Thursday, August 26, 2010

Gmail Contextual Gadgets: giving the gift of time

We've talked with a lot of Marketplace vendors who weren't aware of the Gmail Contextual Gadgets launch back in May at Google I/O. Gmail Contextual Gadgets is one of our favorite APIs that's launched in recent time, so we wanted to make sure you're all aware of it.  It's a great way to save time for your users.

Contextual Gadgets greatly accelerate user adoption by bringing the application directly to the user in context and in their normal work flow. Many great apps fail to gain user traction because they are separated from the normal workflow. Gmail Contextual Gadgets solve that problem for developers, and make it much easier for the end users to see the benefits.

Here's an example gadget from Harvest-- allowing the users of their time tracking application to fill out their time sheets directly from within Gmail:


We just posted more info on both our developer-facing and customer-facing blogs. Check it out:
Google Apps Developer Blog