I was working on a paper a little while ago, and someone began to chat with me in Gmail.

It was a friend of mine who I had emailed earlier today about a class assignment. This friend uses Gmail as well, so instead of replying to the email when he saw that I was was available on chat, he simply began a Gmail chat (or Google Talk, I don’t know how to refer to it) session with me.

But, this time, I saw something new in the integrated chat window. Gmail knew that my friend was indeed replying to my emailing, even though he was replying through Gmail chat. So Gmail put a little text in the window to tell me that the message is “In reply to [email message subject]” and includes a link to the email.

Amazing! Gmail continues to astonish me with useful features that might have been around for a while (I mean, who really knows how long this has been in Gmail) and I just now happen find them.

If you haven’t already found the Word, whoops, I mean Gmail, go here to get a free account. It comes with nearly 3 gigabytes of email storage, integrated chat, and you can use Gmail as a one-stop-shop for sending and receiving email from all of your email addresses (forward your other email addresses to Gmail or have Gmail fetch the email for you). Once brainwashed by the amazingness of Gmail and the other Google apps, you will never look back.