Tag: INBOX

Microsoft has announced that people who use both Hotmail and Internet Explorer 9 are now able to see a desktop notification of how many messages have arrived since they last checked their Inbox. Unlike Chrome's desktop notifications, these won't be pop-up bubbles. In fact, the pinned Hotmail icon will simply change to display a number next to it -- that shows how many messages have arrived ...

Last year, Google kicked up Gmail with Priority Inbox, which uses a clever algorithm to decide which incoming email are most important to you. And now, with the introduction of Smart Labels, even more zero-config automated sorting is here to help your webmail woes. Smart Labels will automatically scour for and tag any bulk mail, notifications, and forum communications you receive. You're not ...

When the news first broke of Gmail losing a small chuck of its users' inboxes, I had a rather terrifying realization: For nearly 8 years, I've been using Gmail as my only message store -- putting all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. If you use Gmail, you're probably now thinking the same thing as me: I really should have a backup. But where should I back up to? There are two choices: use ...

Google Search has long offered suggestions when it thinks you may have entered a word (or words) incorrectly. That feature has also been available in Gmail as part of Apps Search -- a Gmail Labs experiment. Now, however, the switch has been flipped and suggestions are now offered whenever you perform a search. It's nice to see that Google is working to enhance Gmail search, though as Alex ...

Gmail's new Priority Inbox feature has revolutionized how many people deal with their email. Unfortunately, you may have noticed that it's only available on the standard desktop version of Gmail in your browser. Well, that's not entirely true. Priority Inbox works based on a label called "Important" that Gmail's priority algorithm applies to messages it considers important. Just like you can ...

Much has been said about Gmail's new priority inbox -- all of it good! -- but it turns out that Microsoft Research has been working on similar technology since the 1990s. Not only is there a slew of research papers detailing how the technology works (it sounds very similar to Gmail's priority inbox), but Microsoft also has a bunch of well-targeted patents filed as far back as 1999! Is this ...

Before I get into this too far, let's start with the usual disclaimer. Yes, Google is rolling out a new feature to Gmail users. No, you might not have it yet -- in which case, you'll have to wait just like always. Now, on to the good stuff! Google has apparently been hard at work teaching an old dog (the Gmail spam filter) some new tricks. Well, one new trick: learning how to automatically ...

Threadsy is an interesting new approach to managing all of your inboxes at once. It's a newly launched beta product that connects to your email provider and social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter, and presents everything in a unified interface. The Threadsy interface consists of two panes. The Inbound pane on the left is the primary pane, and it's essentially your inbox for incoming ...

Hopefully you've checked out GMail labs before. It's packed with slick additional functionality that you can bolt on to your Web mail client like these 10 useful options. Two new features have been made available that are definitely worth enabling: Message Sneak Peek and Nested Labels. With Sneak Peek turned on, you can right-click a message in your inbox and a snapshot will appear above your ...

Inbox2 is a "premium connected lifestyle application". I'm not making that phrase up -- it's from their about page. In simpler terms, it's an email client which also does Facebook and Twitter. And it's beautiful. Seriously -- this thing is in-your-face gorgeous. I love the color scheme! Since the premise is fairly easy to understand, I'd like to share a short list of pros and cons from my ...

[Update: Google has now released a statement that they will not be removing Buzz from Gmail, but rather are considering building a standalone version of Buzz that doesn't require Gmail.] Two days later, the negative press for Buzz has not let up. Users are unhappy about how tightly the social networking service is married to Gmail, and the resulting privacy concerns. Though yesterday Google ...

I think it's pretty safe to say that most people who are not using some kind of stand-alone todo list are using their email inboxes as their de facto todo list. While that clearly works for some people, it's not kosher in the Getting Things Done universe. If you're a Gmail user and you're finding yourself overwhelmed with trying to keep track of things in your inbox, but don't really want yet ...

Don't you just love it when you find a way to make something good even better? Remember the Milk is a fantastic online task management application, and here are a couple of browser extensions that make it even better if you're using Firefox or Chrome. Both of these extensions have existed in some form in Firefox for a while, but they have both recently been released for Chrome, and they're worth ...

Yahoo! has been talking about ways that the company can use social networking-style features to improve the email inbox. Now the company is rolling out a minor update to Yahoo! Mail that could certainly save you a lot of time and hassle, because it lets you sort your email messages so that you only wind up seeing emails from your contacts. Here's how it works. First, you have to set up a Yahoo! ...

The only thing Facebook messages have ever been good for is getting a friend's real contact info so you can talk outside of Facebook. But what happens when you lose that critical message with your buddy's new address or screenname? Facebook fails you, and you have to scroll back through all your messages to find the right one. Not anymore! The 'Book has introduced a search bar for your inbox. ...