Use the “Favor Test” When You're Undecided About a LinkedIn Invitation

"Should I accept that LinkedIn invitation?" That's a question I'm almost guaranteed to hear during any social media workshop, or indeed, in one-on-one conversations about social networking. Even committed LinkedIn users are often uncertain of which connection requests to accept, or which invitations to extend: Someone who regularly shares your blog posts on Twitter? That guy on your condo board? Your cousin's girlfriend with the commemorative-gold-coin business?

The problem of who to connect with on LinkedIn puzzles people precisely because the network itself is neither fish nor fowl. Is it a social network like Facebook, where your connections are (at least notionally) "friends"? A public platform like Twitter, where people can see and judge you on the number of your followers? Or just a really awesome address book?

It's actually all of these things. To use LinkedIn to its fullest potential, you need to tap its power as an introduction machine: an address book in which all the entries can see and connect with another, to create a mini-network with you and the things you share at the hub. But that introduction machine only works if you are selective about which connections you initiate and accept.

I learned the value of selectivity the hard way. In the early days of LinkedIn, I connected with anyone who asked, just as I had on other social networks. But once I started trying to use it to get introduced to people I wanted to meet, I discovered that my promiscuity in making connections meant that most of my search results consisted of people I couldn't actually get introduced to.

Yes, each search turned up tons of potential connections—people who were connected to people I was connected with. But most of the time, that point of connection was someone I didn't know well enough to ask for an introduction. I wasted hours digging through pages of search results just to find the two or three connections I could really leverage. You need a filter to help you connect to not just anyone you know, but only those people who will be able to help—or whom you can help yourself. Thus was born the "favor test," the answer to the who-should-I-connect-to-on-LinkedIn question.

The favor test is simple: Would you do a favor for this person, or ask a favor of them? If so, make the connection. If not, take a pass. A favor isn't constrained to an introduction; other kinds of requests come into play on LinkedIn: Would you support my charity? Will you attend my conference? Can you review my book?

When you're thinking about whether to accept someone's invitation to connect, imagine being faced with a request like this. (Note that there's a difference between saying yes to a conference because it's an interesting event, and saying yes because you want to help out the person who asked.) It's the people you'd go out of your way to help or whom you trust to go out of their way to help you, however modestly, who pass the favor test. If you're consistent in applying the favor test, you can build a LinkedIn network that is useful and efficient in supporting any professional goal.

But you don't want to be one of those people: the kind of person who evaluates people based on a number. The whole point of the favor test is to think about the two-way quality of your relationships. LinkedIn has its most dramatic impact when a favor goes from a hypothetical test to a tangible action—when you make those introductions, or when you meet that key individual at a company you've always dreamt of working for. Once you see your LinkedIn network not only as a way to realize your own goals but also as an asset you can share with the people you believe in, you'll find it gives you much more than a few more sales leads, or a higher rank in the stack of resumes on a recruiter's desk.

Should I Accept that LinkedIn Invitation? | Harvard Business Review

Alexandra Samuel is Vice-President of Social Media at Vision Critical, a market research technology provider. She is the author of Work Smarter with LinkedIn (Harvard Business Review Press, June 2013). Follow her on Twitter at @awsamuel.

Image remixed from Nomad_Soul (Shutterstock).

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What's a good drink that I can order at just about any bar?

What's a good drink that I can order at just about any bar? LifehackerHackerspaceDeadspinGawkerGizmodoio9JalopnikJezebelKotakuLifehackerPSSearch LifehackerSeIILogin(function(d, s, id) {var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if (d.getElementById(id)) return;js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=37418175030";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

ask the commenters rounduphive mindShep McAllister6/30/13 2:00pmToday 2:00pmg 2,963L 1EditWhat's a good drink that I can order at just about any bar?Shep McAllisterPFollowOUnfollow6/30/13 2:00pmToday 2:00pmg 2,963L 1Edit

