I have quite a few email accounts, one for personal, one for business and others for various projects. It wasn’t until I thought of using them all through the Gmail client that I started my love for Gmail. Now they all get the benefit of filtering, tagging, spam filtering and search and I get them through my iPhone via my one Gmail IMAP set up so I no longer have to check each account individually and changes there (read mail, etc) are automatically reflected on my computer.

So, access is big – Whether I’m on my iPhone, my computer, or any computer I’m looking at the same thing without any synching (I’m an anti-synchite).

The filters, which I always struggled with in Apple Mail are simple and fast, but the search function works so quickly that you only need them for all but your most common emails. The tags are so easy I’m tagging everything now (I’ve gone a little tag crazy like an administrative assistant on his first day with post-it notes).

Apple Mail’s spam filtering was okay, but never really kept up with things. Gmail’s is actually pretty amazing.

Searching, at least for the six thousand message I have (only 4% of my allotment), is very fast. I do try to delete unnecessary messages as they come in, both to keep my space clean and my search results better.

Keyboard shortcuts – learn ‘em. Navigating email is faster.

Gmail is a Web app, meaning that I get improvements as they hit without having to think about updates (why should I ever have to think about updating my software?).

Gmail is smart: Integration with the Gmail Calendar program is nearly seamless to the point it’s almost scary. It detects events in your emails (the same way it tries to present contextual ads) and asks you if you want to add to your calendar.

Integration with contacts (which in and of itself is not fully fleshed out yet) is also pretty clean. When you look up someone in your contact list or even just hover over their name in the inbox you can click to see your “recent conversations” with this person, either “to” or “from” them, something I’d have to set up in Apple Mail, which does either, but not both without setting up a smart folder. I don’t know how “recent” is defined, but for example, if I filtered to see conversations with my friend Mitch, it would list “1-20 of hundreds” etc.

It also integrates with Google Reader, another app I’ve come to rely on (more anon).

What I don’t like about Gmail

1) Ads. But as everyone knows, when you look at them every day you tune them out.

2) It’s a little scary having your life sitting on someone else’s servers (I have another post in store on that).

3) And, related to that, the potential for security leaks, the potential for government access (which, at least in principle is disturbing, although I don’t know how much of a threat that is). If I had concerns for critical data loss, I’d probably run a backup copy on my computer, but that’s not an issue for me.

4) Apple’s Mail handles attachments much more seamlessly. Nice when you’re sending photos, but I do that less because I use Flickr and other services now.

5) On the Mac, clicking a “mail-to” link doesn’t work. This is something that’s broken, so I suspect it will be fixed in time.

Enough Already

I haven’t even really gotten into the chat function, but I probably should and I’m sure there are other things to talk about. The only reason I post about Gmail at all is that I suspect a lot of other independents like me spend a lot of time grappling with an overload of email and I’m also going to be writing about Google Apps soon, so this, you might say, is an entry into that subject.

p.s.

The title of this post is an elliptic reference to Nabokov’s memoir, “Speak, Memory”. Email becomes for many of us a form of technological memory, recording events and conversations accessible in far more linear and accurate ways than the human memory.

If you’ve ever gotten your email online in Squirrel Mail or AOL or Gmail, then you’ve used a Web app, but those instances are only the beginning. Google is the exemplar here (though not alone – see Zoho) with their Google Docs, including spreadsheets, documents and presentations, all easily shareable among groups just like their calendar and the wiki pages built into Google Groups. What Fluid does is allow you to segregate those online applications into their own browser window completely independent of the one you use for actual browsing. To someone like me who is highly dependent upon Basecamp and Backpack for their workflow this seemingly small thing is a boon to the way I operate.

Synching between computers is (soon to be) dead

I’ve also given up on using Apple’s Mail and iCal programs – as compellingly elegant as they are – for the far better designed (functionally speaking) and more quickly evolving Gmail and Google Calendar. Synching is dead and Apple’s products are built upon a cumbersome model of uploading and downloading across users and computers. I get email from all of my addresses (4 or so for my various projects) and I can much more easily share calendars, at least with anyone willing to have a Google account.

