All posts tagged: Inbox

I solved my read-it-later bookmarks problem with a reading inbox in Obsidian

I solved my read-it-later bookmarks problem with a reading inbox in Obsidian

Published by skeptic

It’s often said that browser bookmarks are the graveyard of good intentions. We save an article with a mere click, and plan to return to it. We never do. Read-it-later apps and even browser features have gotten better. At least for me, my digital hoarding habits have remained the same. Worse, I am juggling different apps: Instapaper for long reads, browser bookmarks for quick references, and a notes app for things I’d half-processed. Each a stranger in its own silo. There was no “web” of logical relationships even between the related articles. A dedicated reading inbox inside Obsidian, built around the Obsidian Web Clipper extension, finally fixed all three problems at once. Related I use this simple workflow to turn my random web reading into a library I can actually use This simple Obsidian workflow becomes so convenient that I find myself always reading my web clippings. Saving links is easy; thinking is not Browser bookmarks are a procrastinator’s escape Credit: Saikat Basu/MakeUseOf Most read-it-later apps focus on saving, not processing. You tap a button, and …

I set up 3 Outlook rules and my inbox mostly cleans itself now

I set up 3 Outlook rules and my inbox mostly cleans itself now

Published by skeptic

My inbox used to be a mess. It used to stress me more than help me. I would open Outlook first thing in the morning to take on my tasks quickly. But within minutes, I’d find myself struggling to find important emails, browsing through newsletters I didn’t remember subscribing to, and getting distracted by unwanted notifications. I kept telling myself that I’d clean my inbox later, but that never happened. Things changed when I started using Outlook Rules. My inbox would automatically organize itself in the background. As a result, my important emails became easier to spot and clutter stopped piling up. I expected Outlook Rules to be complicated, but it wasn’t. I started with only three rules, and they have changed how my inbox looks and feels. Automatically sort newsletters out of my main inbox Send newsletters to a dedicated folder Newsletters were the biggest source of noise and distraction in my inbox. I didn’t want to unsubscribe from them altogether. I genuinely enjoy reading some of them occasionally, but I also didn’t want …

Here’s my favorite email trick for cleaning up inbox clutter – automatically

Here’s my favorite email trick for cleaning up inbox clutter – automatically

Published by skeptic

MirageC/Moment/Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. I’ve had the same email address for more than two decades. I use it for just about everything I do. That’s really convenient, but it also means my inbox is inundated with advertising, newsletters, social media updates, and other ephemera. Left unchecked, that firehose of trivial correspondence can overwhelm the useful and important stuff. The world’s two largest email providers realize this is a problem. Gmail and Outlook do some automatic mail sorting with the help of algorithms. Still, their solutions are imperfect and require constant manual intervention to train the algorithms and find the important stuff that was inadvertently demoted. Also: Best email hosting services: Expert tested and reviewed For years, I used rules and filters based on sender addresses to move less important messages out of the inbox and into custom folders. However, setting up and managing those rules is a tedious, time-consuming process. Every time a newsletter or merchant changed their sending address or used a different subdomain, I had …

CC is the AI agent I’ve been waiting for — it turns my chaotic inbox into a daily briefing

CC is the AI agent I’ve been waiting for — it turns my chaotic inbox into a daily briefing

Published by skeptic

AI chatbots are old news — everyone is talking about AI agents now. Agentic systems use AI to automate and complete multistep tasks without specific direction, so you can set up workflows once, and they’ll complete tasks independently. General agents like the ChatGPT Agent or the Gemini Agent live in a chatbot, but there are also specialized agents that integrate with software like email, calendar, file, and task management services. I’ve been using an agentic Google Labs experiment, CC, for months in Google Workspace, and it’s never been easier to keep track of my responsibilities, discover events, and even catch deals before they expire. CC is described as an AI productivity agent that provides daily personalized briefings using information from Gmail, Calendar and Drive. You have to give CC quite a bit of access to your Google Workspace account, but when you do, the productivity agent compiles all your events and action items in one place. Since it’s a Google Labs experiment, CC exists outside of Gemini and Google Workspace, and you need to opt …

My inbox got much cleaner after I set up these 4 Gmail automations

My inbox got much cleaner after I set up these 4 Gmail automations

Published by skeptic

Digital housekeeping has never been one of my strong points, and this was no more apparent than when I looked at my Gmail inbox. To say it was cluttered would be an understatement, with newsletters, notifications, and low-priority messages making it difficult to find the emails that actually matter. Eventually, I decided enough was enough and took advantage of Gmail’s built-in automation tools, including filters, labels, and automated responses, to reduce clutter, improve organization, and save myself valuable time each week. By automatically categorizing and prioritizing messages, I have streamlined my inbox, reduced distractions, and made email management much more efficient. OS Android Price model Free/subscription Platform Android/iOS Understanding the basics Getting started with Gmail inbox automation So why is inbox automation so useful? Instead of spending a lot of time sorting repetitive messages, labeling conversations, or archiving newsletters, Gmail can be configured to handle many of these tasks automatically. One of the biggest benefits of automation is reduced email overload. When your inbox is filled with unread notifications, promotional emails, and ongoing conversation threads, …

A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox 

A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox 

Published by skeptic

The now-viral X post from Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue reads, at first, like satire. She told her OpenClaw AI agent to check her overstuffed email inbox and suggest what to delete or archive.   The agent proceeded to run amok. It started deleting all her email in a “speed run” while ignoring her commands from her phone telling it to stop.  “I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb,” she wrote, posting images of the ignored stop prompts as receipts.   The Mac Mini, an affordable Apple computer that sits flat on a desk and fits in the palm of your hand, has become the favored device these days for running OpenClaw. (The Mini is selling “like hotcakes,” one “confused” Apple employee apparently told famed AI researcher Andrej Karpathy when he bought one to run an OpenClaw alternative called NanoClaw.)  OpenClaw is, of course, the open source AI agent that achieved fame through Moltbook, an AI-only social network. OpenClaw agents were at the center of that now largely debunked …

Google Is Adding an ‘AI Inbox’ to Gmail That Summarizes Emails

Google Is Adding an ‘AI Inbox’ to Gmail That Summarizes Emails

Published by skeptic

Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches. On Thursday, the company announced a new “AI Inbox” tab, currently in a beta testing phase, that reads every message in a user’s Gmail and suggests a list of to-dos and key topics, based on what it summarizes. In Google’s example of what this AI Inbox could look like in Gmail, the new tab takes context from a user’s messages and suggests they reschedule their dentist appointment, reply to a request from their child’s sports coach, and pay an upcoming fee before the deadline. Also under the AI Inbox tab is a list of important topics worth browsing, nestled beneath the action items at the top. Each suggested to-do and topic links back to the original email for more context and for verification. Courtesy of Google Despite the continued spread of generative AI features, the underlying reliability of these tools remains iffy. Back in 2023, when Google’s chatbot was still called “Bard,” …