I am a big fan of the label feature. Currently, I am using around 125 labels and filter combination to short my mails. Labels in Gmail are such a lifesaver. It helps us organize our mails and keep the inbox tidy. You can use label along with filter option to create a rule to categorize the mails and even remove them from your inbox. I will tell you how you can use the labels.

Create a label and a filter rule

This is the very first thing to do. Let’s say you have created a label called Sweetheart, and in the filter you mention that any mail from your sweetheart’s mail ID (even more than one) should go directly to that label skipping inbox, or simply apply the label to the mails coming from her.

Color code your labels

Like me, you can also color code your labels. It makes it easy to visually scan through the kind of stuff is there. Like all my SEO newsletters have Orange code, online marketing ones has red code, and all my writing related newsletters has blue code. This has helped me visually scan through the labels.

Activate Hide read labels from Gmail lab

Click settings (you can find it near logout link in Gmail) followed by lab then scroll down to find “Hide read labels”. Enable this feature. This will help you keep the sidebar clutter free, and only labels with unread mails will be visible to you.

Using labels to search

You can also use labels as a shortcut to reach the mail you want. For this, you will need to enable “Go to label” feature from settings >> lab. (See pic for detail).

Hide Labels from subject

I personally do not like hiding labels from subjects, but not everyone shares the same view, therefore, Google has this feature to hide labels from subjects. To activate this, go to settings and then to lab, search for “Hide Labels from Subjects” and enable it (see pic). That is all you need to do, if you do not like seeing colorful labels beside subjects.

That was it, but then came the lab feature which changed the game of e- mailing. Gmail became a system, and it started providing one-stop solution for many a thing. The latest addition to the list of Gmail lab feature is Google Docs preview.

Google has made it possible for us to preview content of Google Docs document, spreadsheet, and presentation files inside the mail. This feature is new addition and to enable this feature you need to go to setting and then to lab.

Once in the lab, you should enable previews for other content type as well. Google allows you to preview YouTube videos, Picasa and Flickr images within the mail itself. You can even preview Yelp listing inside your Gmail.

You can also listen to the voice mails that you received from inside your mail. There are many more features in the Gmail labs that are worth enabling. I have been using it for quite some time now.

It is only when you used Gmail lab features that you come to know that Gmail is much more than unlimited space. Unlike every other mail, Gmail is not just a mail, but it’s a system that has many cool features.

Go now and enable features in lab and witness the change in the mailing experience. You will be as thrilled as I am about the cool features of Gmail.

Securing Yahoo mail is somewhat manual process. You need to look for Https prefix before you feed your e-mail ID and password in the Yahoo form. If the page doesn’t have Http then you have opened a phishing site (or have been redirected to one). It means, someone out there is trying to trick you.

Along with this, you can also take the following steps to keep your Yahoo mail secure:

• Create your personalized Yahoo Sign in Seal. This let you create a custom login page using either text or image of your choice. But there is a limitation to this. The custom login page that you will create will be visible on only the system on which you will create it.
• If you use a browser that supports Greasemonkey scripts then install the HTTP-to-HTTPS redirector. Firefox, Opera, Chrome (recent build), and Flock supports Greasemonkey scripts.

This way you will make sure that you are always on the Https page of Yahoo. There is one more way to secure your Yahoo mail, and that is password time out feature of Yahoo. This will protect all your Yahoo accounts. Follow the steps given below to set your password timeout.

Step 1: Login to your Yahoo

Step 2: Go to My Account. You can find a link to my account at the top of the screen.

Step 3: You will be asked to enter the password again, after which you will be taken to account information page.

Step 4: Go to “Member Information” and click “Edit”.

Step 5: Click the drop-down with a label “Prompt for Password” and change the setting. 15 minutes is the shortest duration after which you will be prompted to enter the password again. Set the duration for 1 hour. This will ask for password after a set duration.

The clean, no-nonsense homepage of Google brought storm; it was not just the homepage that created a furor, but it was all the under-the-carpet innovations by Google that amazed all of us. Unlike many start-ups, Google did not go on the roof and shouted about its better algorithm or Page Rank system. It was left for us to find out and get excited over the things, and thus we all fell in love with Google.

