stoutpirate

If you’re like me, you live inside of Gmail and deal with a neverending stream of information.  Having your Gmail properly set up with labs can greatly improve the efficiency of dealing with, categorizing, and prioritizing the emails in your inbox.  I have figured out a system that works for me, and I would like to share it with you.

First of all, this guide requires that you have a few labs enabled.  To manage your Gmail labs, click here and read along with my guide.

These are the labs that I have turned on, in the order they appear on the labs page.  I recommend you turn on all the labs I have list, those bolded will be detailed below. Please don’t be alarmed at the size of this list. Everything on it is quite useful.

1. YouTube previews in mail
2. Picasa previews in mail
3. Flickr previews in mail
4. Yelp previews in mail
5. Google Voice player in mail
6. Google Docs previews in mail
7. Message translation
8. Quick Links
9. Superstars
10. Pictures in chat
11. Fixed width font
12. Custom keyboard shortcuts
13. Advanced IMAP Controls
14. Default ‘Reply to all’
15. Quote selected text
16. Navbar drag and drop
17. Forgotten Attachment Detector
18. Mark as Read Button
19. Go to label
20. Inbox preview
21. Multiple Inboxes
22. Google Search
23. Create a Document
24. Filter import/export
25. Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat
26. Authentication icon for verified senders
27. Send & Archive
28. Undo Send
29. Title Tweaks
30. Don’t forget Bob
31. Got the wrong Bob?
32. Green Robot!
33. Hide read labels.
34. Mark Unread From Here
35. Google Calendar gadget
36. Google Docs gadget
37. Add any gadget by URL

My favorites are the Superstars and Multiple Inboxes, the interaction of which is beautiful.  The Superstars allow you to apply different types of stars to your emails and Multiple Inboxes give you quick access to information that is likely to be referenced, such as emails you have recently starred. My favorite additional inbox is what I call the Freshbox, it simply displays my unread emails.  Also of great usage are the Quick Links, which provide easy access to saved searches.  I will explain how I’ve set up these labs, starting with the Superstars.

You can manage which stars are enabled and in which order on the General Gmail Settings page. Simply drag and drop them.  I use:

for emails with INFORMATION that I may want to refer to in the future.

for emails that I need to act on ASAP

for emails with DATES like meetings, appointments, parties

for SPECIAL emails that I want to want to save for a rainy day

for delegated emails, stuff I’ve sent out that needs to be returned to me

These stars allow me to quickly prioritize what flows through my inbox.  Not a replacement for labels whatsoever, these stars work in conjunction.  For instance, I can click on my work label and see which emails are set with a red bang.  Similarly in the work label I can quickly spot emails with important documents by the info tag.

Now, the grandaddy lab: Multiple Inboxes.  What this lab does is allow you to create additional inboxes. These inboxes can be placed on top of, which I prefer, or to the right of or below the regular inbox. These additional inboxes show the results of a search query that you specify in your Multiple Inboxes settings.  These search queries could be anything you like.  I have mine set to show the Freshbox, Superstars and Chats.  The parameters I used to set up are as follows:

Pane 0: Query: is:unread in:inbox -in:buzz Title: Freshbox

Pane 1: Query: l:^ss_cr Title: ASAP

Panel 2: Query: l:^ss_sr Title: Dates

Panel 3: Query: l:^ss_cb Title: Reference

Panel 4: Query: label:chat Title: Chatbox

Have the maximum page size set to show 10 conversations per page for the new inbox panes and have them set above the inbox.

One last important thing left to set up are the Quick Links.  Once you’ve enabled this lab a widget will appear on the left-side of your Gmail.  After performing any search in Gmail, clicking ‘Add Quick Link’ will save the current search in a handy link with a name of your choosing.  So, do a search for l:^ss_sp and create a quick link for your special, rainy-day emails.  Likewise make a search for l:^ss_co and create a quick link for the emails you’re waiting on.  Here’s a quick link to all the files you’ve emailed from:me;has:attachment.  For a complete list of the search terms for superstars, see this lifehacker article on Gmail GTD that initially inspired me.

If you haven’t heard all the buzz about facebook the past couple weeks, listen up.  Facebook just changed the way they handle privacy.  There are no more regional networks.  Unless you restrict specific things, they will be indexed by Google.  In this post you can learn how to  setup your facebook for max visibility while retaining a necessary amount of privacy.

The levels of limitation are: Friends, Friends of Friends, Friend lists, or Everyone.

