Spark mail

Wed 06 June 2018 by Dr. Dirk Colbry

Spark Logo I am weird that I like email. It is my preferred form of communication on projects (maybe I am just getting old). I trust that I will get to my email and that I will not loose things. I realize that this trust is often not true but it is true enough for me to keep productive. For the longest time Gmail was my favorite email application. However, work changed policy from "we highly recommend you don't use Gmail" to "don't use gmail". So I chose to switch to the university Office 365 accounts.

I tried the built-in Mac mail program. It didn't thread my email the way I prefer. I also tried outlook which had its own problems. I don't really feel like bashing this software, it just didn't work in a way that fit my Gmail workflow.

As I move into a new laptop I stubbled across the spark email client. About three weeks into using it I am very satisfied. The laptop and phone versions work nicely together. I really like having both my personal Gmail account and work accounts connected in one application. There are a lot of things I like but probably the best is that since using Spark I have gotten my inbox to zero almost every day. This is big news. I am a big fan of emptying my inbox but this is often a challenge. I like the fact that Spark will allow me to show badges with the number of messages in my inbox instead of the number of unread messages. For some reason this is a real motivator for getting my email where they need to be. It also helps me keep my Gmail clean which is mostly news feeds, advertisements, etc.


Remember the Milk

Sat 19 May 2018 by Dr. Dirk Colbry

I have been a paid subscriber and dedicated customer to Remember the Milk (RTM) for many years (I have lost count). RTM is a todo list application. It is in the same category of something like Wonderlist and ToDoist (There are many others). RTM fits my personality and needs quite …

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Back to Blogging

Fri 18 May 2018 by Dr. Dirk Colbry

I like the idea of blogging but often have difficulty in the delivery. A few years ago I maintained a blog when I worked for the Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (iCER) at Michigan State University (MSU). At iCER I did a lot of High Performance Computing (HPC) User support. This …

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