Google has released an update to their popular email service by introducing priority inbox system designed to help heavy email users manage their inbox more efficiently and effectively.

The below is a quick guide how to maximize the system:

Step One:

Once logged into Gmail, you should see a link in red to the left of your email address along the top right of the screen. Click this link, and a short video introduction appears. Watch the video, and click try now.

The below screen will appear where you can amend various settings:

Step Two:

Default Inbox: Select from the drop-down menu ‘Default Inbox’ Priority Inbox. Using this option will always display the Priority Inbox in Gmail.

Priority Inbox Sections: This option allows you to display up to four levels of email settings within Gmail. Here you can select:

1) Important and Unread
2) Important
3) Unread
4) Starred

Each of these options are customizable, and will depend on your own preference as to how you want Gmail to priorities your emails.

Filtered Mail: To maximize the feature of Priority Inbox you will need to select the ‘Don’t Override Filters’. I’ll come on to Filters in a moment and how they will affect your Priority Inbox.

Importance Markers: Again, this a personal choice whether you would like to see emails that are marked as important or not.

Show Priority Inbox: You will need to select ‘Show Priority Inbox’, as the emails selected as a priority, will appear here.

Once you have amended the settings, don’t forget to save them.

Step Three:

In order to ensure every email appears in the correct Priority Inbox, you will need to set up Filters for each email you receive that you want to appear in your Priority Inbox. The alternative is to allow Gmail to automatically do it for you. I tested this for a couple of hours this morning, and it was very hit and miss.

Create a Filter:

1. Click on Settings along the top right row.
2. Select Filters across the top of the page.
3. At the bottom click on ‘Create a new filter’, and you should see the following screen:

4. Type in the email address in ‘From’ which you would like to appear in the Priority Inbox upon receipt.
5. Click ‘Next Step’.
6. Place a tick in ‘Always mark it as important’ and any other Filters that are relevant to this email.

7. Click ‘Create Filter’.
8. You will need to repeat the process for email address.

If you have any questions or need any help with this, please either leave a reply below or use the Contact Us section.

After deciding that I wanted to purchase the HTC Desire, the Desire is only available on the US Cellular network. Upon checking their web site I have found that they do not provide coverage in the area that I live. Therefore, and for obvious reasons, the HTC Desire isn’t going to be the phone I purchase.

Having conducted some further research, the options are limited to one of the following:

Samsung Galaxy S

or,

HTC Evo

Both look as if they are really great phones. At the moment I swaying towards the Evo, as it has a better camera and video capturing hardware. At this moment I am going to hang fire on buying the Evo, as currently, the Evo is only available on Sprint, and it’s rumored the Evo will be available on other networks in a month or two.

Facebook Places has now been released in the US only and I’ve had a little time to play around with Facebook’s latest addition to its services. Firstly, Places can only be accessed via the Facebook iphone app and Facebook plans to release apps for other platforms including Android and Blackberry. Alternatively, you can access places via a brower at touch.facebook.com.

There are three flip sides to Places and I will discuss each individual as they are unique and offer different functionality depending who you are:

The End User:

The end user is me and you. We have a Facebook account and use the social networking web site to stay connected with friends and family. Facebook Places offers this facility to share our location with the people we have added as friends. You can also tag one another at the same location, or check in each other at the same location.

Local Business Owner:

Facebook Places is a local business owner’s vehicle for advertisement on the web for free. Places offers a locational based social side of the coin to help people share information and promote a business, offer discounts and loyalty bonuses for customers.

Developers:

Facebook has now released Places API, which will allow users to scrap data from checkins of their friends and their friends friends. Developers can surf the data in their applications to create a variety of social experiences, such as:

• A travel application that gives people the ability to see which of their friends have already been to the place they are visiting
• A conference application that makes it easy for attendees to find colleagues and connect with them
• An event application that enables attendees to see where their friends are at a concert

Facebook has stated that in the coming months they will offer additional location features through the Graph API and the Open Graph protocol, including the ability to check in with Facebook through your application and discover places nearby.

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The media are reporting that Facebook will be making an announcement on Wednesday (tomorrow) detailing their location service. So what will this service look like, and how will we use it?

