Prioritise this, Google!

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Google Labs: isn't it great to see the rate at which they churn out new features and new products. Some hit, some miss, but they keep busy. They get things out there.

 Gmail was a huge hit, and I loved it right from the start. It's been the class leading webmail since the day it was released, and soon overtook the best mail clients once labels, filters and Calendar integration came together.

Many of the labs features have made it into the product, and many other features seem indispensable to me. The keyboard shortcuts were such an importaam nt step forward - being able to use the keyboard as much as possible is very important to every power user, and they recognised that. Various changes to the way label links were presented, to help to clean up an increasingly cluttered layout, I could understand why they would do that.

In short, all was well, until I saw the invitation to try out their new Priority Inbox feature.

At work, I  have to use Lotus Notes. It's OK, or at least, I'm so used to it that it doesn't really bother me. It does a job. I used to have urgent mails at the top, because, like most email clients, that's where they go.
However, define urgent? What's urgent for you, may well not be urgent for me. Just because you put "!" all over the mail doesn't make it so special. Especially if everyone else does the same thing.

Now I know what you're thinking: this isn't the same thing at all; Google aren't letting the sender mark a mail as high priority, they're letting YOU do it. That's the difference, and that's why it's cool.

While this may be true, I'm not sure the end result is all that different. When I decide something is important, and mark it as such, each and every mail of that type (that same sender, or same subject) gets marked as priority mail. Great. Thing is, I already have this. Thanks to labels I can categorise and taxonomise my emails to my heart's content. Thanks to filters, I can auto-label certain types of mails, have them skip the inbox, or get starred, or auto-forward them, or auto-delete - I could go on. I have all sorts of control, and can change my mind whenever I want. The really beautiful thing is that I can decide to look at those mails as and when I want to. They aren't shoved in my face until I either remove the priority label, or read them.

My Lotus Notes inbox is not sorted by priority. It's sorted by date. Screw what the sender thinks is important. Put a sensible subject in the email, let me prioritise ad-hoc, I have a brain after all.
Thanks to Gmail, I have labels and filters and that's more than enough for me, so after giving Priority Inbox a good trial run, I'm turning it off again. I don't need it, and find it a distraction that actually wastes my time.

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