GMail’s Priority Inbox
So … did Google just buy GTriage or what?
Because it’s too much of a coincidence to just be a “coincidence.” Y’know?
Archive for the ‘beta’Category
Gtriage – Your Inbox Can be Tamed
The Problem: E-mail Overload
The Solution: That depends …
Finding too many new messages in our in-boxes is a stubborn, universal problem for lawyers: an occupational hazard if you will. I’ve examined various solutions to this problem, including as Outlook plug-ins ClearContext and Xobni, but was never satisfied with their performance.
Take ClearContext for example. It produces excellent coordination between contacts, attachments, tasks, and appointments, but requires way too much work. Basically for CC to work well, the user must do all the classification and draw the connections. By the time I’m done advising the program of what’s important, I’m already exhausted.
Xobni on the other hand, magically organizes e-mail and attachments by contact without the need for any input at all. It really is impressive at showing you who is who, and the history of your communication with them; but it cannot help me make sense of the 100+ new messages I get every day. And without visual clues as to what is worth reading I can’t even find the important messages, much less put them in context.
Finally, these applications and others like them are designed exclusively for use with Outlook; a notorious memory hog that can single-handedly slow down and crash my system. No thank you.
Then I read about Gtriage in a FriendFeed post a few months ago. Gtriage works with Gmail or Google Apps to identify important messages and give you visual cues with which to find them. Just sign up and within minutes Gtriage learns your e-mail habits, applies its machine-learning algorithms, then identifies and labels messages so you know which ones to attack first. Amount of work required on the user’s end: none. That’s more like it.
Gtriage takes less than 3 minutes to set up. Since it learns automatically there is nothing to do or worry about once you have signed up; but if you are the creative type you might want to see how it can be combined with Gmail plug-ins like Multiple Inboxes for spectacular results (see this example).
Special Offer for Practicehackers: At the moment Gtriage remains in invitation-only beta, but Unblab was good enough to provide the invite code for 10 new accounts. Simply go to http://gtriage.com and be one fo the first 10 readers to sign up using practicehacker as your invite code.
Let me know what you think of Gtriage by posting your feedback, compliments, or hacks right here on Practicehacker.com, send your thoughts by e-mail to mhedayat@mha-law.com, join our Friendfeed Group, or sound off on Twitter.
Posted via email from practice (redux)
21
07 2010
Google AppEngine for Business
This weekend I revisited the Google AppEngine – a project that has kicked around Google for some time but was heretofore confined to the company’s developer sandbox. But now Google has brought the AppEngine front and center, aiming it squarely at small businesses and setting off the latest salvo in the saga of Google v. Everyone (in this case, Google v. Microsoft and its entourage of high-priced application builders). I think it’s particularly cool that the Guardian, a British newspaper, has written about its own use of the AppEngine and development of its suit of company-specific, task-oriented apps or “Micro Apps” as they call it. Take a look and let me know what you think.
- M. Hedayat, Hacker in Chief
Today we’re launching a brand new product and framework called MicroApps which the diagram above describes. However, just as Google dogfoods its new products before launch, so do we, and we wanted to share some of the things we’ve been building as MicroApps using Google AppEngine for the storage and application development part. With 36 million unique and very engaged readers, everything we make has to scale, which is why AppEngine is ideal. With it’s highly scalable architecture and features such as task queues, built for creating loosely coupled apps, and memcache, AppEngine makes an excellent companion platform for MicroApps in which the apps can run anywhere in the cloud. The examples presented here range from new ways to find content which others are finding exciting or interesting, to live responses to the TV debates to ways to bring together all of the tweets of our journalists on specific subjects. <<Read the Full Article>>
23
05 2010
Just Got Invited to Google Mobile Ads
I’m a big believer in mobile: the mobile Web, mobile ads, etc. Mobile means activity and action: somebody doing something useful. It means commerce.
So I’m very gratified that my law firm has been selected to participate in the Google Mobile Ad beta trial.
If your business uses mobile ads, let me know or comment under this post. We should share experiences.
The mobile ads deployed by Google will reference my current listing on Google Local - now known as Google Places:
20
04 2010
Office 2010 officially ships …
… but will it be any better than the beta version I’ve been using? Maybe. Will I pay to find out? Not sure. So what do I know? I know that Mashabl!’s lame coverage tells me nothing. Thanks for the Microsoft press release guys. I didn’t know you were a public-relations outlet for Bill Gates. Nice.
Posted via email from practice (redux)
17
04 2010
Glympse
This Redmond-based startup is introducing its location-based social sharing service for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile, allowing friends to see their location on any Internet-connected device. Users customize who can see them and their posts, whether that is a single person, a group, or everyone they add on Facebook, Twitter, et al. Read the full story on Read/Write/Web.
Sent from my iPhone
Posted via email from practice (redux)
16
04 2010
The coolest ID site you’ve never heard of
I discovered DooID when I saw it being used by the Editor in Chief of London-based blog, TheNextWeb . As you can see from the shot above, the application is cool just to look at, not to mention the fact that it incorporates virtually every social network and blogging platform available. The result is e-mail ready too, so it can readily be added to your existing signature block. Check it out here.
14
03 2010
Foursquare’s First TV Commercial
See if you can tell who Foursquare is targeting in it’s first TV Spot
First Google, now Foursquare. Hot on the heels of Google’s first search-related television ad during the Super Bowl, location-based social network-as-game sensation Foursquare
is gearing up to do the same thing tonight on cable network Bravo during the show Sheer Genius from 9 to 10 PM. It’s a 20-second spot in which Foursquare highlights its recently announced partnership with the network. The idea is to show users real-world locations for Bravo’s show.
Now this is hardly a piece of legal or even legal-tech news, except that Foursquare is the embodiment of the casestreaming concept I wrote about in this TechnoLawyer piece over a year ago. Oh, how the times have changed. And now that location-aware apps are all around us, including Twitter of course which got geolocation capabilities last year, we’re all that much closer to being forced into acknowledging colleagues in our vicinity whether we want to or not. I think I just felt a chill run down my spine.
Posted via email from practice (redux)
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