Gmail users will shortly be given a better way to manage the flood of emails that come their way. A new ‘priority inbox’ will sort your messages based on how important Google thinks they are. This ‘importance’ will be calculated in a number of ways, including how often you email the sender and which messages you reply to.

Many users will welcome this but there are other ways to deal with email overload. I can’t claim to operate the world’s tidiest inbox but as someone who receives hundreds of emails each day, allow me to offer some tips based on how I deal with them.

1. Archive as much as you can
If you’re a Gmail user you can select any email and archive it. This doesn’t delete it, it just removes it from your inbox. In Gmail’s case, the inbox is so vast that you’re unlikely to run out of space even without deleting anything. If you need it later, you’ll be able to find it through search. When you’ve dealt with an email – replied, taken action or even just read it – archive it and move on. It will keep your inbox small and therefore less overwhelming. I recommend enabling the ‘Send & Archive’ feature in the Labs section of the Settings too; it simultaneously sends your reply and archives your email.

If you use an email service that doesn’t allow you to archive then you can create a an archive folder and send the messages there. If you’re working with a limited inbox size then you will have to delete emails instead of archiving them. Still, it’s better to be ruthless and delete now than when your inbox fills up and you need to make frenzied cuts.

2. Add stars to emails that you need often
Don’t clutter your inbox with emails that you need to keep for reference. Password reminders, order confirmations, the instructions for repairing the office photocopier – these kind of emails shouldn’t be in your inbox. Add a star in Gmail and then archive them. When you need them they’ll be in your Starred list and your inbox will remain tidy. Once again, if your email service has no equivalent of stars, you’ll need to use folders for this but the same principle applies.

3. Use your inbox for things you need to action
Emails you’ve dealt with should be archived, so that means that all that should remain in your inbox are the emails you haven’t dealt with. Some just need to be read, others will need replies and some can be kept as a reminder to carry out an action. (Though keeping this last group does turn your inbox into a to-do list, which is a cardinal sin among well-organised people. It’s better to move those items to your to-do list and archive the email, once again keeping your inbox slim.)

If an email stays in your inbox too long – perhaps two weeks or a month – without being dealt with then do the task right away or archive the email. It’s either something that’s unimportant or something that you’re putting off.

4. Respond quickly and succinctly
It’s so easy to say “all that should remain in your inbox are the emails you haven’t dealt with” and a lot harder to do the actual ‘dealing with’ bit. I try, with varying degrees of success, to follow this rule: if an email can be dealt with very quickly then do it now. It’s very easy to skim your emails and put off tasks for later but if all that’s needed is a quick reply, it’s far better to deal with it right away and get that message out of your inbox.

5. Use rules and labels
I don’t use these anywhere near as much as I should if I wanted to be an email ninja but there is a lot of potential in setting up rules and labels for email. For example, whenever I buy an app for my phone, which I do quite often, I get a receipt emailed to me. Setting up a rule to send these emails into a folder named Receipts would keep them out of my inbox entirely and let me check them when I need to.

Of course, it’s remembering to check them that’s the problem. I have a tendency to send things to folders and forget about them, which is why I don’t use rules very much. If you’re better at that sort of thing then rules might help.

That’s how I deal with email but there are plenty of other ways. If a huge inbox doesn’t bother you then you could just leave all your email there, never filing anything and use search to find it when you need it. It all depends on how you prefer to work.
-By Shane Richmond

PROfounders Capital’s Brent Hoberman, famous for co-founding of Lastminute.com, and Rogan Angelini-Hurll, take us through their top10 European technology companies of 2010.

Hoberman and PROfounder’s general partner, Angelini-Hurll, who formerly headed the Citi Pan European Media Research team, give us their choice of the 10 European tech firms you should be tracking, or even using, during the next year.

1. Wonga – an e-loans business
The site was launched in 2007 and is a service which provides small, short-term cash loans to UK consumers. Wonga has a real-time loan processing system and its mission is to “solve consumers’ urgent and short-term cash flow problems with an equally short-term and responsible solution”. It carries out a credit check before a loan goes through and informs their credit bureau partner of a person’s trustworthiness.

2. Playfire – a social network for gamers
It describes itself as “the new social network designed for gamers, by gamers”. Hoberman has privately taken a small stake in this start-up which is still in beta, three years on from being founded. Playfire tracks people’s gaming activities and is supported on platforms such as Xbox Live and the Playstation network. Members of this gamers’ global community can create profiles to display in-game statistics and favourite game genre graphs.

3. CitySocialising – a city based network designed to help make new local friends
The site has lots of different city-based versions of itself, for example: CitySocialising London, Manchester, Bristol and Leeds. It is a service designed to help people make new friends in the UK city they live in. CitySocialising targets people who have just moved to an area and those who are looking to break out of their “usual network”. Free to join, it unites people with similar interests and charges for unlimited messages between members. It also allows people to arrange their own social events and provide a local city events list.

