Gmail’s use of the “Conversation” causes confusion with its Filters system. If you are reading a message, aka “part of a conversation thread” then you can use the drop down menu “More Actions” => which shows a link “Filter Messages Like These.”  It’s a good feature to have—if it worked properly. But the filter page that appears after you click this option does not pertain to the specific message (example, “sender”) but rather, to the FIRST message in the thread. And often times the first message is by YOU (the user).

Here’s how it plays out; I compose a message to ten people asking if they want to join a new fake band. I get a few positive responses. I read the response from “Jerry.” I decide to Filter all messages from him so that I can Label as “fake band.” I click “Filter Messages Like These.” Instead of populating the “From” address with Jerry’s, the filter populates it with my email address.

This is all the more problematic because for some reason, Gmail does not allow you to create filters based on Contact Groups, neither from the Contact Group edit panel nor from within Filters New panel. The situation is completely ridiculous because in most other places, Google is VERY on-top of granting access to your Contact List. I’ve written about this before, specifically the consequence of having to edit a filter per email address (which changes sometimes) rather than with a Person / Contact (or Group).

Oh Google! I have grown convinced that you alone are the most high Internet company, and will always do right. And yet I occasionally confront silly user interface glitches that seemingly contradict this vision of you as Ultra Righteous. Please please see if you can find someone who can take a break from counting money and insert some pragmatism into your designs.

gmail, Google

Google Voice is terrific; it’s now run by Google–of course it’s totally awesome. Well, not totally.. As envisioned by its creators, the Grand Central team, the service was to be a single place to view all sorts of messages: voice, texts, emails (even though email addresses were of the format “phone number @grandcentral…..” ).

gmail, Google, Voice

Oh, Google: you keep sprinkling killer apps with AJAX and Comet to make the interface really ‘fast’ , and yet by overlooking how the tools are employed by us humans, you waste so much of our time! Take for instance, Gmail Filters (cited in the previous post for its usefullness). As you may know or can guess, Filters are like MS Outlook Rules– your instructions to the program to Do things to Incoming Messages. First, you define Criteria by placing a value in any of the following inputs: From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t Have (the words).

Then you Choose an Action to be run on the targeted messages:

The weakness lies within the Defining of Criteria. For starters, the input fields do not use the auto-fill / display of likely matches service which Google deploys in many of its other apps. This oversight is especially unsensible in the ‘From’ field, because Gmail Contacts are already stored. When I typed in my brother Kevin’s address, I had to type it in its entirety, which might have caused a wrong address. A prompt, or list of addresses matching a nickname or first few characters (which Yahoo Mail provides) would be helpful.

The major problem with the Criteria Inputs is they don’t allow multiple values. I wanted to create one Family filter. In the ‘From’ field, I should be able to “kevin OR rowland OR clyde.” Why are web services Inputs void of Boolean definitions? Remember those advanced Searches we learned in college to query library databases? They would be very helpful nowadays, too!
Say I have multiple siblings each with the same last name, and also, an unrelated friend with same last name. This would do the trick:

[From: contains] ‘hanley BUT NOT cindy’;

And in the case where I have four sisters who are married, and have different last names, I would like to do this:

[From: contains] ‘clyde’ OR ‘christine’ OR ‘kathleen’

Instead, I have to create a NEW FILTER FOR EACH sibling!! Hey, I do want to make multiple filters, but to hanle a myriad of business and personal relationships. One filter should handle the fam.

An indirect, alternative method to accomplish that wish, would be to first: Tag each of your Contacts (assign a label/keyword). Then, when creating a filter, use a Label as a Criteria.
Example:
[From: labled]: ‘fam’

However, this method is impossible as well–Gmail does not allow you to Label Contacts, nor does it allow Labels to be a Filter Criteria! But Gmail does offer to Assign Labels as a Filter’s Action.
If [From: kevin]: Then : label ‘fam’

Gmail Filters are a helpful tool for deleting or forwarding targed communications. But human users want to organize / sort messages based on Types of Contacts. The easiest way to offer that, would be to allow users to Label each contact. Gmail adds a layer of complication by not allowing the labeling of contacts, and then demanding a unique Filter for each Contact.

auto-fill, boolean, contacts, criteria, e-mail, email, filters, gmail, Google, labels, limitations, predictive input field, Yahoo Mail

One of the sillier things I’ve done in the music scene is ask my old guitar instructor to remove one of my addresses from his mailing list (he was that type of entertainer guilty of importing into a blaster every address from which he received a message). My request was unnecessary, and (directed as it was to an egomaniac) insulting. Also, challenging. I was asking him to do something, period. If he was interested in granting the wish, then he would have had to learn how to remove an email address from his blaster. Although that is probably easy, the thought of learning can induce a headache.

All I needed to do was set up a filter or ‘rule’ in my Email Program to siphon off any incoming messages from the blaster—which is what I did two weeks of invites later.

Note the faulty logic which led to my request:
I do not want Ben’s band invites in my gmail inbox. I am going to take action—by asking him to stop. (Because I have no control over what arives in my inbox, I must depend on the senders. )He is sending the invites to both yahoo and gmail accounts. I will ask him to only send it to yahoo account. (Yeah, and contact each and every spammer in your Bulk folder and ask them to stop too).

Here is how I should have thought through the matter:
I do not want to see Ben’s band invites in my Gmail inbox. I must preserve the Gmail inbox as a spam-free family and friend zone. How can I prevent the trespassing? What tool(s) may I access to control my Gmail experience?

The answer: Filters. Filters is the fourth tab in the Settings Panel, which gmail users may access through a link from the top right Header. Remember users: gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail are each Email PROGRAMS. There is more to them than just what Displays upon log in: Inbox and Left Navigation. Programs Do things, and give you a level of control in how things are done. Look into it… Filtering is how these programs keep away spam, or direct it to a Bulk folder (Yahoo). You can do it too!

Another lesson: when dealing with man-machine hybrids such as a distant friend/colleague using an Email Blaster, it is best to mediate issues through a machine of your own. Although I could not (and probably should not have tried to) directly contact Ben, I could adjust my machine to overpower his machine. Not only did my filter nullify his blaster’s action, but it required no work on Ben’s part. Therefore, he has that much more time to book awesome shows in venues such as that rockin’ place in Dover, N.H.

avoiding messages, blasters, email, gmail, Google, hotmail, outlook, promoting shows, rules, yahoo

A group of ten friends in San Francisco have made international news and gained a large following by keeping a compact to give up buying new non-essential products for the recently ended year.

This news has not been welcomed by the Advertising Industry. In fact, the group members have been blocked from using any of Google’s services until they disavow the experiment.

OR

One drawback though: now the group members have to wait five years before opening an account with Gmail.

advertising, consumer boycott, gmail, Google