About a month ago I wrote a post titled Trying Gmail For A Week.  I haven’t thought about Outlook, Entourage, or Mac Mail for a month and I don’t think I’m ever going back.  It took about a week to rewire my brain for how conversations worked and what the keyboard shortcuts were, but not that I’m there it’s just awesome.

A few weeks ago Fred Wilson wrote a post titled Inbox Zero.  In it he mentioned two Gmail services he found indispensable – Priority Inbox (from Google) and Unsubscribe.com (from James Siminoff who created Phonetag, another great service.)  I agree with Fred on both of these, but have discovered a few extra things that are killer.  I’ll list them below and for balance talk about a few shortcomings.

Priority Inbox: I’ve seen numerous tweets and blogs about how Priority Inbox doesn’t really do much.  These are wrong / misinformed reactions.  The trick to Priority Inbox, like many other things, is to actually use it for a few weeks.  Part of using it is training it by quickly marking things up to “important” (by clicking +) or down to “everything else” (by clicking -).  A small configuration change can make Starred emails (for quick follow up) a different category.  I found that it only took about three days of this before I saw benefit and now (a month later) Priority Inbox gets it right 99 out of 100 times.  I get over 500 emails a day – there is a long list of them that fall in “Everything Else”.  I used to have to check / clear email obsessively throughout the day to stay at Inbox Zero.  With Priority Inbox I’m finding solid email stretches a couple of times during the day are more than enough for me to stay on top of everything.

Unsubscribe.com: Like many people, I’m stuck in the endless “unsubscribe from email lists” infinite loop.  I get vigilant for a few days and do the annoying unsubscribe drill one by one and knock a few off the list, but within a few weeks I’ve got even more.  I’ve never seemed to be able to eliminate all the stuff I don’t want, especially around an election when it all escalates like crazy.  With Unsubscribe.com, I simply click the Unsubscribe button in Gmail and the service gets rid of it.  Don’t bother with the trial – trust me and just pay $19 for the service for a year if endless mailing list email that you don’t want is a problem for you.

Google Voice: I’ve had a Google Voice for a long time but I never fully switched over to it.  The Google Voice integration with Gmail has tipped me over.  I’ve been dreaming about getting rid of my desktop phone for a while – I now find myself almost exclusively doing every call from my computer except when I’m not online (where I have to use my cell phone.)  More importantly, video chat and text chat is completely integrated within Gmail so from one screen I have email, my phone (inbound and outbound calling) Skype-equivalent video chat, and text chat.  While I still use Skype extensively (I’m bradfeld) I find I’m using it much less as I end up using brad.feld@gmail.com instead.

Gist: I’m an investor in Gist and use it for my unified contact manager.  Google Contacts is ok, but has a long way to go.  But Gist integration with Gmail at a data level is superb.  I’m still using Gmail’s consumer service so the integration is primarily at a data level, but I’m now playing around with a full switch over to Google Apps and the Gist + Google Apps integration (via the Google Apps Marketplace) just rocks.  In addition, there’s a new browser-based Gist add-on coming out shortly (hint hint) that will provide direct integration into the consumer version of Gmail.

GooTasks: Since I am an Inbox Zero guy, I don’t keep anything (including paper), but I do have a short task lists of things like blog posts I’m going to write.  I went through an Evernote phase recently but it’s overkill for me.  Google Tasks is perfect, but I didn’t have an obvious way to sync with my iPhone.  Now I do.

There are a handful of annoying things.  The biggest one is that I have multiple accounts on Google (brad.feld@gmail.com as well as brad@feld.com) and they aren’t tightly integrated across all services.  The other is the weak / inconsistent iPhone integration which keeps pushing me toward using an Android phone full time (I’m now carrying both an Android phone and an iPhone.)  My dad’s recent story on the Samsung Fascinate has me seriously considering a full time switch over to Android.

My “while I’m working” migration from a full Windows / Outlook / Exchange / Office world to an almost completely non-Microsoft world has been fascinating.  I’m in Seattle next week including a 24 hour stretch at Microsoft for some stuff – maybe it’ll come up and be an interesting discussion that my friends at Microsoft can learn from.  In the mean time, I think the next big switch will be an organization one completely over to a Google Apps infrastructure.

