Lifehack Deals: Keep Your Email Sanity with SaneBox

As we kick off another weekend, I’m sure you’re not thinking about all of the email you have to deal with when you return to work. I’m not just talking about the email that you left behind for follow-up; I’m also talking about all of the email you’ll receive over the weekend. After all, the Internet never sleeps.

Knowing all of this, can your mind truly be on the weekend at hand? Furthermore, can you keep your mind on the important stuff that goes on outside of your email inbox knowing that you’re going to have to deal with both the important and unimportant messages that will arrive in your inbox on a non-stop basis?

It’s kind of insane, isn’t it?

This is where the latest Lifehack Deals offer comes to the rescue…with SaneBox.

What is SaneBox?

SaneBox contains algorithms to determine the importance of each email that finds its way into your inbox, move unimportant messages out of your inbox into a separate folder, and then summarize them in a daily digest. I’d like to think of it as Gmail’s Priority Inbox on steroids – but it works for all kinds of email platforms. Because of this algorithm, SaneBox separates your most important emails from the ones that can wait. This allows you to prioritize the way you read your messages, saving you time and frustration.

SaneBox works with any mail client you use, such as:

GmailYahoo MailMicrosoft OutlookApple MailMozilla ThunderbirdAOL…and more

Lifehack Deals has worked out a sweet deal with SaneBox. Just sign up to enjoy a free month trial to test out SaneBox, and receive a $14.85 credit towards an annual SaneBox subscription if you decide it’s making you more efficient and effective with not only your inbox – but with your time as a whole. If it works out for you, the savings work out to three additional months of SaneBox…for free!

One of the key features of SaneBox is its ease of use – and adoption.

It doesn’t require any training. There are no plug-ins or downloads, and it works on any email client and service. Simply put: if you know how to use email folders, then you know how to use Sanebox. You manage your email like you normally would. SaneBox keeps all important emails in your Inbox and automatically sends all unimportant ones to the SaneLater folder. You can easily check them at your leisure, and you are also sent a daily SaneLater digest…so you never have to leave your inbox.

Some of SaneBox’s other features include:

Blackhole Unsubscribe: One-click-unsubscribe from people you hate getting emails fromOne-Click Defer Power: Defer non-urgent emails until laterSpam Folder Monitoring: It watches your spam folder for false positives, and fishes out emails caught there by mistakeFollowup with RemindMe: Reminders when an email you sent was unansweredSocial Network Refinement: Make your inbox is smarter by connecting to your social platforms…and much more

So sign up for this latest Lifehack Deals offer today and get started bringing sanity back into your email management with SaneBox. Just click on the “free” button on our Lifehack Deals page and you’ll be sent straight to SaneBox’s registration process. Once you finish there you will have one free month of use and if you decide you like it (which you will) you’ll have a $14.85 credit. If you decide to purchase an annual membership, it will cost you only $40 which is 33% off the price of an annual membership!

Gmail Is Having Issues on Android for Many; Here's How to Get Your Email Back [Gmail]

At some point last night, it looks like Google changed something on their servers that broke the Gmail app on Android. Here are the details, as well as a workaround so you don't have to go email-less.

The issue has popped up as a Google Code bug, as well as on the Google Play page for Gmail and Android forums everywhere. Apparently, many users are experiencing an issue where Gmail can't open their primary account; instead, it just flickers and tries to reload the inbox without ever displaying it. Notifications still come through, and secondary accounts are still accessible, but primary accounts just won't work. There doesn't seem to be a common denominator that we can find, so we don't know who exactly is affected. It hasn't affected everyone, either (in fact, my Gmail is working just fine).

If you're having this problem, though, there is a simple thing you can do to get by until Google releases a fix. Just open up Android's generic Email app, log in with your Google credentials, and you should be able to access your inbox—no advanced IMAP settings required. You won't be able to archive emails or use any other Gmail-specific features, but at least you'll be able to read your email while we wait for Google to push out a fix. If you have this problem and know of another fix or workaround, be sure to let us know in the comments.

