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Get Reminders to Return to Important Email With Snooze Your Email

Simon Mackie — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:04:25 +0000

We’ve probably all had times when we’ve been so busy we didn’t have time to deal with an important email when we first read it. The danger is that the email ends up being forgotten. Snooze Your Email for Gmail may be able to help. It’s an extension for Chrome that enables you to hit a “snooze” button on an email to quickly set a reminder about it for a preset time in the future.

Once installed, the extension adds a new “Snooze” button to the Gmail interface, as shown above. Hit the button, and a drop-down menu appears, enabling you to choose a snooze period from five minutes to four hours, or to be reminded about the email on a specific day or at a specific time:

When the snooze period is up, the extension will then play an alert sound and pop up a desktop notification, reminding you about the email and (optionally) marking the email as unread. In the notification, there are handy links to open the email or to snooze it again:

It’s a simple idea and it’s implemented well. However, it only works on Chrome, so if, like me, you also tend to read your emails on mobile devices it may prove less useful. I’d love to see this as a Labs feature in Gmail itself and have it available on multiple platforms. Note that despite its name, Snooze Your Email for Gmail also apparently works for Yahoo Mail, although I haven’t tried it.

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Springpad Adds Chrome Extension & Mobile Alerts

Scott Blitstein — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:00:23 +0000

I’ve written a number of times about Springpad, the immensely useful information capture service. Reading through my notes, I seem to have an on-again, off-again relationship with the service. Over the course of the last few months, and particularly with my move to Mac and the taking up Yojimbo as the repository of the bulk of my note like data, my Springpad usage has declined.

But when I hear from the folks at Springpad about changes to the service, I always read with interest. Even as my usage has waned, I really have always been very impressed with the service, and the possibilities of what it could become. The latest batch of changes promise to make Springpad even more useful.

I’ve already discussed the transition that Springpad seems to be making, moving away from a structured note-taking app toward more everyday usage, like capturing and then using data around restaurants, movies, books, food and recipes, for example. The company’s own description of Springpad as a “lifestyle application” encapsulates this change and is quite apt. So while I don’t really use it to store the notes and other such data as I have in the past, it’s still a wonderful way to grab information about my stuff and then get presented with more contextual information about it.

I was really excited to read about the new Extension for Chrome, released today. The nice thing about the extension as opposed to the bookmarklet is that not only does it allow me to get info into the app, it also gives me access to the data that already resides there, without having to visit the site. I can quickly view and sort the info in my account. Adding items is easy and it does a wonderful job of recognizing the type of data that I am adding, and can also enhance it with useful information, such as pricing information or addresses for physical locations.

When I clip items using the extension, I can edit the information and add tags. I can’t seem to change the public / private settings at the time of clipping though, which would be nice. I do tend to capture a mix of items and the defaults don’t always match my intentions.

Any application that is supposed to help you capture and organize your information is really only as useful as the tools that are made available to help you get that information into the app. No matter what you can do with the data when it’s there, if it isn’t easy to grab and store it, chances are you just aren’t going to take the time.

I am not an iPhone or Android user so I don’t have access to the mobile applications available for those platforms, but they’ve received a couple of useful updates designed to make that connection even more useful, specifically the ability to send mobile alerts from within Springpad and to quickly push notifications about specific items directly to your phone for easy access. Again, the ubiquity of the data and the ease with which it becomes useful is key. I think mobile users with access to the Springpad application will find the service even more appealing than I do.

Springpad is free, web-based and works in all major browsers. Applications are also available for iPhone, iPad and Android.

I am rediscovering my Springpad — what can it do for you?

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ReadItLater: Firefox Extension of the Week

Judi Sohn — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:38:07 +0000

Ever find that little tool and think, “where have you been all my life?”

We’re constantly talking about ways of dealing with information overload, so it’s a happy day when a tool can truly make a difference. Today, that tool is Idea Shower’s ReadItLater.

Along the same lines as InstaPaper, LaterLoop and others, ReadItNow is simply a Firefox add-on that helps you save a list of pages for later reading. Better than regular old bookmarks, it’s for those pages you want to read when you have a moment but maybe not keep around forever.

ReadItLater has been around for over a year, but this week with version .99, it got insanely useful. I understand why other sites have been talking about it so much.

You can read and save pages on any computer, any platform, even a mobile device (yes, an iPhone). If it’s not a Firefox-based browser, you can use a bookmarklet to save your page.

There’s an offline caching feature so you can catch up on your reading even if you don’t have an Internet connection. Great for plane reading.

You can sort your reading list by Quality (aka PostRank, formerly AideRSS), so you are sure that you are reading the best stuff first.

You can toggle something called “Click to Save Mode” so when you’re flying through your Netvibes or Digg pages, you can quickly collect those sites that interest you and skim them later. I’ve gotten into the habit of loading Netvibes first thing in the morning, opening the pages I want to read in multiple tabs and working through them throughout the day. Doing this in ReadItLater makes much more sense.

The new Google Reader integration is simple and well done. Click the check to add the post to your reading list, without having to actually load the page just yet.

The only bug I found is that it’s not 100% compatible with all 3rd party Firefox themes. If it’s not displaying properly for you, try switching back to the default theme.

Happy Halloween!

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