Today, Google announced planned improvements to the contacts manager located in its Gmail web-based email client. Google touts the Contacts feature now, “works more like the rest of Gmail” and that they incorporated a ton of user feedback. Improvements include:

• Keyboard shortcuts (go to Contacts and hit “?” for the full list)
• Sort by last name (look under “More actions”)
• Custom labels for phone numbers and other fields
• The ability to undo changes you’ve just made
• Automatic saving
• Structured name fields, so you can adjust titles, suffixes, and other name components
• A bigger, more prominent notes field

The new layout looks much cleaner and provides more functionality with fewer clicks of the mouse. Google also mentioned that they, “made it easier to get to Contacts and Tasks,” and that you’ll see links to the two in the upper left hand corner of your screen right under the Gmail logo. Hit the read link for the official Google post. Anyone seeing these updates yet?

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Apparently, people have a lot to do these days. If we had a dollar for every web-based task manager out there, well, our next giveaway would probably be a diamond-encrusted Vertu. For web developers, it makes perfect sense; if you can manage to get people reliant on a web-based task manager you’re looking at a pretty fair number of pageviews each day from each user. Those developing all of these task managers may want to take notice however, as Google is treading on your turf. The king of all things web has just announced the addition of a simple task manager to the Gmail web UI by way of Gmail Labs. It’s no mistake, by the way, that the new Tasks item sites atop the Labs list. For the time being it offers pretty basic though useful functionality but you should expect some big and interesting things to come of Tasks – Google Calendar integration, mobile implementations and so on. For the time being, Tasks sits atop the Gmail UI as a new frame that is always visible unless you minimize it or choose to pop it out into a new window of its own. You can add new tasks quickly and easily, and even instantly link an email to a new task by checking the box on its row and pressing shift + T or choosing “Add to Tasks” from the More Actions box. Despite being pretty basic for now, Tasks already contains more than enough functionality to become a very useful tool to assist users in managing everything that takes place within Gmail and slightly beyond. As the Tasks team flushes the product out however, look for it to jump outside of Gmail and put some serious dents in the SaaS task management game.

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