19 replies to this topic

[H.O.D.]

i've always liked gmail only for one thing - it offers the best spam protection ever, and i have never seen an unwanted mail appear in my inbox till now. as for the other features, i never really had much use for them because i dont get too much email anyway. just a few notifications from social networking sites and of course -the invoices from computinghost.

but im sure there are some of us who receive a lot of emails daily. some receive over 20, some over 50, and some get even above 100 emails per day! managing their inbox,i.e., deciding whih email to read first, which email needs to be replied to first, can be tough to do, when you have a large amount of emails waiting and less amount of time to attend to them. most of the times you may perhaps read just a few mails and put away the remaining for later. but how will you know where your most important email is? it could sitting at the bottom, under all those other emails which aren't so important.

understanding this, google has come out with a new feature for their email service and has named it as the "Priority Inbox". As the name suggests, the purpose of this new feature is to prioritise the gmail inbox an sort the incoming mails as they come in. so how exactly is the sorting done? it's simple - the inbox observes your reading habits - which emails you read first and which emails you keep for later. then it recognises the emails that come from that source and sorts them so that they appear above all other emails and you can attend to to them immediately instead of having to search through all the other mail.

for this system to work correctly, the user has to first "train" the priority inbox to recognise important mails. to do this, the user has to give show how important the mail is by adding a "+" or "-" to the email in terms of priority. then when the email from that source arrives, it is compared with the other sources, checking how much "+" it has over the others, and is sorted accordingly. it may take a while for all this to work correctly, but if you think about it, in the long term, this is definitely very beneficial as it could save you loads of time. the "less important" mail doesn't go to the spam folder or get deleted, but instead it just goes down in the inbox that's all. so even if a mail from your office arrived hours before a mail from your home, if you have given correct priority, the office mail will show before the home mail, thus directing your attention towards it.

i think this is a really useful feature from the gmail team and i have activated it as soon as i saw what it could do. if you want to know more about it, you can visit the page and watch the introductory video that google has provided.

http://www.gmail.com/priorityinbox

you can activate it from your inbox too. just look for the "priority inbox beta" link at the top-right corner of the screen. you can see the video from this link too and you will be given a choice whether or not to activate it. its still in beta (and will continue to be so for a long time, because this is google!) so it will take some time to get used to, but i'm sure once you get the hang of it, you will find it to be very useful.

the only people who won't find this feature too appealing or useful are those who don't get a lot of email and can easily view all their new mails without wasting much time. so unless you are a person who gets a lot of emails daily, this feature isn't for you - think about it!

[SillySoul21]

Nice feature i think obvouisly i would need more work towards it but its very handy having priorities, GMAIL is a very good mail service i have to say its far more advanced and better than hotmail i do not like hot mail,

[yordan]

Please, HOD, try making an effort when writing your posts. Please remember to put a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence. Language correctness is part of our forum rules. I frankly cannot accept your laziness, I hate your lack of politeness when trying to read such posts.

[H.O.D.]

Nice feature i think obvouisly i would need more work towards it but its very handy having priorities, GMAIL is a very good mail service i have to say its far more advanced and better than hotmail i do not like hot mail,

If people still use hotmail it is because they've got habituated to using the service. It's something like using Internet Explorer - it's there already in a new system and so it will naturally be used by a lot of people. I don't think there are a lot of people signing up for hotmail willingly these days. That doesn't mean gmail is the leader, but hotmail definitely can't catch up with even small email service providers. So it's a good thing that gmail is trying to get complete control over the market by providing features like priority inbox.

Please, HOD, try making an effort when writing your posts. Please remember to put a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence. Language correctness is part of our forum rules. I frankly cannot accept your laziness, I hate your lack of politeness when trying to read such posts. mad.gif

I'm sorry, yordan. Now that you've mentioned that it is a problem to read my posts I will do my best to write more politely. I hope there is no other problem with my posting other than the lack of capital letters. Oh, and thanks for not adding a "warning" - that would have cost me dearly at this time.

[Quatrux]

I saw the gmail priority inbox last week and it seems really a good idea, which definitely works.. But as I read in one place, it's not something new, some email client already had this feature, which works similar as when looking at the movie which google is showing for this new feature (which is quite nice) it's a simple process, with time the program will know what you're reading mostly and will show you priority list..

