New in Labs: Add your location to your signature

Sometime ago I noticed how all mail systems tell you when an email was written, but not where it was sent from. Because I love to travel, the first question in many messages I receive is "where are you?" and by the time I answer I am often somewhere else.

So in my 20% time, I wrote an experimental Gmail Labs feature that detects your location and appends the city region and country names to your signature, like this:



To try it, turn on Location in Signature from the Labs tab under Settings, then go to your signature preferences and check the box next to "Append your location to the signature."



It'll use your public IP address to determine your location, so it may not always be that accurate. For example, if you're at Heathrow airport, IP detection may put you in Germany. If you want more accurate location detection, make sure your browser has a version of Gears that supports the location module. That way, Gears can make use of wi-fi access point signals to recognize that you're actually in London.

You'll always be able to disable the option or just delete your location from specific emails whenever you want.

Posted by Marco Bonechi, Software Engineer