Cutting Clutter in Your E-Mail Inbox

You might expect that I get a lot of e-mail, and you'd be right. Wading through the hundreds of messages I get in my various e-mail boxes can be a little overwhelming, and there have been times when I've completely missed messages because of the sheer volume of other stuff that ends up in them, despite spam filters and other ways I've used to cut through the chaff.

Google has just introduced a new feature that can help push messages you want to see to the top of the heap. The feature, called Priority Inbox, uses a set of rules based on how often you read and write back to the sender. It uses the same technology as Gmail's "spam" filter, which filters out unwanted messages, but basically applies the opposite set of rules:

Priority Inbox is in "beta"—that means it's still being developed. But it's available now if you've already got a Gmail account.

If you use Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail, there's a feature in the latest version of Hotmail that can also help you cut through less important messages, called "Sweep".  The feature allows you to select specific senders and move emails from them to a specific folder. You can also  set the feature to do this automatically for you as new messages are received. This works not just to file important emails, but to delete ones you don't want anymore.

Hotmail also has some pre-set filters that let you view messages from just those people who are in your contacts list, as well as emails from social networking update emails from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You don't have to do any setup for these features to work.