One of the advantages of RSS is that it lets you skim through big amounts of content. To make it even easier, you can insert visual cues to the names of content sources. That way, your eye will identify the source of the headline even before you start reading it.
Continue reading “Use Visual Cues to Identify Non-Interesting Content in Your RSS Stream”»
About a month ago Google add a new feature to Gmail – rich signatures. Among other design capabilities, the new feature lets you add images (or icons) to your signature. Now, there is a really big problem with the way images are added to the signature.
Instead of just uploading an image and adding it to the email, when you create your rich signature you are asked to give a link to the image (see screenshot below). The link is of a web address, not a location on your computer. When you send an email, the link is a live link.
This mean that whenever someone opens an email you sent, the image is retrieved from it's original location on the web. If the image changed in the meantime – your recipient will see the changed image, and if it no longer exists – he will see no image at all.
The video below is a nice animation of a lecture by Dan Pink. It talks about the things that motivate people, and especially knowledge workers (my wording). The interesting thing it reveals is that in activities that are highly cognitive (versus mechanical), it is not money that motivates us, but the following three factors:
I think that the most interesting practical suggestion in the video is this:
Pay people enough so that monIey is not a consideration anymore, and then making sure the three motivation factors are satisfied.
Continue reading “Video – The Three Factors That Motivate People”»
When you’re trying to organize a particular area of your life, perhaps shopping, your finances or stock orders, it can be a huge help to have technology on your side. Just recently I’ve been trying out Google’s Gmail filters, and I’ve found that if you use them in a certain way (in conjunction with FireFox and its addon), you can come up with some cool ideas.
One of the most fun ways to use Gmail Filters is to use it for organizing coupon codes and hence creating shopping lists.
Continue reading “Guest Post – Get Ready for Shopping Season: Collect Deals in Your Gmail Inbox”»
Update 7 August 2010: Don’t Use Images in Gmail’s signature!
Gmail now natively supports rich signatures (with images, font size and colors, links and so on) . Just go to 'Settings' and customize your signature under the 'Signature' section. Here is an image of my new signature:
Continue reading “Tips and Examples for using (the new) HTML Signatures in Gmail”»
Back in February 2009 I wrote a post about a new lab feature that Google added to Gmail – multiple inboxes. After more than a year of using this great feature, I'd like to share how it helps me manage my e-mail (overload).
Gmail multiple inboxes allows you to have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view. You can have up to 5 additional panels and set them to display labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want next to your inbox. To learn how to set it up read my previous post about it.
Continue reading “How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload”»