Does GMail Need Folders?
Submitted on June 27th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Email
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Techcrunch today mentioned the fact that google docs now has folders and suggested that logically that gmail should integrate folders next. The comments after the article there do a pretty good job showing the strong feelings people have regarding folders.
Two things struck me odd about the debate however…
First, if google feels so strongly that labels and tags >> folders, then why add them to google docs. If google no longer feels strongly, then why not add them to gmail? At best, their current decision seems inconsistent.
Second, why would you not want google to add folders? If you don’t use folders, then don’t use them. I do not think anybody actually believes that gmail would abandon the label/tags love. Many folder-philes would convert over to gmail if their beloved crutch was available. Google obviously has pretty item-dragging-folder code available now. Why not introduce it into gmail too? Maybe they will…
Using labels in gmail is very similar to folders. Create a label, select what emails you want to have that label, and then archive those emails. If you want to see them, you can click that label; otherwise, they are hidden from sight (almost like a folder even!)
What you can’t do with labels is drag and drop a message to categorize it. Many people physically sort their email like they sort their snail mail. There is some satisfying about dropping an email in a folder. It gives a sense of completion for that little task. With labels, you are more tempted to do groups of emails at once.
I believe a hybrid would work very well. If you could drag and drop emails into a label and it was disappear like a folder, both problems solved! People could still tag/label the old way… and folder-philes would be introduced to the power of labels.
The Joys of Jott
Submitted on May 10th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Email and Productivity
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A big part of “Getting Things Done” is the getting stuff out of your head and into a trusted system. Nowadays I don’t leave my bedroom in the morning to let the dogs out without paper and a pencil or pen. This works well most of the time, but there are times that I am walking or driving and writing isn’t easy. I’ve been looking for a good way to get around this for months now and finally found it a little while ago. It’s a new service called Jott. Jott allows me to dial a number and leave a voice message. That message is then transcribed and can be sent to me, or if needed as an email to a contact. To many people this may seem a bit silly and overly connected, but as a capture tool it has been great. The service is free (for now at least) and does a pretty good job of transcribing what you say. In addition to handling words you can also spell out something, which I thought could be useful with a little scripting to send commands to a unix computer.
The new Hotmail is pretty impressive
Submitted on May 8th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Email and Services
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A long time ago, the only real e-mail options available were AOL and Hotmail (and maybe Earthlink). As the web expanded, many new services have cropped up and replaced these as the new kings of e-mail, particularly Google’s GMail and the recently redesigned Yahoo! Mail. Not to be left behind, Microsoft has spent the past year or two beefing up its Hotmail offering and has finally relaunched it as Windows Live Mail. What they have come up with is definitely a step in the right direction.
.Mac Webmail goes AJAX
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and The Mac Side and Services
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Last month, we reported that a new .Mac Webmail look was coming pretty soon. Well, the time has come and Apple has finally relaunched its commercial webmail service and I must say, it is definitely a huge improvement though not necessarily perfect. Check out a little more information over at Micro Persuasion, as well as a few more images in case you don’t have access to a .Mac account.
Fight spam with SpamAssassin
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and Resources and Security
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Spam is a huge problem affecting anyone with an e-mail address. Some of us have managed to keep our inboxes relatively free, while others have had the misfortune at times of receiving hundreds of spam messages a day. If you’re in the latter group, you may want to have a look at SpamAssassin and this guide over at Web Design Discussions entitled How to Stop Email Spam with SpamAssassin. The whole process is relatively simple as SpamAssassin will do most of the work. The one catch is that you must be able to have access to your e-mail server, so if you only use a free e-mail account, this may not be of much use.
Access your e-mail on your phone w/ Flurry
Submitted on September 27th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and Productivity and Portables and Services
No. of comments (2)
Flurry is a pretty cool new service/application which helps you bring all your countless e-mail accounts and favorite news headlines to your cellphone. Signing up for an account is free, and you’ll receive a text message with a link to download the application. After you’ve set that up, you can access any number of POP mail servers with almost no configuration. You’ll have access not just to your e-mail, but also any contacts from that service, and Flurry will even let you view certain attachments like photos. From my tests so far, the application is pretty fast, but be sure to have signed up for a data plan from your cellphone service provider or your next bill will not be pretty to look at.
By the way, my favorite e-mail service, Goowy, now supports Flurry, so you can access the Flash-only site in HTML glory via your cellphone as well.
New .Mac on the way
Submitted on September 27th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and The Mac Side and Services
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I’m not sure how many of you still have a .Mac account, but if you do, you might be happy to know that Apple is finally updating the service with a spiffy new look, and some new features like drag and drop support, smart refreshing, message flagging and more. Get all the information at the official .Mac site.
Gmail + Growl
Submitted on April 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Reviews and Email and Productivity and The Mac Side and Software
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I came across this link on del.icio.us. It’s a gMail notifier through Growl which is another notifying program which you can customize to notify you of any changes in any program your running. Unfortunately we all PC users can’t use this. It’s only for Mac users!!! I don’t have a Mac so I can’t even test out Growl or even Gmail+Growl. Someone test it out and tell me how it is. I’m hearing some rave reviews on it, so give it a try.
Growl is a simple tool that allows applications to send out notifications to your screen. Notifications appear as small windows with a bit of text and an icon. Gmail+Growl works inside of Gmail notifier to send Growl notifications whenever new mail is received.
In the case of Gmail+Growl’s notifications, the icon is that of the sender’s Address Book entry and the text is the subject and an excerpt of the message. However, Growl notifications can look very different depending on which Growl display you use.
Quote via wafflessoftware.net
GTalk on GMail
Submitted on February 13th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and Productivity and Services
No. of comments (4)
I’ve been hearing all over the net that Google would implement GTalk service into Gmail window. They’ve finally rolled it out over the weekend and it’s pretty slick! All in AJAX coding and runs very smoothly. On your left side under your Filters there is a Quick Contacts bar which acts as your “buddy lists”. If you see someone on, you would see a little green dot. And to message them you just double+click the name and a small chat box pops up inside the current window on the bottom right corner. It is stuck to the bottom of the page, so if you try scrolling it won’t scroll up or down. It also has a minimize button to hide it away when reading emails. It’s not something you would use all the time like AIM or MSN messenger, but it’s a great alternative and a quick way to contact someone with out logging into 3rd party clients. By the way, you can turn on an Auto-save chat feature in settings for Gmail to automatically save your chat history in to a seperate category in Gmail.
*sidenote* Not everyone will have the new GTalk feature in their Gmail box just yet. I’ve been reported that some folks still don’t have the new service.
Tips for hiding your e-mail address
Submitted on February 2nd, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and Security
No. of comments (1)
I found an article via digg with some great tips for hiding your e-mail address. While we’ve discussed many of them on TipMonkies before, it’s still a great read. Some of the obfuscation methods include encryption, using images or Flash, rendering it with JavaScript, and more. My favorite method still remains a well-coded contact form 
[tags]e-mail, security, spam, filtering[/tags]
