The New Gmail Priority Inbox is going to make Gmail much more viable for mainstream users. Introduced yesterday in Beta, it enables GMail users to prioritise email based on who you contact. So spammers and email marketers are going to the bottom of the pile.
This priority filter is smart – it looks at a lot of things, such as who you email a lot, who you chat with, and who you actually read email from, among other things. In effect it sifts through your communications for you puts your important people at the top of the pile and delegates what it deems to be insignificant to the bottom.
I think this move is totally in tune with the changes in marketing and personal online activity. People want to choose who they allow to suggest products to them. It may depend on an existing relationship with a current supplier or a recommendation from someone they know and trust. Just as we now fast forward through the adverts making them ineffective most of the time because we just choose not to see them, so applications such as GMail are helping us to do this with our every day communications by making intelligent decisions for us by looking at our online behaviour.
It is being rolled out gradually like Google Buzz and soon every GMail account will have. Once it’s activated on your account, you’ll see a prompt asking if you want to enable Priority Inbox. There are a few options to choose from for example:
you can choose the order of your various in-boxes
you can choose contacts you’d like to always mark ‘Important’
What’s great about it is there aren’t any rules to set up and you don’t need to ‘teach’ Gmail what is important, it just works.
Kevin Rose, Digg’s co-founder previously warned “the new version of Digg, which would go live in the next few months, would represent the biggest change in the site’s history.
“This is just phase one of what will be an on-going, iterative process, involving lots of input from all of you. We’ll be pushing out features on a regular basis and tweaking often.”
“Our goal has always been for Digg to be a place where people can discover and share content and conversations from anywhere on the web. With Digg v4, we are introducing a few things that will make discovering and discussing news a lot better.”
“When you see the new design, you’re going to go, ‘Wow, this is not the same site’.”
What makes Digg different from other social bookmarking sites is it’s strong user community who vote on how interesting stories are by “digging” the articles they like, and “burying” those they don’t. With 35 million unique users per month many bloggers and web developers feature Digg buttons on their site (like us) to allow readers to easily share articles.
Speed is a big factor as the new Digg is faster in every way: submitting articles, loading pages, and Digging content, great news for those using it as part of their social media routine.
Personalisation is even more key, the new design will makes it easier to view content and connect with friends, publishers, and influencers you care about. I think this will be key to Diggs ongoing success, whilst there has been a lot of speculation lately about the future of Digg, this could get them right back on track.
Digg had become a tool for “digg power users” and the company was both unhappy with the way that power users were influencing the natural and organic way in which Digg is supposed to work. Now the new features make the social and community aspects of Digg paramount, it has definitely made digg much more attractive to peopel like me who want to use it for social media. Read the rest of "I’m digging the new Digg?"
Good assertiveness skills help build confidence and self esteem. They help avoid bullying and being bullied or feeling the victim.
We provide a two day Assertiveness training course providing practical guidance for anyone who needs to develop their assertiveness skills and build confidence for a range of situations.
Assertivness encourages mutual respect within relationships. It can save you from being/feeling/acting the martyr. It’s healthy, non aggressive and liberating…..so….
What causes people to avoid being assertive?
Many people are not assertive for fear of displeasing others or not being liked. However, in the long run although you may avoid some immediate unpleasantness by not being assertive, you can also create more tension and resentment in a relationship if you refuse to assert yourself and then feel that you are being taken advantage of over and over again. Remember for someone to have control over you, you have to give control to them. Yes, you are responsible, which is difficult to take on board at times, you do not need blame yourself, but you can take responsibility to make changes to the way that you think, behave and react to other people by learning and practising healthy assertiveness skills.
How Assertive Are You?
Ask yourself the following questions.
Do you find it easy to ask for help if you need it?
Can you express anger and annoyance appropriately?
Do you find it easy to ask questions when you don’t understand something?
Do you offer your opinion when you think or feel differently from someone else?
Are you able to say “no” when you don’t want to do something?
If you answered no to many of the questions above you would benefit from developing stronger assertiveness skills. We have provided a detailed, free assertiveness resource, or you could enroll onto our Assertiveness Training course. th next one is running on 14th and 15th October 2010.
Of course – not having enough time can often be indicative of other problems – perhaps you’re not being managed effectively by your own manager, or the business processes you’re working to aren’t as effecient as they could be (in which case you might think about arranging some Business Process Management training or Six Sigma training).
However – there are some small, useful, practical things that all of us can do to try to make the best use of the hours in our working day.
Here are 29 practical time management tips for coping with interruptions and obstacles which may get in the way of being a good time manager…
A recent report reveals the UK is less than half as neighbourly as it was three decades ago with 49% of Brits saying people know more about their favourite celebrity than they do about their neighbour. But neighbours can make for good business; Emma Jones suggests we get to know them and offers five business ideas that are plain perfect for the folks next door.
Remember when Twitter sceptics claimed it was a passing fad that was only good for knowing what Stephen Fry was eating for breakfast? Then along came the outing of oil giant Trafigura as a global flytipper, the tidal wave of moral outrage against Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir and a near revolution in Iran.
Twitter was a central player in all three stories and, suddenly, we all realised the immense power we now have to coalesce around a movement or an idea and run with it.
So I’d urge a little scepticism of your own when you hear the inevitable tutting from the same cynics when they scoff: “I already know what Fry’s eating. All Foursquare adds to my life is that I now know where he’s eating it – so what?”
Whether you are a restaurant, travel agent, gardener, circus, accountant, movie star or spaceman, Foursquare will help you find potential customers and understand what motivates them in ways that were previously unimaginable.
I’ll tell you here how Metrodeco, a small tea shop in Brighton, is using the site to do this (here’s our Foursquare page) – but first, a note of caution. Foursquare gives users the ability to hold businesses to account like never before – in fact, I bet your business is already on it without you even realising. Go to Foursquare’s website – you don’t even need to log in – and search for your business’s name. There’s a good chance people are already checking in. Feels slightly uncomfortable, doesn’t it?
Are you wondering how to grow your business and develop it in a way so it’s not wholly reliant on you? Have you considered outsourcing/franchising/productising as a way to achieve that growth? Emma Jones outlines the options with tips for each strategy.
Grow, grow, grow!
Fellow business owners will understand when I say having a business often feels like having a child; you conceived the idea, you nurtured the business in its early stages, and it can feel tough to let it go and grow on its own! There are smart ways to scale your business and here are four of them.
Eruptions in the HR department – “It’s not my fault I missed work!!”