What's a good drink that I can order at just about any bar?Can anyone recommend a good negative scanner?Any tips for dating without breaking the bank?I'm having a hard time keeping up with causes (alerts to sign petitions, call senators, etc..). My inbox is flooded with them. Suggestions?oes anyone know how one can manually queue up shows in a specific order on Hulu?What are your top three podcasts?How do you mentally cope with a future full of office work?How can I break even on tax withholding for the year?I don't really like Feedly. What other Google Reader alternatives should I try?1jFacebookiTwitterkTumblrLDiscuss discussions displayed because an author is participating or following a participant.
additional replies awaiting review.KShow all discussionsSubmitted discussions can be approved by the author or users followed by this blog.Show moreLoad More Stories Loading more stories…AboutHelpTerms of UsePrivacyContent GuidelinesRSSJobs© Gawker Media 2013

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Why Your Memory Sucks (and What You Can Do About It)

Human memory is quirky, complicated, and unreliable. Even when we think we're remembering everything accurately, chances are things have gotten twisted along the way. Let’s take a look at why your memory sucks, and how you can change that.

Science is still figuring out all kinds of new things about our brains and memory. What we do know is that a lot of people struggle with remembering things, and in many different ways. Perhaps you're always forgetting a few items at the grocery store, or to pick up the dry cleaning on your way home. Worse, maybe you can't remember events from your childhood that well, or you remember an event from college differently than a friend. So, let's take a look at what's really going on in your brain, and then see if we can actually do anything to improve your memory.

Everyone's memory is different, but none of us have a perfect memory. In fact, even if you think your memory is perfect, chances are it isn't. To understand how this works, we need to look at a few different things, starting with how we remember anything to begin with.

The fact is, human memory is complicated. As an example, consider how you remember visual images. It seems straightforward, you see something, and you remember it. But as Scientific American points out, it's more complex than that:

Memories of visual images (e.g., dinner plates) are stored in what is called visual memory. Our minds use visual memory to perform even the simplest of computations; from remembering the face of someone we’ve just met, to remembering what time it was last we checked...

Memories like what you had for dinner are stored in visual short-term memory—particularly, in a kind of short-term memory often called “visual working memory.” Visual working memory is where visual images are temporarily stored while your mind works away at other tasks—like a whiteboard on which things are briefly written and then wiped away.

So, what causes those memories to stick around and not be wiped away from that whiteboard? According to a one study from MIT, it might simply be how meaningful an image is and if we can connect it to other knowledge. If you can connect that image to something else, it increases the chances you'll remember it later. Like learning, memory is all about context. This is why, as The Atlantic points out, pattern recognition is key. Essentially, the more connections a new memory has to knowledge you have, the more likely it is you'll remember that information. The same basic process seems to happen with most memories.

Underneath the hood, all types of things are happening in your brain. How Stuff Works does a good job of breaking it down:

Experts believe that the hippocampus, along with another part of the brain called the frontal cortex, is responsible for analyzing these various sensory inputs and deciding if they're worth remembering. If they are, they may become part of your long-term memory... these various bits of information are then stored in different parts of the brain. How these bits and pieces are later identified and retrieved to form a cohesive memory, however, is not yet known...

To properly encode a memory, you must first be paying attention. Since you cannot pay attention to everything all the time, most of what you encounter every day is simply filtered out, and only a few stimuli pass into your conscious awareness... What we do know is that how you pay attention to information may be the most important factor in how much of it you actually remember.

The fact of the matter is, we're still learning a lot about human memory. Why we remember certain details over others is still a mystery.

It's probably no secret to you that you can't trust your memory. All of us have had moments where we've misremembered a detail, forgotten something, or even made details up completely. The reason is pretty simple: our memory isn't always reliable because it's about perception.

