that, when a user inserts a Google Maps link into the Google Buzz post box, it will automatically show an image preview of the location below the message.
However, it is not a full-fledged, embedded, interactive map, but it helps give people an idea of where the place is located.
Currently, the Gmail feature is only available for U.S. addresses, but Google is working on rolling the feature out for more locations around the world. So that any Google Maps URL will work.