Four Weird and Wacky Uses for Gmail

Here's how you can incorporate Gmail more into your life and get some more functionality out of Google's humble web-based email program, Gmail!

1. Personal Diary

   Dear diary... you can set up filters and a new Gmail account so you can keep a record of your day-to-day activites. Create a new account and set up a filter so emails coming to that email address will be labelled "Diary" or "Journal" etc. and go straight to the archives. You'll be surprised at how quickly those emails can build up!

2. A Baby Book

   Rafe Needleman of the site Webware posted his "parent hack" - he sends important details of his child's development to a dedicated Gmail account. He sets up a filter so it goes directly to the archives. He also forwards email from that account to another PC-based email account, which is backed up using Carbonite, making the chances of losing his precious baby's memories almost zilch.

3. A Virtual Drive

   Backup, portability... whatever: you can use Gmail as a virtual drive using Gmail Drive. Because there's such a ridiculous amount of storage on Gmail, why not put this to better use by storing your files on it? Gmail Drive integrates into your computer (meaning that you can save onto it the same way you save into My Documents, etc.), so it's easy to use.

4. Email Blacklists

   Receiving too much spam from one email address? Is a company sending you too many "newsletters"? Is a friend bombarding you with chain letters? You can add all of these email addresses to your blacklist by setting up a filter sending all of their emails that you receive straight to the spam folder or trash - it's up to you. If you're a steadfast user of another mail program, try using Gmail as your "watchguard". It has a better spam filter than other web-based emails and you can also filter out any unwanted email using Gmail's filtering feature.