After 18 months of Gmail Labs being in operation, Google's killing off some unpopular features, but also promoting the oft-used ones to permanent functions. Say hello to the forgotten attachment detector, YouTube previews and custom label colors.

While the muzzle, fixed width font, email addict, location in signature and random signature functions have been buried by Google due to either a lack of interest or the feature made redundant by something better that's waltzed on in, at least the good man won, with my trusty forgotten attachment detector graduating to a standard feature.

It detects phrases in your email, such as the word "attachment," and before sending the email reminds you of the forgotten attachment. Definitely saves redface, especially when applying for a new job.

Search autocomplete and the go to label function will suggest words when searching in the Gmail box for a particular email. YouTube Previews is fairly self explanatory, opening a little preview which will avoid being Rickrolled for the umpteenth time.

Over 4,000 colors are now available for labels—handy if you have a green fetish—and the last graduating feature is vacation dates, which will turn on your out of office autoreply based on what dates you're on holiday. [Gmail Blog]

The chocolate brown HTC Incredible has reappeared on the scene, this time in Verizon Wireless' inventory system. Is the Android phone close to announcement? It's peculiar HTC hasn't officially announced it yet, instead outing the Legend and Desire.

The Android 2.1 phone (with HTC Sense slicked on top) is rumored to run on a Snapdragon processor, with 256MB of RAM and a 3.5 - 3.7-inch WVGA display. If traces of the Incredible are appearing on Verizon's system, then it'd make sense if it's outed shortly—right, HTC? [Berry Scoop via Android Community]

Image Credit: Pocketnow

These 1GB lightsaber flash drives may have been imported from Japan and they may light up when plugged in, but they still don't feel quite right without some woosh-woosh-zzwoommm-zwing sound effects. Worth $20 without those? [ThinkGeek via Nerd Approved]

There are reports of Google CEO Eric Schmidt forcing his mistress to take down her naughty tell-all blog. Whether that's the reason for its disappearance or not, we're glad that our Gawker friends preserved some of the amusing details.

Former Forbes journalist Kate Bohner is supposedly the gal behind the now-deleted "Recovery Girl 007" blog and as the former mistress of married Google CEO Eric "Dr. Strangelove" Schmidt she had quite some stories to tell. You can read them over at Gawker. The best thing on that blog though though, was a commentary about a prototype iPhone and Steve "Stephen" Jobs:

I haven't thought about Dr. Strangelove in such a long time-I try to sweep all of that data completely under the Persian carpet. That's a lie. I think about him every so often in these fleeting cinematic flashes...I have completely stopped sleeping. My friend Jason is so worried about it that he confiscates my Blackberry... I've been sleeping with my Blackberry just in case Strangelove might send an e-mail. If I was really smart I ditch the Blackberry for the iPhone he gave me – the prototype version. But I have yet to arrive. Stephen Jobs is not St. Stephen. He's just a stoned Jesuit priest lost in his garden. Strangelove still has his stranglehold on me and nothing is new under the sun.

This lady's walking between panels of thermally-bonded polypropylene filaments which I keep thinking are giant dryer sheets. Either way, her body's static charge is all that's required to make the panels jump apart.

There's no real purpose to this art installation set up by design group SpaceOperaFoam other than to use static charge for a pretty, dreamy effect. But that doesn't keep me from wanting to run between the sheets to make them dance. [Dezeen]

This sushi-making robot, along with the Okonomiyaki robot and the omelet robot, aren't new, but they are featured in this NYT story about chef robots to get you up to speed on machine-prepared cuisine.

The only question I have, since these robots are from Japan, is about where else that hand has been. [NYTimes]

This was Nikola Tesla's letterhead. It reminded us that along with the often overlooked little things which change our lives, we need the loud, filthy, slaughter-filled battles just as much. Like the dirty War of the Currents.

Just in case you're not familiar with the War of Currents—one of my favorite messes in the history of electricity—allow me to catch you up. On one end of it all we had Nikola "Wizard of the West" Tesla, George Westinghouse, and alternating current. On the other hand was Thomas "Dirty Fighter" Edison and direct current.

The whole trouble began when the United States were ready to move away from Edison's idea of direct current and try that newfangled AC. Dear ol' Tommy couldn't just sit back and let that happen. So, he did what any man in his right mind would do and started a smear campaign against the new system:

[He spread] disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown, to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses. Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison's system of direct current.

When that wasn't enough, Edison got a bit more personal:

He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being "Westinghoused". Years after DC had lost the "war of the currents," in 1902, his film crew made a movie of the electrocution with high voltage AC, supervised by Edison employees, of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant who had recently killed three men.

Considering that we don't refer to someone being shoved into the electric chair as a "Westinghousing," I'd say Tommy didn't do so well. Anyway, we're not here to make fun of killing animals, Tommy's lost war, or to brag about Tesla. The point is that a good idea—alternating current—wasn't taken down by a dirty fight. And that, ladies and gents, is a #lifechanger.

Letterhead image from Letterheady. Some information from Wikipedia and the Nikola Tesla Museum

The best part about dominoes? Watching them fall down. The worst part? Setting them back up again. The Ouroborus Domino sculpture turns the worst part into the best part and makes me dizzy in the process. [Doobybrain via SlipperyBrick]

The Cloak camera bag, presented without comment. (Mostly.) [Cloakbags via Craziest Gadgets]

The W90 is Pentax's solid successor to the W80. It's got a new strap and LEDs around the lens for close illumination. It's also slightly more resistant, rated to 20 feet of water and 4-foot drops.

