One of my native Google Apps dislikes is that the apps themselves are pretty disjointed. Sure there are links to the other apps if you’re in one, but there’s a productivity benefit to having certain data types on the same screen. You could go the Greasemonkey route of course, but Google just made the experience a little better with two new Labs features.

Within Gmail, you can now add an agenda view by hitting Settings, Labs and enabling the Google Calendar Gadget. Likewise, you’ll see a Google Docs Gadget that offers searchable access to your docs, spreadsheets and presentations. While it’s no big deal to have another browser tab open when you jump between Google Apps, it’s nice to have an option that makes Gmail more like a client app. One of Outlook’s strengths for example, are the many views that offer all of the at-a-glance data you need to be productive. While these new Gmail features don’t offer the same elegant functionality, they do bring the web app closer.