I tried it and it's quite good, even though it's stil in beta, but most google beta features are working well.

[H.O.D.]

I saw the gmail priority inbox last week and it seems really a good idea, which definitely works.. But as I read in one place, it's not something new, some email client already had this feature, which works similar as when looking at the movie which google is showing for this new feature (which is quite nice) it's a simple process, with time the program will know what you're reading mostly and will show you priority list..

I tried it and it's quite good, even though it's stil in beta, but most google beta features are working well. smile.gif

It's been done by someone else already? If possible, could you give us more information about this? I'm very interested to know who "inspired" Google with this idea

Nevertheless, Google seems to have a winner upon its hands and this feature has been working really well. GMail itself was in beta for a long time and we all know how it worked out So I'm sure this version too will have a good, long beta time but will be used by a lot of people who won't notice the beta tag at all!

[starscream]

It's been done by someone else already? If possible, could you give us more information about this? I'm very interested to know who "inspired" Google with this idea

There are some private email providers already doing this before google. There was one email provider that my client used once which was for spam filtering and email monitoring. I don't remember the name(i have to check the support ticket to know that). I'll let you know that later.

I don't think there are a lot of people signing up for hotmail willingly these days.

That's not true. Hotmail ID can be used as openID and for various other communication within MSN Network. So people not using hotmail is wrong. There are similar set of services from hotmail that matches with gmail except those stars and archieve features. If i'm not wrong priority is not available with the free version of hotmail. Have to verify that though.

[FirefoxRocks]

I'm using Priority Inbox now and it works quite well, although I'm finding that it thinks too many messages are important, I guess I have to train it better. Here's an interesting read about Microsoft Hotmail though: http://www.downloads...-before-google/

By the way, this is different from the email's X-Priority (also known as Importance or X-MS-Priority) in the sense that this is controlled by the user and mail server, rather than the sender specifying the message importance. With all the spam going around, this feature has lost its usefulness.

[yordan]

That's not true. Hotmail ID can be used as openID and for various other communication within MSN Network. So people not using hotmail is wrong.

"People not using Hotmail" is exactly the same as "People not using Microsoft Windows". It's a matter of thinking, it's not really a fact.

[vhortex]

The plugin does not work on me or I was getting more and more emails than Gmail can organize. I am not really worried if this work or not since Gmail was providing me around 90% of my email needs and the plugin was on Beta.


About people not using Hotmail, in terms of using the mailbox it is a big yes that lesser people are using hotmail.

1. Hotmail was spreading spams non stop, this can be a security hole. I am getting tons of hotmail emails on my mailbox with valid id's and headers and when being submitted for checkup on complains to hotmail, they are indeed coming from their server. Since this mails are coming from legit mail boxes, Gmail was not marking them as spam unless the same email address sends mass spams from only 1 email address.

2. Hotmail will suspend your inbox of inactivity.

**********

Almost all of my contacts now use Gmail and use hotmail to login to windows live services. This will hold on forever until Google can come up with a universally accepted equivalent to all services that Live have. Up to this date, windows users still occupy around 60 percent or more of the OS usage Pie and since there are no other providers that lets you connect your windows machine to services online with lesser effort the way Live was doing it, hotmail will still stay. It may change a little but it won't cease to exist.

Just like windows, as long as new computer are being shipped preinstalled with windows, windows won't die as it creates newer user from each new machine that was purchased.

[The Simpleton]

I've been using Priority Inbox for a few days and it's very well-trained by now! It sorts the mail I want to see immediately and pushes all the rest of the mail down the page. I receive around 20 emails per day so it's not a huge number, but within these 20 emails the sorting is done very neatly. It's a good thing if everyone starts using Priority Inbox so that Google gets encouraged to add new features to it And about the debate of Hotmail, the less we talk about it, the better!

[yordan]

Rather off-topic but I found it funny.
Yesterday I was writing the sentence "please find here enclosed...", I clicked "Send" and gmail opened a pop-up window saying "hey, you are talking about enclosed and you enclosed no file, do you still want to send your mail?"
I find this feature nice, gmail looking what you are writing and warning you that you forgot to add your file.

[vhortex]

I find this feature nice, gmail looking what you are writing and warning you that you forgot to add your file.

