Google Puts a Little More Ninja in Its Gmail

The search giant Google beefed up user tips and enhanced its "theme" offerings for Gmail in its usual quiet understated fashion this week.

The Gmail tip guide (not an actual booklet or file but an online resource page), launched initially last July, with the promise it would help you and me become Gmail ninjas. Now the first, and newest Gmail tips, are available in Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and U.K. English.

Users can work their way from "white belt" mail users all the way up to Google Mail master status by mastering the various capabilities and uses.

New tips, according to the official Google Gmail blog, include the ability to add formatting to chat, selecting more than one message to save or delete, and sending and receiving messages from multiple addresses. Google says the new tips came directly from user suggestions. So if you have a Gmail tip you want to share with fellow Gmail ninjas, just click here.On the Gmail theme side, the development team has added four new themes which took 10 months according to developers, bringing the total number of choices to 35. The four new ones feature Turf (yes, just leaves of grass), Orcas Island (a graphical image of the island off Washington State, obviously), High Score (a black background with video-game fonts) and Random (which gave me a rock design but actually cycles through the entire theme list as users select it as an option).

It’s the first time Google’s added to its themes, which debuted in November 2008, according to the blog.

Photo courtesy of Google