Google has released a new Gmail Labs feature that lets you preview Google Maps within Gmail and Google Buzz.

"I often receive emails containing addresses in them — where to meet for dinner, the location of my friend's new apartment, etc. To find out where these places actually are, I have to copy the address, open up Google Maps, and paste it in," says Google software engineer Mark Knichel, explaining the motivation for creating this feature.

Now users can enable "Google Maps previews in mail" from the Gmail Labs tab under "settings", and when they receive an address or a Google Maps link in an email, a preview will appear containing an interactive Google Map of the location.

When a user pastes a Google Maps link into the post box in Google Buzz, it will automatically fetch an image preview of the location, and you can associate that with your post.

At this point, the Gmail feature only works with US addresses, but Google says it's working on making the feature available for addresses around the world. Any Google Maps URL will work.