Summer is when new apps graduate out of Google's labs and beta programs into the real world.Google announced Tuesday that it would shift its Tasks feature out of Google Labs into a standalone feature. Tasks is the first feature to graduate from the Labs site, according to a Google spokesman.
Google is also announcing a new tool that will make it easier to switch from Lotus Notes to Google Apps, following an effort with Fairchild Semiconductor last month, in conjunction with moving several of its Google Apps, including Gmail, out of beta.
Many of Google's products began life as beta projects or components of its Labs offerings, the latter of which has served as an incubator for several projects created by Google's "20-percent" program, which encourages its employees to develop their own, self-managed projects. At this point, Google's highest-profile Labs effort is Gmail Labs, which houses efforts to access Gmail offline, and preview services like YouTube and Picasa directly inside an email.
On Tuesday, Google also announced Calendar Labs, a Labs section for its Google Calendar portion of Google Apps. One of the more interesting portions for the Labs announcement, according to the Google spokesman, is that Google is releasing a Google Calendar API to let developers add on features and gadgets into the Calendar platform. Google usually releases APIS to let developers take Google information and integrate it into third-party apps; Google's approach with its Calendar Labs is the opposite.
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