Gmail Labs is making it possible for us to add more gadgets to Gmail if we choose.  The first thing you need to do from your Gmail is to activate Gadgets by going to Settings, then Labs, and enabling “Add any gadget by URL.”  It’s at the bottom of the list at the moment.  Be sure to save changes.

Now navigate to Settings > Gadgets in order to add new gadgets.  They are all added by copying in a URL and saving your settings when you are finished.  Makeuseof.com has a list of URLs for 10 gadgets you might be interested in.

You probably won’t want them all in your sidebar.  If you are often on your Gmail page and wish you had easy access there to Twitter, too, you can add the TwitterGadget by copying in the URL from makeuseof.com’s post.  I tried it out just to see how it worked and it looked pretty usable.

I already have ways I manage Twitter, however, so I deleted the gadget and looked at the other possibilities.  They include Wikipedia, FriendFeed, World Clock (which I have on my Calendar), Digg, Calculator, Facebook and MySpace, none of which I decided I wanted in my Gmail sidebar.  (If you add several of these, it is handy to be able to minimize them when you don’t need them.)

However, the URL shortener, bit.ly, looked like just the thing — I frequently send links in my gmails and they can be quite long.  I added the gadget (the URL is long: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml) and found a use for it right in the next message I composed.  Works fine.

I already have the bit.ly URL shortener in my Bookmarks Toolbar, but having this gadget easily at hand in Gmail is great.  By the way, Firefox also has an extension called bit.ly preview so you can see “what lurks” beneath a bit.ly-shortened URL when you encounter one.  You might like to know before you go there.

A friend and colleague (thanks, Jean) brought Gizmocall to my attention recently.  Once you establish an account, all you have to do to make a call is enter the phone number or username on the GizmoCall “telephone” (accessible through your browser) and click call.

There is no set-up fee or download required.  GizmoCall says all you need is an Internet connected computer with a browser and Flash version 9 or better.  A headset is recommended for optimum call quality.

You can open GizmoCall in a separate window, login and you’re ready to make or receive calls from other GC users.  Once you have the handset on screen, use the “test” icon to make sure you can hear and be heard.

You can call any other GizmoCall, Gizmo5 users, 800 numbers, or SIP address for no charge.  To call a traditional phone number you will need to buy $10 of call-out credit.

There are some special configurations you can arrange for a small set-up fee.   There is also a Firefox Plugin which will automatically make any phone number on a web page clickable and place a call via GizmoCall.

New Google toolbar and handy gadgets
If you haven’t downloaded the new Google toolbar for Internet Explorer or Firefox, you’re missing out on some handy new gadgets.

I was particularly interested in the Google Maps gadget which pops up when you click on it, allowing you to use it without leaving the site you are on.  Find businesses (and reviews) or get driving directions.

While you are at it, you may want to check out the toolbar gadget gallery.  [via Lat Long Blog]

Quick definition search
I saw this post awhile ago and was reminded that I ought to spend some time learning the ins and outs of Google search instead of just plugging in basic keywords that come to me.

The “define:” search command is an easy way to a dictionary function and it will likely give you several options.

In the Google search bar, enter define:[something] and try it out.    

A new version of iGoogle was officially launched yesterday after months of testing, posts Google Operating System blog.  In addition to putting tabs on the left, a “canvas” view has been added that allows gadgets to become full-fledged applications.

“Canvas view allows developers to deliver richer content, games, and UI to users on iGoogle as well as the opportunity to monetize.”   Not all gadgets are ready for this view, but many are, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and, of course, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Gmail, and weather.  Although you can use Gmail without leaving iGoogle, it lacks some features that would have made it a good replacement for the full-featured Gmail, such as links and attachments which are stripped from messages.

The next big thing for iGoogle, the blog states, is support for OpenSocial that will make Google’s personalized homepage more social.

If you’re a user of Google Book Search, you will appreciate them taking advantage of the canvas view with their new iGoogle gadget, notes their blog.

It allows you to manage your Google Book Search Library and receive customized recommendations based on the books you save, no matter your subject preference.  With the release of canvas view, you now have more space to explore recommendations, or, once you’ve found a promising book, to preview and read books right inside the gadget using the new embedded viewer API.

When an image is worth a thousand words — these apps help you understand what is happening during our election season, found on Read/WriteWeb.

Now you can visualize:

• Political contributions by industry — an interactive visualization from Sunlight Foundation
• Earmarks — which states slip the most pet projects into spending bills (I recommend you have latest javascript)
• The 2008 Presidential Election In The Blogosphere — perspctv’s graphs include CNN polls, news mentions, blogosphere mentions, Twitter mentions, a U.S. electoral map, and Google Trends-based timelines
• Electoral College Prediction Tracker — an interactive, embeddable visualization widget you can use to view predictions from different organizations

Google Book Search has developed new tools and partnerships that promise to make books more discoverable on the Web, whether it is from Google search results, bookstores, publisher and author websites, online library catalogs, or social networks.