The new case is nicer than the old, and the innards seem pretty similar to the older model (which I liked). There's the 12mp sensor, 720p video recording and digital shake reduction as well as a 5x 28-140mm equivalent lens. I liked the old one, so I'll probably like the new one. (Although perhaps not quite as much as I like the new rugged Lumix TS2.) [Pentax]

Did you know that your run of the mill keyboard is basically a gigantic apartment complex for bacteria? Gross, no? Thankfully there's Cleankeys, a keyboard that bulldozes that shit and replaces it with a sleek, sterile touch-sensitive slab.

Wiping a standard keyboard with a disinfecting cloth kills about 5% of bacteria. Cleankeys claims the same test kills 99% of bacteria on their keyboard, simply because they have nowhere to hide.

The wireless keyboard trades actual keys for touch-sensitive ones, so in exchange for a much more sanitary experience you'll be giving up that satisfying clickity-clack you've grown accustomed to. It's intended for use at hospitals where keyboard-germs are a serious issue, though I'd imagine it might pique the interest of regular old germaphobes too.

The Cleankeys keyboard includes a trackpad for clicking about and uses patent-pending technology to keep it from registering keystrokes when you're just resting your hands on the thing. That way your doctor doesn't accidentally diagnose you with alsdfjasgyboxicyuixccccccccc.

A molded model costs $400 and a glass version will run you $50 more. No one said your campaign against germs was gonna be cheap. [Clean Keys Inc]

When on vacation and not wanting to tote around two laptops and three spare external drives, it's nice to have a gadget to dump and view photos on. Sanho's HyperDrive Album could be that gadget—if it weren't overpriced.

The HyperDrive Album is supposed to serve as a way of clearing out your memory cards and backing up your treasured moments without a computer's intervention. And it does just that with a 640GB capacity, 2GB per minute transfer speed, and a 4.8-inch display to double check that all went well. The trouble is that while the device's speed and capacity are tempting, the price range of $350 to $600 for 160GB to 640GB is tough to look past. [HyperShop]

The mini-giant Nintendo DSi XL, which is ALSO AN EREADER APPARENTLY, has just gotten a price: $190. It will be ripe for your purchasing on March 28.

Microsoft's Beijing office filed a patent yesterday for an unusual little device with two distinct functions: one side is an inductive charging pad, for, say, a mouse. The other features a tiny built-in display for displaying headlines or sports scores.

Sometimes mash-ups are just right, creating something that's greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes, well, they just plain remain the sum of those parts. This mashed-up peripheral falls somewhere in between.

Though the tiny screen doesn't look like it'll be a great boon to your data intake, it should suffice for signaling new Tweets or scrolling the occasional news item. Also nifty is that the device doesn't hog twice the power: a built-in accelerometer detects which side is in use and reduce the juice pumping to the opposite face.

After Microsoft's patent showed up on the internet yesterday, people were quick to connect it with months-old photographs of a prototype device given away at Microsoft Research Asia's 10th Anniversary celebration. Its name: the uPad. Ha!

So the name won't stick, and it's not exactly a multi-function powerhouse, but at least Microsoft's looking to make an inductive charging pad that's a little bit more than just an inductive charging pad. [Engadget]

Long ago, someone wrote about how Google is out to control your dog and marry your wife. I don't know how right he was about all that, but I certainly know that Google Voice is out to ruin relationships.

You see, reader Pascal wrote us about a recent experience he had with Google Voice's transcription feature:

I recently set up Google Voice on my wife's new Nexus One, and today I was leaving work late and left her a voice mail whilst there was some background noise in the rain admittedly.

My message was supposed to be something like " Hey babe, I've just left work, its about 7:15. I'll see you at home. Bye. "

Pictured above is what his wife saw as a result of a voice transcription mangling. It reads like a dirty confession about Pascal's upbringing, drinking habits, and age.

Of course I'm exaggerating about something like this ruining a relationship, but it could certainly create some temporary confusion. Especially if you call your girl to tell her about the "trucking stunt" you saw earlier in the day. [Thanks, Pascal!]

Not sure why it took $2,500 and a student design competition to come up with this, but Trevis Kurz has invented a smoke alarm you can change the batteries for with just a broomstick (and your arms). [Housewares]

The latest iPad/iPhone SDK not only makes it easier for developers to build universal iPad/iPhone apps, but it also appears to have support for a front-facing camera, zoom, camera flash, and video conferencing. Oh, and some snazzy accept/decline buttons.

Keep in mind that the iPad SDK is the same as the iPhone SDK at this time, so we can't really know which sections of the framework are intended for which device. Not to mention that Apple sometimes leaves some stray test conditions in the code and those may never make it into a final OS.

In other words? Let's not get too excited here. [MacRumors]

We love figuring out how things work, but in the case of this video—a bizarre musical performance involving disembodied holographic heads—it's probably better to just behold. OK, fine, speculate how they did it in the comments. [Make]

This is the most accurate, highest resolution true color image of planet Earth to date. And at 2048 x 2048 pixels, you should put it in your desktop background now. You can get America too:

Click on the images to get the high resolution version.

Oh, you are beautiful, you little blue marble you. [NASA via Twitter]

I get a lot of emails from cruel, annoying, persistent individuals and I sometimes don't know how to deal with them. If I had this little extra button in my email program though, boy-oh-boy-oh-boy. I'd be even more passive aggressive.

Maybe it's a good thing that I don't have this button after all. [Murray the Nut]