It’s common geek knowledge at this point that Google Wave is named after the predominant method of audio-visual transmission in the tragically short-lived science fiction series Firefly (and it’s feature film sequel, Serenity). What’s ironic about this association is how much Wave, at this stage of development, reminds me of Firefly character River Tam.

River (Google Wave) is a prodigy, exceedingly gifted in nearly every respect, consistently one-upping her older yet still talented sibling Simon (Gmail). As striking as her abilities are, they are only experienced through a fog of schizophrenia and instability. While Simon lacks any of River’s psychic  insight, he is nonetheless remarkable and ultimately more reliable.

Okay, maybe I’m stretching the metaphor a bit. My point is that Wave has really cool moments, but they’re fleeting in this early state. While I haven’t experienced the rampant bugs reported by other users, I have noticed that the interface leaves a lot to be desired (it’s shockingly similar to Microsoft Outlook,  neglecting the emphasis on conversation Gmail achieved), and things become cacophonous when a conversation has many participants.

What I dig about Wave are the live conversations, the ability to structure those conversations in any order you please, and the freedom that plugins give the service. What’s wonderful about these high points is that they aren’t unique to Google’s implementation of the Wave platform. Remember, Wave is an open source creation aimed at replacing email as a standard, with Google’s offering the inaugural product. Regardless of the current user experience, one can’t deny the capabilities of the service, which any group of enterprising designers and developers could leverage into something truly wonderful.

That’s not to say we should necessarily write off Google’s interface at this early stage of development. Sure, it’s a little loopy, but who knows? It might kick email’s butt after all.

Like so many geeks on Twitter, I’ve been shamelessly begging for a Google Wave invitation. I’ve heard numerous tales of the product’s rampant bugginess, but email feels so broken in the wake of the initial demo that I can’t help but pine for its modern, collaborative goodness.

In spite of this, I realize my wait will not end with Wave’s arrival. The service will likely taking many years to establish itself as the ubiquitous standard it aspires to be. I can’t just ditch email and twiddle my thumbs until that happens.

Here’s how I attempt to thwart email’s crappiness and continue to maintain that Merlin Mann nirvana that is Inbox Zero.

Step 1: Gmail

The setup begins with Gmail which, despite the handicap of our dilapidated email standard, still manages to rock 90% of the time.

I choose Gmail for its massive (and ever-expanding) storage capacity, the ability to send email from my personal domains, the versatility gained from “tagging” messages with labels, and the freedom to access all that cool stuff via POP3, IMAP and Google Sync for free. No competitor even begins to compare at this point and, even if they did, Gmail’s the easiest to escape from should you ever wish to switch.

In accordance with Merlin’s inbox makeover article, I immediately move every email I receive out of the inbox and into an action label after a brief skim. This protects me from workflow disruptions and insures that Gmail’s inbox and archive are used faithfully (for unsorted and archives items).

I prefix my action labels with an underscore so that they’ll be at the top of Gmail’s labels and any folder view in another application. They are:

Action

For items that require some sort of action or task on my part before I can respond.

Hold

For items I’ll want close at hand in the next week or so (login information, URLs, attachments, etc.).

Respond

For items requiring a short message from me without any major tasks or required research.

Waiting

For items which will likely require action once the sender has responded.

For added goodness, use Gmail’s Multiple Inboxes (enable it in Labs) to put these front and center:

I then follow Adam Pash’s lead and organize all other labels into Contexts and Projects, abbreviated to ‘C’ and ‘P’ respectively. Contexts might be something like “Events” and “Appointments,” whereas Projects refer to things like “New Web Site,” “The Big Account,” etc.

Once all your conversations are nicely organized and you’ve got a great bird’s eye view of your actionable items, Firefox users may want to install FaviconizeTab and Gmail Favicon Alerts for at-a-glance incoming mail alerts without additional applications.

Step 2: iPhone

If you set up Gmail on your iPhone using Apple’s baked-in, shiny logo button for the service, you’re missing out on the best experience.

I highly recommend using Google Sync, which gives you push mail, calendar and contacts from Google’s services. There’s nothing quite like the warm, fuzzy feeling you get having incoming messages pushed directly to that red badge on your home screen.

