A Guide to Organizing Your Gmail Inbox

Over the official Spark Email blog, I’ve just published this detailed guide to decluttering and organizing your Gmail inbox.

In this article, I’ll tell you the tips and tricks to organize your Gmail inbox and also explain some hidden or lesser-known features that help you organize your emails in Gmail. And for those of you who have thousands of unread emails in your Gmail inbox, I’ll help you bring some sanity to your inbox.

Gmail is arguably the most common email provider today and thus, it is very common to see Gmail inboxes that are just left unattended. I’ve outlined some pretty simple steps that can help you clean up your Gmail inbox in minutes.

August 6, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Podcast Appearance: Wadicast #6

We just released Episode 06 of the Wadicast and this is a fun one. We discuss the prevalent culture of fake WhatsApp messages & forwards in India, chat about the origins of our own surnames and some other interesting and funny Marathi surnames, and later everyone reminisces about the music they used to listen to back in the day.

We’re confident that you’ll thoroughly enjoy this one, and if you do, please consider subscribing to Wadicast.

July 25, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Pastel is a Fantastic App for Working with Colors

Steve Troughton-Smith has just released his new app ‘Pastel‘ on the App Store. Available for iPhone and iPad, with a Mac app coming later, Pastel lets you create your very own library of colors and color palettes. It’s a fantastic app for anyone working with colors and I highly recommend you try it out.

I have been relying on sites like Coolors and Color Hunt for inspiration, but having something native and handy is so much better.

Pastel App

Pastel is a modern iOS app, meaning it supports many of the new features of iOS. You can drag & drop any color from Pastel onto any iPad app that supports dropped colors, which makes it super easy to quickly use a particular color in your work.

All your colors in the library seamlessly sync over iCloud across all your devices, so your favorite colors are always handy.

Pastel is available for Free on the App Store and you can add up to 20 of your own colors. To unlock unlimited colors, there’s a simple $4.99 IAP.

Get Pastel from the App Store →

June 10, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Ipsita Dasgupta Hired to Lead Apple India's Streaming Services

Writankar Mukherjee, writing for ETtech:

Apple has roped in Ipsita Dasgupta as India country manager for its streaming services like Apple TV+, Apple Music and the App Store.

Dasgupta has joined the iPhone maker from Hotstar where she was president of strategy and new ventures.

She has succeeded Khushboo Ponwar who had last year moved on as head of business development for Apple in India, Middle East, Turkey and Africa. Dasgupta, who is an MBA from Harvard, took charge this month.

Apple needs to focus heavily on some good content in the coming months if it’s serious about Apple TV+ here in India. But I also hope that there’s a good developer evangelism plan for the apps coming out of India. There’s no dearth of shitty apps here with suboptimal experiences.

June 3, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Telegram Instructured to Provide Info on Users Pirating E-Papers

Aroon Deep, writing for MediaNama:

In a case filed by Jagran Prakashan group, the Delhi High Court ordered messaging service Telegram to remove several channels distributing the Dainik Jagran newspaper’s PDF versions. The order also instructs Telegram to reveal the identity of the individual(s) distributing the paper illegally.

Telegram has far bigger issues than users sharing just e-papers, and I just hope the Indian government doesn’t choose the WeTransfer route to handle this.

June 1, 2020 ✚ Permalink

WeTransfer Blocked in India

Sameer Desai, writing for Mumbai Mirror:

In an order dated May 18, the telecom department directed internet service providers (ISP) to ban three specific website URLs. The first two are specific pages of WeTransfer, while the third is the entire website. It is unclear as to what is contained in the first two URLs as the website is currently banned by several ISPs, but banning WeTransfer entirely is a perplexing decision.

What a bunch of morons.

May 30, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Graphing the Evolution of Smaller & Lighter Mac Laptops

Jason Snell, writing on the Six Colors blog:

The trend in laptop design, since the very beginning, has been toward lighter and thinner laptops. In 2001 Steve Jobs boasted about the mind-blowing one-inch thickness of the Titanium PowerBook G4; 19 years later the average Mac laptop is half that thickness.

But it’s one thing to know that laptops trend toward thinness and lightness. It’s another to see a chart that lets you visualize it. So I dug through the specs of past Mac systems at EveryMac.comand averaged the weight and thickness of the Mac laptop product line for every year since the first Mac laptop, the hilariously heavy Mac Portable, hit the scene.

Fascinating graphs. The dive in 2008 in both the graphs is my favorite.

May 30, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Mumbai, Engulfed by Coronavirus

Jeffrey Gettleman, writing for The New York Times:

As the coronavirus gnaws its way across India, Mumbai has suffered the worst. This city of 20 million is now responsible for 20 percent of India’s coronavirus infections and nearly 25 percent of the deaths.

Hospitals are overflowing with the sick. Police officers are exhausted enforcing a stay-at-home curfew. Doctors say the biggest enemy is Mumbai’s density.

Particularly in the city’s vast slum districts, social distancing is impossible. People live eight to a room across miles and miles of informal settlements made of concrete blocks and topped with sheets of rusted iron. As the temperatures climb toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit, many can’t stand to be cooped up anymore and spill into the streets.

I have lived in Mumbai all my life and the city is currently in a terribly sorry state. These heart-wrenching photos by documentary photographer Atul Loke paint a solid picture of the hardships that many people have to face in the city.

Check out some more photos on Atul’s Instagram profile.

May 29, 2020 ✚ Permalink