INTEGRATION FACEBOOK:

While Facebook started as a dating tool for Harvard students and quickly became the personal social tool of choice, its businesses uses have also grown. For a business today to not to have a Facebook page is akin to not having a phone number.

Managing that Facebook page can be a challenge in it's own right. While Facebook is a crucial social app for a business to use – it is just one more in a long list of applications that a team has to manage.

At Unified Inbox we take the problem of “application overload” as seriously as it's more commonly known cousin “information overload”, so we included Facebook as one of the first social applications that we integrated into Unified Inbox.

Status updates from the inbox
Our Facebook page status updates are updated directly from within Unified Inbox. When a member of our team has something they want to share, they go through the same process as if they were sending an email.

Ensure messages are handled by best team member
When one of our followers sends us a message, that message arrives directly in our inbox which means it is then able to be assigned to any member of our team to work on and respond to.

Keep on top of wall posts, comments and likes
While we're working, any team member with the associated rights can check on our wall and comment or like any of the posts that our followers have made. The notifications of these posts comes into our inbox, so again it can be assigned to the most appropriate team member to respond.  

We like using Facebook through Unified Inbox because it means there is one less applicaton we have to have open on our desktop.  And given that Unified Inbox is accessible from any web-enabled device, our team are able to do this work anywhere.  If you'd like to trial this integration for free, then we have one month free trials on all our paid plans.  Sign-up here today!

 

 

 

 

INTEGRATION TWITTER: Team tweets from your inbox

Five years on from start-up, it would be a rare business that does not have an active Twitter account. Yet many find the management of a Twitter presence still needs some fine-tuning.

• For a business running a Twitter account – do you give all the people who need to work on it the username and password?
• Do you need to open a specialised package (be it Twitter or one of the suite of products that has evolved) to manage your presence?

At Unified Inbox we thought there were better ways to manage our Twitter presence and added them into the build of our product.

We tweet from our mailbox.
For our team, sending a Tweet is exactly the same as sending an email. It's all done from the inbox so that only one package needs to be open and running on your desktop.  And of course, being Unified Inbox - it's available from any web enabled device, meaning your desktop just went mobile.

All authorised members of our team are able to Tweet.
Rather than give everyone the password to our Twitter account, we authorise access for team members from within Unified Inbox as appropriate.

Embedding links got easier.
Any member of our team prepares their Tweet – with URLs, where required and pastes it into the new Tweet window. Then one click on the “shorten links” button means that all URLs within the text are shortened.

Handling multiple Twitter accounts.
Your Unified Inbox account can connect to multiple Twitter accounts and you can assign access rights as needed. So individual team members can tweet directly from their inbox to the most appropriate twitter account.

Incorporating access for your team to your Twitter account is only one of the Social applications available in the Communicate package. You can trial one free month today and check out the other social applications available.

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

• You’ve got mail…and more mail. more
• My Solution to E-mail Overload (or, How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About It!). more
• Tech Blamed For Stressed "Gen Y" Drivers; Some Tips To Help. more - real life impact of overload.
• Information overload. more - for a change of pace we're linking to a poem about the subject. Enjoy ;)
• Managing Email Overload. more
• Dealing with the email overload. more
• Why Social Media Overload Means New Opportunities for Startups. more - a new term is coined: "choice overload"

Statistics

• People see more than 34 billion bits of information per day – an equivalent of 2 books a day online.  more
• 60% of employees polled believe that they don’t need to be in the office in order to be productive.  more
• 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared each WEEK on Facebook. more

Wisdom

• Lost time is never found again - Benjamin Franklin

How many applications is too many applications?

The promise of Web 2.0 is that out there someone clever has designed an application that will solve every last little problem that you may encounter during your online life.  Whether it's creating your blog, publicising it, making notes, keeping projects on the go or keeping uptodate with your friends - there is an application for it.

The downside of finding the perfect application for every job can be a spreadsheet with a multitude of login details.  Now that's necessarily the worst of it - because there are applications that are built to hold this information.

Rather it's the sheer number of applications to open and monitor during a regular workday.  It was working with this problem that set the Unified Inbox development team to thinking about how to incorporate the best of Web 2.0 into the heart of their unified inbox.

Over the coming weeks, Unified Inbox will be publishing information on the applications you can integrate into your inbox.

