Web Worker Daily

We’ve covered many third-party Google Calendar hacks and add-ins in the past, but earlier this week Google announced the launch of Calendar Labs. Calendar Labs works similarly to Gmail Labs,  offering “official” experimental hacks and extensions to Google Calendar. You can access it from your Settings page, which now sports a brand-new Labs tab.

Read the rest of this entry »

After reading Aliza’s post about how she organizes her email, my biggest piece of advice in using Gmail is to embrace the organizational chaos. I’ve been using Gmail for over three years, and I use it as my primary email. I have a dozen or so email addresses, but they all get forwarded to Gmail. I use it as my central inbox for everything, so my email volume in that one inbox is high.

Prior to Gmail, I used Outlook for email, which has a less-than-optimal search capability. In other words, if I didn’t file an email into the proper folder, my chances of ever finding that email again were slim. When I first started using Gmail, I brought this filing behavior with me, and I obsessively tagged and labeled everything. I ended up with a bunch of labels that I probably didn’t need. At some point, I realized that Gmail’s search facility is so amazing that labeling and filing every email became unnecessary. Now, for most emails, I read them, respond if necessary, and archive. All without bothering to give them labels.

Now, to contradict myself. I also make extensive use of Gmail’s filtering capabilities to automatically add labels to some email. However, I reserve this capability for the really important stuff, like client email — you know, the people who pay me money to do stuff. I want to keep careful track of those emails. Read the rest of this entry »

I love Gmail. With it I can flag emails and sort my mail into folders, have multiple email accounts forwarded to one Gmail account, and it has great calendar and map integration. I have my email with me wherever I go: I can check it on my iPhone, on my MacBook Air, or on a friend’s computer. I also have elaborate auto filtering and tagging systems set up to make sure all my client emails stay sorted. Oh, did I mention offline mode? I can have all my emails downloaded to my computer so I can see them even when I am not online.

Recently I discovered a new Labs feature that makes me love Gmail even more: the “Send & Archive” button. Read the rest of this entry »

Gmail Labs has been busy lately, it would seem, and has introduced a number of new features for the web-based email service that have me, once again, considering going back to it (I generally use my MobileMe account, because it allows me to sync across my Macs and my iPhone and iPod Touch). These new features are generally useful for anyone, but they can also add to a web worker’s productivity, especially if you use your Gmail account for both private and professional correspondence.

First up, there’s a feature I know I’ve wished I had many, many times. And generally, when I found myself wanting it, my career was somehow involved. Basically, Gmail now has a take-back button for undoing a “Send” command. It actually holds the email for five seconds after you’ve pressed the send button, so it can’t actually reach out and steal a sent email back from the receiving server, but that five seconds is often all I need to realize that I’ve forgotten an important attachment in a client-facing email. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Google added a new Labs feature to Gmail, Multiple Inboxes. I put together a quick screencast introduction to show you how it works:

Have you tried Multiple Inboxes? What do you think?