You Should Forget About Push Notifications for Your Email [Productivity]

Two weeks ago, the popular Mac-only desktop email client Sparrow released the iPhone app, and it is really, really good. It does, however, have one catch: It doesn't (yet) support push notifications. To that I say: Who cares?

You may have a job where email is the primary form of communication and you need to respond to every email the instant it arrives. If that's your job, I'm sorry. This post may not be for you.

For most of us, instant email back-and-forth is not nearly as important as we make it out to be. Yes, email is where a lot of our most important communication happens. But most email isn't something that requires you to drop everything the moment something new pops into your inbox. That you think so is an indication that email is probably screwing up a lot of your day.

Despite having heard countless times that multitasking is a myth, you may consider yourself a master multitasker. Okay, fine. But believe me when I tell you: the vibrating pulse in your pocket indicating the arrival of a new email; the unpredictable "ding" from your desktop's email notification; these things are killing your focus and destroying your ability to work to your capacity.

Stop worrying whether your pocket buzzes the instant a new email arrives. You shouldn't let it do this anyway. Check your email in batches. Schedule in your email time. Do it as often as your job requires. Once an hour is probably more than enough for most of us. Better yet, make it twice a day if possible. Respond thoughtfully, when your time and energy is focused specifically on checking and answering email.

If that sort of schedule is a problem, you may want to consider a new hierarchy for your communication. At Lifehacker, email between staff is relegated primarily to non-urgent communication. By non-urgent, I mean communication that everyone is expected to read (and if necessary, respond to) at some point during the day. For urgent group matters, we have a group chat room. For urgent individual matters, we have IM, or even SMS.

This hierarchy of communication is important. Yes, it requires people at your work to adopt and use the hierarchy. But it's worth it.

As for push email? Turn it off. Your sanity (and battery) will thank you.

Gmail Now Tells You Why Email Ends Up in Your Spam Folder [Gmail]

Have you ever peered into your spam folder on Gmail and wondered how and why those 600 messages were marked as spam? Gmail now provides you with an explanation for how those messages ended up there so you can better understand them.

When you select your spam folder, click on any message and at the top of the message you'll see an explanation for why the message was marked with spam. These range from the boring old, "It's similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters," to the more exciting, "It might contain a virus or malicious link." Next to each message is a Learn More link that will lead you to Gmail's series on spam that will tell you if you need to take action to stop the spam or if you can let it be. It can be helpful if your spam folder is filled with phishing scams, but it's also handy for those one or two messages from friends that seem to end up in your spam folder for no reason. The feature should be live in your Gmail account right now.

Ask Unclutterer: To check or not check email first thing at work?

Reader James submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I’ve read productivity books and articles that claim checking email first thing at work is a bad idea. I have been burned by not checking it because my boss and clients sent me important messages overnight and I didn’t get them until two hours later. What is your take on checking email? Is my overall productivity worth the times I’ve been burned?

I can see the reasoning behind not checking your email right when you get to work — you run the risk of getting caught up in work that might not be extremely important to your job responsibilities at a time when you’re likely at your most focused and productive. It would be better if you could use your best brain power on your most demanding and core work.

That being said, I check my email first thing when I get into work. I don’t really address it, though, I simply scan all the “from” and “subject” lines to search for work-altering messages. If I don’t see any indicators that someone sent me an email that will change my most demanding and core work, I immediately close my mail program and wait until I need a break from my demanding work around 10:00 a.m.

If I click on a message, read it, and discover it didn’t affect my immediate work day, I mark the message as “unread” so it can hang out until I process email in a couple hours.

If I click on a message, read it, and discover it does affect my immediate work, I’ll process the email the same way I do when I’m really handling email. This means I’ll file it as Archived, add related next actions to my to-do list, and/or schedule any related information on my calendar. If I need to reply to the email, I do it at this time. After giving proper attention to the email, I’ll scan the rest of the inbox to see if there is anything else I must check. If I’m done with my quick search, I’ll quit the program and wait to address the other issues at 10:00 a.m.