Now that my Apple and Google experiments have been huge successes, I thought I’d try an Android phone one more time.  I like my iPhone 4, but it’s pretty weak with all the Google apps.  Specifically, I badly want better contact integration, clean email sync, and Google voice.  Plus, AT&T still blows in Boulder.

Any suggestions out there for the “best Android out there today.”  I was using a Sprint EVO for a while (and liked it a lot) until it was stolen by my assistant Kelly.  So, I open to any choice – suggest away.

Today I concluded that my Gmail experiment is working nicely.  In addition, we figured out (thanks to Dave Michels) how to wire up feld.com to Google Apps without breaking all the other feld.com users that are being served of an Exchange server.  So, breaking rule #1 of all migrations, Ross and I flipped the switch at the end of the day to have my mail end up in my Google Apps account (via feld.com) rather than my Gmail account (via brad.feld@gmail.com).

All of my mail flows nicely.  You can send email to brad@feld.com and it shows up in the right place.  That was good.

But, I hadn’t thought through all my other Google services that are tied to brad.feld@gmail.com.  Contacts was “so-so” – Export/Import but it still feels a little messed up and I can’t figure out why.  But Docs seems like a totally parallel universe, as does Profiles.  And I’ve got a bunch of other services that I use (e.g. Bookmarks, YouTube) that I don’t really feel like having two accounts for.

I searched around for an easy way to “move my brad.feld@gmail.com account over to brad@feld.com in Google Apps.”  There are some mediocre help suggestions about migrating individual services, but nothing that just solved it.

Am I missing something obvious, or is this a non-trivial thing to do.

My week-long experiment with Gmail continues with my first big bump happening last night at around 9pm.  After sending a lot of emails (apparently 500) I received an error message “You have reached a limit for sending mail“.  I tried again.  This perplexed me.  So I clicked on the link.

I read through it and couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.  I tweeted about it and immediately heard back that Gmail had throttled me for up to the next 24 hours because I’d been sending too many emails.  I poked around a little to try to figure out if there was a way around this and finally concluded that the solution was to go to sleep and try again in the morning.

When I woke up, email was magically sending again.  I guess I got turned back on in less than 24 hours.  We’ll see what happens today.

Of course, one solution is to use SendGrid.  I’ve just gone and signed up for an account in case I get rate limited again.

In the mean time, Gmail feels slow this morning.  I’m getting used to my new friend, the yellow “Working” link at the top middle of the window.

Ever since I switched to the Mac, I’ve had N (where N is a suitably large number) tell me that I should switch to Gmail from Exchange.  I finally decided to try it for a week and see if it works for me.  Given my Mac experience – where I had to commit and really use it, I’ve decided to do the same on Gmail.

For now, I’m just going to use Gmail (instead of Google Apps) because I don’t want to go through the hell of switching the feld.com domain since I’ve got a bunch of other people (e.g. my family members) on it in a variety of configurations.  That’ll limit me a little as I won’t be able to use the Apps Marketplace, but the benefit is I’ll be able to mess around with a variety of other Gmail stuff.

If you’ve got Gmail addons, hints, tips, and trick, leave them for me here.  At the end of next week, I’ll either be switching to Gmail or heading back to Mac Mail against my Exchange server.

I just finished up spending the past two days at Google I/O. On one of the panels I participated in yesterday (VCs Who Code), the endless discussion about open (e.g. Google) vs. closed (e.g. Apple) came up with Dave McClure stating “Open is for losers.”  We had a short but spirited debate about a topic that could easily consume an entire panel before Dick Costolo (our moderator) quickly moved us on.  Of course, we got bogged down again later in “native apps vs. web apps” question (which I think is irrelevant in the long run, and said so.)

When I woke up this morning I was still thinking about the open vs. closed thing.  I’ve been using a Droid for a week (Google gave one to everyone that came to I/O) and I’ve been loving it.  I’ve been an iPhone user for several years and while there are a bunch of things about it I love, there are several that I hate, including the pathetic AT&T service, major limitations in some of the applications such as email, the restriction of Flash, lack of tethering, lack of statefulness, lack of multi-processing, and the unbearable shittiness of iTunes for Windows.  But, I never really considered an alternative until I started playing with Android 2.1 on a Droid on Verizon.

