One of the reasons that I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard was the new ability to sync the Mac OS X Address Book with Gmail’s or Google Apps’ Contacts. This function has been around for a while, but for some reason, it was previously available only to iPhone users.

I really appreciate well-produced synchronization, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get right. It seems that software developers can never quite agree on how to organize contact information, so everyone’s databases are different. For a long time, for instance, one of the major makers of financial management software didn’t even create city, state and ZIP/postal code fields, opting instead for an address field where all of that information was run together, making the data very difficult to parse.

So I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Snow Leopard’s “sync with Google” function, especially because I have a fairly large address book, and most of its entries have photos associated with them, something that very few sync solutions even try to support.

With a little planning, you can easily sync your address book with Google. Here are some tips — some of which are also applicable to other synchronization systems, such as the one available for synchronizing data between Google and Thunderbird’s Address Book on a PC.

1. Clean up your contacts. It’s easy to get sloppy about how we enter information, so it’s worth looking through your Address Book to make sure that your data is accurate and well-formatted. Putting first names and middle initials together in the first name field can produce amusing results, as can forgetting to check the “company” box for such entries — I had one card titled “Daily, Web Worker”! I also discovered a bunch of messed-up entries that had apparently been caused by previous experiments with sync software and services. One such service must have been European, because I found lots of entries where the postal code preceded the city, as is standard in France, but which isn’t correct in North America or the UK. Be careful with international phone numbers, too. If you don’t precede country codes with the plus (+) sign, some programs will try to format the numbers in North American format.
2. Back up your data! At the least, use Address Book’s Export function, and save a backup in Address Book Archive format. If you want added safety, use a program like Address Book to CSV Exporter to save your data in CSV format, which can be read by lots of other programs.
3. If possible, don’t try to sync two sources with different data, at least for an initial synchronization. You’ll get best results if you can clean up your data in the Mac Address Book, and completely erase all your contacts in Google. However, if that’s not possible, the charmingly named Conflict Resolver will spring into action during the sync, and give you the choice of which records to keep.

Once you’re ready, enter your account information into Address Book’s Preferences. Go to Accounts, check the “Synchronize with Google” option, click “Configure,” and enter your Gmail or Google Apps email address and password. That’s really all there is to it. I’ve found that you need to be logged out of the Google web interface for the sync to start. You might also need to make a change to your Mac Address Book in order for the sync program to become active, but once it begins, the process is surprisingly fast.

The Mac-to-Google sync system does have limitations. It can sync with one Gmail or Google Apps account at a time, and although it offers sync with Yahoo Mail’s contact lists, I’ve never been able to get Yahoo sync to work. Sync is also available with Apple’s MobileMe service, but I haven’t tried that.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with the results, and am happy that I can have immediate access to my contact information in several different places. As far as I’m concerned, one can never have too many backups of this vital data.

How do you keep your contact data synchronized?

I spent the weekend updating my Mac to OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard. It went well, thanks to a little planning and a lot of patience. Windows users are facing the decision as to whether and when to upgrade to Windows 7. Here are some questions to consider when you’re faced with an operating system upgrade.

Is It Worth It?

I’m generally not in a hurry to rush out and buy the latest and greatest OS. It’s always worth reading the reviews, and following reports of bugs. In this case, it’s been a while since Snow Leopard came out, and there’s already been a .1 maintenance release that seems to have dealt with most of its known issues.

Snow Leopard is, by all accounts, not that heavy on new features, but it’s also relatively inexpensive. Most of its advantages are under the hood, with 64-bit processing and better memory management. But one feature caught my eye: the ability to synchronize the Address Book (including pictures) with Gmail or Google Apps — a feature that’s been around for a while, but which, for some reason, was previously only available to iPhone users.

Can Your Hardware Handle It?

This is an important consideration. Windows, in particular, is notorious for increasing its memory and disk space requirements with every release. And with computer prices falling all the time, it’s often tempting to just buy a new computer with the new OS pre-installed. But I decided that my Mac could work with the upgrade.

Is Your Software Compatible?