Memories are changed by all kinds of things. Nostalgia plays a roll in how we remember, and according to Scientific American it's surprisingly easy to instill false memories in people. Most shocking though, is how often we're just plain wrong about the details. For example, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, but as The Smithsonian Magazine points out, our memory of major events is consistantly inaccurate:

Most people have so-called flashbulb memories of where they were and what they were doing when something momentous happened: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, say, or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. (Unfortunately, staggeringly terrible news seems to come out of the blue more often than staggeringly good news.) But as clear and detailed as these memories feel, psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate.

Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, says his memory of the World Trade Center attack has played a few tricks on him. He recalled seeing television footage on September 11 of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. But he was surprised to learn that such footage aired for the first time the following day. Apparently he wasn’t alone: a 2003 study of 569 college students found that 73 percent shared this misperception.

It's not just traumatic events that cause our memories to flake out. One study in The Journal of the Association for Psychological Science points out that simply recalling memories enhances and distorts them. Which is to say, when you remember something you're actively changing it. In part this has a lot to do with a wide variety of memory biases that color the ways we remember. From the positivity effect where we tend to remember the positive over the negative to the egocentric bias where we remember ourselves as being better than we are, we're constantly changing memories in a way that benefits how we view ourselves. Which is to say, trusting your own memory isn't always the best idea.

For example, one study published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that we tend to think we'll remember something important more than we will. This is essentially when you don't write down a brilliant idea because it's good you'll never forget it, and then you immediately forget what it was. It's happened to the best of us, and it's because we're overly confident in our ability to remember.

Unfortunately, like most of our biases, the only way to really counteract them is to know they're there. Knowing that your memory isn't perfect means you'll pay more attention to those imperfections in the future.

Improving your memory is possible, but despite what the self-help section at your local bookstore might say, it's not just about a series of mental hoops you can jump through every day. In fact, while there certainly are some techniques proven to help you retain information, improving your memory is just as much about lifestyle as anything else.

We know that physical activity affects the brain in a number of positive ways, and one of those is a boost to memory.

Physical activity's role in memory is incredibly complicated. Studies published in Behavioral Neuroscience, The Journal of American Geriatrics Society, and The Journal of Aging Research, among others suggest that exercise plays a signifigant role in memory. The New York Times breaks the current research like so:

What all of this new research suggests, says Teresa Liu-Ambrose, an associate professor in the Brain Research Center at the University of British Columbia who oversaw the experiments with older women, is that for the most robust brain health, it’s probably advisable to incorporate both aerobic and resistance training. It seems that each type of exercise “selectively targets different aspects of cognition,” she says, probably by sparking the release of different proteins in the body and brain...

[B]eyond merely stemming people’s memory loss, she says, “we saw actual improvements,” an outcome that, if you’re waffling about exercising today, is worth remembering.

Essentially, exercise improves cognitive functions, and when that happens it enhances our memory storage and retrieval. Basically, the better shape your brain is in, the better the chances you'll remember something.

Most of us have heard before that sleep plays an important role in memory, but as time goes on we're learning a lot more about how that works. Sleep and memory is an intensely researched subject, and it's pretty clear that sleep plays a signifigant role in memory formation. Sleep does this in two key ways. Speaking with NPR, Robert Stickgold from Harvard Medical School explains it like so:

Well, it turns out that probably all the stages of sleep are involved, but they're involved in different ways. And so what we will classically do is we'll train subjects on some memory task, and it might be a list of words, or it might be a typing sequence. So it can be very different types of memory problems...

And what we see pretty consistently is that the ones who got a chance to sleep will actually be performing much better after that 12 hours than the ones who had been awake... So on one task it might be the amount of deep sleep you get early in the night, and this would be the case more for things like verbal memory, that you'll see that the amount of improvement subjects show after sleep will depend on how much of that slow wave, that deep sleep they get, whereas in other tasks it might correlate with the amount of REM sleep that they get.

Basically, certain stages of sleep are thought to help form different types of memories. So, declarative memories (things like facts and knowledge) are enhanced by slow wave sleep (deep sleep), whereas implicit memories (long term memories that don't require conscious thought, like riding a bike or tying a shoe) are enhanced by REM Sleep. Essentially, it's thought that the better the sleep you get each night, the better your memory.

