How To Win At Email
nikilster.com
nikilster.com
I've shared this with a few friends who love it. It's pretty flawless. It's never caused me to miss any important emails (that I'm aware of).
another option could be using https://unroll.me/
I don't use gmail, but used to use <prefix><dash>username (prefix-username@) with qmail - and at some point had to have email at a site that used Exim with standard setup - that allowed <prefix><plus>username (prefix+user@) -- but not with a dash (it is possible to configure Exim to do this - but with qmail it is standard).
That's how I discovered that a lot of sites erroneously filter out + from the username part.
Now host my own email with Exim - but rather than use a prefix, I've just set up Exim to route all users at all subdomains to my inbox, so I can use adresses like:
site@s.example.com (s for spam). So far I that have worked fine.
I get very strange looks whenever I give out my email address in person. But you're right; it's an excellent way to track who gives out my email and it's an easy way to block spam that gets through the filter.
I find that this easily filters out machine generated addresses, always works on forms, and if spambots ever get wise to it, it'd be difficult for them to add in the dot at the correct place, whereas taking out the stuff after the plus would be quite easy
We gave settings to disable that when it launched, but that was obviously not sufficient especially since it was on by default. After it started to roll out and we got complaints pretty much instantly, we turned it off within a few hours.
So ya, if this soured you permanent off of Streak then obviously that sucks big time. We definitely learned our lesson though, so hopefully we get one mulligan.
Then I switched to Gnus in Emacs, and for mailing lists at least it is a world of difference. Scoring in Gnus ensures important emails are at the top, unimportant are at the bottom, I can press "c" to mark all as read, almost all frequently used functions require a single keypress, and subscribing to a new mailing list also typically only requires a couple keypresses, and unsubscribing is "ctrl+k".
Real world example: I want to follow any subjects in the high-volume libreoffice-dev list that contain the word "proofreading". I do "^" and search for "libreoffice", click enter to subscribe, enter to open the group and click "I" to add an increase-score-rule ('subject contains string "proofreading"). Next time I open the group, all high-scoring threads will be at the top and I can press "n" to go through them quickly, then "c" to mark the rest as read. You can do this sort of thing with filters and IMAP flags ("stars") of course, but they take so much more time to set up and change and yet only give one level of priority (what if you want certain authors to be more prioritised than others, when talking about proofreading?). If I ever tire of following those subjects, I just ctrl+k on the group to remove it forever, I never have to open an "unsubscribe" page – it's a single keypress, and it's offline. Switching from gmail to gnus for mailing lists was for me like switching from svn to git. Of course, you do need to be an Emacs user already, otherwise you'll probably just be frustrated …
When you've done this sort of thing for email, and it eventually becomes second nature to apply the same level of filtering to Google Reader, then to Twitter lists, then Facebook groups, etc - you end up blocking so much of the noise that it's disheartening when you finally discover that actually the signal isn't very interesting either.
sigh The organised person's first world problems, I guess...
Should perhaps add parentheses with "(but don't forget you're not really done, you've just hidden anything that takes more than two minutes to respond to out of view, make sure you deal with those emails later)".
Especially with keyboard shortcuts, I can glance at the important emails, check any others that catch my eye, and then archive/mark the rest. Priority inbox, labels, etc. became almost automatic mental cues to check or delete email.
Another thing I've done is the username+service@gmail.com trick. Easiest account filtering possible.
I dislike this new trend which consist of SHOUTING at your reader and ordering them to do or not do something (for their own good, obviously).
This is used to give some weight to very dull advices, like when you should or ~n't read your emails, which books to buy, etc. Strangely enough, genuinely useful advices about important topics like how to educate your kids or how to behave in foreign countries do not need to be SHOUTED at the readership.
Also a big plus of this approach is feeling like you are "done" with email. I know it seems a bit complicated but its actually quite simple - most of the setup is a one time upfront cost of about 20 min. Try it out and let me know what you think about this strategy!
http://www.emailtray.com/email-sorting-software.html
It takes care of unnecessary email junk