If you must have full multiple label goodness on your iPhone, or if you already have an Exchange ActiveSync account associated with the device, you should definitely use Gmail through mobile Safari. It does nearly everything the desktop version does (including offline support) and trumps the default mail app in numerous ways.

Step 3: Postbox

I’m somewhat of a zealot when it comes to having a local backup of my email on a hard drive. Call me skeptical, but cloud solutions are too new for me to have complete and total confidence in their archival potential. I was a happy Thunderbird user for years, but Mozilla Messaging has moved forward at a snail’s pace.

Postbox is Thunderbird with super powers. The interface is much more polished and boasts great features like tabs, attachment aggregation and social network integration. In many ways it’s the email client I wish Thunderbird was (and hopefully will be).

Setting up Gmail in Postbox is a snap. The big “archive” buttons acts as you’d expect, conversations are threaded, and the search accepts Gmail-like arguments (such as “from:Mom”).

Unlike Thunderbird, Postbox is a commercial application that’ll set you back $39.95 for a single license after a 30-day trial. Luckily, they’re nice enough to give purchasers a discount to hand out to friends, so the first ten people who purchase using this link will get ten bucks off that price. You’re welcome.

Why are we doing this again?

Because email is a beast, a sickly mutant beast that eats at your productivity and requires specialized care no matter how you access it. This is what it takes to make me happy with it. Using this setup allows me to access the same email everywhere, maintain a local backup on my home PC, and receive new email notifications no matter where I am on my iPhone. My conversations are threaded, helpfully organized and quickly searchable from anywhere.

But I still wouldn’t mind playing with Google Wave. I’ll even trade you a Typekit invite. Anyone? Update: Thanks to Ryan Williams and Chris at Studio 625 for the invites! I’ll publish a reaction to Wave soon.

Continuing this month’s theme of making the most out of 16 square pixels, I got to collaborate with my good friend and colleague Peter Wooley on the next version of the excellent Gmail Favicon Alerts script for Greasemonkey.

Many Gmail users will keep the application open in a tab while browsing to expedite the process of obsessively checking one’s inbox. But wouldn’t it be great if you could be privy to the arrival of new mail or chat notifications at any point in your browsing experience, regardless of your current tab?

That’s where this script comes in. I’ll let Peter explain:

• A Blue icon lets you know you have unread mail. New to version 3, the number of unread messages is indicated in the icon beyond 10!
• A Red icon means you’ve read all your mail (or, at least, clicked on them all).
• A Speech Bubble icon means someone has sent you a chat message.

The newest version of Gmail FavIcon Alerts brings both a visual and functional refresh. Many thanks to awarded-winning designer Tyler Sticka, who has redesigned the iconography from scratch. The updated icons are now visually balanced, evenly shaded and gorgeous. In addition, Tyler designed numeric indicators for displaying the number of unread items in your inbox. As we both avidly watch our inboxes, knowing how many messages are unread allows us to make a better decision on when to switch tabs. The indicator counts up to 10 unread messages and hides when more unread items exist. Much like the Chat alerts, you can choose to turn this feature off through the Greasemonkey User Script Command menu.

Used in combination with the PermaTabs and Faviconize Tab extensions, you can easily keeps tabs on your Inbox status with less screen real estate than usual.

It’s always a blast redesigning something you use every day, an experience which always yields fruitful lessons. My first instinct was to switch things up and use the more vivid red icon as “unread” and a desaturated gray when there were no new messages. I abandoned this solution for two reasons:

• Having used Gmail Favicon Alerts for years, changing the colors completely threw off my learned behavior, impairing usability.
• The gray icon was markedly uglier than other variations. After all, you do have to look at this thing all day.

In the end, changing the color scheme presents little immediate user benefit, whereas introducing an unread count bares plenty. As such, Peter and I are both extremely proud of this version.

Download and install Gmail Favicon Alerts from its Greasemonkey homepage. If you dig it, why not leave a comment or write a review?

Update (2/19): Gmail Favicon Alerts has been featured on Lifehacker! Maybe they’ll integrate it into the Better Gmail extension? (Crosses fingers)

Update (3/17): Updated the imagery and description to match the latest version. Thanks to user feedback, we’ve replaced the orange chat icon with a more appropriate chat-bubble icon a la Google Talk.

Update (4/8): Updated the description to match the latest version, which no longer caps at 10 unread items. Whee!