4. Everbread – a travel search engine
Having received some early financial backing, the service, as recommended by Angelini-Hurll, is still very much ‘one to watch’ as it has yet to go live. Everbread claims it will offer one of the fastest travel search engines, focusing on cheap flights. A big point of difference is that it will integrate a number of low cost airline carriers into its search results – which are usually excluded from big aggregators’ results.

5. Mendeley – management and sharing tool for academic knowledge
It offers both desktop and web tools focussed around organising academic information with greater efficiency. Founded in 2008, the desktop app provides free academic software which helps manage and share research papers. While Mendeley Web, is a free research network which helps like-minded academics connect and discover research trends.

6. GroupSpaces – helps digitally manage and improve real-world memberships
The London-based company develops technology to help groups offline run their memberships with more efficiency and ease online. GroupSpaces software is currently used to manage 561,185 group memberships at the moment. It also helps communities promote events, take payments and improve their websites.

7. VouChaCha – a location-based discount voucher system
Founded in February 2009, the mobile app partners with retailers to deliver discount deals within walking distance of a person’s location. Special offers are pushed through the app, a voucher can be downloaded and then directions are given to the relevant retailer. VouChaCha’s aim is to bring “the immediacy of the web to the high street, enabling retailers and consumers to connect through the use of targeted discounts”.

8. Made.com – a furniture retail site that delivers products straight from the manufacturer to consumer
One of PROfounders’ initial investments, Made.com aims to bring high-end, made-to-order furniture, at low prices, to the UK market. Products are sent directly from the manufacturer to the consumer, cutting out any middlemen. The site showcases the designs of a variety of manufacturers from around the world, including the UK and the Far East, and asks visitors to the site to vote on their favourite items of furniture. The most popular items go in to production, and visitors who have voted on the site can then buy those items at a discounted price.

9. Mangahigh – games-based learning site focusing on maths for secondary school students
PROfounders’ latest investment, the service is free for schools and students. Mangahigh features games that emphasise rapid-fire learning of different maths techniques. It was founded by Toby Rowland, co-founder of both King.com and Clickmango.com.

10. Shazam – a mobile music discovery provider
Despite its founders having coming up with the concept just over a decade ago, Shazam still makes it into Hoberman’s top 10 European companies to watch over the next year. The company’s huge growth has largely been fuelled by its iPhone app. However in the last month, the Shazam app has entered the Orange app store and gone onto the Android platform- with two versions of its core service. Shazam on Android has additional features, including song lyrics, tour information and YouTube videos for tagged artists.
–By Emma Barnett,06 Aug 2010

On Jul 29th, Billboard, a US music industry magazine, reported that Spotify’s “licensing negotiations with the major [US] music labels have reverted back to square one”, citing multiple sources.

However, Spotify, talking to The Telegraph, has denied the allegations in the report, saying the service is still on course to launch by the end of 2010.

A Spotify spokesman said: “Regarding label negotiations…the allegations in the article are without any substance. We are in fact in a very good place with our label negotiations, which have moved forward significantly and we’re still on course for launch by the end of the year.

“Any talk of ‘back to square one’ is completely unfounded speculation and quite simply not true.”

The Billboard report also alleged that Spotify had approached Sean Parker, the Founders Fund managing partner, to lead company’s US operations. Spotify has denied this, saying it is “completely untrue”, as Kenneth Parks, a former EMI executive, has been Spotify’s US managing director since June 2010, and is continuing to lead all negotiations.

The music streaming company has also reaffirmed its commitment that the US version of the service will have an advertising-supported free element to it, as it does in Europe.

Spotify has been talking about a US launch for the best part of a year, but talks have taken longer than originally anticipated. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief, had originally hoped to launch in the US at the beginning of 2010, after a 2009 launch proved unlikely.

Talking at the Monaco Media Forum at the end of 2009, he admitted that negotiations had proved more complicated in the US music marketplace than similar discussions with labels and publishers in Europe.

“The US is a different beast. Most people are not still not aware of the service or how it works – so we do have to spend time educating the market…The US music labels want to get there and are very excited about Spotify but there are thousands of publishers we need to get signed up and fully informed about the service,” he explained.

However, Mark Mulligan, vice president and research director of industry analysts Forrester Research, said: “Spotify’s negotiations with the US record labels probably aren’t back to square one, especially after such a lengthy discussion period. But there is a fundamental tension that won’t go away: the US digital music market is in a much healthier place than the European market was when Daniel Ek originally pitched Spotify as the legal answer to music piracy.

“The majority of music subscriptions around the world are in the US – with the likes of Napster, Mog and Rhapsody on the scene. So the US arms of the labels don’t need Spotify to work as much as the European labels did and there is more risk of cannibalising existing models from an advertising supported free model.

“The labels in the Europe knew they were taking a risk when signing with Spotify, but it was a calculated one and they had less to lose. The US labels can afford to walk away from Spotify.”

A source close to Spotify said that the company had only agreed terms with one of the four major record labels in the US, but was “close to agreeing terms with others”. It is widely understood that each of the four record labels are shareholders in Spotify. Spotify refused to be drawn on where its negotiations with the labels were up to.
–By Emma Barnett, 30 Jul 2010