Gmail—everyone seems to know what it is, and a huge number of people use it. Hands-down, it's recognized as the best 'deal' in the free webmail scene. But why?

A screenshot of Gmail's conversation view

In short, it comes down to Google's core values. Among them are "Focus on the user and all else will follow," and, paraphrased, "don't be evil." Running with this direction, Google's team (and a huge user community) turned on email on its side by acknowledging two core things: 1) people have conversations, not messages, 2) humans don't always think linearly and 3) keep powerful features easy.

Staying in the conversation

Gmail offers something few other email clients have been able to touch: effective threaded conversations. What is a thread? Imagine passing a note back and forth in class—writing a reply on the same page that you received a message on. Gmail pieces together the messages going in and out of your address to provide a cohesive view of a conversation—even if the messages are weeks apart—so that the context of messages is clearer. This way, instead of wading through pages of 'quoted' messages, which are often hard to read, a user can collapse and expand messages which came before and after whatever message they are reading. Often, this makes each message shorter, too, as introductions and conclusions are less necessary.

Needle in a haystack

Gmail also acknolwedges another truth—it's often easier to search than to sort. Since one conversation (Gmail parlance for a collection of messages) may reference multiple topics or a couple of different people, Gmail leverages its class-leading search technology to make it possible to effectively search all of the conversations in an account. That way, users don't have to try and remember when a message came in or even who sent it—they just search like they would Google. Searching email isn't new—but having instant results with miniatures 'teaser lines' of each message (much like a web search) was groundbreaking when released and is still basically unmatched in other clients.

Powerful, easy features

Gmail also does something almost no other mail client or service does successfully—it keeps its powerful features out of the way, but still accessible. Gmail offers a feature that many users may not be aware of: Labels. For example, all messages I receive from certain domains or addresses get labeled 'Clients'. Some of those same messages, depending on their content, might get labeled 'Deadlines.' Unlike most email applications, which would take these messages and move them into another folder, Gmail tags them—so that I can see the message both in my inbox, or when I look only through the lens of 'Clients'. An unlimited number of Labels can be combined, so that 'Finance' and 'Response required' can be independently or jointly applied to a message.

In another stroke of genius, any search you perform can become a filter or saved search—in other words, if you search for messages from clients which include attachments, Gmail offers the option to save that search as a filter so that you can then apply actions, such as labeling all of those messages automatically when they come in in the future (eg, 'Client Files').

Signal to noise

Perhaps the most powerful bit about Gmail is that it allows you to reduce the clutter and excess you view. First, Gmail has perhaps one of the best spam filters in the market. I have never had a conversation marked as spam accidentally, and I see maybe one spam message every three days in my inbox. One click of 'Report Spam' and I will never see that message again. Google combines the input of all of its users to have one of the most up-to-date anti-spam services anywhere.

Using a tool Gmail calls archiving, conversatons can be removed from your inbox without deleting them. This allows you to complete old conversations (which will come back into the inbox automatically if a new message is added to the conversation). For example, when I'm done conversing with my insurance agent about renewing my policy, I can click archive. At that point, I can still find the conversation through search or by clicking on the "All Mail" tab. From there, I can always bring the conversation back to the inbox if I want or need to. As a productivity tool, archiving is indispensable—it allows users to remove the clutter in their inbox and be clear about what emails still need to be managed or replied to.

Using the filters function discussed earlier, newsletters and other 'sometimes I want to read them' emails can be automatically archived, so that they are not in the way but can still be referenced. This is great for managing email subscriptions and listservs which can otherwise dominate an inbox.

In short, Gmail is the web app with the single biggest positive impact on its users—and absolutely no hit on their pocketbooks. The time it saves and the reliability it provides make it the first technology shift we recommend to our clients who don't already have it. Try it today!

Remember the Milk (or RTM for short) is a powerful, flexible and simple tool for managing tasks. Small business owners (and busy folk everywhere) know that having a mere to-do list is insufficient. Remember the Milk works by helping you quickly enter and triage your tasks so that you can get back to doing whatever it is that you do best without worrying about, well, how to remember to get the milk. And, like so many great web apps these days, it's a free service. Remember the Milk works as a great tool for implementing productivity guru David Allen's excellent methodologies, as articulated in Getting Things Done. The core of his practice involves sorting tasks into a couple of cross-referenced criteria, such as project (e.g. 'creating a new website'), context (e.g. tools or locations such as 'phone,'  'grocery store,' or 'office') or duration (five minutes, 30 minutes, etc.). In a traditional paper to-do list or a mish-mash of different task management tools, it can be difficult to sort your the work at hand, or, say, find out what five-minutes tasks you can do between clients. Remember the Milk makes implementing a cross-referenced set of lists easy. Remember the milk accomplishes sorting of tasks through a number of criteria:

• Due date (and time)
• Repeat (e.g. a reminder to send your mother a card every six weeks)
• Time estimate (estimated duration for the task)
• Status (completed/incomplete)
• Tags
• Location (the location where this task needs to occur, such as your preferred grocery store or the post office—as a plus, this serves to automatically alert you of the tasks due at a given location when paired with a GPS-enabled iPhone)
• URL (great for putting a direct link to the relevant site, especially if it's hard to remember)
• Postponed (a very revealing counter which lets you know how many times you've postponed, say, balancing your checkbook or cleaning the garage).
• Sharing (others who you have shared the task with so that it shows up on their to-do list—great for small teams/delegation)
• Notes (a place to add clarification of a task so that your list doesn't get cluttered with lengthy titles)
• Priority

The core service is free (save for certain reasonably-priced special features such as the iPhone app)—and it's a lifesaver. Every week I review my calendar and my task lists with a colleague, and we enter new things into the list while checking in on overdue tasks. Little to nothing falls through the cracks now, and if it does, I know about it quickly. While inputting all my work into Remember the Milk was sobering as I dealt with the amount of tasks I have every week, Remember the Milk allows me to know exactly when the tasks for the day are done and when 'someday' projects like updating business plans will be picked up next. Most importantly, it lets me say yes (or no) to requests from colleagues with complete knowledge of my project load. For further reading, check out this excellent summary of David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology Photo courtesy .fabio under Creative Commons license.

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How many times have you wanted to work on a simple document with a friend or colleague, only to be stopped by problems constantly sending files back and forth? Or needed to share a spreadsheet with a client, only to find their copy of Excel won't open your file? As part of our series on web applications for small business, we'll take a look at Google Docs as a way to save you money. Google Docs is a free service which allows you to work on basic documents (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations) in your browser. At a basic level, it provides the most commonly used functions of programs likes Microsoft Office for free. Your files are stored online, instead of on your computer—which means that crashes and viruses don't affect them, but your ability to access the web does (for example, if your cable modem goes out, you can't access your documents until you find another internet connection). This sort of online file storage is referred to as 'the cloud' in Web 2.0 parlance.

Google Docs also allows for the wonderful experience of jointly authoring or editing a document. Say, for example, that you are working on a notice from the board of your neighborhood association. You could try to get everyone together in the same room to edit at the same time, or attempt to pass around a document (while tracking revisions of it) or delegate the task to just one person. Instead, Google Docs allows you to create or import a document and then share it with other users (either in an editing or read-only capacity) to make it easy for everyone to contribute (or just comment). No downloads, installations or virus-scanning is required. This is also a great way to work on joint budgets or other technical and rapidly-changing information. During one busy period, my partner and I used the spreadsheet function to track apartments we were looking at and the status of each rental application. It saved us a lot of 'missed leads' or duplicate communication. Google Docs can even send notifications to other users when a file is modified, taking out the step of emailing 'look at this change.' While there are a few bugs in its implementation (formatting isn't as fluid, as, say, Apple's iWork program, or even Microsoft Word), the convenience of shared documents and the ease of use make Google Docs a great tool for just about any user looking to either save money on Office or bring friends and co-workers into the editing process.

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If you've ever checked your free e-mail account from a friend's computer without paying a dime, you've experienced of glimpse of web apps. Most small business owners don't know that everything from accounting to conference calls can be achieved online for low or no cost, so we've chosen to write a series on small business savings via web apps. We'll evaluate the benefits, utility and cost of a number of applications. Since Causeit, Inc. is in the process of converting many of our desktop documents into web-capable systems, many of these trials will be supported by our own experience or those of our clients. Here are some of the potential topics [please suggest more!]:

• Mind-Mapping and Outlining Tools to Organize Your Thoughts
• Bookkeeping in a Browser: Online Bookkeeping & Invoicing
• Using Google Documents to Share For Free
• Teleportation: Remote Access and Meetings Via the Web
• Save on Saving: Online Backup Tools
• Can Facebook Actually Get You Clients?
• Using LinkedIn for Networking Knowhow and Reference-Checking
• Online Phone Systems: Press 1 For Cheap Voicemail & Calls
• Google Calendar: Scheduling Your Success/Workgroup Calendars for $0 a User
• Remember the Milk: Free, Powerful Online Task Management
• E-Mail Marketing: What's the Best Deal?
• Online Project Management: Does it Really Save Time?

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