Planning for an upgrade made me realize just how much outdated and unnecessary software I had accumulated on my hard drive. Luckily, a couple of sites have compiled lists of what works, and what doesn’t, under Snow Leopard. I looked at several of them; I found this one particularly useful. It even has an application called SnowChecker that can be used to find what programs you have, and display information about their compatibility.

When you discover programs that are listed as incompatible, you can either find an upgrade (sometimes a beta version), switch to an alternative app that is compatible, or decide that you don’t need the functionality it provides.

Do You Have Backups of Everything, In Case Something Goes Wrong?

When preparing for major upgrades, I probably spend more time making sure that all of my data is backed up than I do anything else. Of course, I use the OS’s built-in tools like Time Machine, and I store multiple copies of customer data on an external drive, in the cloud through Dropbox, on my smartphone through Missing Sync, and on my company’s development server (which itself gets backed up). But it never hurts to make manual backups of really irreplaceable data, so — for example — I made backups of my address book in VCF, CSV and Address Book Archive format. You might think that I’m overdoing it, but I felt that the time was definitely worth taking after learning of Sidekick’s data loss and an apparent bug in OS X relating to guest accounts that could cause it to lose data. As Kevin over at jkOnTheRun says: “Services fail…what are you doing about it?”

Do You Have the Time to Plan and Execute the Upgrade?

Of course, doing all of this takes time, which is why I prefer to undertake projects like this after business hours. Even if it means missing a beautiful fall weekend. That way, I don’t have to interact with clients or put out fires, and being offline for a while won’t make a difference. I picked up a couple of good books at my local college bookstore where I bought Snow Leopard, and got to page 50 of Terry Pratchett’s “Nation” while waiting for the installation, so it was time well spent!

So far, I have been extremely pleased with how much faster many of the programs I use run under Snow Leopard, especially those that are available in 64-bit mode. And I’m happy with many of the OS’s new features. So for me, the time spent has definitely been worth it.

Have you upgraded to the latest operating system? How has it worked for you?

As I noted over at TheAppleBlog, Google has turned on push for Gmail on the iPhone. That means that your incoming messages will be pushed from the Google servers to your phone, instead of your phone having to call in periodically to check for new mail. It means you’ll be more up-to-date, and your phone will use a lot less of your battery’s power than if you use Apple’s Fetch alternative.

For Gmail users with an iPhone who work from home, this is great news. Often, those of us not plugged in to the corporate world miss out on the little niceties like Exchange information syncing. Google Sync, now that it includes Gmail, offers a great free alternative for those of us who’ve left our office working days behind. And it uses Microsoft Exchange technology to do it.

Now you can manage your contacts, calendar and email all from your smartphone, and have that information synced back to the cloud in real time, so that wherever you access it, you’ll be looking at the same thing. I’ve been using MobileMe to do that for about a year now, but since many people already use Gmail, and since Google’s alternative is free, this is much more useful for most people.

If you’d like to set up your iPhone or iPod Touch to work with Google Sync, check out the instructions posted by the official Google Mobile team. Some may prefer to continue using Gmail on IMAP with their device, since it means you can set the schedule by which you’re notified of new mail, instead of having incoming messages dictate to you. Also, keep in mind that the iPhone supports only one Exchange account at a time, so if you have one already for work, you won’t be able to take advantage of Google Sync.

Are you using Google Sync?

“Cloud computing” has easily replaced “Web 2.0” as the current trendy buzzword. The state of California is even turning to it for government systems. I have to say, however, that I have serious reservations about heavily implementing cloud computing in my own work flow. I believe that cloud computing is the killer app of the future, but the future isn’t quite here yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I do make limited use of cloud computing applications, especially Gmail. But mostly, I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire computing life “in the cloud”. Here’s why.

Access. Putting all my data in the cloud means I need an Internet connection to be able to do my work. This limits the times and places that I can work, and makes it more difficult to develop a plan to keep my business running in case of a utility outage. I can’t complete work offline on my laptop’s battery power and then make a short visit to an Internet connection to upload it.