I chose my times for checking email based on when I do my mindful and mindless work over the course of the day — scan at 8:00 a.m., full check at 10:00 a.m., full check after lunch around 1:00 p.m., a scan around 3:00 p.m., and then a final end-of-workday check at 5:00 p.m. I do not have my new message indicator light on my email program activated, and I actually completely close out of the program when not in use. If your job allows you to behave in this manner, I strongly recommend it. It significantly helps my productivity to not be tempted to check email constantly.

Thank you, James, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Please check the comments for even more suggestions from our readers.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Five Simple Yet Effective Tips for Managing Your Email

Everyone nowadays gets way too many emails and spends too much time dealing with them. If you feel like you are wasting too much time on email, you need re-evaluate how you manage it. Here are five simple tips to help you regain control over your inbox so you can do more important (and fun) things.

Nobody likes to read long emails. As more people are checking their emails on their phones and tablets, you need to be succinct with what you write.

Try to keep it brief by using no more than six sentences. This will force you to get to the point. If you need more sentences – consider calling the person or having a face-to-face meeting to communicate your thoughts.

Don’t be a slave to your inbox. If you are, someone else has power of how effective your days are and that’s a recipe for disaster. The issue with people treating their inbox as their to-do list is that external people have direct control on how you go through your day and what your workload will be. Instead, you should be the one in control.

Here is an easy way to get started with this: don’t check your email first thing in the morning. Make it the second thing – after you have done your most important task.

This first simple step allows to take back control over your day. Even if email is very important to you, give this a try. If that means post-posing checking your email by half an hour – do it. That is plenty of time to do one important task.

Email is not the best medium for urgent matters – that’s where phone calls excel. However, email is great for correspondence where you don’t require an immediate response.

That’s why you want to make it a habit to not always respond to emails immediately. The idea is that you do not want to condition others that email is an effective medium for urgent matters. If the other person notices that you always respond to email within ten minutes, that person will start to assume he or she can email you for urgent matters.

No.

You want to avoid that as much as possible. Be upfront with people when you communicate a lot via email. I always tell others that they will get a response from me within two business days. If they need to reach me for something urgent, they can call or text me. Otherwise, I prefer to receive emails.

If you constantly checking your email and you process your email as they come in, you are wasting a lot of time. Instead, you should check your email in batches. Batching tasks is an effective way of processing and getting things done that are similar in nature. That’s why you should do this as well as part of how you manage your emails. Here is a simple tip to do that:

Check emails at fixed times and spend no more than half an hour each time.

I like to call this concept “email hotspots” – the times of the day when you process your email in batches. This requires you to turn off your email program and to learn that it is okay to process emails at fixed times each day.

This guidelines is flexible depending on how many emails you get. If you get less than thirty emails a day, checking your email twice in a day should be good enough. In a typical 9-to-5 day, 10am (you have an hour to do one task before checking your email) and 3pm are great times to do this.

The touch it once principle says that each item should only be handled once. This is especially the case for emails. Have you ever read an email, thought about replying back, postponed it and you had to reread the email again to understand what it was about? It happens to the best of us.

Doing this for one email is fine. What if you have to do this with twenty emails? You will be wasting a lot of time. It’s more effective to deal with emails as you read them for the first time. Don’t let emails linger around “for later”. Touch it once. Read and decide what to do right away with it. If it takes less than two minutes to respond, do it right away.

If you have to respond but for some reason you can’t – put the email in the drafts folder. This folder will have all the emails you’ve started to reply to, but have not sent yet. As you come back to it, you know where to find your email and you can promptly respond.

Get Form Data from Google Docs in an Email Message [Video Tutorial]

This video tutorial explains how you can send form data from Google Docs in an email message using the very useful Send Mail function of Google Docs.

Whether you are looking to add a basic “Contact Me” form to your website or need to create a complex online poll with conditional branching, Google Docs is an excellent tool for you. It offers a variety of themes, data can be easily exported and, unlike other polling software, your Google Docs forms can accept any number of responses without the fee.

There’s one limitation though. Google Docs can send email notifications as soon as people submit your online form but, as shown in the above screenshot, there’s no form data included in that email message. You’ll have to open the corresponding Google Docs spreadsheet to see that actual form data which is not always a very convenient option.

