On Thursday, the GMail Labs application was launched by Google, in the company’s attempt to identify some of the preferences of its service’s users.

Gmail Labs consists of a series of experimental features out of which users only choose to keep those that they like. In the end, the most popular ones are to be implemented in Google’s core products.   

This is the first time the company has used such a large scale testing process; up to this point, all tests have been oriented towards the feedback received from a small number of invited visitors.

Out of the 13 new features made available this week, some are a bit more interesting than the others.

The one called Superstars provides users with a set of customizable icons that can be used for the differentiated marking of messages, depending on their subject, nature or sender. The yellow star is alone no more, as colored stars, exclamation points and question marks have been added to the list of options.

GMail Labs also comes with a feature called Email Addict, that adds a "Take a break" link in the upper right corner of the explorer. The name is quite graphical, as this is exactly what the link does, it lets users take a break. Once the button is clicked on, the Gmail page turns gray and the chat status is automatically set to invisible. Everything is blocked for the next 15 minutes, time that should be used for anything else but computer-related actions.

Of course, if something very important should happen, a simple reload of the page will make the message disappear. Take your time and examine the entire lot and help Google improve its service.