That is one of the Lab's featured plugin. I was told by some friends that this works neatly with priorities plugin and they never have a problem with the two plugins. It was still unconfirmed if what my friends told me was true that with this feature turned on, priority can work faster and better.

I don't have any of the 2 plugins installed so I can't test it.

The nature of my mailbox can be describe with the following list:
1. 5 forward mail address being delivered to the mail account
2. it was also being accessed via IMAP or POP mail access using thunderbird on around 2 computers which the original email at the Gmail inbox being moved to archive.
3. there are 13 email rules currently installed and running on the mail account.

I was betting that this 3 was causing the problems with priorities specially that the amount of email that I get on daily basis is around 100 - 130 emails a day (around 10% of that are accumulated spam that ends up on the spam box)

[The Simpleton]

Rather off-topic but I found it funny.
Yesterday I was writing the sentence "please find here enclosed...", I clicked "Send" and gmail opened a pop-up window saying "hey, you are talking about enclosed and you enclosed no file, do you still want to send your mail?"
I find this feature nice, gmail looking what you are writing and warning you that you forgot to add your file.

Wow, that's a neat feature. However, someone who's not familiar with such scripts could easily think that someone from Google is actually reading as they type their mails

[Quatrux]

I usually write my emails in my country language, or to say it more correctly in my mother tongue, so the feature which can tell me that I didn't attach a file isn't usually working, as sometimes I really forget to attach it

Maybe they could make it multi language feature

[grim reaper1666]

the Google mail Priority inbox sounds like a cool idea. the most important emails go in to that inbox which allows you to find the emails you need like invoices from orders online. information from your online banking and so on. obviously i myself am not sure exactly how Google are going to have this new inbox work know that i think about it it just seems pointless. if you need an important email you have the search mail area to find it quicker than your Priority inbox.

[ysNoi]

It's nice...I've activated GMail Priority Inbox and it's cool...

I think, it will be more better if this will be added also on Thunderbird.

[vhortex]

Before Gmail introduces that plugin, there used to be a 'priority' header in each email. I am using that before on my company email. The priority list was Urgent, Important and 2 or 3 more items. This was being transmitted over the world wide web and all servers that can translate them picked up the priority flag.

I started dishing the idea since most spam mails being generated by professional spammers was being sent with 'Urgent' as priority. I still remember the time that I have 149 'Urgent' spam mails on my inbox and I need to scroll down to see my real emails. I hope Gmail can complete the code and move away from Beta so I can also enjoy this service.

[Illustrious]

I think it is a neat addition to GMail. It appends all of my subscriptions of AstaHost and KnowledgeSutra to the end but it does put all my important email to the front. I do not receive much email so I guess the priority inbox feature doesn't help me as much. I probably get around 7-8 emails a day and I check my email daily.

[Xarex]

I've registered for several Gmail accounts and even have them all linked with each other so what one box receives, so does the other. It's hard, after many years, to just switch over. But I do think Gmail kind of makes that easier considering you can just have it forward to whatever mailbox you want.

Gmail definitely is superior to every other mail system.

I've had Yahoo .. and all I get is bombarded with spam emails.
I've had Hotmail .. the account got hacked.
I've had AOL .. limits the amount of mail you can have in your inbox and severely limits the upload limit.


I haven't used the priority feature, as I just read all incoming mail and sort it out myself.

The labeling system is amazing. I have nearly everything labeled and I have a label for damn near everything. Helps me to find what I need in whatever category quickly.

I didn't want to block emails from any of my close friends who can occasionally get annoying by sending me forward emails.. so I've labeled them so I just at least can take the time to read it once in a while.

The search feature is powerful, with advanced searching to search from who and what.

And the incorporated chat feature and even the Call Phone system that is linked to Google Voice.

Yahoo is the most likely guilty of it -- selling your email address to the highest bidder for spam.

Gmail, however, respects your privacy, and despite the few ads you may see -- they are often appealing, or at least not in your face advertising.

I don't know what it is.. but there has definitely been something about Google that has always appealed to me, and Gmail has been my default email system for over 6 years now.

Love it! Highly recommend it! I remember when I was telling everyone about it and kept saying for everyone to get it.. even sending Invites out to anyone who wanted it. Gmail has since been open but those were good times.. that VIP status for a while .