This has been an anticipated move by Facebook for some time now, and I personally am surprised it has taken them so long to jump on the geographical location service, which is already provided by Google Buzz, Twitter and the specific geolocation service, Foursquare.

It is reported that there will be two key functions:

1) It’s own feature for sharing your location with friends.

2) APIs to let other apps like Foursquare and Gowalla offer services to Facebook users.

There are some clear privacy issues here, of which one hopes Facebook will address with their recent awareness of users desire to unsure they have control over their own data.

Okay, I think I’ve decided upon the HTC Desire Smartphone. As mentioned in my previous post concerning this matter, I don’t want to go for the mainstream iPhone 4, which doesn’t work very well for making calls. In addition to this decision, Android is over taking IO4 and becoming more popular.

The Desire isn’t available in the US until August 27th, 2010. I’ll be ordering it soon.

This is relatively simple process to follow; however, it does only apply to certain individuals. If you are a celebrity, you can verify your account. At this time Twitter isn’t verifying businesses, organisations or charities. Please visit Twitter’s help page for more information by clicking here. From this point you can request verification.

Twitter is a very useful tool to driving traffic to your web site, and in this article I discuss ways to get your Tweets Retweeted. I suspect that the top search engines are spidering peoples tweets, not necessarly to index or rank them, but using them to find content on the web very quickly. A popular post or article can be tweeted some several hours prior to it getting linked too. Search engines being interest in Twitter is very relevant to ensure their indexing is fresh and up to date.

1. Length:

Twitter limits you to only 140 characters per Tweet. A retweet is directly linked to the 140 characters as any retweet will be included at the front of the retweet: ‘RT’ @yourusername. Therefore, you need to keep you tweets short as possible, and leave sufficient space for the retweet information.

2. Phrasing:

There a few different types of phrasing, which are successful in achieving retweets. For example, definitive phrasing tweets which are authoritative and factual carry a lot of weight. Humorous tweets get retweets again and again for obvious reasons. Shocking tweets that provide information that isn’t widely known often get retweeted especially when they turn out to be factual. Carrot daggling tweets are often very intriguing to people. For example, you only give a snippet of information, or part of the story in the tweet and follow it will a url.

3. Content / Subject Matter:

This is very much fits the classic pattern of link bait on the web. For example, technology is big on Twitter and obviously celebrities. Content is king and will need to be current and relevant to your audiences.

4. Time of Day:

Research has shown that tweeting between 9am to 3pm pacific time is more likely to capture the maximum number of individuals are using Twitter. For example, if you tweet earlier you will capture Calaifornia one of the most heaviest percentage of users in the United States. Also, by tweeting before 3pm you will capture the United Kingdom audience. London has recently been deemed as the city with the most tweeters.

5. url:

To include a url very much depends on your Twitter strategy. If you are attempting to drive traffic to a web site, then obviously need to include a url. If there purposes of your tweets to raise you profile and follows, then I would suggest including urls selectively.

6. Pushing:

Email your friends asking them to retweet your tweets. Most people don’t mind helping you out, and it only takes a matter of seconds.

Below is a collection of social media products that I have gathered from around the web, which you may find in any geeks house.

I appreciate this is list isn’t exclusive, and I am sure there are many more products available. If you do come across an item that is worth sharing, please do not to contact me and I’ll include it in this list.

1. Twitter Earrings:

Twitter lovers can show their love for the micro-blogging with these Twitter inspired earrings available from etsy.com

2. Twitter Pendant:

This free jewelry making project shows you how to make a glass tile or glass slide pendant using a twitter image and some basic jewelry making supplies.

3. Social Pillows:

These Social Media icon-inspired pillows will add colour to any living space.

Geek pillow image from pillowhead designs on flickr

4. Twitter Clock:

The Twitwee Clock is a modified Cuckoo Clock that wirelessly connects to the internet and constantly checks for new status updates or search results received from the Twitter API. New Tweets are displayed on the built in display in near-realtime accompanied by the charming yet obtrusive call of a mechanical cuckoo poping out of the clock.

5. Twitter Stockings:

Follow me tattoo stockings.

