GMail Introduces Priority Inbox 242
jason-za writes with this quote from a Google announcement:
"People tell us all that time that they're getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean — here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day — mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that's often not important. It's time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we're happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta) — an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail."
Holy.... (Score:0, Interesting)
Google blows a fart. Quick, post it on SlashDot!
Re:How about good subject lines? (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminder that anyone who wants to go to the company picnic can call XXX-XXXX
Please conserve paper
Hi, I saw this funny video of a cat running into a wall
Did you know that sometimes doctors are wrong and people can live longer then their doctor tells them they can?
Most of the junk e-mail is sent by:
A) Mass-emailers
B) Clueless computer users
and not someone who thinks before they hit send.
I started unsubscribing from mailing lists... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a lot of crap that I used to think was important, or thought I'd be interested in... But the messages just piled up.
One day i just started deleting. I think I removed 7,000 'conversations' from my gmail inbox in an hour. Now I'm much better about deleting crap emails (without opening them) instead of letting them languish...
This 'priority inbox' will be interesting... Glad they're thinking about the problem - too bad it won't unsubscribe you from lists automatically. :)
Email is overused (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to get over hundred emails a week; newsletters, stuff from mailing lists and lots of emails of almost no importance to me. I unsubscribed from everything, after all we have this thing called RSS so there's no need to get the same information sent to the inbox.
I also watched a Google TechTalk called Inbox Zero by Merlin Mann [youtube.com] and have at most 5 emails in my inbox any day.
We've got RSS for news, newsletters, IM for short messages like "What's for lunch today?", I feel like mailing lists drown my inbox so I don't let them email me at all, so there are a lot of ways to limit the emails you get each day.
Threading (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about good subject lines? (Score:3, Interesting)
I use lots of filters:
* 95% of opt-in advertising mail goes into the "Boring ads" folder, and is never read. If I'm booking a flight I'll look at some recent emails from the airlines I've used before, in case they've sent me a discount code. The other 5% goes in the "Ads" folder -- stuff I usually read, like emails from my favourite nightclub saying what's on this weekend.
* Anything from my parents goes into a folder, they email me far too much.
* Newsletters (from charities, alumni groups, etc) go in a folder, I read them if I'm sufficiently bored.
* Automated notifications go in a folder. (e.g. Slashdot "A reply has been posted" mails).
This is especially useful since I bought an Android phone, since I don't get a "Ping!" every time someone tells me I can get a cheap train ticket to visit grandma.
This new feature sounds like it would do lots of this automatically, which lots of people will probably find very useful.
This could be marginally useful (Score:4, Interesting)
But what would be really useful is a snooze button for emails that would archive them for a few days (or whatever time you specify for that email) and then have it pop up in your inbox as if new after that.