Priority Inbox adds an "important messages" section above your inbox. Initially, Priority Inbox decides what messages are important based on your email and chat patterns--a message from someone you often email with will get marked as important automatically. Like the spam filter, you can train it by manually marking messages as important and unimportant as well.

You can also add up to 3 other sections to your inbox. By default it's Priority Inbox, Starred items, and then "everything else." But you can define what's in each section using rules based on read/unread status, stars, and labels. For example, I keep all my unread stuff in the second section. Trusted Trio users could add a section of just items labeled "Followup." I don't love the idea of using my inbox as a to-do list, so I'm still experimenting with what works best for me.

Here's what the Priority Inbox settings look like in my Google Apps account.

As someone who empties my inbox regularly, I was dubious about my need for Priority Inbox. My email pattern is this: I respond and archive/delete messages as I can each day, and then once or twice a week, before the list of conversations exceeds 50 items and goes to the next page in Gmail, do a clean sweep. With a well-trained Priority Inbox, aspirational inbox zero folks have the option to redefine an empty inbox as an empty priority inbox, and just let the rest flow down into the regular inbox. After only a day, already I can feel my eye focusing on the Priority Inbox over anything else on the page, and I'm responding to messages there much more quickly than if they'd fallen down the list with the rest of the bacon and mailing list messages.

The only worry I have about Priority Inbox is the additional complexity it adds to Gmail. As I said this past week on TWiG, Gmail is just getting stuffed with new and more advanced features: phone calling, Buzz, Tasks, and now this, not to mention the (awesome, but huge) buffet of optional features in Labs.

I believe most vanilla Gmail accounts are in the process of getting Priority Inbox now. If you're a Google Apps user, opt your domain into pre-release features to get it sooner rather than later. (Simply opting in won't make Priority Inbox just show up today; just sooner than it would have if you weren't opted in.)

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox [The Official Gmail Blog]

There are two main advantages to using Google Apps (for your domain). 1.) You can easily create other users at your domain. If my email is gina@example.com, and I'm the domain administrator, I can set up addresses for my co-workers or softball team members too and make jack@example.com and jill@example.com accounts. Then everyone at my domain can collaborate on documents and a shared calendar easily. 2.) If you decide you don't like Gmail anymore? Just point your MX record to another host and you're done. Your email address never changes, like it would if you wanted to bail on your you@gmail.com address. Back when it used to be called "Google Apps for Your Domain", I explained more in detail how it works over at Lifehacker with some screenshots, then later at a post at HarvardBusiness.org. Check 'em out:

How to Make Your Small Business Look Big [HarvardBusiness.org]
Ask Lifehacker: What Does Google Apps for Your Domain Actually Do? [Lifehacker]

Thanks to things like Labs and gadgets, you can get your Calendar in Gmail (and vice versa), Docs in Calendar and Gmail, Profile info in Google Reader, Google Voice SMS in your Gmail, and just about everything on iGoogle. Here's how.

Read the rest at Lifehacker »

This week Gmail engineers added a richer contact interface for filling in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields when you're composing a new email message. While address auto-completion has been available for some time now, the new Contact Chooser lets you check multiple recipients off a list. Click on the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: field names (which are now links) to try it out.

Click to enlarge the screenshot on the right to see this in action. You can search for contacts by keyword, or just show names in contact groups by choosing it from the drop-down. Then, check off all your recipients from the list and click the Done button to add those recipients to your message.

I still rely heavily on auto-complete as-you-type since I usually send email to one or two frequent contacts, but the chooser pop-up comes in handy when you've got a long list of folks to email and you need some help finding them in your contacts.