Backups. Very few cloud services provide for making a local backup of customers’ online data, leaving me to trust the service itself to do it. I prefer the security of having my own data backups.

Data Loss. One particular issue that I’ve experienced with cloud services is with those set to sync with other devices or services. If one of the sync locations experiences data loss, the other locations see the lost items as deleted and delete them from their storage as well. The multiple locations don’t act as a backup, because being synced makes them vulnerable to multiplying data loss that occurs at any one of the sync locations. So I have to keep data in an additional (not synced) location to have a true backup.

Service Stability. When I buy software for my computer, I have it for as long as it is compatible with my machine’s operating system. If the software’s designer goes out of business, I can continue using it. With SaaS cloud services, I am dependent on those services continuing to operate to be able to do my work. If a cloud service closes up shop, which has been known to happen literally overnight with startup companies, I can at the minimum experience work flow disruption and possibly total data loss. Even financially stable companies like Google sometimes discontinue SaaS products, forcing users to look for a replacement, and to find a way to port data between incompatible applications.

Privacy & Security. Last, but definitely not least, putting data in the cloud raises a whole host (pun intended) of security and privacy issues. It is easier to protect data that is held on a single local machine than it is to guard against breaches on a server-based cloud system. Having a public point of log-in raises the risk of security breach via compromised password, and data can also be breached in general server attacks, not even specifically targeted to your data.

Data held on someone else’s servers is also more vulnerable to being accessed legally by subpoena than data held on a local machine (which requires a search warrant to access). A cloud service usually has no reason to invest resources in fighting legal requests for data held on their service.

So for now, I’ll keep my data (or most of it) on the ground.

Do you trust the cloud?

I really like Google Tasks. It’s free, easy to use, and well integrated with Gmail and Google Calendar, yet it’s flexible enough that it can be adapted for use as part of a Getting Things Done (GTD) system. Unlike many web apps, it has some very handy keyboard shortcuts built in, which can make it much faster to use and give you a real productivity boost. It’s well worth learning these shortcuts, particularly if you use Tasks a lot:

• Tab: Moves the current task to the right (makes the task a sub-task).
• Shift+Tab: Moves the task to the left.
• Ctrl (Win)/Cmd (Mac) + Up/Down: Moves the task up or down the list.
• Shift + Enter: Edits the current task.
• Alt + Enter: Marks a task as complete (will also mark a completed task as incomplete).
• Alt + Shift + Enter: Removes completed task from the list.
• Esc: Closes Tasks.
• Shift + Esc: Switches focus from Tasks to Gmail.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a shortcut for moving tasks between lists, which is something that I would find very useful with my GTD system. Tasks has been getting some nice, incremental improvements recently that make it into a very useful task manager (Calendar integration and last week’s addition of the ability to export task lists via email, for example); better keyboard shortcuts would be the icing on the cake.

Bonus tip: While in Gmail hit G then K, which will open Tasks and switch the focus to it. (This will only work if you have keyboard shortcuts enabled — the option is available on the Settings page.) You can also create a task from the current message using Shift + T.

If you’ve found any hidden keyboard shortcuts in Tasks, let us know in the comments.

As announced on the Gmail Blog, the folks at Google have added an important update to Gmail: mail and contact import features for everyone. Somewhat annoyingly, these features were previously available for newly created Gmail accounts, but were not available for the many of us who have had Gmail accounts for some time. Many of us also have old email accounts that were around before Gmail arrived. The importing procedure is easy, although some waiting is required.

To import email from another account into your Gmail account, just go to the “Settings” link that is on the upper right of your Gmail account, and click it.  Once you’ve done that, hit the “Accounts and Import” tab, as seen in the screenshot above. You can import from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, or other webmail or POP3 accounts via a wizard. There’s a “Learn More” link if you get confused. Note that you will need to supply the password for your other account.

I went through the import process for an older Hotmail account I have. I haven’t gotten all the messages imported yet, but Google confirms that this is to be expected: “Copying mail over usually takes a couple days, occasionally up to a week — but eventually it all arrives,” says the post announcing the new features. You can also request to have email sent to the other account forwarded to your Gmail account for 30 days.