This stuff is merely the beginning because with Web based apps you also get something developers call the API, which essentially opens up your data from one application to be used in another. Easy example is how I have my Google calendar embedded in another application (Backpack) that I keep all my to-do lists and notes in.

Now, truth is, Apple isn’t really all that behind the times. They have a Web-based version of their mail program, although you have to pay a membership fee to use it and functionally it’s still old school, but most importantly, I think the introduction of the iPhone, which primarily relies on Web-based apps for non-core functionality, and their super-thin and highly coveted by this tech junkie MacBook Air signifies that all you really need is a to get on the Web. Personally, I’m moving to “The Cloud” as techies call it and I’ll be writing more about that here soon.

Much of what I have to say here won’t mean anything without you seeing what it looks like, so I suggest if you think this will meet your needs at all, you hop over to the Backpack site and sign up for a free account to try out.

How it works

Backpack works with individual pages – each page has a place for notes, files or images, to-do lists, links to other pages, and finally tags. The tags become important as you start to build up a lot of pages (I currently have 36 pages set up). There is also a reminders page for those to-dos that must be done at a certain time, an easy to use calendar (although I use Google Calendar) and writeboards for collaborating on documents.

Pages are the core of the system. Each page is listed in the sidebar (this list is the only thing in the sidebar except for upcoming reminders, keeping things as simple as possible), but you can also remove them to keep more active pages up front. The sidebar list is kept in alphabetical order, so I add symbols in front of project names based on each one’s time sensitivity (it’s quick and easy to change a project name):

• “+” for a project that has work to be done now;


• “-” for next up;


• “=” for soon;


• “@” for ongoing;


• “[” for projects that have not started, but will soon.


• “\” for non-client projects


• “__________________” break – everything below is a notebook page

Templates

If you work on a lot of similar projects, you can set up a page to be used only for a template (just name it and/or tag it template and take it off the sidebar) and when a new project comes along, just go to that page and duplicate it, then rename with your project’s name.

Email

The email feature is important. Backpack’s core functionality is based on email – notifications for reminders are sent via email and each page has a unique email address where notes, to-dos, files and images can be emailed. I put a project’s email address into my client’s address book entry and whenever something relevant comes in, I just forward the email to their page. This makes it easy for each page to be a central repository for information.

So what types of information do I keep on these pages? I use a to-do list for workflow, laying out the major steps of a project, usually supplemented with ad hoc items as they come along. As I set up a client’s hosting or content mangement system, or anything where there’s a set of detailed information, I save it as a note or email. I use the Backpack plan with secure SSL encryption, by the way. I also keep quick notes, projected launch dates or other critical data in the “body” of the page, which is nothing more than an easily editable note section at the top of the page.

Control point

Most importantly, I use my main page as a central point for all my projects, keeping my “today’s priorities” to-do list, a list of things I’m waiting on and lists of things to do that are not tied to any single project. I cycle through my active project pages (which is a good practice in and of itself) to generate my priority list and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Drawbacks

For someone to collaborate on a project via Backpack, they need their own Backpack account – there’s no central place for everyone to log-in. For those projects, I still use Basecamp. I keep a link to my Basecamp account on the top of my main Backpack page.

Links

That’s the core of how I use Backpack. Since I’ve started using it, I feel more in control over my projects. Here are a couple relevant links from the Backpack blog with tips that I’ve adopted:

making_it_easier_to_remember_a_pages_email_address.php

pages_adding_content_to_a_page_via_email

Do sift through the entire blog though. Backpack lends itself to little tricks to make it work best for you, so you’ll find a lot of tips there.

I often look at other project or to-do list management software and every time they fail in one important aspect – too many features that limit flexibility.