I’ve organized my settings by section, which you can access by clicking on the links.

http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=profile
About me -> Education {Only Friends}
Photos and videos {Dudes}
Posts {only friends}

Dudes is a friend list excluding certain family members and people from work that I’d rather not see my pictures.

http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=contact
IM -> Current Address {Only Friends}
Website -> Add me as a friend {Everyone}
Send me a message {Only Friends}

http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=applications&field=friends_share
Status Updates, Online Presence, Website, Education and work, My birthday, My hometown {checked}

I allow anyone to search for me.  But, if you want you can turn this off and be hidden.  Lastly, to block people go here.

There are many benefits to using google voice as an a personal digital operator.   First and foremost, screening calls. Your personal operator is going to ask everyone with a restricted number to state their name. If you want, this can happen to anyone that calls who isn’t one of your Google Contacts.

Your personal operator can also serve certain people to specific phones and present custom voicemail greetings. These voicemails will be transcribed and sent to your phone as a text message and emailed to you.

The history of your phone calls and voicemails will be archived at http://google.com/voice. Having GvoiceMail is handy. This personal operator is so good at handling calls that you can switch the phone you are using in the middle of a call.  Say you walk home while on a business call: tell the person on the other end to hold, then you press press * and hang up, your home phone rings and you answer it. Sounds too good to be true.

Want in?  One doesn’t ask for an invite to google voice, he signs up.   I should also mention that this service is free and Google provides you with a free number.

Google is using speech recognition to index political videos on youtube. With a search, one can easily find what a politician has to say about a particular subject. http://labs.google.com/gaudi/

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After meticulously organizing my iTunes Music Library, I have found playlists to be extremely handy—static playlists as well as something relatively new, smart playlists.  For those that are unfamiliar, smart playlists build their contents based on variables and are live updating.  What this means is that you are going to have amazing playlists.

Let me show you how to import your favorite songs you haven’t heard in the last week, month, or how to aggregate your holiday music, tracks with missing tags and your most listened to tracks with the least number of skips.

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In the past, students enrolled in courses by filling out a form.  I suppose the fax machine was the next step.  But now students are filling up an online shopping cart, on websites, of their classes for next semester.  Naturally, this is a highly stressful time, so the system should have a user centered design.

I have experienced two of these registration systems.  I found the first system quite pleasant and intuitive; the second, not so much.  Babson College has a superior course catalog/registration system to SUNY Purchase.

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Conversations on the Internet have a certain flavor to them that exceeds limitations of the normal world. The participants do not have to be in the same room, let alone the same country. It is because of this phenomenon that we have a fusing of cultures with the capability of pooling knowledge together. This seemingly infinite array of knowledge is indexed and searchable.

These participants can keep track of one another through social networking enabled websites, which informs one another of interests, relationships, microblogs, and blogs. Conversations here closely resemble informal social interactions, similar to a party atmosphere. This is a pleasant contrast to the focused, educated, and moderated conversations that are ever so quickly building the infinite data pool.

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Regarding the new the facebook layout, what do you not like about it?  Is it too cluttered?  How so?  Do you really need to see everyone’s new facebook pic of the day?  I feel that facebook deserves this update.  Many complain about how disorganized the new layout is, that they can’t find anything.. well what are you trying to find?  Is there a special group of friends that you want to track everything about?  What are you looking for that you can’t find?  Let me explain how facebook has changed and how to use friend lists.

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Most articles I come across are lost in a sea of advertisements and bad formatting.  While advertising surely has its place, I feel that it is unfair to distract the user when they have committed 5 minutes out of their day to read what you have to say.  Perhaps I am a glutton for simplicity, but I prefer being able to finish an article in one go, rather than having my eyes darting all over a page.

Luckily for people easily distracted like myself, some javascript genius has figured out how to automatically pull the article content out of a page and display it in a customizable, easy to read overlay, toggled by a bookmarklet.

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Currently, our power grid is operated by people.  Mechanical switches.  Telephones.  Blackouts are unknown until someone calls it in.  The sources of our power are centrally located, single locations providing power to vast territories.  Having such serious power centrally located is extremely dangerous.

The recent major blackouts on the East Coast and Silicon Valley in the West Coast of the United States are examples of how this system is reaching its maximum capacity and is failing on us.

President Obama has called for an overhaul of our grid and a transition to an automated, widely distributed energy delivery system.  In this system the electricity will flow both ways.  Allow me to explain why this is important and how it works.

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