If you’ve ever sent an email and waited aeons for a reply, only to forget you even sent the email in the first place, here’s a simple Gmail trick to keep track of important sent messages you need to remember. More »
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Firefox: If you feel like you’ve accumulated so many virtual inboxes — email, social networks, media sites — that you’re never able to keep on top of them, Poyozo aims to help you collect and organise the various data streams from your virtual life. More »
Thunderbird: Some may scoff at viewing web pages in Thunderbird, but it can be faster to quickly glimpse a link in a new tab than via browser launching. Thunderbird Extension WAT (WebApplicationTab) streamlines your inbox flow by making it so. More »
You may be a diehard Gmail user, prone to declaring desktop email clients dead. That’s fine. We still think you’ll find Thunderbird 3 to be a better offline email solution, and a really convenient aggregator for all your inboxes. More »
Google’s Wave tool suffers from a “just another inbox” problem, at least at this early stage. So it makes sense for Thunderbird users to monitor their waves from a tab inside their actual inbox, with a single line of code. More »
In his productivity bible Getting Things Done, David Allen says that you should minimise the number of collection buckets for all the information coming into in your life. (Collection buckets include a paper in-basket, email inbox, voicemail box, feed reader—anywhere new “stuff” channels into your day.) You should have as many in-baskets as you need and as few as you can get by with… If you have too many collection zones, you won’t be able to process them easily or consistently.
A few different services and tools can consolidate your inboxes and collection buckets, from email to voicemail and even paper and snail mail boxes. Let’s take a look.
Single phone number with GrandCentral: Ever since I switched my main number over to a GrandCentral number, I never looked back. You can ring all or any subset of phone numbers you’ve already got on a per-contact basis with GrandCentral, or send calls to voicemail or screen them as messages are being left. Voicemail notifications come straight to your email box (if you work primarily in email, like I do, this is priceless), and you never have to worry about giving out your number. See more on how to consolidate your phone lines into a single number with GrandCentral.
Single email address with Gmail and Google Apps for Your Domain: This may be the fourth Gmail post of the day, but what the hell. Since Gmail can fetch and send mail from any POP-enabled existing address, it’s a fabulous way to consolidate old addresses into a single place. Don’t want to give up your custom domain gina@example.com address? Google Apps for Your Domain gives you Gmail without the @gmail.com domain in your address.
Send paper to your digital “inbox” with the ScanSnap: This one I haven’t gotten set up for myself yet, but it sounds like the best instant, scan-paper-to-PDF solution on the block. Over at 43 Folders, blogger Ryan Norbauer describes his Fujitsu ScanSnap workflow for a paperless existence. Definitely giving this a try myself in ’08 so I can ditch the paper in-basket and use the digital “inbox” folder on my computer exclusively.
Snail mail: Okay, so most people don’t have the problem of multiple mailing addresses. But if you’re a freelancer who moves around a lot—or you’ve got a small business you’d like to have its own address—I can’t recommend getting a PMB (Private Mail Box) enough. Sure it’ll cost you a couple hundred a year, but the freedom to give out your mailing address without worry and even move without having to change your address is awesome.
How do you minimize the inboxes in your life? Tell us about it in the comments. More »
Find yourself constantly sifting through “new music” and “artist alert” emails from certain unnamed online music retailers? New website Music-Alerts helps you keep tabs just on your favourite artists’ new releases through a custom RSS feed. Type in the artists you want to keep on top of and you’ll get pings whenever new albums show up on Amazon.com. The site says it checks Amazon every three days, so true fanatics might still do better to sign up for an official newsletter, but everyone else can push their fandom out of mind and into their feed reader.
Music-Alerts.com [via MakeUseOf.com]
