Unfortunately there is still no software application that can handle your emails.

I’ve seen some interesting prototypes but still nothing usable.
Maybe one day, a Gmail 2.0 add-on will read your email, move unwanted messages to your “not now” folder, schedule meetings in your calendar if the sender invites you to one, and highlight emails from your wife (or maybe mark them as spam ).

Until then, an interesting alternative is ActiveInbox: GTD based work-flow add-on for Gmail which lets you “handle email as a flow of actions”, as the developers say.

Its main objective is to make the zero inbox rule a reality.
This rule is part of the GTD process by David Allen, which illustrates how to bring to zero your inbox and file all your messages in the right place.

With ActiveInbox you can better focus on high priority emails, track emails that you are waiting for a reply to, file emails into projects for easy retrieval. All this with user-friendly dropdown menus right into your Gmail account.
With a simple to use add-on for Gmail you will see an extra menu on your left column, showing contexts, projects and ToDos. With one click you can see all your emails to a given person from which you are expeting a reply. Or you can check, project by project, which are your next actions.

ActiveInbox comes with a free version and a premium account for $24.95/year.

Here is a short list of the productivity tools which I really can’t immagine my working life without them:

1. Remember the milk: this is an incredibly easy to use and powerful task management system. It has most of functionalities you would expect and many more. I find very useful the project tabs under which I separate my “worlds”.
   It has an incredible amount of plug-ins and other ways of accessing your data (iphone, widgets, extensions, google calendar intgration) and it is completly online, web 2.0 style.
   (FREE version and pro account for $25/year)
   
2. Google Calendar: from the night it has come out, it is my only beloved agenda. Clean, powerful and complete. This is how I would describe the productivity spike it has given to my work organization. Anything you might ask a digital agenda, gcal has it. From sharing your calendar, booking availability with colleagues, automatic reminders (sms, email) and all the advanced features a busy person might desire. Obviously it syncs with most of the stand alone applications such as iCal.
   (FREE)
3. BusyCal: if iCal is not enough for you, then Busycal is the right option. The one thing that iCal does NOT do is two way sync with Google Calendar, which BusyCal supports. Also, if you have a lot of tasks to deal with, maybe iCal is not as efficient as BusyCal. If you are not very familiar with cloud computing, you can also share your calendars with colleagues and family on a local LAN.
   ($49 one time license)
4. GTDInbox: this is a pretty new add-on for firefox and chrome which I think email oveloaded people would like. It is based on the popular GTD method from David Allen. You can be sure you will never miss or forget an email anymore, and you can easily keep track of emails you are waiting a response from. Organize emails into projects, contexts and references. As the developing team says “emails are just bad formatted tasks”, and this is something will change using GTDInbox.
   (FREE version or pro account for $25/year)