Email Heaven

Do you ever feel like your inbox is a mess? Well, it looks like your prayers have been answered: Google is launching a new beta feature to Gmail users: The Priority Inbox. Basically, it's a way for Gmail to learn which emails are of more importance to you, thus making sure that you see them first.

The new feature is accessible through a link in the top right of your Gmail inbox (if you don't see it by now, you will probably be able to soon) which offers you the opportunity to customize your priorities. Once you have finished with the settings, you will start seeing the Priority Inbox instead of the good old standard inbox. However, you can switch between them at any point, and your mail will be laid out accordingly.

Gmail prioritizes the importance of an email on whether you've previously read emails from its sender, whether you have emailed that person before, and other factors which are currently unknown. In addition, if you ever find that Gmail misjudged a mail, you can simple add or remove its importance marker, just as you would have added or removed a Gmail label up to now.

Users who have tried out the new feature have reported that the Priority inbox is organizing their email pretty accurately, and that it has placed mail from their favourite contacts on top of the email pile.

Some users still claim, however, that it tends to mark too many emails as important. In conclusion, this looks like a promising feature. It's definitely going to help users who receive a big chunk of emails daily, especially those who use the somewhat confusing (yet sufficient) combination of labels in order to make sense out of their inbox. Be sure to try it out, or if you are skeptic, maybe wait a bit until Google fine-tunes it.