The New York Times breaks down the importance of sleep and memory pretty bluntly:

Some of the most insidious effects of too little sleep involve mental processes like learning, memory, judgment and problem-solving. During sleep, new learning and memory pathways become encoded in the brain, and adequate sleep is necessary for those pathways to work optimally. People who are well rested are better able to learn a task and more likely to remember what they learned. The cognitive decline that so often accompanies aging may in part result from chronically poor sleep.

Case in point, a good night's rest really can improve your memory in the long term. The good news is that rebooting your sleep schedule isn't that hard to do. If you stick with it, your memory should stay strong.

In the end, your memory probably isn't as bad as you think. It just takes some regular maintenance and a little training to keep it in shape. You can't magically just improve your memory by studying. If you're the type who forgets your keys, you'll probably always do so. That said, you can employ certain techniques to help you with memory retention, and perhaps more importantly, your initial perception. We've talked about this a lot in the past, so here are a few places to get started:

Train your brain like a USA Memory Champion: Our own Melanie Pinola went through the USA Memory Championship and shares her techniques, including several different memorization systems.Improve your memory with the chunking technique: The chunking technique uses the pattern recognition we talked about in the first section to help you remember things. In the simplest terms, it's like remembering a phone number using the letters on a phone's dial pad instead of just the numbers.Combine information with bizarre images: If you need to remember a certain set of details, it's often easier for us to do so when we combine that information with something crazy. So, if you need to remember milk and bananas at the grocery store, remember a giant banana with a hatchet chasing after a cow that's ready to burst with milk.Use a mnemonic peg system: This one's a bit complicated, but a peg system essentially lists items as a rhyme so it's easier to remember. Once an item is pegged to the list, you can usually recall that information later.Increase your powers of observation and perception: You're only going to remember what you notice, so if you want to improve your memory skills one thing you need to do is pay more attention to what's happening. Watch the world closely, form connections between what's happening and what you know. Remember, according to research in The Journal of Neurosciece, the more we value a memory, the more likely it is to stick around. The more you see, the more accurate your memory will be.Take a nap: We already mentioned that sleeping has a direct impact on your memory, but so does a quick nap. If you can sneak one in during the day, go for it. A solid nap is an effective tool for improving memory and learning ability. If a nap's not possible, medidation has been shown to work as well.Memory is weird, and it works in strange ways. It's unreliable, but we still have to put our trust in it. Memory is hard to work with, but it's still malleable and you can force memories into your brain. Science is still figuring out exactly what works best, but for now it seems like few things trump a good night's rest and exercise.

Photos by Official U.S. Navy Imagery, jon_a_ross, Charles Smith, Joi Ito, and Quinn Dombrowski.

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When Should I Care About My Job Title?

Dear Lifehacker,
I recently received a promotion at work that included a nice raise and several new responsibilities. It didn't, however, include a title change even though my new job description warrants one. Does this matter? Should I ask for a new title? If so, how should I go about it?

Sincerely,
Troubled About Titles

Dear TAT,
Job titles cause a lot of trouble and they rarely matter that much in the moment. They can make people feel important at a job but rarely do more than establish a hierarchy. Your title only makes a significant difference when distinguishing a regular employee from a manager and when you leave your job and have to stick it on your resume. If you plan on staying at your job for awhile, a lack of a new title shouldn't have a major impact on you. Nevertheless, you don't want to ask for something from your company if you plan on walking out the door in the near future and want to leave on good terms. If you want a title bump, or at least want to know why you didn't get one, you just have to ask—in the right way, of course.

They're Reserving the Title for Later
Some companies can't afford pay raises for the same employees year after year—or, at least, not much of one—so they upgrade job titles instead. Your company may want to reserve a title boost for you later on so they can pay you less but still give you value. If this is the case, asking for your new title right now means you might get less later if they give it to you.

