I don’t know how many people use gmail, i use it as my primary email. When gmail first came out with there one gig of email allowed. I was pretty excited about all this. They also introduced the idea of searching through your email instead of organizing it with folders. This was a novel idea and i liked the idea a lot. Soon after this Apple introduced the same idea, not organization, just fast search. It was a weird to do this at first, but this is how i work these days. I just search and i don’t do much organizing.

Gmail has something called labels. When i first started using gmail, i loved to label everything. I have 23 labels, I used these labels; Attach (3), erin ballew, Events (119), Forums, Friends, friendster, gmail, gmailswap, irena, Jobs, Login Password, Lrhb, me, music/mp3, Myspace, Seth, Shows, Sowftare, Store/Shop, Unread (144), Warez, Work,youawake (7). All of the labels are pretty self explanatory. Most emails from my friends get labeled Friends, except for irena and erin. Anything that is from amazon, ebay, etc…gets Labeled Store/Shop. I like to keep my gmail inbox looking nice and clean, mainly empty. So i have to label and archive everything.

I used these labels all the time, when i first started out. When i was looking for an email i would click on the labels on the left and it would show what i was looking for. Just like i used to use folders. Up until a few months ago that is. Since google is a search company i figure the best way to find an email is to use the search function. And i have gotten so lazy with my emails that i usually label everything one of five things; Erin, Events, Friends, Jobs and Youawake. The rest of the labels i haven’t used in months. So i have decided to slim down my labels and only keep those five labels. But i have decided to change the name of the events label to Stuff. I will probably just use the stuff label in the future. I use the search function anyways.