There comes a time when enough is, quite simply, enough. I had been putting off the task of organising my sprawling Gmail inbox for months, if not years. But when Lifehacker told me that we were going to have a Spring Cleaning week, I knew it was time. And I wasn't going to waste precious hours trying to find apps or tools to do the task for me. I needed to Ron Swanson my inbox -- roll up my sleeves, jump in, and manage the mess manually.
I recently purchased a few smart bulbs and have plans to expand my collection of smart lights. I did notice a small inconvenience during setup, however: It was hard to tell which bulb was which without staring into an app. So I added a visual aid to my bulbs using emoji stickers. It's a lot easier to see the "banana" light is out instead of trying to figure out which bulb is "Hue living room bulb 7" while your ceiling fan is off.
Glass jars and bottles are infinitely reusable, but the label doesn't always stay applicable for very long. Luckily, the cheapest method for removing the label and its sticky adhesive is also the laziest.
Clear stickers look great on windshields and other transparent surfaces, but printing your own costs quite a bit. With a little elbow grease, you can make custom clear labels for a fraction of the price.
The last time we mentioned Labeley, it was best at making custom labels for homebrewed beer, without forcing you into a complicated image editor. It's still great for that, but the webapp can now make more labels for more occasions, and can even professionally print them for you if you want.
A good label maker can be portable and hand-held, attached to your computer via USB, or somewhere in between. It needs to print good labels that are readable and that will last, whether they're in a filing cabinet, your pantry, or your freezer. This week we're looking at five of the best.
If you use your inbox as a to-do list, you'll need a good system for keeping track of your tasks and prioritising them. Systems rockstar Justin Garrison offers this email labelling method: prioritise emails by severity level. Syslog, or the message logging system used by computers, provides a framework.
If you have the Gmail "Smartlabels" (or Smart Labels) lab enabled, the next time you log in, you'll see more options for automatically categorising your emails. New emails can be auto labelled as purchases, travel and finance -- in addition to the social, promotions, updates/notifications and forums labels already in place.
A while back, Gmail introduced "Smart Labels" for bulk email, notifications, forums and social updates. You can't edit these filters, but you can automatically archive matching messages, so those updates don't fill up your inbox.
Having issues keeping Gmail labels properly applied in an IMAP client? Lifehacker reader Bonne shares the script he used to solve the issues.
If the black-Sharpie-on-a-box doesn't help you easily differentiate between boxes when you're moving, Worldlabel's free PDF will save you time and energy by letting you just stick on your custom labels, whether for different rooms, fragile items or "this side up" boxes.
Android only: The default Gmail client can sync individual labels, but only notifies users about new inbox messages. A tiny little app, Gmail Label Notifier, offers customised notifications of new label messages.
Google added two new features to Gmail Labs today: The often-requested Nested Labels - for those of you who like folder-style label nesting - and "Message Sneak Peek", which provides a quick look at an email when you right-click the message in your inbox.
Ed. Note: If you love Gmail but just can't shake a longing for folder-style organisation this clever hack will help you create pseudo-folders.
Party-going is tough when you don't know anyone. Then there's those awkward "Crap! I can't remember your name" moments. Be a good host and print out some customised name tags to hand out to guests at your next bash.
The latest Gmail Labs offering does something that Greasemonkey hackers (and our own Better Gmail extension) have long found useful—hide label tags from the inbox, freeing up more screen space for subject lines and message previews.
Google's data-crunching ways found that the majority of Gmail users aren't actually using the webmail service's labels. Starting today, those label names get higher placement, and drag-and-drop labelling aims to make Gmail's labels more like familiar email folders.
Firefox only: Gmail's powerful filters and labels make it great for organizing, but when you have multiple labels assigned to a message the subject barely fits on the screen—unless you auto-hide them with a script.
AutofillPDF Labels is a handy web tool for anyone who's wanted to print their own labels of any kind, but loathes the idea of manually filling out the printing template over and over. Many print-your-own label packets come with links or CDs that get you a pre-formatted Word document to fill out. Unless you're getting married or sending out other invitations, though, you'll usually end up putting the same thing on each label, and Ctrl-C/V-ing your precious time away. This handy webapp pops open a scripted PDF file on any system, while letting you change the font, styling, size, and other text properties, and also add images. In short, you create one label, and the PDF fills out the rest of them for you. The templates include CD labels, address or mailing, file folder labels, and even non-sticky business cards. Free to use, no sign-up required, and it works best with Adobe Acrobat (the free reader). autofillPDF Labels
