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Google's Analyst Day featured a discussion of an update to the Gmail service, with some tweaks to make it more responsive and useful. Many Gmail users have decided to find improvements to the service without waiting for Google to roll them out. The 'Better Gmail' extension for Firefox, featured on Lifehacker, rolled in a number of Greasemonkey scripts to make one highly useful Gmail add-on.

Gmail is still in beta, and in many ways looks as it did when it debuted. Google has since added a primitive chat feature, increased storage, and other little goodies.

Philipp Lenssen picked up on some forthcoming updates mentioned at the Google Analyst Day event. Gmail users may see a "Newer Version" link at the top of the Gmail screen; it's the road to trying out what's new.

Speed should be the noticeable improvement, courtesy of back-end JavaScript rewrites. An updated Contacts list will benefit from this as well.

Lenssen also noted how users can select a photo from Picasa Web Albums when adding a picture for a contact. "Skipping the hard disk might seem like no big deal but we may see more and more of this in the online OS/online office," he said.

Another step towards the on-demand office suite from anywhere sounds promising. But for those who don't want to wait for Gmail's newer version, we can recommend Better Gmail as a nice add-on for Firefox fans.