My inbox is a disaster. In all respect to my friends who teach inbox management, I don’t buy it… I know too many people, they all email me, and they all expect a response. Sometimes, as priorities determine my work, an innocent email from a friend or even a prospect may fall by the wayside. It’s not that I don’t think they’re important – it’s simply that I’m doing the best I can to keep up.
I’m busy unsubscribing from commercial emails all the time – and I’m constantly trying to remind myself where and when I met some of these folks. Sometimes prospects will renew a conversation that’s months old.
Today, thanks to the New Digg (I really do like it – follow me!), I found Rapportive. Rapportive allows you to put additional notes and information in the sidebar of Gmail or Google Apps, and already supplies a wealth of social information on the sender of the email. Here’s a recent email received from Flowtown founder, Ethan Bloch:
For Google Apps, you do have to enable single sign-on:
- From Google Apps, click “Manage this domain”.
- In the blue bar, click on “Advanced tools”.
- Under “Authentication”, click “Federated Login using OpenID”.
- Make sure the checkbox labelled “Allow users to sign in to third party websites using OpenID” is checked.
- Click “Save changes”.
I have a similar tool in my email client, Postbox, but it doesn’t pick up nearly as much information (like the actual Twitter stream!) as Rapportive.
