Like many of you, I’ve been happily using GMail for years. While there are many things I like about it, one in particular has always impressed me: email search. It’s no surprise that Google would add powerful search features to their email system, but there are many great features that go laregely unnoticed by many GMail users. Today we’ll go over some of GMail’s best search tricks and how to get the most out of this powerful feature.

A few weeks ago I was re-listening to an audiobook by Seth Godin called “Purple Cow”. One part talked a little bit about a person who randomly sent the people at Google an email if the word count got too high on the main search page. These emails help them keep the search page exactly what it is designed to do. Compare the main search pages of Yahoo.com and Google.com; which one are you more likely to get distracted on?

Job hunting these days is a battle. With fewer jobs available in certain industries, one needs to be efficient, streamlined and spot on in their quest for employment. Below are some things I personally use or have used to keep abreast of possible opportunities. Even if you are happy in your current career or company, it is never bad to be prepared in case you find yourself in need of a job.

We here at MakeTechEasier got a lot of positive feedback on our coverage of Google Wave, along with quite a few requests for additional information. So here, by reader request, is the second installment of Wave. Today we’ll be covering some of the more advanced and detailed features that didn’t fit into the original post. In this installment we’ll take a look at Wave’s use of folders, contacts, extensions, and believe it or not, even scroll bars.

I see posts on business oriented sites almost daily shelling out tips for every inch of the Microsoft Office Suite. An equal number of sites talk about Gmail, giving tips and ways to be more productive while using it. What about Google Docs? Docs can do some equally fancy stuff too.

Slowly but surely Google has been adding a feature here and a feature there. Some have been bigger steps than others; all of them are chipping away at the reasons you need to buy an office suite. I’m not going to get on a soapbox and shout to the world. I will however, give you a few nifty tips to make using Google Docs spreadsheets a little easier.

If you have a web site or blog, you probably rely on web analytics to understand about your visitors. It provides a way for you to know

1. How they found your site
2. The items on your site they find interesting and
3. Location information about your visitors.

The best known and most widely used web analytics tool is Google Analytics. There are over 80 reports that can be accessed to track and analyze the health of your web site/blog. Additionally, it also has an ad hoc reporting function that allows you to further tailor these 80 reports, or create your own from scratch. There are other tasks that allow you to monitor vistors’ paths on your site/blog, monitor your AdWords, group similar visits together, etc. What if you were able to extend the functions that Google Analytics offer? There is a Firefox add-on that will allow you to do that. It’s called the Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension.

Google’s not afraid to reinvent the wheel, as long as they think they can make a better wheel. So far, in my opinion at least, they’re usually successful. That being said, when I first heard about Google Wave, the new browser based communications system, I was skeptical. I like my emails, IMs, message boards and blogs the way they are. Could Wave really transform the way I communicate online? Could Google really reinvent email in a way powerful enough to pull me from my beloved GMail? Well through my massive underground operative network I was able to get one of the beta invitations to try out Wave for myself.

As some of you may know, invites are being sent for Google’s new service aimed at simplifying your phone usage, Google Voice. I received my invite about 2 weeks ago and jumped at the chance to try it out. With so many features that appealed to me, I was like a kid in a candy store when I was able to play with it for the first time. For me, this service was a great solution to a lot of the complaints I have with using the phone. Being a Blackberry user, I was also VERY happy about the Blackberry app available right from the get-go.

Below, I will explain the layout of the site, then get deeper into a few of the main features. There are several other features to this service if you’d like to check them out for yourself here.

When Nokia first released the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, many Linux geeks could not resist a hackable handheld computer, even if they had no use for it.  With the subsequent releases of the N800 and N810 versions, the devices gained even wider appeal.  One of the problems I have always had with it, however, is that it has no default PIM (personal information management) software, and the free options available for it were always rather slim.

Nokia advertises it as an “Internet Tablet” rather than a PDA, so perhaps they expect you to rely on cloud services, such as Google Calendar.  Very well, we will, but we will do it with style.  mCalendar is a small application for the Maemo operating system that allows you to have an appointment calendar on your tablet and also sync it with your Google Calendar.  It is finger-friendly and easy to use.  It is available for Maemo/Tablet OS2007 and OS2008 and should work on Nokia 770, N800, N810, and N810 WiMax models.

If you keep up on tech news, you’ve doubtlessly seen all the hype surrounding Wolfram|Alpha, the new not-exactly-search-engine that’s making big waves in the web search industry. Your traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc all work on the same basic principle: finding web pages based on keywords. Wolfram|Alpha isn’t about bringing web pages to the user, it’s about bringing information to the user.

Let’s say you open up Google and enter a query like “Princess Bride Cast”. You’d get results linking to several pages with info on who was in that cinematic masterpiece. It would probably look something like this: