Back in February 2009 I wrote a post about a new lab feature that Google added to Gmail – multiple inboxes. After more than a year of using this great feature, I’d like to share how it helps me manage my e-mail (overload).

What is a Gmail multiple inboxes

Gmail multiple inboxes allows you to have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view. You can have up to 5 additional panels and set them to display labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want next to your inbox. To learn how to set it up read my previous post about it.

My views: main inbox, non-work, daily stuff and newsletters, to-dos and drafts

My views are separated mainly based on their importance and urgency levels. Note that about 90% of the e-mails I get are automatically directed to their view using Gmail’s filters. See a screenshot of my inbox below:

click the image to enlarge

main inbox – most important and urgent

The main inbox view contains e-mails that didn’t go to any other view. Hopefully, these are the most important and urgent to answer our deal with.

Non-work – important but less urgent

This view gets  e-mails from family members and friends,  messages I get on Facebook, Aardvark answers, calendar notifications and so on. The point here is that it’s OK to delay the answer to these e-mails if necessary. Usually I will get to them the same day  they were sent in, or one day later. But if I read them (or only their subject) and decide not to answer right away, they will stay out of the main inbox and will not interfere with more important e-mails.

Daily stuff and newsletters – Less important, not that urgent

Newsletters and other e-mails that are sent to me automatically, go to this view. It includes Linkedin updates, mailing lists I’m subscribe to (only if they don’t have an RSS feed, of course. If they did, they would go straight to Google Reader), meetup notifications, new twitter-follower announcements, and so on.

To-dos – not urgent

The To-Do view usually gets e-mails I sent myself (from work, from Google reader and the like). These are e-mails I want to deal with when I have some free time. I will usually empty this view once every few weeks.

Drafts

As the name imply, the drafts view contains  e-mails that I have started to write but did not send. It will usually be empty. I find it comfortable to have the draft e-mails in front of me when they exists, otherwise I tend to forget about them.

Got any questions about this post or you want to share your own e-mails processing methods? Feel free to share them with us in the comments.

Post from: ProductiveWise

How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload

I often find that Google isn’t quite tuned in to my search needs. Although I would rather that it only searched sites I know and trust, I often get results from sites that don’t look trustworthy or aren’t of high quality.

That is why I’ve created a custom search engine that only searches the best technology sites – The ‘Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs’ Search Engine.

Try it out

What’s in a custom search engine?

A Custom Search Engine (CSE) is a Google service that lets you create a search engine that only return results from sites you’ve predefined (create your custom search engine here). In the ‘Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs’ Search Engine I’ve added the following sites: Gigaom; Lifehacker; Readwriteweb; Mashable; Labnol.org; Makeuseof; Downloadsquad; and some other sites.

How to use it

You can use the custom search engine in one of the following ways: – You can drag the Top-Notch Search Engine into your Favorites and use it whenever you need it. – Or Add it as a gadget to your iGoogle. – Or embed it in your website using the following code:

<mce:script mce_src=”http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/cse/api/015720876466678303127/cse/rfvhyaxh8tk/gadget&synd=open&w=320&h=75&title=top+notch+technology+and+media+blogs&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js”></mce:script>

If you think I should add other websites to the search engine, please write them down in the comments below.

Post from: ProductiveWise

The ‘Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs’ Search Engine

Every day we read, hear, and see tens of web pages if not more. How do you process the useful and interesting information you find online? Do you send it to yourself via email? Do you star it in Google Reader or add tags? Or maybe you just rely on the good old brain to retrieve the right information at the right time?

To participate, write in the comments what are your online information processing methods.

Next month I’ll post a summary of all the answers.

image by kevindooley

Post from: ProductiveWise

Survey: How do You Process Online Information?

Social networks and social media tools let you find and communicate with people all over the world, even if you’ve never met or known them before. But sometimes, all you really need is the opinion, advice or support of the people closest to us. Status Search answers that need by letting you search your friends’ social status updates.

Recently launched in beta, Status Search is a little private search engine. It connects to your Facebook and Twitter accounts (no need to give away any passwords) and then lets you search the status updates of the people you follow, and also the photos, links and videos of your Facebook friends.

Can’t I just use Google?

If you think about it, many of your quests for information would be better answered, and sometimes can only be answered, by people you know or those who are in your close surroundings. Also, you have much better information about the reliability of these people and it is easier to approach them.

Let’s think of some realistic examples. It’s Saturday morning and you want to go with someone to the sea. Just type in ‘sea’ and you’ll find all the people who’ve written something about it – some are probably about to go there…

What about the new iPhone, should you buy it? Whose opinion would you rather hear, one of your Facebook friends or one from someone you’ve never met? Well, type in ‘iPhone’, and you’ll get a list of people that have related to it, and who would be glad to tell you more about it (see image below).

The list goes on and on, with anything in which your network is better then the whole web: book, vacation, beer, party, job and so on.

Find opinions about iPhone within your network

Can’t FriendFeed do that?

Well, not exactly. FriendFeed is indeed a great social aggregator, but it is more likely that you’ll find there your geeky friends. Status Search will also go through your family, childhood friends and non techie friends. That is – people who do not use FriendFeed to aggregate their feeds.

Advanced features

Much like Twittersheep, Status Search tells you what are the trending topics in your network (except it also includes Facebook). Look at the right side of the screen to see them.

Firefox users can use Status Search without going to the website, by adding it to Firefox Quick Search. Simply login and click ‘add to Firefox Quick Search’ at the lower right corner.

For the following month, you will be able to set up alerts in order to monitor subjects of interest within your network. Add an alert by clicking ‘alerts’ at the lower right corner. The Business model of Status search is built around people paying for alerts, so beginning next month this feature will no longer be free.

Status Search features

More is still to come as the developers say they are working on adding more networks to the service, such as LinkedIn and MySpace.

Have you tried Status search already? Tell us what you think about it in the comments!

Post from: ProductiveWise

Status Search – Search within Your Friends’ Status Updates

Since RSS was introduced, the number of sites people are able to read increased substantially. Try these six methods to find more sites to subscribe to and fill in the reading gap.

1. Stick to good things

Let’s say someone you followed on twitter, or a coworker from work sent a link to a useful article in PDF format. PDF documents on the web are disconnected from the site they are published on. That is, there is no navigation menu to put you in context. When you get this kind of document, remove the end of that document’s URL and visit the site that published it. Usually, you will find more interesting things in there.

For example – I got to a document called “Best Practices for Political Advertising Online” while I was reading a post through my RSS reader. That was its original URL:

http://www.ipdi.org/UploadedFiles/BannerAdReport4.pdf

I removed all the right part and stayed with http://www.ipdi.org , where I found more great publications.

2. Web apps you’re already using

Some sites that you are already using will be happy to recommend you more good stuff, based on your current preferences. For example, if you are using Digg - look at the “upcoming” tab. There you will find recommendation of more posts and stories that diggers like you liked.

If you are using Google Reader, click “browse for stuff” in the left hand side menu and you’ll find other feeds recommendations (visit that section once in a while to find new stuff).

3. Aggregating sites

Sites like LifeHacker and many others (actually, most blogs) often review and recommend others’ posts. Now, let’s say you have just read a post on LifeHacker that you like. Look at the bottom of the post and you’ll see a link to the original post and blog. Go to that blog and look for more posts, and don’t forget to subscribe to its RSS feed. I often subscribe to blogs I find through aggregating sites without even reading other posts – I just assume that if they’ve written one good post – they will do it again.

4. Search Alerts

Various sites offer you to set up alerts for searches that interest you. Search.twitter.com, for example, enables you to subscribe to an RSS feed of your search query on twitter. Subscribe to cool queries in topics that interest you and you’ll find new sites recommendation from other twitter users.

For example, you can subscribe to this query:

“social media” great filter:links

From now on you will get twitts that have the words “social media” and “great” in them and also refer to a website.

Other sites that provide search alerts are – Google alerts and GoogleBlogSearch and Trackle.

5. Great sites’ blogroll

Blogroll is a list of links to other blogs and websites that the blog author recommends on. Visit the sites in the blogroll of your favorite sites and on their blogroll as well. Do that especially when you want to enter or learn about a specific niche. That way you will find the top sites and opinion leaders. Here is ProductiveWise’s blogroll:

6. Recommendation engine

Some sites where created especially to help you find more sites. Upload your excising RSS subscription list to SuggestRss, and it will analyze your feeds and suggest new ones. that’s how the results look like:

Have you got other ways to find great sites? feel free to share them with us in the comments.

Post from: ProductiveWise

6 Ways to Find More Sites worth Subscribing to

in this post you will learn how to save time and get the most out of your RSS subscription list in Google reader. the method presented here include 4 steps and is easy to implement right away. it is based on finding the sources that fit you best and unsubscribing to those that do not.  just to get some  perspective, take a look at my Google Reader stats. I stay on top of 1,043 subscriptions using that method.

My google reader stats

1. Star worth-reading items

the first thing you should do is to star items you like.

Do it whenever you find something that you would define as worth reading; thing you would like to see more of (Star an item by clicking the star next to it in the reading list or by pressing ‘S’ in the keyboard).

2. Go to “trends” and compare your reading trends to your subscription tends

In the Upper left corner, press the “trends” link. This page presents all kind of statistics about your feeds reading behaviors.

Now, look at the two tables at the bottom of the page. The left table, Reading trends, presents your item reading trends for the last 30 days. The right table, subscription trends, presents your subscription trends for the last 30 days”.

Under “Reading trends,” click “starred.” You will now see a list of your subscriptions and the number of starred item each of them got (in the past 30 days only!).

3. Delete subscriptions that did not deliver the goods

look at the top of the “subscription trends” list. Relatively, the subscriptions in the top should also be at the top of “starred item” list. Why is that? Because the more items a source post, the more stars you would expect it to get. It does not have to be a perfect correlation. But, if you see a source in the right table that does not appear in the left table – erase it. This source post relatively meny items, but you do not find these items worth reading (i.e. it waste your time).

4. Repeat this process every few months

keep subscribing as much as you wish, but do not forget to clean your subscription list once in a while.

Example

In the example screenshot, you can see that the first, third, fifth and sixth, subscriptions (in the “subscription trends” list) are located at the top 20 starred items list (the arrows point to their specific location). But, the second, fourth and fifth subscription don’t even appear at the top 40 starred items list. Therefore, they should be deleted (as noted by the  the red delete next to them).

See  also Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users.

Post from: ProductiveWise

4 Steps to Optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader

Gmail lab feature “Multiple Inboxes” allows you to have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view. You can have up to 5 additional panels and set them to display labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want next to your inbox. Here is how to start using Multiple Inboxes and 7 great things you can do with it.

Enabling Multiple Inboxes and setting panels

First, to enable Multiple Inboxes go to settings > labs > enable multiple inboxes

Enable multiple inboxes

To set a pane (another inbox view) go to settings > Multiple inboxes.
Write a in one of the panes the search query you want to display.

Write your search query

Great, now that we know how to use multiple inboxes, here are a few possible uses for them.

Things you can do with Multiple Inboxes

1.   Merge other email accounts

You can manage all your email accounts in one place. set a rule (or “filter” as Gmail calls it) to forward incoming emails to your active Gmail mailbox. Now, set a filter to label these emails (for example: email2) and make them skip the inbox. Create a new pane to display that label using this query:

Label:email2

From now on you will see all the emails you get to your other accounts in once place. After you reply to an email, remove the label so it will stop sowing up.  (Remember that if you reply to a massage, the name and address that will appear in the “from” filed are those of the account you replied from from! you can set a custom “from” address to solve that problem)

2.   To-do list

Set a pane to display a labal called  ”to-do”.  Whenever you are assigned a task by email, label it as “to-do” and archive it.  That way, you can keep your inbox clean without missing any of your tasks or having to transfer them to external to-do list.

Use this query:

Label:to-do

3.   Advanced to-do list

If you get a lot of tasks by email, you might want to take us and advanced to-do list. It works the same as the previous example, except that you have three levels of urgency: level1 (most argent), level2, and level3 (the least argent).

Set up three panes using the following queries:

Label:level1

Label:level2

Label:level3

4.   Separate emails from important senders

Set a filter to assign the label “important” to emails from your most important clients. Create a pane to display that label, and Voilà! – Your top clients get top respond time.

Query:

Label:important

5.   Separate emails by source

Got a blog or website? are you an active participant in online forums? Set a filter to label massages people send you through the contact form in your website, comments to your posts, or replies to your questions in forums, and set a pane to display it.

That way, you can separate work related emails form your website, blog or forums related emails and have more control over the time you allocate to each of them. You can do the same to separate alerts form Facebook or LinkedIn.

Here are example queries you can use:

from:Facebook

from:linkedin

<Your Blog’s Name> comment

6.   Use Gmail as an ubiquitous notepad

Let’s say you want to document an idea you had, but also what it accessible from anywhere. Write it in a new email and save it. After saving a draft in Gmail, you can assign a label to it. Refresh the page and assign the label “notepad” to the draft.

Set a pane with the following search query:

label:drafts AND label:notepad

And there you have it – your document is available whenever you can access your email. keep editing and saving that draft. As long as you do not send it to anyone, it’ll keep serving you as a portable notepad.

7.   Turn Gmail into a mini playlist

People send you songs by email? Set a pane with the following query and enjoy your songs every time you open your inbox:

.mp3 has:attachment

These are my ideas of how to use Multiple Inboxes. Have other ides? Tell me in the comments and I’ll add thme to the list!

More about multiple inboxes

• Organize Multiple Inboxes in Gmail by Wired How-To Wiki.
• Google Group for Multiple Inboxes in Google groups.
• How to use Gmail’s ‘Multiple Inboxes’ for extra Gmail accounts by Webware – CNET.
• The annoucment fo the new feature by the original Gmail blog

Post from: ProductiveWise

7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes

The idea is simple – your RSS reader (hopefully) contains hundreds of your favorite sites. Why not use its search capability before turning to Google or other search alternatives?

The rational

The search option in your RSS reader searches through all your subscription. Put differently, you have a private search engine to search the best sites on the net (why else would you subscribe to them?). Admittedly, it won’t always be the best solution, but I would keep it in mind when searching for something. After all, a recommendation on a software or a site from Lifehacker‎ , MakeUseOf, Mashable or ReadWriteWeb could be better than just finding a site through Google.
 

Example

A couple of days ago I used this method to find a software that could control my CPU fan speed. Although searching Google and Donwloads.com did provide usable results, I was not satisfied with them, and eventually used a software that had been recommended in a post I found using my RSS reader.

Post from: ProductiveWise

Before Google – Use Your RSS Reader as a Search Engine

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a new way to surf the web, which puts the user in the center rather than the sites he surfs. It increases the efficiency of using the internet and multiple the number of sites read and with less time ‎spent. Read this short guide to familiarize yourself with this tool and get started easily.‎

‎What is RSS

Put simply, RSS means that a website has the ability to update its readers ‎with new content it publishes. It does so by using a certain code structure that allows a ‎user-side program (called “RSS reader”) to read its content. This new content is the site’s ‎feed.‎

Why is it good

With RSS, there is no need to look for new content in your favorite ‎websites. Instead, this content comes to you. So now, Instead of going to ten different ‎sites just to find out that half of them have not changed, you only need to open your RSS ‎reader and see the new content from the half that have.‎

RSS helps coping with today’s ‎information overload by enabling users to scan through hundreds of updates from ‎hundreds of sites in minutes. I, for example, scanned through ‎‎7,873 updates in 467 sites ‎just in the past 30 days. It ‎dramatically improves your web reading efficiency by preventing the need to go through ‎different sites, waiting for them to load, watching advertisements, rereading things ‎already read and so on.‎

How to use it

Here is how to get started:

1. Get an RSS reader. I ‎recommend Google Reader, but you can use any one of dozens of RSS readers available, ‎such as these: www.blogs.com, www.newsgator.com, ‎www.netvibes.com, ‎www.bloglines.com. Some web browsers (like Firefox and ‎Maxthon) as well as Outlook ‎‎2007 has it built in.‎
2. Subscribe to feeds. This sign (or alike) indicates that the site is RSS ‎compatible. Click it to be directed to that site’s feed. Usually you will only need to click a ‎button to automatically add  the site to your reader. Sometimes, you’ll need to subscribe ‎manually by copying the feed address from the address bar and pasting it into your RSS ‎reader.‎ ‎
3. Read your feeds. Whenever you feel like, open your RSS reader to read ‎new content form your favorite websites. If you didn’t read them for a period of time – it’ll ‎just be waiting there for you, so that nothing is missed.‎

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How To Use RSS – Beginners Guide