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Easier email: Minimalist, Cloud Magic, and other apps help you master your
inbox
PC World – 6/16/2014 Liane Cassavoy
Email. Few things waste more time, yet
few things are quite as essential to our daily lives—both personal and
professional. And the only thing worse than wasting time managing your inbox is
wasting time on an app that’s supposed to make it more efficient. But I can
help: here’s are a few email apps that can save you time and energy.
Minimalist
Chrome; free
This free Chrome extension isn’t solely
for email, but it shines when used with Gmail. Minimalist
is designed to let you “take control of the way you experience your favorite
Web sites.” It does that by allowing you to remove much of the clutter that
those Web sites—including Gmail—have all over their pages.
Don't like the way Gmail looks?
Minimalist makes it easy to customize its appearance.
Minimalist makes it easy to customize
Gmail’s interface, as it comes loaded with a Gmail module that allows you to
change the appearance of or hide certain elements, such as the Google Bar, the
toolbar, Google+ notifications, and even the site’s header, logo, and search
button. Minimalist also allows you to customize your Gmail view by doing things
like assigning specific colors to certain email messages. You can use
Minimalist with sites beyond Gmail, but I found doing so a little tricky, as
you have to create the module yourself, which can be confusing.
Mailbox
iOS, Android; free
Don't want to deal with an email right
away? Mailbox lets you "snooze" it until later.
The Mailbox app
is everything the iPhone’s built-in email client should be but isn’t. It's
designed to help you fly through your email, and that’s what it feels like as
you start swiping messages left and right to move them to locations other than
your inbox. A swipe to the right archives a message, while a longer swipe to
the right places it in the trash. (I was worried these two similar gestures
would be problematic, but they aren’t.) I like how you can snooze a message
until set times in the future and how you can mute conversations that you don’t
care about. Mailbox truly makes email easier than ever.
CloudMagic
CloudMagic integrates with third-party
apps through "cards."
Mailbox is great, but it only works
with Gmail and iCloud email accounts for now. CloudMagic supports
Gmail, Exchange, Outlook, iCloud, Google Apps, and any IMAP account. And this
wide base of support is not the only thing I like about CloudMagic; I'm also a
fan of how well it integrates with third-party apps, such as Evernote, OneNote,
Trello, and more. It does so through what CloudMagic calls “cards”—there’s one
for every service it supports, and you use these cards to save the info your
emails contain. I also especially like CloudMagic’s powerful search, which
makes it easy to find just the message you’re looking for on your phone.
Gmail
Offline
Gmail Offline
is pretty self-explanatory. This free Chrome app automatically syncs when an
Internet connection is available, and when a connection can’t be found, you can
use Gmail Offline to read and compose messages. Its streamlined interface is
reminiscent of checking email on a tablet, lacking the clutter of Gmail’s
traditional web-based interface. It’s so clutter-free, in fact, that it just
may become my browser-based Gmail method of choice.
Gmail Offline features a pared-down
interface that's reminsicent of a tablet app.
Molto
Molto adds plenty of visual appeal to
your inbox, but it also makes it easier to use.
If part of what drives you crazy about email is
the way it looks, you should check out Molto.
This free Android and iOS app adds visual appeal to your email inbox and
messages. If you connect it to your Facebook account, it adds profile pictures
to your inbox, and displays images inline as well. It also makes email messages
themselves look better, laying out messages in a sleek and sophisticated
manner. All the good looks in the world don’t mean anything, though, unless it
makes your email easier to use. And Molto does that, too, creating a customized
list of the contacts with whom you interact the most and offering a quick reply
option that makes it easier to get back to the people who need to hear from
you.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:
www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki
If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo. I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ Rider University and PSG of Mercer County New Jersey.
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