Why link to TechCrunch, why not link to the original source, as requested in the guidelines? Look, here is a submission to the actual Google blog post:
I saw this on TechCrunch, thought it was cool, and posted it; they didn't link to the original Gmail blog source, so I figured they just found the feature on their own.
~5% of the average population is on Gmail, with 43%+ of users out there still stuck in Outlook.
I always wonder why we don't see a more concerted effort to build a dead-simple email prioritizer / labeler for Outlook.
Outlook has decent extension management features - Xobni has made some inroads but I feel like it addresses a much more complex set of needs and is unweildy for solving this basic problem.
Microsoft made a somewhat interesting attempt w/their "email prioritizer" extension in MS Labs but they killed it rather quickly and I haven't seen much progress in releases that are managable / simple enough for the average user.
So amongst all the hackers of hacker news is anybody working on a project along these lines?
After I realized that Outlook's built-in filtering had a ridiculously low circa-1985 limit to its code, I just built a Python script to file things in my inbox.
I haven't bothered making it user-friendly or "smart", however - it just goes by rules expressed in a yaml file.
I like the idea of making it easier for everyone to use labels and filters. I couldn't imagine using Gmail without custom filters -- especially for notifications. This should be very useful for those using Gmail. Is this available for Google Apps customers?
About a year ago I set up a series of about 10 filters that essentially do the same function. This is definitely a useful Lab for people who don't want to spend 30 minutes setting up their own custom system.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2305782