This was a long time coming from Google, but it will be convenient to not have to hop between email accounts all the time — especially since one of Gmail’s strengths is its huge storage capacity; that should allow me to cut a couple of accounts that I have altogether.

Hit any snags importing an old account into Gmail? Let us know in the comments.

James over at jkOnTheRun has an excellent post describing his custom Gmail setup, which enables him to make the best use of his screen real estate. Like many web workers, James spends a large part of his day working with Gmail — it’s the one app that he has open all day — so customizing his setup helps him to be more productive. James tweaks Gmail’s layout and functionality using Labs features like Multiple Inboxes and Superstars, and by incorporating gadgets for Google Calendar, Google Docs and Remember The Milk. Check out James’ post for extensive details.

A new iPhone app called reMail gives iPhone users the email archive search functionality available in applications like Gmail and Outlook.  reMail is priced at $4.99 until September 1st ($9.99 after that date). The creator of reMail is Gabor Cselle, who has previously worked on Gmail at Google, and who was the VP Engineering at Xobni, an Outlook add-on which has previously been reviewed at WWD.

The iPhone does have Spotlight search already built-in, but Spotlight has a limitation. It can only search what is stored on your phone. For an email account, this means that it can only search a couple hundred messages, not the account’s entire archives. And how often is the email you are searching for one of the most recent two hundred? In my case, the answer is rarely.

reMail works by connecting to your Gmail or other IMAP-enabled email account. It downloads the entire archives of the account onto your phone, making it searchable in the app. reMail suggests leaving your phone on a WiFi connection overnight to download mail the first time. I was impressed it recognized my Google Apps email address as a Gmail account and connected to it without a problem via the app’s Gmail protocol. In my experience, other applications can’t always do that (including Google’s own). reMail currently only supports usage with one email account.

Unlike Spotlight, which only searches headers and titles, an email’s entire content is searchable in reMail. The app also allows for more advanced searches than Spotlight does. For instance, exclusion searches are possible, as well as “OR” searches, and searches limited to terms in only an email’s header or body (header:term, for instance). Auto-complete suggestions are made as you type your search.

Once an email has been located, it can be replied to or forwarded using the app’s email client.

One aspect of reMail is its greatest asset and its greatest weakness at the same time. Because the app downloads the entire archives of an email account onto the iPhone for archiving, searches are faster than using similar tools such as Gmail’s search, especially if you don’t have a 3G connection. Searches can even be done offline, when roaming, or when on an airplane, to reference material.

But at the same time, large email archives take up storage room on an iPhone that the user may wish to devote to other things. My relatively small archive of 6800 messages took up 26.9MB. reMail says that as a rule of thumb to estimate it will use 5MB of storage for every 1000 emails, which is fairly in line with my usage.

Xobni includes advanced email search as part of a suite of features that integrates search of contacts, calendar items and tasks, and integration of social media profiles with contact listings. Could this be the future of reMail on the iPhone? I’d say that’s unlikely, given Spotlight and Apple’s history of rejecting apps that duplicate functionality it already provides.

reMail is a powerful search tool. If you need to frequently search your email archives for reference material and have the storage space to devote to it, reMail might be a time-saving tool for you. But if your archives are massive it may leave you pinched for space on your iPhone.

How often do you search your email archives? Is power search capability worth giving up iPhone storage space?

Like many web workers, I store a lot of information in the cloud. It’s great to have my data, my contacts and even my files accessible from anywhere I’m working, but there’s also something of a risk with having all of my data stored elsewhere, because it’s hard to make sure that it’s all backed up. Many of the services I use do enable backups, but it can be a fairly laborious process. LifestreamBackup provides a simple tool that will back up information you have stored to a variety of different accounts, and automatically manage your backups for the future.

