May 2007

Written by Leo Babauta

One of the coolest things about Gmail is its filters – set up properly, filters can add loads of functionality to your already-powerful Gmail account. Save time and space, rid your inbox of unwanted emails, and turn your Gmail into a multi-functional tool with simple filters.

There are some limitations to Gmail’s filters that I’d like to see improved in the future, including:

• the inability to mark a post as read
• the inability to create live “smart folders”
• difficulty in adding a large number of email addresses to a filter

But all in all, the filter function is very cool. Here are some ideas for how to use it:

• Killfile. If people send me too much junk mail (jokes, chain mail, etc.), they get added to my killfile. It’s a simple filter that looks at the “from” field and deletes the message if it’s one of the addresses I’ve added to the filter. Every now and then I’ll decide to add someone to my killfile, and I’ll just open up the filter and add their address.
• Booleans. The filter works much like Gmail’s search function, in that you can add search terms such as AND or OR or NOT. So I can look for addresses that are from a number of people (using OR), or emails that must include all of the words on a list (using AND). Use search operator symbols to make it even easier: “|” for OR, space for AND, “-” for NOT, and parentheses to group different terms in your search string.
• Other search terms. Beyond the common terms above, your filters can use other terms such as “from:”, “to:”, “has:”, “is:”, “filename:”, and “label:”, among others. Using these terms, you can make your filters even more powerful.
• Send reminders to someone. One of the things I wish Google would add to Gmail is the ability to send a delayed email. This would allow me to send reminders to someone at regular times. Instead, I sign up for a reminder email service to send reminders (meant for other people) to my gmail address, and then set up filters to forward the reminders to various people depending on the subject or content of the email. It’s not perfect, but it allows me to send reminders to different people on a regular basis.
• Calendar and log. I set up Google Calendar to send me reminders of events. You can set up a label (“events”) so that your calendar reminders go straight to the label, star the message, and skip the inbox. Now not only are your events in one place, instead of scattered through your inbox, you can unstar the message when you complete the task or event, and now you also have a log of all the things you’ve done.
• To-dos. This is a commonly used function, but you can email yourself tasks that you need to do, and then set up a filter that has your email address in both the “to” and “from” boxes, that applies the label “to-do” to the message. This will allow you to view all your to-dos in one filter. Or, if you’re a GTD fan, you could set up to-dos for each context (@work, @home, @errands, @phone, etc.), by creating different labels for each, and then setting up filters for different email addresses. Email yourself at yourname+work (you don’t need the @gmail.com part), and set up the filter to label that address “@work”, and so on for each context.
• Follow up. Even if you’re not a GTD fan, having a follow-up label is a must. Simply set up a filter with an email address such as “youname+follow” and put it in the “has the words” filter field, and have this filter label it “@follow” and skip the inbox. Now when you send out an email that needs to be followed up on, put yourname+follow in the “bcc” field, and it’ll go into your “@follow” label. Be sure to check this label once a day so you can follow up on your emails.
• Send spam to trash. Instead of having Gmail-filtered spam go into your Spam folder (and have the annoying count of unread spam by the folder’s name), set up a filter with “is:spam” in the “has the words” field (just click “OK” on Gmail’s warning dialog box when you click next step) and “Delete it” as the action. Now all spam messages will go in your trash.
