CLIPP Board

Email Management

I’m always looking for new ways to manage all my email!

Thankfully, I use my Aston staff account for almost everything, as I’ve mentioned before:

Exchange sync everywhere?

That includes from multiple computers, at Work, Home or anywhere in between. Last night I was playing with a feature in Apple OSX Mail called ‘Smart Folders‘ which allowed me to automatically group related emails, without moving them from my tried and tested heirarchy of a score or more of folders.

So, now I’m at work and can’t figure out how to make Outlook(2007) do the same, and thinking, it MUST be able to! Well, it can and just as easily, but it is just called ‘Search Folders‘ instead.

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Exchange sync everywhere?

My previous post “What is RSS?” explained how I manage web information across multiple computers of different types, at work, home and anywhere else.

I also do the same with my Aston email, contacts and calendars(Aston & Google).

I use Microsoft(MS) Outlook on my work PC. Outlook is part of MS Office(I have the latest Office 2007, but previously used 2003 version). I prefer to use Google Calendar for multiple work and private calendars, and I can access it from any web enabled device, but functionality and usability are not always as convenient as dedicated applications.

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What is RSS?

See that PostIt note above? It also has 2 RSS icons on it.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss

Blogs, like podcasts, rely on RSS feeds to alert interested internet users of changes and new information without having to visit each site just in case, or filling your email inbox with extra alerts.

You can ‘subscribe’ to either or both of the 2 feeds by clicking or dragging the RSS icon to any software that acts as a feed reader. Some web browers support it natively, and Google offers a web based ‘Reader’, even Outlook 2007 supports it.

I use software on several different computers that synchronizes what I have read so I don’t have to read it again later, for example when I’m at home, work, or having a coffee somewhere else.

I see the feeds on my work PC(Windows FeedDemon), home Apple Mac and wireless Apple iPodTouch – both the later use NetNewsWire software and synced with FeedDemon via Newsgator.com.

I subscribe to hundreds of different RSS feeds related to both work and pleasure, and I can choose which ones to see and read on which computer. I categorise them in folders accordingly, for example Leisure, IT, Learning & Teaching, Software and News.

It means I can keep my email inbox to between 20 and 30 active or pending emails!

I can also use my emails, calendar and contacts on the same computers and synchronized in the the same way! That is a forthcoming post…

UPDATE 31/7/09:

Newsgator have just announced that they are moving to Google Reader as their web and management engine for individual users, and updating FeedDemon and Netnewswire to reflect the changes. I’ll post again when I’ve got all my syncs working, hopefully before the 31st August deadline.

UPDATE 25/9/09:

Well, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded, first was FeedDemon3.0 which led me through conversion to GoogleReader sync, including my folders and clippings, very painlessly. Then I updated Netnewswire3.2 on my home Mac(OSX 10.5) which ‘just worked’, and finally NetNewsWire2.0 iPhone app.

The only drawback, a small ‘Ad’ window, bottom left in the Free versions of each of the Applications. I must also say that FeedDemon is still very ‘clunky’ compared to the NetNewsWire versions.

More UPDATES in Comments…