The Blog of Scot Newbury » Google

Gmail’s Priority Inbox – a great tool

Scot Newbury — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:55:01 +0000

The last few weeks have been pretty thin around here for postings and the main cause for that is I actually took a vacation. So I spent the first part of August getting the desk at my current employer cleared off (not an easy task when my boss took the first two weeks of August off) and then moved the family into a new home – which leaves little time for my online pursuits.

Well, now it’s time to get back into the swing of things and as I’ve started plowing through the hundreds of emails and RSS articles the notification that Gmail’s Priority Inbox was available to me to try out popped up in my tool bar. Let me say if you have not checked out this new feature you should – it’s a great tool.

Here’s a short video from the folks at Google to explain it:

The default settings work quite well and for most folks will work just fine but I have a tendency to let some things sit – they don’t need a response or action any time soon but I don’t want to archive them into oblivion so they sit in my inbox and eventually get buried. I know, I know, that’s not very GTD like but hey, we all fall off the bandwagon once in a while (ok, I’m about 50/50 – but I’m improving). So in order to work through the huge backlog I have it sift things just a bit by making a small change in the section set up:

I added a section that gives me just the unread items in my inbox, 10 at at time. This allows me to work through the backlog I have without seeing all the read items that need me to make some decision on at the top of my reading list. I know that it is better to take action on an item immediately so that you can get it off your mind but I trust that I’ll get back to the item eventually (it’s not critical or important otherwise I would do it) so it can sit in my inbox – I just don’t need to be constantly reminded of them as I work through everything else.

So, give the new Gmail Priority Inbox a try – it works well.

[You can read all about the new Priority Inbox on the Gmail Blog.]

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Dead Calm – the end of Google Wave

Scot Newbury — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:58:22 +0000

The ocean has gone quiet as Google decides to halt development of Google Wave.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

- Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow

For myself I have mixed feelings on this as I have been a Wave proponent but at the same time never really managed to integrate it into my daily workflow or the teams that I work with. Some of the features that drew me to Wave, like the ability to collaborate in real time with others has already been incorporated into other products, like Google Docs, so hopefully I’ll be able to take advantage of it there.

I do want to congratulate Google on this decision though and that might cause some to get upset with me but it takes a responsible Project Manager or Company to make the tough call of cancelling a project when it just make sense to continue it.

So, were you a “Waver?” If so, what are you going to use in its place?

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