6. Facebook Pillow:

Facebook is hard work, between the friend-ing and poking and tagging and stalking, it doesn’t take very long to get all tuckered out. That’s where this comfy icon pillow comes in. Now you can take your pokes offline and onto this perfectly plump Facebook pillow!

7. Twitter Icon Pillow:

There was a time when if you didn’t want to show your face, people would see a blue “o_O” on a hideous brown back drop. What was that about? Now, we get these wonderful colorful birds! And in pillow form you can have anonymous tweet dreams .

8. MySpace Icon Pillow:

Like MySpace, everyone should have one of these pillows, and everyone should also know 200 people who have one of these pillows. Tom should have one of these pillows. Unlike MySpace, this pillow doesn’t blast music, or try to give you a seizure when you lay your head upon it, instead it just makes you feel really cool without too much effort on your part. It’s awesome like that.

9. Reddit Alien Soap:

Check it out. It’s the Reddit Alien soap, and it’s awesome.

It comes in three fantastic fragrances. Orangered (which is just orange, to people not in the know), Bacon… and yeah, it smells like bacon. Have some vegetarian friends? They’ll both hate you and love you.

The third fragrance is Chocolate, and that’s for the Reddit’s Big Heart soap… the pink, cute one.

A complete collection of social media t-shirts available from Zazzle.

11. Facebook Cufflinks:

Social media has taken over the way we connect and communicate with our friends and family. From your boy/girlfriend to the random kid who ate glue in grade school, we now can keep up with goings-on of everyone we cross in our path.

Perfect for a night out, make a connection and become a friend instantly with the F Me Cufflinks.

How can you be lonely when you have so many friends on Facebook?

Are you cursed by the social network generation of only having relationships with people you hardly know, or work colleagues that you would rather not know in person, let alone online?

Has time move on from days when groups of friends got together in person for a night out or weekend activity?

Do you feel pressured into having to join popular social networking site because your friends are there, or you need to feel part of a community because online is the only community available to you?

All these questions are faced by many lonely people, who’s only access to people or a community is only available via a social networking website. Users of social networking websites know that you do not have to publish information about yourself, or post minute by minute status updates, but are you excluded or even black-marked by people when you do not join the ‘community’?

In my opinion social networking websites are not the place for a lonely person, because it can quantify your isolation from the outside world and people in person. The news feeds or status updates are constantly updated with streams of peoples activity, opinions, and photographs. It is a continued reminder of how other people are living their lives in text and technicolor and who’s popular and who’s not. Photographs are probably the most heartfelt reminder of when you see people tagged in a photograph and you were not included.

The pressures of young people to join social networking websites is well documented. Bullying has moved from the playground to social networking websites, and is know as cyber-bullying. There has been many reported cases in the media of people being harassed which has driven a few to suicide attempts and self-harming due to the psychological damage people do to one another. Do not get me wrong, bullying is not anything new, and not limited to social networking websites by any stretch of the imagination. My point is, as with many things, and especially for young people, there are social pressures for people to join these networks whether they want to or not.

This is not just a teenager or young person problem. The Mental Health Foundation released a report that a staggering 53% of 18-34 year olds had felt depressed due to loneliness. The report did answer one fundamental question: nearly a third of young people stated they spend too much time communicating online and not enough time in person.

A couple of days ago, Google announced they will no longer be supporting Google Wave. I wanted to write a short article expressing my disappointment at this discussion:

I was one of the first fortunate individuals to secure an invitation to use Google Wave, and the immediate problem I found was that no one else I knew had an invitation, so this obviously limited my use of the applications. As time went by I eventually found a couple of individuals that also had access, and we began testing the functionality of Wave.

We soon discovered Wave was a very useful tool for managing virtual projects in real-time. Once of the most disappointing features of Wave was that it wasn’t integrated into Gmail and ran independently. In effect Wave was a completely separate and independent piece of software that would have benefited from an integration, which would have opened it up to for more users.

I am sure Gmail would look and function very differently if Wave had been integrated, and because of this I believe this is why Google never mashed the two together. It’s a shame because there was no reason why there could not have been an option to integrate or run the two apart. Google did it with Buzz, so I don’t really understand the reasons why.

Either way, its a disappointment to me that Wave will no longer be supported by Google.

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