Star and Label Gmail Messages Before You Hit Send to Help Remember to Follow Up [Gmail]

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to remember to follow up on important emails. You send out an email, forget about it, and hope your recipient replies back with the information you need. A new feature in Gmail now allows you to star or add a label to outgoing emails to help you remember to follow up.

The labels and starring works the exact same way it does in your inbox. Before you hit send, you can assign a label or add a star. The feature works retroactively too, so if you just sent a couple important emails you can go back and star them quickly by browsing your sent folder or clicking the email and adding a label. If you happen to know a person who is always forgetting to reply or you're sending out an important email you don't want to get lost, this is a handy new feature.

Star and label messages before you send them | Official Gmail Blog

10 Apps That Help You Stay on Time and Remember Things

By being a knowledge worker, you are bombarded with due dates, things to remember, special events coming up, and projects that you need to spend time on to complete. Even the best of the best productivity gurus out there struggle with keeping track of time and dates.

If you are one of these people that struggle, here are 10 apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android that can help you stay on time and make sure that you don’t forget a due date again.

Due for iOS is my go to reminder/timing app. You can setup reminders for specific times that repeat, multiple timers that can run at the same time, and also access to a handy Logbook where all of your checked-off reminders are stored.

Due also has a bunch of settings allowing you to customize your alarms and sounds as well as the ability to backup and sync your reminder/timer data.

Repeat Timer is a simple and beautiful timer app that only supports three different timers. The timers can have a set interval so you can practice your Pomodoro technique with ease. You can also setup how many times you want the timer to repeat with its interval.

Repeat Timer has some great sounds to it as well as an awesome design, look, and feel. If you want a simple way to stay on time with your iPhone, this is the app.

Alarmed reminds me a lot of Due but with some extra functionality like wake-up and sleep timers (which you can even assign playlists to for the duration of your sleepy time). The app is quite impressive, but can feel like setting overload, especially if you are looking for just a simple way to stay on time.

But, if you are looking for an app that does alarms, repeats, and alarms all in one, Alarmed is a good bet.

More of a reminder application than timer, COL Reminder for Android allows the user to setup multiple reminders with notes, due dates and times, repeats, as well as a priority system. There are also a bunch of settings for customizing now the alarm sounds and notifications react to reminders, ability to change the minutes you can choose from in the dropdown list, etc.

One of the coolest features is a built in parking timer that you can set to be placed in your notification bar when you activate it.

Timer is a simple way to run multiple countdown timers at the same time. The timers can wake your phone from sleep when finished, you can pause/continue them, and many of them can be saved and used later.

My favorite part of Timer is the way that you use a “knob” to set the timers, kind of like using an iPod click-wheel.

RemindMe is a very simple timer/reminder application for setting quick reminders. Basically, you create a new reminder, set the countdown timer or specific time of day you wanted reminded, put in a brief description, and set the reminder.

Pretty much the simplest of simple when it comes to timers on OS X, nice timer is a great choice if you are just needing a countdown timer or stopwatch. It’s small, elegant, and gets the job done on your Mac.

Nag is mostly interesting because of it’s interface that allows you to easily adjust your alarm by pressing buttons that add or subtract hours, minutes, and seconds to your reminder. You can also set a bit of text for the reminder and be “nagged” by the app until you click the stop button.

Although it may not be the prettiest of apps, TimeLeft is a super powerful way to drag due times and remind you of when things are happening. With TimeLeft you can set reminders with complex rules, set countdown timers, use a stopwatch, or even replce the Windows system clock with the TimeLeft clock.

The app is fully skinnable, so you can try to make it match your cuttent Windows look and feel.

Countdown Timer is great way to track numerous countdowns and be reminded of certain events with music and notification messages. The interface is simple and easy to use, yet there are many powerful features like being able to wake your computer from sleep mode at a specific time or due date.

CM Smith is a technologist, writer, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State. CM is also interested in personal productivity, creativity and how to use technology to get things done. Check out his writing at devburner.net or follow him on Twitter.

You Should Probably Change Your PIN Now; Here’s How to Remember Your New, Secure PIN [Security]

If a new study by the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory is correct, most of your ATM or debit card PINs are either "1111" or "1234." You may think it's okay because someone would need physical access to your card to use the PIN, right? Wrong. Here's why you should change your PIN right away, and some hacks to help you can remember your new one.

Mashable reports (and the study confirms) that the issue of simple, repetitive, and easy-to-guess PINs is so widespread that if a thief managed to steal enough cards they would be able to walk up to an ATM or go to a store and use every 18th card like cash with the correct PIN. Sure, if you lose your wallet you can just call the bank to have your card canceled and a new one issued to you, but in an age of card skimming, where the thief doesn't need your physical card to make a copy of it for themselves, you may not notice that your account has been compromised until it's too late and your money's been withdrawn. Photo by Cory Doctorow.

