Google Priority Inbox Tip

I've been playing with priority inbox for the past few days, seeing if it fits into my email life.  I've always liked Gmail's spam filtering, but I still end up sorting the good email from the chaff - unimportant things that I still want in my inbox to refer back to later.  When I first set up Priority Inbox, true to the system's purpose, it began to categorize things that were important to me.  The one problem?  One of the ways Gmail determines what goes in the priority box is by looking at what/who you regularly respond to.  My inbox was just as flooded, with my various forum response alerts, Facebook alerts, and Google Group emails!

I decided to tackle this today, and clean up my email once and for all.  Lo and behold, it was easier than I thought.

If you haven't played around with Gmail's filters, it's well worth looking into.  My forum, groups, and alerts that regularly come in are now nicely sorted - and I was able to specify that none of them were to be flagged into my priority inbox!  Gmail makes it very easy to manage these unweildy email problems, and after a few minutes of fiddling with filters for my various categories, I have a nice, clean priority inbox that actually WORKS!

If your priority inbox doesn't seem to have your priorities in mind, try working a bit with your rules.  A few minutes spent perfecting a rule list can clean up your new, shiny priority inbox, and make sure that Gmail prioritizes the way that you do.

Cr-48 - First full battery test

I finally got around to giving my Cr-48 a decent battery test tonight.  I arrived at work tonight at 11:00pm and set up the netbook to handle my web and music streaming duties, opting not to plug it in.  My battery turned red, alerting me that I had just under 60 minutes of charge remaining at 6am.  That's 7+ hours on a single charge - and before I showed up here, it had already seen some moderate use at home.  Google has under-promised and over-delivered with this little unit.  I never feel that impending fear of running out of juice these days.

School and the Cr-48

As some of you well know, I am a student at a local university.  As most college students well know, classes are beginning to ramp up after the holiday break.  With my laptop confined to a docking station at home, with a dead battery and no true mobile life left in it, and a replacement still three weeks away, the Cr-48 will face its biggest task yet - being my primary school laptop for an online psychology course.  Will it rise to the occasion, and perform in my web-based classroom?  Or will I spend many a sleepless day catching up on schoolwork in my home office after a long commute home.  Only time will tell.

Also, in a completely unrelated twist, I've discovered that the Palm Pixi gets QUITE HOT when running the mobile hotspot app.  Taking the "hot" portion of that app name a little bit too seriously, aren't we Palm?