It becomes an Email which is very easy to retrieve.

Using this app you can set auto replies to your friends letting them know you’re away or even busy. According to its developer, Gtalk Autoreply uses Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol(XMPP)  inorder to send automated replies.XMPP is an open technology for real-time communication, which powers a wide range of applications including instant messaging, presence, multi-party chat, voice and video calls, collaboration, lightweight middleware, content syndication, and generalized routing of XML data.

1. New location for labels
You’ll notice your labels in a new location on the left of your inbox (or on the right, for those of you using the Arabic, Hebrew, or Urdu versions of Gmail). Instead of having their own section, your labels are now above your chat list, grouped together with Inbox, Drafts, Chats and other system labels.

2. Label hiding and showing
You now have control over which of your labels show. We’ve done our best to get you started by automatically showing the labels you use most and hiding the rest. Label hiding is my favorite new feature, since it saves me from having to look through labels I rarely use. If I ever need to reach any of my old labels, I just click the “more” link.

3. Drag and drop
You can now drag messages into labels, just like you can with folders. This does the exact same thing as “Move to” — it labels and archives in one step.

Read more from gmail blog HERE.

What is Google Voice?

* Not linked to any phone or location, your Google phone number is like a regular phone number which is linked to you.

* It is an Internet telephone service that allows you to make domestic as well as international calls from your computer.

* It gives you a Google phone number which links all your phones together into one central communications network

* People don’t have to worry about calling you at home, work or mobile phone. They can simply call on your Google number and you get to decide which phone rings.

* You could have all your phones ring at once, or different phones as per your choice, convenience and based on who is calling.

* If you do not want to attend calls, you can have the call forwarded straight to your Google voicemail that you could check later from any phone or online for free (voice.google.com).

Getting started

* Click here to send a Google Voice Invitation Request.

* Just leave your name and email, and Google will invite you as soon as Google Voice becomes available. If you left your email address previously on the GrandCentral site, you don’t need to resubmit it here.

* Once you receive your invitation, just click on the link and follow the instructions to setup your new Voice account.

* You can find a Google number that is personalized to you. Make use of the number picker that lets you search by area code and text. You could find a number that contains your name, a specific word or a number combination.

Link: Google Voice Invitation Request

(Source & Image credits: Google blog)

Chatting with your AIM buddies is easy — just click on a name in your chat list, and start typing.

Note that an AIM account is required to use this feature. AIM in Gmail is not a Google Talk and AIM federation; it’s the ability to sign in to your AIM messaging account from Gmail. Gmail uses Open AIM to provide this feature.

Note: AIM, colored labels, group chat and rich emoticons only work in the latest version of Gmail, currently available for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. Please upgrade your browser to take advantage of these new features.

Let’s see how we find this feature and how you can enable this integration with your orkut profile…

• Navigate to your Orkut Home Page

• Scroll down to see upcoming birthdays section.
• Just below those upcoming brithdays, you’ll see an option to view your friends’ birthdays in Google Calendar.
• Click on that option.

• You will be taken to Google Calendar and will be asked for the confirmation to enable integration.
• Choose Yes when prompted.
• Now, your friends’ birthdays will be listed in your Google calendar.

• Click on the listing to get more details.

• You even have a scrapbook link of the friend who is celebrating his/her birthday.

Go ahead and add this great feature for google calendar and you will surely never miss a birthday from now on for your orkut friends birthday.

Now, Google’s chat feature is being enabled for all Orkut users, irrespective of whether they have a Gmail ID or not. You will be able to use your existing email address as your user name and chat on the Google Talk network without any hassles.

This is still work in progress, so if you do not see this feature enabled for you yet, give it a few more days, it must be on its way into your account, for sure.

As a security measure, you will be required to do a simple email verification in order to use this feature.

Click here to read more: Verifying Your Google Account: How it works

(Source: google.talkabout)

This recent integration opens all active Google Talk chat windows when you move from one Orkut window to another Orkut window seamlessly. This integration also works while switching between Gmail and Orkut.

I personally find this very annoying as I keep open Gmail all the time and prefer to use Gmail chat version of Google Talk. Everytime I open an Orkut page, I have to close these annoying popup chat windows. So I wanted a way out where I can disable these popup chat windows and still have my all Orkut friends get added to Google Talk friend-list automatically.

Solution:

Disabling these popup chats on Orkut is just a click away.

Simply set your Google Talk status on Orkut as offline. This will not affect your status on Gmail and elsewhere.

Screenshot: