How to set up email filtering in Gmail

Email filtering is an absolute necessity for me personally, as it keeps my inbox clear of all but the most vital direct messages. Gmail doesn't have folders per se - but its labels function can operate in much the same way.

First, select a message of a type that you want to filter away from your inbox. Then click on the Label button above your inbox, this looks like a little tag. Select "Create New" and insert your label's name.

Then find something about that message and others like it. Do they come from the same email address? Do they always have something particular in the subject line? Enter one or more criteria into the Advanced Search panel (reached by clicking the dropdown arrow to the left of the blue magnifier button). At the bottom right of that panel, you will see an option to "Create filter with this search".

You will then get a list of options. The first is the most important: Skip the Inbox! Then be sure to check the box "Apply Label" and from the dropdown, select the label you created previously for this category of message. If you wish, also check the box to apply to existing messages that fit this search, then all relevant items will be cleared out in one move.

Thereafter, when a message comes in that matches your filter, you won't see it in the inbox. Rather, it will appear in the Label list on the left of your screen, with a number in brackets indicating how many unread messages you have in that category.

When you are creating a new label, you also have the option to "nest" it - that is, make it a subcategory of another label.

Life is complicated enough without having to manually chew through large numbers of emails each day. Let Gmail or another system get them out of your way - or even delete them! As for me, I'll take all the help I can get.

Top 10 Tools for Online Living

The Internet's a crazy place. Over the years I've developed an arsenal of strategies to handle it and stay sane, too. Originally I was going to call this the Top 10 Online Tools for Writers, but in fact, they are essential for pretty much anyone who spends time interacting online. Some require a little techspertise, however, you'll soon find that it's worth it - they save so much time.

1. Email filtering - When you sign up to mailing lists or join groups or social networks, the amount of notifications landing in your inbox can be overwhelming. You can create folders and have messages from certain addresses or with certain keywords go straight there instead of clogging up your front page. Of course you can also opt out of notifications, but if you do want them, they don't have to swamp you.

2. RSS reader - I've already talked about this, but in brief, you can add all your favourite blogs to a service where you can then peruse their titles like email subject lines. Only read the ones you are interested in - and you don't have to visit every site individually!

3. Facebook Landing List - Hundreds of friends? Their posts will only appear in your News Feed if Facebook's algorithm deems them worthy - decided by factors such as overall response to a post, or how much you interact with that person. But you can make a custom list with a subset of priority friends, then use that location as your landing pad and never miss anything truly important again.

4. Instant Messaging - There's nothing like it for teamwork or a bit of a chat. 'Nuff said?

5. Blog Scheduling - Statistics prove that certain times of day are more effective in gaining attention. Not around at those times? I'm not, because I sleep away most of the American day. So I schedule my posts for advantageous timing and head off to dreamland.

6. Blog Syndication - This is where it gets really powerful. A scheduled blog post, appearing while I sleep, triggers a Tweet on Twitter, two Facebook posts (one on my personal feed and the other on the Splashdown Books page) and one on Google Plus. Each with a link to the blog post and most with a preview image. In addition, post comments can appear as activity on Google Plus as well. To say nothing of the full post being pushed through to my Goodreads and Amazon profile pages. That's at least six different appearances for each post!

7. Free Phone Calls - Skype and Google Talk allow for international contact like never before.

8. Pinterest - I am still figuring out this one. But I must be doing something right, since I often get 20-30 repins and likes per day. The image's clickthrough link should always go to its original source, but my thought is that if I include a link in each pin's description, it can travel very far as it gets repinned - because people rarely bother to change the existing description. The trick now is to find a blog post or book of mine that is relevant to that pin.

9. UnPolitic.Me - Triggered by keywords of your choice, replaces Facebook posts with an Instagram feed of your choosing. In my case, I replace political comments with Doctor Who images. You may want to clean your feed of cats (perish the thought!), or babies, or food - this tool can do all of those things and more.

10. AdBlock Plus - Makes the Internet a nice place by removing all those junky advertisements.

So there we are. I'll write up a wee comment on each item in the weeks ahead, and link them here when they're done. What are your favourite online tools?

Tech Tip: RSS Reader

Do you read a lot of blogs regularly? If so, I sure hope you recognise the symbol above. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It sounds all technical, and it is on the back end, but not where you need to worry about it. I couldn't get by without my RSS reader - or at least, life would be that bit less interesting.

An RSS reader, or feed reader, takes all the article titles of the blogs you are subscribed to, and drops them into a browser window or program - looking much like an email inbox. You can scan the titles, click to read any that interest you - most right inside that same window without going to the blog page itself (Jump code = the bane of RSS readers, but at least it's fairly rare).

I guess the best thing is that I can skip right by anything that doesn't grab me. No blogger is going to write something that fascinates me every single time. Therefore, I have saved hours I might otherwise spend in going to various blog sites one after another (and how often??) to see what they've got.

The reason I post this today is because I still see people talk about visiting blogs regularly. What a time-suck! Of course, if I want to comment or read comments, I have to click through to the site, too. But in this way I can at least keep a finger on a ton of things that interest me, from fandom news to the publishing industry, from typography to photography, from serial fiction to art and design. Yeah. Where did you think I got all this stuff? ;)

What about you - do you use a feed reader?