Retailers, publishers and anyone with a web site can embed books from the Google Book Search index.

“We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers’ book collections.  By providing tools that help sites connect readers with books in new and interesting ways, we hope publishers and authors will find even wider audiences for their works,” says Inside Google Book Search.

You will be able to preview online up to 20% of a book’s contents, much as if you had it physically present in your hands, when using partner sites or web sites with the embed code.  But it isn’t just book sellers using these tools.

“It is now possible to preview books—including a huge number of works in the public domain—right from the online catalogs of the University of California and the University of Texas, as well as through OCLC’s WorldCat.org, a service that lets you search across the collections of more than 10,000 local and institutional libraries worldwide.”  Author and publisher sites will find the preview functionality useful as well.

Try the embedded viewer API, which also has a link to the Preview Wizard, a tool built atop of the embedded viewer.

Find out who is currently using the Book Search API here.

More real-time quotes on Google Finance
You can now get both NYSE (as of today) and NASDAQ (as of June 2) free real-time market data via Google Finance.  Search Google or Google Finance, add your stock symbols, and keep the page up to have quotes stream live.

If you add Google Finance to iGoogle, add the Google Finance portfolio gadget and monitor your stocks as they are traded throughout the day.

PDF Search Engine: find, download e-books
You can now search quickly for PDF books using PDF Search Engine.  Some results may show PDFs that are not free.

You can add the PDF search engine to your search engine dropdown menu.

Web 2.0 features are “put to a socially significant use” at OpenCongress, says Read/WriteWeb.

OpenCongress recently inroduced 13 new features, and is designed to make it easy to track activities in the US congress.  If you are at all interested in politics and what’s happening in government, you will appreciate this project of the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

Use OpenCongress to read news, commentary, and blog buzz, link to bills you are interested in, follow hot topics, share information through Digg, StumbleUpon, etc., and find out what your local members of Congress are doing.  It’s quick and easy to establish an RSS feed.

You can create a personal account with OpenID, and enjoy navigating with “a perfect amount of AJAX.”  Outside news and data is pulled into the site, rated by users and actively discussed.

There are many widgets to choose among, helping you to track trends, bills, and issues in particular areas.  Read/WriteWeb also offers suggestions to OpenCongress on additional useful features they might develop.

Listaculous to-do list
Listaculous is a free, tabbed to-do list manager that you can add to your web page or iGoogle start page.

Keep track of all your tasks and lists in one place — accessible from anywhere on the Web. 

I was happy to add this to my iGoogle page since it seems to be simple and intuitive, as advertised, and I particularly like the tabbed presentation. 

It’s quick and easy to register, log-in, and use from any computer at any location via the web.

Logon to Zoho with your Yahoo or Google ID
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with login account so I was glad to see that popular office productivity suite, Zoho, has removed the need to create a separate account to use their services.  Now you can now log in to any of their products using a Google or Yahoo account. 

Zoho plans to adopt OpenID eventually, but in the meantime they wanted to integrate directly with the most requested third parties.  Their goal is to get users to try Zoho with as little hassle as possible.  They may integrate with others such as Microsoft and Facebook in the future.

Powerset search engine with Wikipedia
Is Powerset  a “natural language” search engine?  Maybe not exactly, but Search Engine Land says it is at least an “understanding engine.”  “Because it actually understands what pages are about, it can extract facts from those pages plus comprehend how those facts — as well as those pages — relate to each other.”

You can use Powerset to search Wikipedia now.  It claims to give you better results than Wikipedia’s or Google’s search because Powerset’s technology has read and understood what every word within Wikipedia actually means. 

I don’t know what your experience will be like, but I read about Powerset a couple of days ago when I was also trying to dig some information out of Wikipedia. 

I had limited knowledge of what terminology the subject might use so was finding it difficult to come up with relevant search terms.  I had already explored using both Google and Wikipedia search engines, and then tried Powerset.  Better results!  Once I found a relevant article, I was able to identify good key words that improved my search results outside of Wikipedia, too.

Google Spreadsheets gadgets
I just decided to use Google Spreadsheets for the first time so I was interested to hear about some new features and improvements, including autocompletes, email notification among collaborators, and a directory of gadgets that can be added.

To add a gadget, click on the “Insert” dropdown and select “Gadget,”  Each gadget can be embedded into web pages or added to iGoogle,

Smartphones will have Flash and Reader
Microsoft will license Adobe Systems’ Flash Lite and Reader LE software for use in future versions of Windows Mobile-based phones the companies announced earlier this week.

Budget-conscious tech gadgets
PC Magazine recommends some favorite “cheapskate” gadgets — fun for $200 or less.  They range from Apple’s wireless keyboard and mouse to a Plantronics Bluetooth handset.