Publicly Promoting You Causes Trouble with Other Employees
Office politics can play a role as well. Sometimes giving you a greater title may make another employee feel stilted or want a promotion as well. Companies may want to keep your promotion relatively unknown, and as a result they won't provide you with a new title. If this happens, you should see that title bump in the near future (or at least have cause to ask again at a later time).

This Is a Test
Your company may also want to see how you perform in your new responsibilities before officially giving you a new title. If you've worked hard for them and earned a raise, they'll have no trouble paying you more for your continued effort. They may add new responsibilities as a test to see if you can handle them, then provide the title promotion on its own if you pass.

You Don't Deserve One Yet, or They Just Forgot
New responsibilities may seem like a lot to you and much less to your employer. If they haven't put you in charge of managing a large project or other people, they probably don't see your new position as a new position. Your company wants to pay you more because they've asked you to do more, but nothing that couldn't fall under your existing job title. While some companies will add a junior/senior distinction when providing new responsibilities, they may for some departments in the company but not others. For example, developers may get this distinction but customer support representatives will not. Look at your department and find a precedent. If it seems like you should have a title upgrade, you can ask for one. Sometimes companies don't think about it as closely as you might, so if it seems like they overlooked this aspect of your promotion you should bring it up.

When you ask for a title promotion after getting a raise you may come across as greedy. Also, because title promotions prove most useful on your resume, rather than at the company (in most cases), you also give the impression that you don't plan to stick around too long. You don't want that kind of brand at the company, as it can hurt you in the future whether or not you leave, so you should tread carefully.

If you work in a traditional company with different departments, you probably got a promotion because your manager recommended you for one and the company decided what to give you. This puts you in a better situation because you can talk to your direct manager about your title first, potentially minimizing the number of people who know you asked for it. If you need to go directly to your boss, don't worry—you still want to make the same approach. Tell your boss or manager something like the following:

I really appreciate the raise and new responsibilities, but I feel like I'm now doing the level of work associated with a(n) [INSERT JOB TITLE HERE]. I don't want to ask for too much because I'm very happy here, but do you think that's an accurate title for the work I'm doing?

When you broach the subject, you want to make a few things clear: 1) you appreciate what you have, 2) you're happy at your job (i.e. you don't plan to leave), and 3) you only want the appropriate title for the level of work required of you. You also want to leave them with a question at the end of your request to ensure they think about what you said rather than see it as a point of argument. When you ask a question you become less imposing and you don't want to overstep when making a request like this.

After you ask, your boss or manager will explain the situation and that explanation will likely fall under one of the previously described scenarios. If they provide you with the new title, great! If they want to wait, turn this denial into an opportunity. Ask them what the company would like to see from you in order to earn this title. Show them that you want it and that you want to work for it. As a result, if you don't get the title when the company traditionally promotes people you can ask why you didn't receive it while demonstrating how you met the criteria they laid out for you.

Job titles are silly little things that make us feel like we've made progress when we receive them. For the most part, they just don't really matter that much and you shouldn't put too much stock in them. Titles shouldn't affect how you feel about your role in the company and the (hopefully) good work that you do. You don't want your ego to get in your way.

That said, job title promotions show that the company recognizes that work. If they don't show that in other ways—like a pay raise—you should ask. Job titles have value once you leave the company. Even if you don't plan to do that anytime soon, things could change. You may get laid off if the company needs to downsize. You may find you hate your new responsibilities or the company hires a manager you just can't work with well. You need to care about your job title because it can get you a better job later on. Let go of the egotistical reasons that might make you want something like "Senior Manager" and aim for the title that'll get you better work later. You may not need it now, but planning ahead can mean avoiding unemployment later.

Love,
Lifehacker

Photos by Kzenon (Shutterstock), zimmytws (Shutterstock), and The Office.