LifestreamBackup can archive a variety of services, including:

• Flickr
• Twitter
• Delicious
• Zoho
• Google Docs
• Photobucket
• Basecamp
• Gmail

The site says that YouTube and Facebook backups are coming soon, and welcomes suggestions for services to add in the future. You can back up multiple accounts on each service.

As I added my account information to allow LifestreamBackup access to the data I have stored with each service, I noticed something about the process. While the site used Flickr and Google Doc’s authentication systems, to back up any of the other services, I had to provide the app with my user name and password. I know that some of the services supported, such as Twitter, offer authentication options that are not currently used by LifestreamBackup. Personally, I’d feel more comfortable if the site was able to work without requiring me to hand over my passwords, or having to remember to update it whenever I change my passwords.

You can see at a glance when your accounts have been backed up through LifestreamBackup’s history function. When you first sign up, it can take about 24 hours to get all of your data backed up, which can make your history seem a little sparse. However, after longer usage, the ability to sort through backups by service can come in handy. It doesn’t hurt, either, that each backup is labeled with the date of the backup. The service can be set to back up each of your accounts on a daily or weekly basis. If something happens, like a hacked account or problems with a service provider, you can download a copy of your backup at any time. The interface isn’t particularly complex — but it doesn’t need to be. You can tell at a glance how to add new accounts and to download your backups. You can also set your account to send you email updates about your backups, ranging from an option of an email every time a backup is performed to a weekly digest of your backup activity, as well as the option to receive no emails.

The service allows you to back up as much as 20 GB of data, with your choice of a monthly subscription fee of $4.95 or a yearly fee of $29.95. If you need more storage, you can use the LifestreamBackup service to save data to your own Amazon S3 account for $14.95. While using the service with your own S3 account seems fairly straightforward, I’m hopeful that LifestreamBackup will eventually offer a service with more storage — I have 20 GB of data in my email alone.

Do you back up your lifestream data?

I’ve been using Google Voice since it was GrandCentral, and have been quite impressed. But it’s still in beta, and while invitations to the beta are finally becoming available, I understand that they’re still hard to come by.

3jam is billing itself as an alternative to Google Voice, and it’s available today, so I’ve given it a quick spin. This is not a complete review, as there are some of 3jam’s features that I haven’t tried, such as SMS messaging, forwarding to Skype, an API that lets you write your own applications to interact with their service, and “group” numbers that allow multiple users to share voice mail and messaging.

Signing Up and Getting a Number

Signing up for the service is easy. Just select an area code where you want a number and 3jam will display a series of available numbers from which you can pick. You can also enter words to see if you can get a “vanity number” that spells something. You can also port an existing number to the 3jam service for a onetime fee of $25, something that Google Voice doesn’t yet offer. Right now, 3jam is only offering incoming numbers in the continental U.S. If you want an incoming number in another country, you’ll need SkypeIn or another VoIP service.

Pricing

In my opinion, a major weakness of 3jam’s service is its complex pricing structure. For those of us who are used to the clearly-defined packages offered by most cell phone and VoIP providers, it’s bewildering to be confronted with a choice of monthly fees and SMS packages, and to realize that the monthly fees include only a ridiculously small number of incoming minutes (just 30!) and no outgoing minutes at all.

3jam charges a monthly fee ranging from $4.99 per month for a 12-month contract, to $8.99 per month on a monthly basis. Additional minutes, SMS and even transcriptions of voice mails (over the first 30) cost extra. Additional minute rates for calls (apparently both incoming and outgoing) are competitive. The SMS prices are puzzling, though: 5 cents per message to the U.S., but only 4 cents to Uganda or Uzbekistan?

Annoyingly, information about pricing is very difficult to find on 3jam’s web site. The monthly fees are displayed during the sign-up process, but only after you’ve already selected a phone number. A more comprehensive list of pricing seems to be available only in the help section, which I found by doing a search.

By comparison, the Google Voice service does not currently charge a monthly fee, or fees for calls and SMS messages in the U.S. Google Voice charges for international calls at rates that are competitive with other VoIP services. It’s rumored that Google could make the service advertising-supported at some point.