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

• Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure http://cot.ag/pJwlf2 - 20 minute video from much quoted expert
• Email: Fail (A Confession and Manifesto) http://cot.ag/n8ScH4 
• Email Overload: Check your email later in the day http://cot.ag/oap2Aj 
• Why +MG Siegler is wrong about email (and right too) http://cot.ag/oql1E6 A detailed piece on steps taken to train a mailbox.
• I’m Quitting Email http://cot.ag/mZ6rEn Would you say this is a valid solution to overload?

Statistics

• 57.4 % of respondents never turn off their phone. http://cot.ag/pjhvD0
• In the time it takes you to read this sentence, some 20 million emails entered cyberspace. http://cot.ag/SActE
• If email was a country, its 1.4 billion users would make it the largest in the world. http://cot.ag/SActE

Wisdom

• The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time - Abraham Lincoln
• The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once - Albert Einstein
• The mere imparting of information is not education. - Carter G. Woodson 

 

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips:

 

• The Riskiest, Most Radical 30-Day Trial I’ve Ever Attempted? http://cot.ag/nouJly - no email for 30 days - will it work?
• Are you an emailer? 4 wrong ways of defining the email overload problem. http://cot.ag/nOsOIx - new occupational code - emailer :)
• How to separate your personal and professional lives online. http://cot.ag/pfZwZY - advice on achieving distance between work and home life.
• Information Overload and What You Can Do About It. http://cot.ag/pDs2vQ - review of Jonathan Spira book and tips
• Struggling With Information Overload. http://cot.ag/qMlcqA  - how one author is finding ways to cope.

Statistics:

 

• 92% of adult US Internet users send or read email. http://cot.ag/opLyrW
• Employee stress levels are increased when their inboxes grow by more than 50 messages a day. http://cot.ag/qIMuxG
• 23.8% of Asians use the internet compared with 78.3% of North Americans. http://cot.ag/oIUatD
• Bloggers post 900,000 articles everyday, enough posts to fill the NYTimes for 19 years. http://cot.ag/oX8lyE

Wisdom:

 

• Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. - Gertrude Stein.
• The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. - Oscar Wilde
• Where is all the knowledge we lost with information? - T. S. Eliot 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Balancing information work with home life

The Journal of Family Issues recently published results from the Finnish Use of Time database and asked the question: "Does Knowledge Work Require the Marginalization of Private Life?"

They concluded that knowledge work families especially experienced feelings of hurriedness and time famine.

It seems the advent of technology that allows for work to take place outside the office also allows for that work to take over family time.

We've seen statistics that support this statement:

• 76.7% of respondents read email and respond evenings and weekends. 
• 33% of respondents said they check emails in the middle of the night.
• 39.9% saying: "I feel I ignore family or friends."

The Huffington Post article that two of these statistics came from, pushes the curation solution to information overload - that is: to get your information from one or two well-trusted sources who do the work of sorting through the multitude of information and present only what they believe to be relevant.  

While that is one solution to keeping information overload from wrecking havoc with family time, others offer technology or media fasts as a way of re-connecting with their families.  In a technology fast, family members refrain from using technology such as cellphones, tvs or computers for a pre-arranged period of time.

Reading many of the writings on these subjects we'd like to suggest that as with all technology advancements there is a period of re-settlement as we decide what boundaries are important and what changes are for the better, and for each individual to proactively find the solution that gives them the best balance of work and home life.

 

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips:

• "How To Handle E-Mail Overload In 2011" http://cot.ag/n0m1oT Focus on using handheld devices for accessing email.
• "My Solution to E-mail Overload (or, How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About It!)" http://cot.ag/o6gctf
• "Could you go info-vegan? A diet for information overload" http://cot.ag/qVbyu1 A possible solution to issue of information overload.
• "Does Inbox Zero help you manage your emails" http://cot.ag/nteOKx Detailed discussion of pros and cons of Inbox Zero approach.
• "Managing information overload" http://cot.ag/qCuzlt Interesting article followed by 4 useful tips.
• "How to Avoid Email Overload?" http://cot.ag/qIMuxG Five useful tips.

Statistics:

• 53% of employees would opt for a personal assistant rather than personal trainer. http://cot.ag/ofxvSe
• As we go from grade school to high school, we learn only a billionth of what there is to learn. http://cot.ag/pvpy8G
• 44% of the worlds internet users are in Asia http://cot.ag/oIUatD

Wisdom:

• The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. - Mark Twain
• It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see. - Winston Churchill