The Cambridge University study affirms that most of us are terrible at picking passwords and PINs, especially when they're things we know we'll have to remember, and when they're in the confines of a narrow system like "four digits only." The study also pointed out that we're not terribly private about our PINs either, and close to 50% of the people who participated admitted to sharing their PINs with others freely, and a third of the participants used the same PIN for all of their cards—which is about as bad as using the same password for all of the web sites you log in to. Others thought they were more secure because they used their birthdate as their PIN, forgetting that if their wallet is lost, there's likely some document also in the wallet with their birthdate printed on it.

So whether it's using the same PIN, using your birthdate, writing the PIN down and keeping it in your wallet, or giving out your PIN to other people, you can see why it's time to change it. Even if you know how to keep physical control over your wallet and your ATM and credit cards, it's still more likely that your wallet will be lost or stolen than it is someone breaks into your computer and takes all of your passwords.

When you're ready to change your PIN, come up with four new numbers, and steer clear of numbers that can easily be mapped to information that's readily available about you—or worse, may be in your wallet if it's stolen. Try to avoid pet names mapped out on the keypad, or picking numbers that line up on the keypad and are easily guessed, like "1472" or "3692." Try to avoid the last four digits of your social security number, or your phone number, as well. Once you have a sufficiently random series of digits, here are some tips to help you remember.

Spell out a word with your PIN. Use a site like Phone Spell to find out what words your PIN spells on a phone or ATM keypad. Alternatively, if you're still trying to come up with a PIN, type in a word that's easy for you to remember, and the site will give you a PIN from the numbers each letter corresponds to on a numpad. Make a sentence from your PIN. Mind Your Decisions suggests you pick a random series of numbers, and then take the first letters of each word for each number, and then build a mnemonic around those letters. For example, if my PIN is 5642, the words are "Five, Six, Four, Two." I take the FSFT first letters, and come up with a sentence to help me remember, like "First Standing, First Toppled" to lead me back to the PIN. That way any random series of numbers is suddenly easy to remmeber."Encrypt" your PIN in your phone, or on paper. Most banks will tell you never to write your PIN down, and especially not to keep your PIN somewhere it could be lost with your ATM or credit card. Mind Your Decisions also notes that you can "encrypt" your PIN by injecting useless numbers and then writing it down. For example, if my PIN is 5642, I could jot down 05060402 on an index card and keep it in my wallet. That's easy to guess, so to make it more difficult, I could use the numbers next to the ones in my PIN, like 56674523, or another four digits, where only I know that every other digit is meaningless. Take it a step further and add your PIN as a contact in your mobile phone, complete with this "encryption," and you'll never forget your PIN again. It's not bulletproof, but if you're the type who needs to write down your PIN anyway, it's better than no obscurity.Pick a number that means something to you but nothing to anyone else. If you have a private, personal series of numbers that you can remember and cannot be easily tied to some other readily available information about you then go for it. You're still stuck with four digits, so if they're four digits you'll remember but no one will guess, you're all set. If it's something like your dog's birthday, the last four digits of your best friend's call phone number, or any other series of digits highly unlikely to be in your wallet and equally unlikely information to be easily available to a thief, it's fair game.Use math to conceal your PIN. Another, more advanced suggestion is to use Modular Arithmetic to secure your PIN. Here's how it works: you know how difficult it is to fool yourself into getting up earlier because you set your clock back 5 minutes? You'll always look at the clock and know to subtract 5 minutes to get the real time, right? The same principle applies to your PIN. Take a random PIN, like 5642, and then add 5 (mod 10) to each digit: 101197. Then, drop the excess numbers, and your result is 0197. (Thanks for the correction, area_educator!) It's a simple code, but it works, and the key is in your head.Get the bank to reset your PIN. If doesn't preclude any of the tips above, but one way to make sure your PIN is a random series of digits is to make the bank reset it, mail you the new PIN, and then force yourself to use whatever they assign you. You can use the mnemonic trick to make it easier to remember, or you can just brute force the number into memory and call it a day. Painful, but it works.

In the end, the method you use to remember your PIN is best decided by how likely you are to embrace the technique and eventually remember the numbers without having to write them down or fall back on something that's easily guessed or otherwise obtained. Regardless of what you choose, if your PIN is "1111" or "1234" or even some variation on the theme, pick a new PIN, for your bank account's sake.

How do you remember your ATM PIN? Do you use a technique like the ones above, or just pick a special number that only you know? Do you give out your PIN to family members or friends? Share your thoughts—and security suggestions—in the comments below.

Title image by redspotted.

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