I’d basically decided to switch to the Droid.  The keynote on Day 2 was split between Android 2.2 and Google TV.  I was completely blown away by Android 2.2.  It doesn’t merely address each of the issues I have with my iPhone, it demolishes them. Google wasn’t bashful during the keynote about taking shots at Apple, which was fun to see.  And as I sat there, I kept thinking about how far Android has come taking an entirely open approach.

While Google “had me at Android 2.2”, they sealed the deal by giving every attendee a brand new HTC EVO 4G (running on Sprint).  There have been plenty of complaints about Android handsets; the Droid was good although I have had a Droid Incredible on order.  But, now that I have my HTC EVO, I’m completely hooked.  The physical device is magnificent, the Android implementation is awesome, and it is still only running Android 2.1 so it get even better when the over the air update is released and automatically upgrades.

I’m now in a position where I can dump my Verizon MiFi since can use my HTC phone as a hotspot.  One less $60 / month bill, one less thing to schlep around.  And I never have to use iTunes for Windows again.  Apple just lost me – again.

The most amazing thing to me when I reflect on this is how much of a complete non-event Microsoft in this discussion.  Before the iPhone, there was a different discussion and Windows Mobile (or whatever it was called) was regularly in the middle of it.  Not only is it no longer in the middle, it’s no longer in the discussion.  Google focused their sights directly on Apple and – with an open approach – is now in a position where it can legitimately threaten the iPhone’s long term position.

I love this stuff.  Plus I now have two cool new phones.

The Boulder Fiber Forever project to bring Google’s 1 Gbps fiber network to Boulder is having a flash mob at the Walnut Brewery (1123 Walnut Street) today (Sunday) from 3pm – 6pm.  Come join us, but first go to Boulderfiber.com and add your support for the effort.  Then, head over the the Walnut Brewery between 3pm and 6pm, mention Boulderfiber, and get pints of some of the best beer in Boulder for $2.25.

I’m running to town from Eldo today and should be there around 5pm.  I’ll see you there.

If you live in Boulder, it’s time to help bring the Google Fiber experiment to our awesome city.  A bunch of folks from all over Boulder are working on the Boulder Fiber project to help us become one of the cities for the Google Fiber for Communities project. 

Boulder is a perfect city for this.  When I moved here in 1995 I didn’t expect to engage in much business as I was spending most of my time in Boston, NY, and San Francisco.  However, I discovered an incredibly smart community that was extremely computer and Internet savvy.  As the commercial Internet started to take off in the mid-1990’s, Boulder was a hotbed for Internet usage and innovation as we rapidly became an incredibly wired city.  I attributed this to the convergence of (a) a smart, well-educated population, (b) a university at the core of the city, (c) a bunch of national labs, (d) a solid legacy of tech startups, especially around storage, cable, and telecom, and (e) a strong culture of independence which was well suited to all things Internet.

What I didn’t realize at the time were two important metrics that underscore both the technology and the entrepreneurial energy in Boulder.  The two metrics are that on a per-capita basis, Boulder has the highest percentage of computer scientists and the highest percentage of Ph.D.’s in the US.  When combined with a vibrant entrepreneurial community that has deep software and Internet expertise, magic things happen.

We’ve seen a lot of this magic in Boulder in the past five years.  I’m proud of how the city I call home has arisen as one of the most important entrepreneurial communities in the US with much more activity, visibility, and influence than a city with a population of 150,000 typically has.  More importantly, the amount of innovation coming out of Boulder is extraordinary.

Google has put out a challenge to find communities that are willing to be a test bed for an experimental ultra-high speed broadband network to see what kind of innovation will emerge.  If you are a member of the Boulder community, even if you aren’t in the high tech or entrepreneurial sector, help us tell Google why Boulder is the best city in the US for this experiment.

If you are game to help, do the following things:

1. Go to the Boulder Fiber site and follow the directions – it’ll take five minutes.
2. Follow the Boulder Fiber project on Twitter
3. Fan Bring Google Fiber to the City of Boulder on Facebook.