While some people may find 3jam’s à la carte approach to pricing advantageous, I think that businesses will need to know what they can expect to pay; 3jam makes that difficult. The 3jam control panel does offer a running total of calls made and the costs incurred, so users can at least keep track of what they’ve spent.

Setup

Setting up the service is straightforward. You can set incoming calls to the 3jam number to ring on as many as six different phones, not only in the U.S., but in many other locations throughout the world. You can also forward incoming calls to Skype, something that Google Voice doesn’t offer. And you can forward incoming SMS messages to IM services like Google Talk and AIM, which is a nice touch.

3jam offers the ability to import your contacts to its address book from external email accounts like Gmail, and from Outlook, Thunderbird Entourage and .csv files. I was unable to get either Gmail or a .csv import to work, however, and didn’t try the other options.

Quality

Like many VoIP services, sound quality varies from call to call. I had several friends place test calls to me, and we heard occasional echoes, delays and crackles. But generally, call clarity was good — as good as Google Voice, if not better. The transcriptions of voice mails seem to be on a par with Google Voice as well, which is to say, good enough to get the gist of the message, even when some words are missing or incorrect.

Applications

3jam offers three applications that I didn’t try because I’m on a Mac. The first is a Windows-only desktop application for SMS messaging. (The site mentions a web version, but the link to it doesn’t seem to be working.) There is also a BlackBerry app, and a way of having 3jam send messages to you via Twitter.

For people who need maximum flexibility in routing calls and SMS messages, especially internationally, 3jam is likely to be an excellent choice. For those who need to forecast their communication costs, and those who don’t need the international forwarding options, Google Voice is probably a better choice, once it becomes more widely available.

Have you tried 3jam? How does it compare to Google Voice?

Up until yesterday, one of the really annoying things about Gmail was that if you wanted to use it to send email from an address other than your Gmail address (a company email address, say), it would add your Gmail address into the Sender header in the email. This would result in your email being displayed as being from “myname@gmail.com On Behalf Of myname@company.com” in some email clients, like Microsoft Outlook. That looks quite unprofessional, and made it hard to use Gmail to manage corporate email without forking out for a Google Apps account.

Well, yesterday Google added the option to send your email using your own SMTP server, meaning that it won’t need to add your Gmail address to the Sender header. In other words, no more of that unprofessional-looking “On Behalf Of.”

If you want to set this up in your Gmail account, first you’ll need to make sure that you have the login details for your SMTP server. If this is for a company email account, you might need to ask the IT department. Go into Settings->Account. In the “Send mail as:” section, you’ll see a list of your accounts. Click “edit info.”

Click “Next step” in the popup, and then select to send the email through your own SMTP server. Fields will appear where you enter your login credentials.

Enter your username and password. Click “Save changes” and your email recipients won’t see “On Behalf Of” ever again.

Do you use Gmail for corporate email?

Recently, I wrote about WatchDox, the security application that allows you to secure and track the documents you send online. The company behind the app, Confidela, has just moved the app to a fee-based model (free accounts are no longer available). As of this week, you can test out the application for 30 days for free before selecting either the Pro version (for the individual) or the Business version (with additional features). Existing individual users are grandfathered in and can retain their free account but still have to upgrade if they want the features available in the Business account.

Some new features on all the paid accounts include the denying people the ability to take a screenshot of any documents sent through Watchdox. I tested this out by trying to take a Skitch screen grab of a protected document, and it immediately went into “curtain” mode, blurring the content.

Another nifty new feature is the “Spotlight” mode which actually prevents anyone from taking a clear digital photo of a document when enabled. The company considers this an “extreme feature,” but it’s an effective one nevertheless. Documents protected with Spotlight look like they have colored vertical bars over them. Only a small portion of the document is “spotlighted” and readable at one time — the rest is illegible.

The company also continues to improve the document viewer, which now includes a “PowerPoint presentation slide mode” that you can toggle for easier document review.

Business accounts allow for multiple users on the same account, with a company-wide administrative function. Coming soon will be the ability for the administrator to add users, remove users and change individual permissions from a central management dashboard. Business level users can access a full audit trail of all users to pinpoint how a document has distributed using Watchdox.