Google’s penchant for under-the-carpet innovations is what has always excited me. I feel the ownership of the information when I find something exciting about a topic on my own, and Google gave me a lot of space to feel like an owner of the search engine.

Google has this uncanny ability to control the excitement over its products or its feature. Contrary to going over the top and telling us what to do and how to do it with its products, Google maintains silence, and let us explore. The company lets its products take life of their own.

Let me give you an example: have you tried the time zone feature of Gmail? Or have you used Google’s wonder wheel for keyword research or relative search?

Or,

Have you noticed the super-size search box?

Yes, Google has increase the size of search box that you see on Google.com. Well, you may say, so what, and brush this innovation aside. You might not feel any real difference, but I am sure you will agree about the symbolic value of this change.

The new, big search box suggests, no matter what, Google is still all about search. Happy Goggling!

Fast forward couple of decades and many more e-mail (now web mail) providers will appear on the horizon offering free e-mail services, but instead of doubling the productivity, the e-mail has now slowed the process down. People are more engrossed in the tool, and e-mail is no longer a mean to an end, it has become an end in itself.

E-mails have become an addiction, and people started getting confused between sending and receiving mails, and real work. The more e-mails a person reads and writes the more fake-sense of accomplishment he gets. Now the problem is over communication, not the lack of it. In the changed situation, close to 90 percent of the mails in any mailbox are either forwards or useless newsletters. These newsletters still get delivered only because you do not have time to unsubscribe from them.

A disciplined approach to e-mail is required. The first step you can take towards using e-mails to increase your productivity is to de-clutter your inbox by creating appropriate filters. Every e-mail provider as well as every e-mail client has in-built filter option, but very few people use it to their advantage. Creating a well-defined filter will keep not-so-important mails away from your immediate attention.

Next thing you can do to increase your productivity is to changes couple of things in your e-mail usage behavior as well. You can start with changing the frequency of checking e-mails. Limit this frequency of checking your mail to twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening at least after seven hours of real work. This will help you focus your attention on the task at hand, and will save you from wasting time in replying the mail as soon as it come. Let the problems, issues and complains of clients wait for a while. Another thing you need to do in this direction is to keep the outgoing e-mails short and succinct. This will not save your time only, but it will also save the recipient’s time. Keep in mind, no one likes to read long e-mails, so keep the niceties out of e-mails, and be straight forward.

Gmail is a great help in this battle between productivity and e-mail behavior. I like Gmail because it has some great productivity enhancing features, like a very strong and intuitive filter, and searching for a specific mail in Gmail is as fast and accurate as is searching for information on a particular keyword in Google. You can also customize Gmail using XML according to your need.

At first glance, CADIE and Gmail’s Autopilot Email program seem unbelievable!  Gmail says that you don’t have to spend all your time reading messages because  Gmail’s Autopilot will do all the work for you by matching your writing style.  If two Gmail accounts use the autopilot program then they can “converse with each other for up to three messages each.”  Before you continue reading this post, go check it out for yourself now by opening a new window and visiting Google’s Gmail.  Also check out the CADIE page to befriend the artificially intelligent being yourself.

I checked out the CADIE blogspot homepage, which seems like a cheap mock-up from the past with all of its flashy scrolling banners, and I asked myself, “Why a panda?”  The music is nice, but why does it say this at the top of the page:

All your personal World Wide Website belong to CADIE

Did Google get hacked?  It can’t possibly be!  I scrolled back to the Google page and effectively, there was the announcement for Gmail autopilot!  Google is either way ahead of the IT game or has poor security!  What do you think?  Or did Google get hijacked by a supercomputer it created?  Maybe we shouldn’t be questioning CADIE or Google!  Okay, okay, the truth (which dawned on me after a little while) is that Google has played one of the biggest April Fools jokes on the internet!  I didn’t want to spoil the joke by posting on it, so I tried to just pass the information on…  Were you fooled?  Would you want artificial intelligence to do the things Google said she could?  Is email with artificial intelligence just too much for now?  Leave a comment with your opinion…