1. Google Mail Checker – if you obsessively are checking your email, or keeping it open when you’re not using it, you can stop doing that now.

2. XMarks Bookmark Synchronizer – if you rely on bookmarks, and find it frusturating to not have all of them on all your machines, worry no morel.

3. Chrome Milk - I’ve always been a fan of Remember the Milk. But they never had a killer app. All of the UI’s are mechanical and confusing. The best one I’ve seen was the iGoogle ad-on. With it now embeded in Chrome, I think I can actually use it!

4. Chromed Bird – there are sure to be a bunch of Twitter apps coming out in the near future, but this one seems pretty good. Can Post Tweets, ReTweet, URL Shortener, view timeline, etc.

5. TooManyTabs for Chrome – this is a really cool app. Not sure how useful it will be, but it looks cool.

1) Real-Time Search – anybody can publish anything, worldwide, and in seconds. Searching for something in Twitter brings up all the people who are tweeting about it within the last few minutes. Despite the lack of quality control, it still allows news to break instantly. I prefer to utilize this in a more passive way by combining Twitter Search with Google Search. Every search entry in Google, gives me the last 5 Tweets containing that search entry. The results are often surprisingly interesting, and that will only get better as more people use Twitter. I achieve this by using Firefox as my web browser (install here), installing the Greasemonkey plugin here (click Add to Firefox), and then installing the “Twitter Search Results on Google” script here.

2) Keyword Tracking – this might be the best feature. One of the many Twitter application sites on the web (275 of them here), is called SocialOomph (formerly known as TweetLater). This allows you to manage your Twitter account in many ways, but my favorite is the ability to provide a list of keywords (or phrases) that you’re interested in. Their service will then send you a daily e-mail of all the tweets that contained those words. This is a great way to discover news articles and subject-matter-experts in any field. I get every tweet about Findability or Faceted Navigation (amongst other things). Warning: make your phrases relatively unique or you will be overwhelmed.

3) Makes the World Smaller – in the past most normal people would never have the chance to communicate with Al Gore or Shaquille O’Neal. But with Twitter, you can message anyone directly. There is a chance their eyeballs will see it, and they may be inclined to respond. This makes it fun and potentially useful for networking (which has become a big thing of late). Just the exchanging of ideas and the conversation makes this a exciting technology in principle. In practice I’m not sure how effective it is yet, but it certainly intrigues me.

Twenty days ago, I was a mess. My friends and family all complained that I was out of touch, not responsive, and they were getting worried. Why, because I had an email problem. I had 10 different accounts at 7 different services, and no hope of staying on top of each one.

I had a problem that I knew had to be solved. Enter Gmail. I had been a huge fan and power user of Google search since its inception, but never really explored their applications or email service. Now that I have, I realize it has all the tools to bring me from the primordial swamp to becoming a highly evolved power emailer (i.e. an email black belt). Here’s my 12 step program:

Step 1: Admit that you are powerless over your email problem, and open a Gmail account.

Step 2: Commit to making Gmail your universal control center (you never have to tell anyone): go into Settings, and click Accounts. Under “Get mail from other accounts” you may add up to 4 different email accounts. In the “send mail as” area, choose “reply from the same address the message was sent to” to prevent others from finding out you have so many email addresses. You can even pull your Hotmail into Gmail (if you Google it, it will come).

Step 3: Set up Labels to tag your e-mails. These are Gmail’s version of Folders, except that emails can have multiple labels (tags) so one email can be in multiple places. (use greasemonkey script: Folders4Gmail to collapse labels in folder-like view) http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8810

Step 4: Set up Filters to sort your e-mails. Filters (which are really rules) are the most powerful thing Gmail has to offer, and they will make your life easier. All of your emails are not held in the same regard, so why should you treat them all alike? For important emails, create a rule to tag them with an important tag (e.g. family, friends, etc.). For email that is just reference, create a rule to skip the inbox and mark as read. They will always be there for you to browse through later.  http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/20-ways-to-use-gmail-filters.html

Step 5: Realize your inbox is sacred. Your inbox is a precious and holy place. Only email that deserves to be seen by your eyes should land there. Make heavy use of the “Skip the Inbox” feature in Filters. When a new person follows me on Twitter, I get a number next to my “networking” tag, but those emails are not polluting my inbox. I may go there once per day to see whats new, but that’s is.

Step 6: Use multiple inboxes. Your inbox is sacred, so the more the merrier right? In Google Labs, you can enable this feature. The beauty here is you can have different inboxes with different criteria, e.g. one can contain all emails tagged work, one can be personal, etc. So all important work and personal emails will be sorted and instantly viewable (no need to click on labels).

Step 7: Utilize ”+” and ”.” in your name to build powerful filters (see http://tinyurl.com/3dfwz6)

Step 8: Google Labs Wrapup: enable “Quick Links,” “Mark as Read Button,” “Custom Label Colors,” “Go to label,” and “Superstars.” These are all self-explanatory, but enhance the Gmail experience.

Step 9: Read Steve Reubel’s 4-part series on making Gmail your “personal nerve center.” If nothing else, it will open your mind to the possibilities. Subscribe to his RSS feed while you’re there.

2/25/07 http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/02/transform_gmail.html

3/1/07 http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/03/more_ways_to_us.html

9/26/07 http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/09/looking-for-the.html

9/16/08 http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/09/make-magic-with.html

Step10: Sign up for an RSS feed to the Official Gmail Blog http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/. This is the only way to stay on top of the new features/discoveries.

Step11: Synchronize your email account with Microsoft Outlook. As great as Gmail is, there are other cool things you can do by managing your Gmail in Outlook. (I’ll blog about it later)

Step12: Check your email once in a while. All of this was great, but if you don’t check your mail, then it’s all for not.

Good Luck! And try not to fall off the wagon…or is it stay on the wagon?