There is currently an MS Outlook plugin so that you can send a document securely via Watchdox with just one click, and the Gmail add-on is pending.

Confidela says it is getting some traction from industries requiring high levels of document security including finance, legal, healthcare, and manufacturing, but emphasize the value of using Watchdox security for company price lists, client proposals, contracts and human resources documents, such as hiring offers.

In a nutshell, with Watchdox, you can control, track and protect your documents at a high level for $14.95/month (charged annually) for the Pro level for a single user and $29.95/month per user for a Business account, with a minimum of 10 users. For a business license covering less than 10 users, you can contact the company directly for a custom package. Larger custom packages are also available via the company. If you need to secure and keep track of documents, it’s a well-designed service, although I have to say that I haven’t incorporated it into my workflow yet.

How are you securing sensitive documents that you distribute online?

I use a lot of Google’s applications to stay organized and productive, but I’m especially fond of Gmail. In its standard form, it’s a fine email client that makes it easy to stay on top of that mountain of email, but with a little customization you can use it to become even more efficient. Here are six super ways to send Gmail into productivity overdrive.

1: Enable super stars.

You know how Gmail has the standard Gmail star, enabling you to highlight certain emails in your mailbox? Now you can make it a super star! Enable Superstars within Labs (found in “Settings”). Once enabled, you can select the super stars you’d like to use by dragging and dropping them within the “General” tab under “Settings.”

I use the red and yellow exclamation points to mark items that are work-related and require some action on my part (red indicates something more pressing than yellow). I use the purple question mark for pending payments, deposits and other things I’m waiting for.

2. Use advanced search and spend less time keeping things organized with labels.

I don’t really use labels/folders in Gmail, because the search functionality is so easy to use. If I need to find something related to a particular client, I just type the client’s name and find it that way.

The advanced search functionality allows you to search within a date range (say within a month of a particular date), so finding a particular email is generally easy and requires a lot less upkeep than folders, unless you set up filters to maintain this for you).

The best tip for searching is to use very specific search terms. If you can remember a particular phrase, name, or keyword that was used and the approximate date it was emailed, you’ll reduce your search results tremendously, making it even faster to locate information.

3. Save on typing with canned responses.

Canned Responses is another Lab gadget that’s really handy. If you type a lot of the same messages over and over, you can save them as canned responses so that it saves you on typing. (Celine wrote an excellent post giving some great tips on boosting productivity using Canned Responses.) Just click the canned response, and it automatically appears within the email.

4. Save button clicking with send & archive.

Yet another Labs feature that shaves time off processing email is Send & Archive, which Jenny wrote about previously. With it enabled, you’ll see another button (“Send & Archive”) next to the regular “Send” button. When you compose a message or response, simply click it to automatically archive the entire conversation after sending your message.

5. Enable in-Gmail Twittering with the TwitterGadget.

The TwitterGadget allows you to see and manage your Twitter account right within Gmail. It even has separate tabs for monitoring different types of activity within your Twitter account, like replies. Plus, you can add updates to your Twitter account right within the gadget.

6. Use the other Google tools available within Gmail.

The best part of using Google Apps to stay organized is that all of the tools are available within one interface. You can access your Calendar, Reader, Docs and Photos right from your Gmail account. Take advantage of them and save time by not having to visit other sites.

Although I use many other online applications to stay organized, Gmail has to top the list, and with all the Firefox extensions and gadgets available to soup it up, managing email is getting easier and easier.

What are your favorite Gmail hacks? If you have a tip for increasing the speed and efficiency of managing email, please share it.

I use multiple computers throughout the workday and am always using Gmail. Sometimes, when I am in a hurry, I jump up from the computer and forget to log out of my Gmail. Usually I can just head back to the workstation to log myself out, but occasionally I’ll only remember hours later and am no where near the workstation. Luckily, Gmail has a “remote log out” feature so you can log out of all your active Gmail sessions from any computer or mobile phone that supports JavaScript and has access to the Internet.

