The Gmail team at Google has been busy lately, haven’t they?
Last week, Google introduced the Multiple Inboxes Lab, which works for both @gmail.com and Google Apps addresses. This lets you sub-divide your inbox into multiple views; check out Simon’s Multiple Inboxes screencast from yesterday for an overview. I didn’t enable the feature for a few days, thinking that I already had a pretty good system for getting to Inbox Zero and staying on top of what needed to get done. Turns out that multiple inboxes makes a good system even better.
You can get quite creative with the panes you have set up in your Multiple Inboxes beyond the default is:starred or is:unread that it comes with out of the box. Here are two inbox panes I’ve configured that are helping me stay organized.
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We’re living in a cross-platform and cross-browser world. Most web workers aren’t one-browser-fits-all.
I have two computers: a MacBook Pro and an iMac. Even though Firefox 3 is my default browser on both computers, I regularly have at least three different browsers open to do what I need to do in my work day. Certain sites only work in Internet Explorer, while others simply behave better in Chrome or Safari. Other sites are bookmarked in Safari solely for the iPhone.
Foxmarks has long been the free go-to utility for syncing bookmarks between multiple instances of Firefox. I’ve long preferred Foxmarks to Mozilla Weave which, while it syncs more information between Firefox browsers, I’ve found to be less reliable. For non-Firefox browsers, I’ve had to use my.foxmarks.com to access sites using IE or Safari that are bookmarked in Firefox.
No more. Last week, Foxmarks introduced syncing for both IE and Safari (I can’t wait for a Chrome version).
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For about 40 minutes this morning, Google searches were useless. Every result could “harm your computer” with no working link to result. It was, by Google’s explanation, a stupid human error. All is well now.
Less than an hour of inconvenience and the incident was over, but it did show me just how much I depend on Google search. Even though I’m aware of other search engines, I know little about them and rarely, if ever, use anything else in my everyday searching. Judging by the stats on all the sites I manage, I’m not alone.
As fate would have it, during that 40 minute downtime I had to find something. I switched over to Yahoo search. Why? It was the next one listed in my Firefox search box.
Because “it was there” is not a very good reason to use a search engine, so I ask you: If Google wasn’t available, which search engine would you use? Why?
WebWorkerDaily began in September 2006 as GigaOM founder Om Malik was building his new company from a table at Starbucks.
Now, just about everyone who earns income is a “web worker” at least for some part of their day.
To keep up with this ever-changing working world, and so we may continue to be a go-to resource for those who work in the cloud, we’ve got some staff changes to announce. We’ll be saying goodbye to Mike Gunderloy as Senior Writer, and hello to Simon Mackie as the new Editor of WWD. I’ll be stepping down as Editor to concentrate on writing for the site.
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We’ve been worried about GrandCentral for a while now. The free service that promised “one number for life” started with such promise. And then Google bought the company and the technology way back in July 2007…and they left it to rot. No new invites. Existing users have seen the service languish in maintenance mode since the acquisition. No updates. No new features or improvements. No word from the developers. Shame.
This morning, those of us still using a GrandCentral number are logging in to our accounts to see this:
An expired SSL certificate is not a big deal. Just accept the expired certificate because you trust the site and move on. But that’s not the point. It’s yet more evidence that if the GrandCentral folks are still at Google, they’re working on something else. The GrandCentral support forum is filled with questions and problems, and there has been no official answer to anything.
The challenge for those of us left behind is number portability, or lack thereof. I like my GrandCentral number. It’s easy to remember. It’s in the area code I want it to be. I would gladly use another reasonably-priced service if I could take the number with me (I do use PhoneFusion for my local contacts). Yes, GrandCentral has always been “beta” and was never meant to be used for mission-critical contacts. But it’s a little difficult to “test” a service like GrandCentral without giving the number out to contacts, isn’t it?
It’s about time for Google to do the right thing. Shut GrandCentral down once and for all, and give us a way to port our numbers elsewhere.
This morning, we published an article by a guest contributor. Approximately 30 minutes after the post was published, we were made aware that the freelance contributor had already submitted and published the exact same article on another site. As soon as the duplication was brought to our attention, we pulled the article.
We apologize to our readers for the error.
Focused on the cloud as we are, we haven’t paid much attention to Marketcircle’s Daylite. It’s a desktop PIM/CRM (Mac only) and it’s not cheap ($149).
Now the company is getting ready to introduce Daylite Touch, a companion product that allows for over-the-air sync of calendar, tasks and project information to an iPhone or iPod Touch. Might make it worth a more serious look, especially for those looking for a way to ditch Exchange or MobileMe.
Even though Daylite Touch won’t be released for a few months yet (targeting Q1 2009), The Apple Blog will be getting a look at the new app at next this week’s Macworld Expo.
On behalf of all the WebWorkerDaily writers, we’d like to wish all of you who celebrate a very Merry Christmas. If today isn’t your holiday, we hope you are relaxing and enjoying time with friends and family. Even web workers deserve a break for a few days.
See you on Monday.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