• Archived bookmarks. If you use del.icio.us and other bookmarking services, you can archive them all in a Gmail label (“bookmarks”). Get the feed urls for each of your bookmarking services, enter them in a forwarding service such as rssfwd.com, and then set up a filter to label them all “bookmarks”. Now all your bookmarks are in one place, with Gmail’s great search.
• Attachments. If you’re like me, you like to go through your old emails and delete a bunch of them at a time. I do common searches during the cleanup process, such as “has:attachment”, so that I can look through all my bigger emails and delete them. Make this process quicker by making a label and filter for this search, and for any of your common searches, for that matter.
• Media. If you get a lot of media sent to you, such as music files, videos and photos, set up filters (“filename:wmv | filename:mov” for videos, “filename:mp3? for music, filename:jpg | filename:gif” for photos, or “filename:pdf | filename:doc” for documents). Now you can quickly find any media.
• Backups. Create a second Gmail account for storage, and create a filter to automatically forward any emails with attachments (“has:attachments”) to this second address. Now you can delete your old emails without guilt or worry.
• Newsgroups or feeds. You can set up filters for your newsgroups, so they don’t clog up your inbox. Or forward your favorite feeds to your Gmail, and automatically label and archive them for later reading. Now you can not only access them from anywhere, but you can search them too.
• Bloggers. If you run a blog, you can have all your blog’s comments and pingbacks automatically archived and labeled (“blog”), so your inbox doesn’t get filled up fast. Also have your blog stat reports mailed to you and shunted to this label, so you can get a quick look at your blog’s success at a glance.
• Delete old sent emails. There’s no reason, in most cases, to keep your really old sent emails. Delete them. Create a filter with “before:2006/06/01 label:sent” with “Delete it” as the action (you’ll need to click “OK” to Gmail’s warning dialog). Every month or so, update the date of this filter.
• No delete. Some emails you don’t want to delete – those precious ones from your kids, for example, or maybe ones from your boss. Set up a label (“nodelete”) and a filter that puts the nodelete label on emails from (or to) the addresses you want. Now, some of the above filters, add the string “-nodelete” so that it doesn’t show these emails. Now you can delete your old sent emails, or your attachment emails, for example, without worry that your kids’ or boss’ emails will be trashed along with the rest of the riffraff.
• Flickr. Forward your Flickr account’s feed to your Gmail, with a filter to automatically label it, and now your photos are searchable through Gmail. You can also set up filters to send notices that certain tags in your Flickr account has new photos to certain relatives.
• Notes. Email yourself notes on web research, on meetings, on books you’re reading, on classes you’re taking. Set up a filter to archive and label them (if you send notes to yourname+notes, for example). Now they’re searchable and archived and accessible from anywhere.
• Twitter. Use your mobile phone to send text messages or IM messages to Twitter, with a keyword at the beginning of each Twitter message (NOTE, TODO, BLOG, FOLLOW, etc.). Forward your Twitter account’s feed to your Gmail, and set up filters for each type of keyword (“note twitter” will be labeled “note” for example). Now you can use your mobile device to send notes, to-dos, follow-up reminders and more to your Gmail through Twitter.
• Wildcard. Use the wildcard character (*) for companies that use multiple types of address from the same domain. One great use I’ve seen is to use the wildcard character for vendors such as Amazon or eBay to make it easier to track online purchases. Create a label (“online shopping”) and a filter with such email addresses as “*@amazon.com|*@ebay.com|*@paypal.com|*@barnesandnoble.com”.

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Written by Anthony Burch

There are many things that will always be manly, like stubble, red meat, and being angry. Other things tend to change as time goes on – tend to lose their manliness factor as the world changes. Before you know it, the manliest thing on the planet has been reduced to an effeminate, useless version of its former self. In the interest of protecting our readers from all things formerly-manly, we begrudgingly present a short list of those things which used to be manly, but now aren’t.

Tattoos

Once the symbol of nonconformity in a hopelessly conservative political landscape, the tattoo has now become the exact opposite – total conformity posing as nonconformity. Like when emo kids pretend they’re all total individuals that nobody understands, but they all somehow manage to look, sound, and act the same. Tattoos have taken on many different meanings in modern society: men with any sort of oriental symbol tattooed on their arms or torso are generally pretentious, pseudo-political douchebags. Guys with barbed wire circling their arms tend to be insecure assholes who probably work out a lot, refer to themselves as “badasses,” and secretly hate everything about who they are. Granted, there are still those older men who got tattoos back when they actually meant something, but they are a dying breed in the face of this new wave of tattooed douchebaggery – the men who were getting inked back in the day are forced to watch, horrified, as an entire generation of neo-yuppies singlehandedly steals one of their generational symbols and perverts it beyond all recognition.

Piercings

There was a time when a man could get a bull ring pierced into his septum and get a little respect. Those days are over. Piercings of any sort have become the method of self-expression to use for emos, Goths, and faux-punk kids all over the planet; it appears that the more boring and self-involved one is, the more piercings must result. Jesus, even women are getting piercings en masse: you find me a chick who doesn’t at least have her belly button pierced yet, and I’ll show you a chick who hasn’t yet reached her eighth birthday.

Stabbing people

In the good old days, one guy would get into an argument with another guy, the words would turn into fists, and the fists would turn into a few inches of cold steel getting mercilessly plunged into the eye socket of the weaker guy. Men would stop, and stare, and as the killer was dragged away by the cops, muttering something about unpaid debts, people would look on in awe – that dude stabbed someone. What a badass. But in a time of so-called intellectualism, fraught with political liberalism and progressive ideals, stabbing people isn’t “cool” anymore. Not only is violent crime now frowned upon, but stabbing people generally appears to be the gayest way to shuffle someone off their mortal coil: years of horror movies and bearded historians have established the blade as the number one phallic symbol of violence on earth (the gun is number two, if only because you can’t kill someone simply by forcing a gun up one of their orifices), and so it now appears that stabbing people no longer has the manly connotation it once had – and pretty soon, shooting people won’t be all that neat either. The only other option left for the violence-loving man is to either not kill people (an unacceptable decision, in every way) or to beat people to death with his bare hands.

Motorcycles

Like the tattoo, the motorcycle used to be a counterculture icon – thanks to Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda (two actors who have also lost a significant amount of manliness), the motorcycle was a symbol of freedom, independence, and rebellion. Nowadays, it represents one of two things:

-The fact that your mom bought you a Yamaha, which you will almost immediately crash

Or

-You’re a middle-aged marketing guy who joined a motorcycle club, rides your bike on the weekends, and secretly puts “Born to be Wild” or “Bad to the Bone” on repeat on your iPod Nano whilst cruising down 6th street at 41 miles an hour next to other similarly repressed middle-aged marketing guys.

Today, the motorcycle has lost literally all of its meaning. While the Hells Angels still run around raping men and women all over the countryside (and God bless ‘em for it), the motorcycle has completely lost its status as an icon of masculinity, given that those most likely to own them today are either vapid, mid-40′s men trying to channel the spirit of Easy Rider without getting more than a few miles away from home, or spoiled preppy kids who stupidly race their crotch-rockets and end up totaling them once they actually have to turn.

Leather

Enough said.

Chivalry

Whether you like it or not, gone are the days of roses, hastily scrawled love poems, and sweet serenades crooned lovingly outside a fair maiden’s window. Today, women may pretend like they want to be courted by a chivalrous gentleman, but in reality the chivalrous man has about as much chance of netting the girl of his dreams as Helen Keller has of winning a darts competition. Women want a good-looking, arrogant asshole to treat them like crap. You may think that’s overly-misogynistic, but it’s a scientifically proven fact* that once a woman finds out you are attracted to her, her level of attraction towards you drops by at least 50%. Chivalry, in all its forms, focuses on the man professing his endless love for the woman whilst doing quasi-romantic deeds – deeds that, today, immediately drive women away. It’s an unfortunate trend, to be sure, but an unavoidable one: the chivalrous romantic can write all the love songs and give all the gifts he wants, but outside circumstances aside (in this case, “outside circumstances” means “money”), the chivalrous man will end up with nothing more than his dick in his hands by the end of the day, while the cocky asshole who lifts weights and/or plays guitar chokes the girl of your dreams to death with his penis.

Special Note

This article is not meant to suggest that any man who might have tattoos or piercings or leather or a motorcycle are immediately unmanly: we simply wish to suggest that the things, the objects themselves, have lost their intrinsic worth as objects of manliness. If we were to see a 300 pound guy with tattoos and piercings, wearing a leather jacket and holding a knife, we’d still be very, very scared of him, and would certainly be in no position to doubt his manliness. One can possess all these pseudo-manly traits and still be the baddest motherfucker around – it’s just that the actual objects themselves no longer mean what they used to.

*No it isn’t

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