1. Log into Gmail in any web browser
2. Click the “Details” button. It is located next to “Last Account Activity” below your Inbox (below your current mailbox usage info).



3. A pop up window will come up. Click the “Sign out of all other sessions” button.

Google Voice wants to be your phone manager, SMS and voicemail provider. The service is rumored to be almost ready for public access.

Google Voice germinated after Google acquired GrandCentral almost two years ago. The service was relaunched earlier this year as a private beta for GrandCentral users. I’ve been using it for a while, and am generally impressed. Google Voice offers a number of features that should make it popular with web workers.

Incoming Calls and SMS

• You are given one phone number that can be configured to ring multiple places — office, home, cell phone or even an account on the VoIP service Gizmo5. (In the past, users were assigned a new telephone number. Apparently, it will soon be possible to port existing numbers to Google Voice.) Sound quality is quite good, although there can be a delay in transmission, which causes awkward pauses. It’s rather like a better version of talking via satellite.
• If you are not available, voicemails are recorded. They can be transcribed and sent to you by email or SMS. The accuracy of the transcriptions varies, but ranges from fair to excellent.

• You can choose to screen some or all callers, and have them speak their name before the call is forwarded to you. You can set up groups, and allow some callers to bypass screening.
• You can “listen in” on callers as they leave messages, or record calls.
• You can import your contacts through CSV files.

Outgoing Calls and SMS

• You can make outgoing calls through the Google Voice web site. Outgoing calls are free in the continental U.S. International calling rates are quite reasonable, and are competitive with many VoIP services.
• With the Google Voice Add-on for Firefox, you don’t even need to go to the Google Voice web site to make calls. You can just click the add-on and enter a number. And the add-on recognizes phone numbers on web pages and makes them clickable links, too.
• You can also send SMS messages through the Google Voice web site and the Firefox add-on. When you do so, you are assigned a number in area code 406 that allows recipients to reply.

There are a number of other useful features, including conference calling. The complete list is at Google Voice help.

Are you already using Google Voice? Will you sign up once it becomes available?

I was recently introduced to Gmail aliases and am loving them. With aliases, you can receive email messages at “your.username+any.alias@gmail.com”. So if your email address is “jane.doe@gmail.com” you can receive mail at ”jane.doe+notes@gmail.com” and it will still be delivered to your inbox. Why would you want to do this? Well, you can use the alias to set up filters to automatically direct those messages to trash, apply a label or star, skip the inbox, or forward to another email account entirely.

Here are the aliases I use, together with the labels I have set up:

• “cl” applies the label “craiglist”
• “rec” applies the label “recipe”
• “p” applies the label “pics”
• “bb” applies the label “blackberry”

To create filters to auto-apply your labels:

1. Click Settings->Filters
2. Scroll down to the very bottom and select “Create a new filter”
3. Enter your filter criteria (so in the case of my craigslist filter,  I would put “myemail +cl@gmail.com” in the “To” box)
   
4. Click “Next Step”
5. Click the checkbox next to “Apply the Label” and select the label you would like to apply from the pulldown (if the label does not exist already, select “new label”)
   This is also the step where you can forward, trash, etc. all emails from that address.
6. I always check the box next to “Also apply filter to x conversations below” and then select “Create Filter”

Bonus Tip:
This is for people who don’t have phones with email. You can use this method to create a rule that auto-forwards emails to your cell phone via text message (useful for emailing yourself directions, grocery lists, etc):

1. Click Settings->Filters.
2. Scroll down to the very bottom and select “Create a new filter”.
3. Enter your filter criteria: “myemail+m@gmail.com” in the “To” box.
4. Click “Next Step”.
5. Click the checkbox next to “Forward it to” and enter in your phone’s SMS-to-email address. Below is a list of the most popular carriers and how to figure out your phone’s SMS-to-email address:
   • T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
   • Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
   • ATT: phonenumber@txt.att.net
   • Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
   • Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
   • Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
6. Select “Create Filter”.

How do you use aliases?