Should you wish to receive Google Docs form data in an email message as soon as a user submits the form, there’s an easy workaround as explained in the following video.

The trick is that you associate a send mail routine with your Google Docs form that triggers as soon as a “form submit” action happens. And this routine, written using Google Apps Script, does all the magic – it reads the form values that were just submitted and sends them all in one message to a pre-defined address.

Here’s how you can add email capabilities to your Google Forms step by step:

Create a new form in Google Docs (or use any of your existing forms) and switch to the Spreadsheet view.Go to Tools –> Script Editor and copy-paste the following code in that code editor window. Replace the value of variable “email” with your own email address.function sendFormByEmail(e){ // Remember to replace XYZ with your own email address var email = "XYZ"; // Optional but change the following variable // to have a custom subject for Google Docs emails var subject = "Google Docs Form Submitted"; // The variable e holds all the form values in an array. // Loop through the array and append values to the body. var message = ""; for(var field in e.namedValues) { message += field + ' :: ' + e.namedValues[field].toString() + "\n\n"; } // This is the MailApp service of Google Apps Script // that sends the email. You can also use GmailApp here. MailApp.sendEmail(email, subject, message); // Watch the following video for details // http://youtu.be/z6klwUxRwQI // By Amit Agarwal - www.labnol.org}Next go to Triggers –> Current Script’s Triggers and associate the Send Mail function with “On Form Submit” event.Save the Google script, authorize Google Docs to access your Gmail account (for sending email) and you’re done.

Advanced users can further customize the script to have custom email subject lines that match one of the form fields. Alternatively, you can specify the form submitter’s email address as the replyto address and thus you can directly respond to the user by replying to that email notification.

Also see: Perform Mail Merge in Gmail using Google Docs

View the original article here

Unsubscribr Crawls Through Your Email and Provides a One Click Unsubscribe Button for Spam and Newsletters [Email]

Email inboxes can get full of newsletters, subscriptions, and other useless junk pretty easily. Just because you ordered a sweater three years from a store doesn't mean you need to continue getting a catalog from the company. Unsubscribr scans your email box for newsletters and unsubscribes you quickly and easily.

We've seen a lot of methods to unsubscribe from email, including the handy Unsubscribe.com button, the unsubscribe keyword filter, and the still in beta Unroll.me. Unsubscribr makes things a little easier as long as you have Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail, or AOL Mail. Type in your email address, grant permission to the webapp, and it scans and provides a link to unsubscribe. Unsubscribr doesn't have access to your email password as long as your email client supports it.

The service is free and scans up to five days of past mail or you can pay a one-time fee of $2 to clean out 30 days worth of mail at a time.

Unsubscribr | via Make Use Of

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BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 arrives, built-in e-mail and all

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 arrives, built-in e-mail and all | The Digital Home - CNET News CNET News @import "http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/Ads/common/css/SponsoredTextLink/sponsoredTextLink.live.css"; Manage Packages With UPS My Choice Home Reviews Cell Phones Camcorders Digital Cameras Laptops TVs Car Tech Forums Appliances Cell Phone Accessories Components Desktops E-book Readers Games and Gear GPS Hard Drives & Storage Headphones Home Audio Home Video Internet Access Monitors MP3 Players Networking and Wi-Fi Peripherals Printers Software Tablets Web Hosting You are here: News Latest News Mobile Startups Cutting Edge Media Security Business Tech Health Tech Crave Apple Microsoft Politics & Law Gaming & Culture Blogs Video Photos RSS Download Windows Software Mac Software Mobile Apps Web Apps The Download Blog CNET TV How To Computers Home Theater Smartphones Tablets Web Marketplace Log In | Join Log In Join CNET Sign in with My profile Log out .mad_center {text-align:center;} .mad_center div, .mad_center table, .mad_center iframe, .mad_center a img {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}

CNET News The Digital Home BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 arrives, built-in e-mail and all by Don Reisinger February 21, 2012 4:47 AM PST

If at first you don't succeed, they say. Still, although PlayBook owners will now have much of what they were hoping for in the first version, they're not getting everything.

Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook

(Credit:James Martin/CNET)

Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook OS 1.0 was criticized for a general lack of built-in features. With a new software update, the BlackBerry maker is trying to address that.

RIM today announced the launch of its BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0. The operating system includes many of the features users were hoping to find in the last version, including a native e-mail client with a unified inbox, and built-in calendar and contacts applications.

The company made the odd decision in the first version of the software to not include native e-mail, calendar, or contacts applications. In order for users to have access to them, they'd need to have a BlackBerry smartphone and connect that device to their PlayBooktablet. The move was a major black mark in PlayBook reviews, and stunted the 7-inch tablet's growth.

Related storiesGet a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet for $169.99RIM will trade you a free PlayBook for an Android appRIM lineup leaked: More Curves, BlackBerry 10, and new PlayBookCNET Review: BlackBerry PlayBook

Although PlayBook owners will now have much of what they were hoping for in the first version, they're not getting everything. BlackBerry Messenger, which allows users to instant-message each other from one BlackBerry device to another, is still absent from the software.

In the platform's calendar and contacts apps, RIM has added social integration, courtesy of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The software's updated BlackBerry Bridge application, which lets a BlackBerry smartphone and the PlayBook communicate over Bluetooth, now includes a remote control feature, allowing owners to use their handsets as a wireless keyboard and mouse.

One other major improvement to the operating system: BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 includes support for certainAndroid applications.

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is, as expected, available now as a free download.

Don Reisinger Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, posting at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

Topics: Digital Home Tags: RIM, tablet, BlackBerry, PlayBook

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Scared of Anonymous? NSA chief says you should be

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The Digital Home

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How Virgin Atlantic's birthday e-mail stabbed me in the heart Technically Incorrect

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About The Digital Home

Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.

Don writes product reviews for InformationWeek and is a regular contributor to Processor Magazine. You can visit his personal site at DonReisinger.com or if you would like to email Don with questions or comments, drop him a line at CNETDigitalHome@gmail.com. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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Use Email to Convert Files into Different Formats

Learn how you can use your email program to quickly convert files into different formats. The file conversion is almost instant and works even on a mobile phone.

There exist quite a few online services that let you convert files from one format to another. You upload the source file, specify the output format and within seconds, the converted file in the desired format becomes available for download. That’s easy but there are somes limitations with this approach:

When you want to convert a file, you have to upload it to the file conversion service. This is not an issue when you are converting files from the desktop but how do you upload files from iPhone, Android or any other mobile browser.Sometimes clients will send you files in obscure formats as email attachments. In order to convert those files in a format that your apps can understand, you will download the attachments to your desktop and then upload them to the file conversion service. That’s work.

Zamzar, a popular tool for converting files online, has added a new option that lets you convert files by email itself. You can forward your email attachments directly to Zamzar, without downloading them to the desktop, and they’ll be converted in no time.

To get started, you need to forward the input (source) files to a specific email address like format@zamzar.com where format represents the file type of the desired output format.

For instance, if you have a Word document that you want to convert to PDF, you can send the file as an email attachment to pdf@zamzar.com. If you have a PDF file that you want to convert into an ebook, the corresponding conversion address would be epub@zamzar.com or mobi@zamzar.com depending on your ebook reader.

Here’s a complete list of input-output file formats that are currently supported by Zamzar. You can convert documents, presentations, ebooks, videos, audio files, archives and more.

In my test, the converted files were delivered quickly and the quality of the converted files was impressive. There’s no need to create any account at Zamzar and you can convert files up to 1 MB in a single batch. You may go for a pro account to convert bigger files that starts from $7 per month.

One more thing. You can only upload files by email and initiate the conversion process but you’ll still have to visit the Zamzar website to download the converted file. It stays on Zamzar servers for about a day and their download page is actually very confusing when accessed on a mobile phone.

Email Attachment is in a Different ZIP Format ? Convert It OnlineConvert & Read Adobe PDF Files on Amazon KindleConvert Microsoft Office Documents to PDF FilesEmail Based File Conversion for PDF, DOC, DOCX and MP3Convert PDF Files to HTML Web Pages with Quick PDF – For Windows Only

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