Inbox Zero can help manage e-mail

I've recently adopted a new method for managing my e-mail called Inbox Zero.

It's the brainchild of Merlin Mann, a free-lance writer and the editor of the personal productivity Web site 43 Folders. The goal of Inbox Zero is to filter and organize your e-mail as it comes in and eliminate the piling up of messages in your inbox.

The first thing is to install a better spam-filtering solution. Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook include built-in spam protection, but it's not as good as some third-party solutions. For Windows, I recommend SpamBayes. For Mac users, download SpamSieve. Both applications integrate with your e-mail client and work by learning your e-mail habits and what you think is spam. SpamSieve eliminated 98 percent of my spam messages.

Once the spam filtering is up to date, the first step to take with Inbox Zero is to purge the inbox. Create a folder in your e-mail client called "DMZ" and move all the messages currently in the inbox to it. This enables a fresh start for managing e-mail going forward. When you have free time, you can go back and clear out the DMZ folder's messages, but for now, the focus is on dealing with what's coming in today so you don't get behind again.

The idea of Inbox Zero is to have the inbox empty when you head home each day. That doesn't mean each message needs to be tended to as it arrives. Instead, messages can be organized by manually sorting and using your mail client's built-in filtering capabilities.

Twice a day I go through my inbox and manually sort my messages based on the action I need to perform. Messages that require a response are put in my "Respond" folder.

When a client e-mails me asking me to modify something in a project, I put it in an "Action" folder. The folders you create do not matter. Create ones that adapt best to your work and personal life.

Manually sorting takes time, so whenever possible I let my mail client handle it for me. Every modern client has support for rule-based filters, which organize messages based on who it is sent from, subject or the content of the message. One of my favorite filters pushes all my "Bacn" mail into a folder called "The Social."

"Bacn" is the name applied to comment notifications from MySpace, store catalogs or newsletters companies send out. It's not exactly spam, but it's also not personal or business mail. I have a rule setup that filters anything that comes from @facebook.com and @myspace.com and automatically puts it in my "The Social" folder. I can then read through those messages whenever I have free time.

The main thing to gain from filtering and sorting is getting the message out of the inbox and into a manageable folder.

Every day, I work through my "Respond" folder in a 20-minute burst to clear it out. If I have time, I also go through other folders, such as my "Action" and "Pending," to complete as many e-mail messages as I can.

Inbox Zero isn't about reducing the amount of e-mail you receive. It's more of a mind trick to help you get past that feeling of being overwhelmed.

You can learn more at InboxZero.com.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press.

Online access is tearing off music label

Last week, English rock band Radiohead released its latest album, "In Rainbows," exclusively on its Web site.

While an online release is not unique, what made this one noteworthy was Radiohead telling its fans to pay what they thought the album was worth.

If you think the album is worth nothing and pay nothing, you still gain access to the DRM-free MP3 tracks. Early estimates show that $5 to $8 was being paid to download the album.

Radiohead's contract with record label EMI expired, giving the band freedom to experiment with this commercial strategy. Now that a major recording act has bypassed the traditional promotion machine offered by a label, it could open the door for both upcoming and established artists to connect directly to fans.

Last week, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor posted on his band's Web site that, after 18 years, the band was no longer attached to a label. Reznor has long been an opponent of the music industry and publicly slammed it last year for charging $35 for his album in Australia.

That kind of thinking is what is dooming the music industry.

In the late 1990s, as Napster was gaining critical mass, the music industry tried to stifle the digital revolution with lawsuits and by spreading fake files throughout the Internet. Once it realized resistance was futile, the industry begrudgingly began to accept online distribution through outlets such as iTunes and, more recently, the Amazon MP3 Store.

In the digital age, it's becoming easier for musicians to find an audience.

Many bands have an account on MySpace.com and Purevolume.com that they use to share their latest songs, push tour dates and interact with fans.

Scott Hubiak, guitarist for local band 4-Seamer, sees the digital age as both as a blessing and a curse.

"Our band has gained serious exposure from MySpace and the Internet in general," he said.

Hubiak believes that while the exposure offered by the digital music revolution is great, it has also led to an oversaturation of bands.

"It is great in the sense that everyone's music is getting heard, but bands have almost no chance of being successful on the financial side."

Still, many independent bands are bypassing a traditional recording contract and going the digital-only route.

Digital distribution makes the barrier to entry so much lower, because a musician no longer has to pay the cost of mass-producing an album, which has always been one of the major reasons for signing with a label.

CDBaby.com, an online music distributor, makes it easy for bands to get albums published online at various retailers.

For its time and effort, CDBaby takes a small percentage of the sales — far less than a traditional label.

Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are paving the way for the next revolution in the music industry, and by cutting out the middleman, consumers will be the biggest benefactors.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press

Looking for online phone account?

When I started my company, I didn't want to invest money and resources into setting up a landline or signing up for another cell phone account.

I don't spend that much time on the phone, as e-mail is my preferred method of communication. I signed up for a Skype.com account to handle my phone calls, and it has worked great. Skype is a piece of software you download on your Mac or PC that lets you make free phone calls to other Skype users.

For another $60 a year, you can have a real, local phone number and voice mail, which makes the service infinitely more useful.

I used Skype in conjunction with a Logitech USB headset on my Mac for the first few months but found it was distracting when a phone call would come in. I also didn't like having to dedicate precious system memory to keeping my phone running.

In the past year, several companies have started offering WiFi-based Skype handsets that let you use your Skype account on a physical phone. I've been using the Netgear SPH101 for the past few months, and I have found it is a decent substitute for a landline if you aren't a heavy phone user.

The SPH101 is a white candy-bar-style phone that could easily pass as a Nokia cell phone. The phone feels sturdy and well built and is small enough to carry with me. The backlit, color screen is easy to read and use. When you first connect the phone, it walks you through finding and connecting to your wireless network.

The phone sometimes has issues with signal quality, which can be frustrating when trying to identify networks. I keep the phone next to my wireless base station, but it will sometimes drop its connection.

The call quality is decent. If you are making a call between two Skype users, the quality is great and I have no issues. There are some problems, however, when I call landline phones.

The signal will sometimes be garbled. The quality seems to degrade the longer the duration of the call. It's nothing that makes me want to stop using the phone, but I hope the landline call quality improves in future revisions of the phone.

Another area I'd like to see improvement is battery life. It's abysmal. Netgear claims the phone's battery life is four hours of talk time and 20 hours of standby.

In reality, it has 2.5 hours of talk time and a day's worth of standby. I keep the phone charging whenever I'm not using it because the battery life is so bad.

If you're a heavy phone user, you'll want to steer clear.

If you decide you want to trade in your landline for a Skype phone such as the SPH101, know that 911 is not supported. One of the biggest problems in gaining mass adoption of voice over IP phone technology is the lack of emergency calling support.

There's no way for the 911 operators to trace where your call is coming from as they can with traditional phones.

Vonage, another Internet telephone provider, now has support for 911, so hopefully it will be added to Skype in the future.

If you're a light phone user and have a high-speed connection, a Skype account in conjunction with a WiFi handset is a great solution.

The SPH101 retails for $160, but you can find a better deal online. The handsets are relatively new, and, as with most gadgets, should improve with future revisions.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press

Let's pause to consider featuresof DVR

Digital video recorders (DVR) are the new age VCRs. Instead of recording your favorite television shows to tapes, a DVR uses a hard drive like you would find inside your Mac or PC.

DVRs offer a built-in program guide that gives a listing of what is showing on each channel for up to two weeks. You can then schedule to record a single episode of that show, or an entire season. If you are a fan of "Lost," you can set the DVR to automatically record each episode that airs.

The real killer feature of a DVR is the ability to pause live television. Pressing the pause button on the remote signals the DVR to begin recording the show you are watching so that you can pick up where you left off.

The company noted with founding the DVR revolution is TiVo, which released its first device in 1999. In subsequent years, TiVo has struggled to stay relevant because of competition from the cable companies. Time Warner, WOW and Insight all offer their own DVR boxes, but I think they are lacking in features and frustrating to use. I have never found one that matches the feature set, ease of use and fun factor TiVo offers.

TiVo has all the same features that are available in cable-provided DVR boxes.

In addition, the TiVo remote has a thumbs-up and thumbs-down button to use in rating the TV shows you watch. TiVo uses these recommendations to automatically record programs it thinks you will also enjoy.

If you want to record every Colts game, regardless of which channel it's on, TiVo's Wishlist feature can scour the TiVo program guide for all instances of Colts football on any channel you receive. You can also create a Wishlist based on an actor, director or genre you enjoy.

Another reason TiVo has a hard time keeping up with cable company DVRs is that viewers have to purchase the TiVo hardware and then pay a $12 to $16 monthly subscription fee. With the cable company, you usually rent the box, then pay a nominal fee for the DVR functionality.

TiVo offers three different boxes based on the type of TV user you are. All currently available TiVos have support for dual tuners, which allows for the recording of two shows at the same time or recording a single show while the viewer watches another live.

At the low end is the $99 Series2 DT, which allows for recording up to 80 hours of standard definition TV. These are great for people with no interest in HDTV and who want to enter at the lowest price barrier.

I have the $600 Series3 HD TiVo, which allows recording up to 32 hours of HD programming. It also has a backlit remote and a frontal display to show what is being recorded and is the only DVR to be THX certified.

TiVo recently released a lower-end HD-capable device called the TiVo HD. The $299 box has the same features as the Series3, but no frontal display, backlit remote or THX certification. It also records only 20 hours of HD.

Both the Series3 and TiVo HD support CableCARDs in addition to standard coax cable. CableCARD is a new technology designed to eliminate the need for cable boxes to view digital or premium channels such as HBO. CableCARDs rental fees hover around $2.

If you plan to buy an HDTV in the next two years, I'd recommend the $300 TiVo HD. Its superior hardware, HD support and ability to use CableCARDs makes it worth the extra $200.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press