In a first according to the BBC, Google is opening up its testing for users in the United States and the United Kingdom to test 13 new features in its electronic mail service Gmail. This new feature called Gmail Labs provides a new and exciting way for tens of millions of users to run new features and give feedback to the engineers who create them.

The new developments show up as a red tab at the top of the page and according to Gmail product manager Keith Coleman: “This marks a big change in the way the company does product development.”

In the past, Google has run tests on new features either by invitation or internally with staff members weeks or months before being released to the general public.

Now us Gmail users have all of these new features to play with, but what are they and how do they work, and are they easy for even the most novice user to use? This new testing would seem like a breeze for any computer to click on and test away, but sadly it is not.

My first stop to exploring the new exciting features took me to the “What’s New in Gmail” page. First of all before you begin, make sure that you have Firefox 2 or IE7 on your computer, otherwise you will be out of luck to begin with.

There are also some more pitfalls users should be aware of. According to the Gmail Help Center which explains about the labs, they may “They may break at any time,” and/or “disappear temporarily or permanently “ If you still have your doubts, Gmail does offer a disable of the features if they do become unstable.

How do I access these features became the apparent question in my mind as I sifted through help center pages and information on what is new. I still had not found any real information on the site until I started to play around with it on my own. It is not as easy as it sounds and Google obviously did not intend to be a feature for just the average non tech savvy user to play with.

Click on the “Settings” link next at the upper right of your page when you have logged in, it will take you to your account settings.

In the far right, of the settings page, the link in the far right stating “Labs” will help get you started.

From my experience playing around with the features, some of them like the “Quick Links” can be handy for those of us, who like to find information buried in long conversations within a single mail can be useful, however most of them are a little redundant and nothing to get really excited about.

If you want to spend some time playing with the new features, you may find one or two that make your Gmail a little more fun, or easier to navigate, but beware not all are cut and dry about how to set them up and investigative skills are required.