Gmail vs the future

I'm fanatical about the promises of the social web. I wish they materialized tomorrow! But they won't. This post isn't about what we're working on, but finding bits and pieces of the future, available today, and making the best of it. Today I'm interested in how we all maximize our experience of Gmail.

Pro-Filtering? I'm assuming you know all about gmail filtering, or how to google it ^^ Here I'm more interested in that additional edge. Here are a few quick hits I found smoothly saves a bundle of time. Got any of your own? Use code words I include one unique tag word for quick notes and one for long term storage of information. This way you'll be able to find it way after you forgot all the specifics. These days there's so many access keys, times/dates, confirmation numbers and who knows what else to keep track of. Just include the code word when forwarding or send the info to yourself in an email. Search is still king I'm afraid... You just need to know what your're looking for. Filter code words into "code" label Just including the code word is way quicker than labeling, especially from a mobile device/blackberry. Finding "multiple inboxes" from labs works great with this. Also, guilty as charged, I use android's shortcut to gmail label to skip right to my latest info. One touch of the screen... My inboxes below, what are yours? Family Company Billing Code, for code words (archived) Social Alerts (archived) Newsletters, commercial etc(archived) One great thing about this is that the number of emails in your inbox doesn't matter. You could have 2000 or have archived them all. You can see what's recent or bring them all up in once click. Used to keep them to the right of my inbox, but after using an asus 1005HA netbook I now keep them below due to the smaller screen. Got used to it quickly though, now computers that looked tiny before seem huge. Funny thing. Let me know if you found it useful, or if you do it differently. I'm aware that not everyone has use for this much organization. Personally, I find it quite nice. It affords me greater freedom and less time spent filing/retrieving information. The connection With all this automized filtering, what could possibly be missing? Well google wave is coming, which aims to reinvent email with the technology of today. This instead of technology that's been around decades before the likes of me. You could think of it as a real-time scratch pad, what seems more like a multi user chat+wiki than email. Which is all nice and well, but probably won't do much in regards to above. I'm keenly interested in how to maximize you're use of gmail for a few reasons. For many people, much of the time it exposes a more fundamental problem about current means of communicating online. Online interactions contribute less to the real world than they could. Twitter, though nice, ain't the answer. Neither is clicking "yes" on a facebook recommended friend from grade school. Looking the current social web, there's no real change in sight on this one. Or? Presently considering what to be secretive about and what to share. These ramblings will make more sense as we release more in the coming months, and of course commence beta testing.