If you receive more than 20 emails a day, you probably need a bit of help in sorting them out. Here are some rules to follow, which serve as a good starting point for saving precious time and effort when emails are concerned.

Don’t let the computer decide if a message is read or not

You should be able to decide this yourself. When you open an email, it will usually be flagged as “read” within just a few seconds. What if you haven’t read it, or if you need to attend to it later? Also, when you reply to or forward an email, it’s instantly flagged as read too. What if you want to forward the email to someone else? In short, this is quite possibly the worst setting you can have on your email client. It creates confusion as soon as you enable it. You can turn off this function with a TruePreview plugin in Mac’s Mail.

Create a Smart folder to show only new and unread messages

Over time, as your email grows, unread messages will go to the bottom of the page as they are pushed down by new emails. When you’ve started the practice of manually marking emails read or unread, the good news is, you can safely forget about messages that have been marked read. You don’t even have to see them anymore. Every time you fire up your email client, what should be presented to you are new and unread emails. Your work is to process all those emails and move on to other things.

Quicker keyboard shortcut in Mac’s Mail

Manually marking each message read and unread can seem like a hassle at first, but it makes things easier for you in the long run. To do it quickly, you’ll need to use a keyboard shortcut instead of using a mouse to mark your emails as read if you’ve decided no more action is required for that email. You can replace the default keyboard shortcut in Mac’s Mail by changing from Command+Shift+U to Control+A. It makes all the difference.

The best email tools

When it comes to checking your email, you have the choice of using an existing email client that has been installed into your computer, or Webmail. Choose one which can accommodate the points highlighted earlier. In Gmail, you can do it via flagging your email, but to this day, I’m not quite sure of how to use it. Outlook and Outlook Express are both complicated and have a poor interface design. The best email client, by far, is Mac’s Mail for various reasons. Firstly, it’s fast and reliable and the way it arranges your inbox make it easy to work on your emails. Other email clients, such as Thunderbird, Postbox, Eudora, Mulberry Mail and Zimbra are rather unreliable too.

Setting up email using IMAP instead of POP3

Working on multiple devices has proven to be a challenge for most email users today. You want to have the flexibility of accessing your mailbox through your mobile devices and computers, but at the same time keep track of which emails have been read or not. Users also want to send an email through, say, their laptop, and have it appear in their mobile’s sent box automatically. The trick? Set up your email using IMAP instead of POP3.

Flag off at 9.00AM
Date & Time: 13th November 2011, 7.00AM
Location: Padang Merbok, Kuala Lumpur
Distance: 3.6km

Terry Fox Run KL Facebook Page
Route Map

While it can be written off as an Internet issue, to a customer, it’s frustrating to experience problems in downloading emails. At 1.com.my, we take into consideration the ‘overall email experience’ in our email services. If an Internet interruption affects the so-called ‘email experience’, we’ll fix it. If a faulty or misconfigured Outlook creates issues, we’ll fix it.

We listen, make an on-site visit, suggest solutions and strive to create the ‘best email experience’ for our customers.

Good Email Practices

To add, many antivirus softwares intergrate with your email clients such as Outlook to provide additional protection. THIS IS BAD TOO! This unseen layer of protection causes missing email and attachment.

To turn off Junk filters in your email client:

1) Outlook and Windows Mail > Junk Email Options. Choose No automatic filtering.

2) Mac OS X Mail > Preferences > Junk Mail > Disable

To turn off third party virus integration with Outlook

1) Symantec Endpoint Protection > Change Settings > Antivirus… > Disable Outlook Auto-Protection

Nevertheless, with a twist of fate, I had a chance to liaise with Pin and I was very amazed by their speedy response and professionalism. It was really refreshing for me who used to deal with TM for years. Their (Pin) attentiveness and professionalism had motivated me to take a leap of faith even though I was really worry sick of any interruption to our business email. I was seriously amazed by the efficiency of Pin’s team in the email migration, as there was not even one interruption, everything is so smooth that most of my colleagues were not aware the email service had been migrated from TM to Pin. And the most important thing is that I had not made any complaints or I had no need to make any complains to Pin in the past 1 year, life is a bliss now. But deep down inside I appreciate that Pin has made sure the problems have already been solved before I voice my complaints and I am grateful for it by writing this short mail to tell Pin that your hard work is remembered though I may not have say it before. Thank you.

