Google Wants You to Become a Gmail Ninja

Gmail users may have noticed a bright notification in the upper right hand corner of their screen “New! Gmail tips.” A closer look at the link reveals the Google wants you to become a Gmail Ninja!

How does one become a Gmail Ninja? Google claims that the Gmail Ninja will “learn tips and tricks to save time, increase your productivity, and manage your email efficiently,” and encourages tip users to “start with the tips that are right for you, based on how much email you get each day.”

Google divides the tips into four sections. White belts are people who receive only a few messages per day, and the tips are pretty basic: “organize with labels,” “search your mail instead of sorting,” and “reply by chat.” Rather basic, eh? Certainly, but that’s why this is the white belt level.

Next up is the Gmail green belt Ninja. Who qualifies? Google would say that these tips address mostly those Gmail users who get around a dozen messages per day—the average Gmail users. Thus, the advice remain simple, but moving up in the ninja tip status are hints like “use tasks as a handy to-do list,” “highlight important emails using filters and colored labels,” and “send an email from your phone” (showing a picture of an iPhone, of course). But here, even in the relatively intermediate stage of becoming a ninja, I learned about a feature I’ve longed to see in Gmail for a long time: the “undo send.” Yes, it really is possible to retract an email in Gmail, though it has to be retracted within seconds after hitting send. Users can enable this handy feature by going to the Gmail labs and easily switching the feature on. Another helpful tip for the green belts? Yet another Google Labs feature, the “Forgotten Attachment Detector,” which alerts forgetful users if they mentioned sending an attachment in their e-mail but failed to actually do so.

Moving on up is the Gmail black belt. Here, ninja wannabes can learn the Gmail keyboard shortcuts, how to use search operators, and how to “send and archive in one step.”

At the top of the Gmail user Ninja level is the Gmail Master! Masters include those who “get a massive number of messages a day.” Tips here include learning how to “bring Google calendar and docs to Gmail,” “forget to sign out of a public computer? Sign out remotely,” “personalize your RSS feeds in web clips,” and how to “access your mails via https.” Lastly, if you want to be a true Gmail Master, Google wants your money. You can either run Gmail from your own domain or you can shell out $50 to do so on Google Apps.

It would seem that anyone can become a Gmail Ninja with Google’s nifty Gmail tips. Apparently, I became one myself sometime between last night and this morning, as I noticed the link to the tips disappeared on my personal Gmail account.