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But, have you ever wished that you could send an email from your iPhone and have it shown directly in your Outlook? Or, would you like to mark a message as read in your Mac’s Mail and have it automatically marked as read in your Android as well? How about fine-tuning your email tools to boost your email managing efficiency, like AMG adding HorsePower to the Mercedes-Benz?

We understand your needs and plan to come up with a guide, but since each email user is different, we think it would be better if we could spend some time with you to review each case and propose an improvement. With such advancements in email technology, the old POP3 way to access your email has become obsolete, and it has now been replaced with smarter methods where you can manage all emails in all devices while keeping everything you’ve done in sync.

This exercise may take a couple of weeks, so let’s not waste time and kick start it now!

1. Switching to IMAP
2. Fine-tuning email tools
3. 10 bad email habits

Playing catch up with Facebook’s Like button, Google has launched +1, a platform that allows users to say that they like certain ads and search results. Obviously, this isn’t something new, at least in Malaysia. Last year, 1Malaysia was launched a year ahead of schedule and it has now expanded to include 1Radio, 1Tv, 1Clinic, 1Email, etc (let us to come clean, everything except – 1.my).

And just when we thought that the “1″ fever was losing steam, “Cloud” becomes one of the most hyped terms today. Of course, the Cloud we’re talking about here isn’t the “visible mass of water droplets or frozen ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body.” We’re talking Cloud computing.

You could say that Cloud reached a climax when iCloud was finally revealed at Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference 2011. Then, all of a sudden, books, music, files and photos are all on Cloud. Fortunately, Malaysia isn’t far behind when it comes to technology. After all, we have the tallest building in the Clouds and we can even have roti canai above the Clouds.

So, what is Cloud?

Steve Jobs says don’t even need to know what Cloud is, because you never interact with it – your apps do.

End users shouldn’t worry, however, because the moment you upload a picture on Facebook, navigate KL using Google Maps or play Angry Bird on Google Chrome, you are in fact, in a transition to Cloud. To you, it is a matter of experience which makes sharing faster. It also makes life easier and fun! So don’t crack your head trying to understand Cloud, it exists in the background. Think of it this way, you don’t need to know how a car works in order to drive a car, and remember Web 2.0? Who gives a hoot about it now?

It’s wise for businesses to make the change, however. You can be a mover and shaker by helping your customers make the transition to Cloud. Ask yourself these questions – Is your website hosted on Cloud? Does your product require an additional hardware to run? Think again and check out Cloud Computing, as well as this article.

Pin

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Pin is the founder of 1.com.my. He hosts email and websites for his customers on Cloud. He has written two books on Online Business and Linux, and he also founded a Web Developer Group that has over 100 friends. To learn more, please visit his website, or join his Facebook page.

1.com.my takes up projects, such as these two, in a manner that is oriented towards project management. Usually, in a website team, there is – a programmer, a designer, a web developer and a web support engineer. The web developer is the person who usually deals with the client.

In this particular project, however, we decided to take on a slightly different approach – the programmer, designer, developer and engineer are no longer overloaded with information on the changes to be made. Instead, we appointed a project manager, who not only oversees the development of the sites, but also informs the client on the pros and cons of every decision.

Clients often think that website updating is an easy task, but behind the scenes, there’s a lot of work to be done. Even after everything’s complete, there are still the multiple revisions to ensure that the client is fully satisfied with the results. The project manager keeps the ball rolling and ensures that it rolls smoothly. The project manager this time around was our very own Adrian Chow, who has been working with us for more than 2 years now.

One of the obstacles faced by our web development team is the difference in location. We work remotely, which means we are always on the go. This means we communicate via email – a lot! Still, it’s one of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to keep updated on projects (at least we think so!)

At the end of the day, with all the work being carried out collaboratively, we managed to meet the stringent deadline. It was indeed a happy ending for both the project manager, his team and the client.

If you are coming over, do take note that you won’t find our address on our official website. We don’t have admin staff that sit around to answer calls either, but what we do have is a better way of handling things. Plus, you’d be interested to know that we don’t have official working hours either!

Sounds crazy? It’s radical, but it works! Come on over and find out how this is the place to discuss and make our products and services better!

A gathering of friends

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