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Ask an Expert: All About Repairing Your Gadgets

Say hi to Brett Hartt and Luke Soules from iFixit, the largest online repair community. They make it easy for you to fix things yourself with their step-by-step guides, troubleshooting tips, and community of technicians. Today they're lending their expertise on laptop, smartphone, and tablet repairability.

How much should you weigh repairability before buying? Which tablets are more (or less) repairable than others? When should you DIY fix, and when should you leave it to the pros? Brett and Luke are here for the next hour answering all this and more, so ask away!

The q&a is closed—thanks for all the great questions!

Have an expert you'd like to see participate? Email us.

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CPU-Z Tells You Everything About Your Phone's CPU, Battery, and More

Android: Getting detailed information about your device isn't always easy. Apps like Speccy help on the desktop, and now CPU-Z can do the same for your phone or tablet.

The app requires Android 3.0 and above (sorry Gingerbread users). Once installed it will give you extensive information about your device, including display resolution, SoC architecture, active RAM usage, battery health, temperature, and a ton more. In most cases, this app will probably be overkill, but if you've ever needed to know what kernel architecture your device uses, CPU-Z has your back.

CPU-Z comes to Android | NirmalTV

Related Windows only: Planning an upgrade soon? Save yourself the web searches for your specs and download Speccy. Speccy does a quick scan of your machine… Read…

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Why Thinking About Buying Something Makes You Happier than Buying It

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Ask an Expert: All About Renting vs. Buying

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What do you think about the Prism news?

Great discussions are par for the course here on Lifehacker. Each day, we highlight a discussion that is particularly helpful or insightful, along with other great discussions and reader questions you may have missed. Check out these discussions and add your own thoughts to make them even more wonderful!

For great discussions any time, be sure check out our user-run blog, Hackerspace. And today being Friday, don't forget to check out this week's Open Thread.

If you've got a cool project, inspiration, or just something fun to share, send us a message at tips@lifehacker.com.

Happy Lifehacking, everybody!

Related It's Friday. That means it's time to share what you know, ask what you don't, and generally partake in some conversation. Right here,… Read…

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Everything You Need to Know About Gmail's New, Super-Confusing Layout

If you haven't heard yet, Gmail is rolling out a new tabbed interface for the inbox on both desktop and mobile. At first glance, this looks great for email organization. On further inspection, these new tabs are confusing as hell. Here's how to make sense of the new tabs and customize them for your own filters.

Google describes the new tabs as a way to "put you back in control so that you can see what's new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read and when."

You get five optional tabs, described by Google below. Google automatically sorts your inbox into these tabs using its special algorithms (essentially matching many of Gmail's existing Smart Labels, which automatically filter incoming messages):

Primary: person-to-person conversations and messages that don't appear in other tabsSocial: messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, and other social websitesPromotions: deals, offers, and other marketing emailsUpdates: personal, auto-generated updates including confirmations, bills, receipts, bills, and statementsForums: messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing listsYou can also choose to force starred emails from all tabs to display in the Primary tab (in addition to the other tab).

To enable the new tabbed view, go to the Gear icon and select "Configure inbox." Once you do that, you'll be prompted to choose which tabs to enable and Gmail will start doing its magic, auto-sorting your inbox.

You can drag-and-drop emails from one tab to the next; when you do that, Gmail will ask if you want to create a filter for that sender to send messages in the future to that tab. Handy! It doesn't, however, move existing emails into that tab.

You can also create your own filters to send emails into specific tabs, as we'll see below, but that's tricky if you don't understand how the new tabs differ from Gmail's existing labels and which messages get sorted into tabs.

The tabs do give you a convenient way to automatically sort your inbox according to Gmail's preset categories and get notifications at a glance for when new emails come in. However, the tabbed view introduces a new, not-so-clear element in Gmail called "categories."

The tabs are based on these new categories. When you create a filter, in addition to being able to label a message, you can now categorize it as: Personal, Social, Updates, Promotions, or Forums from a drop-down box. These, as you see, match the tabs.

The problem is, you already have labels that also match these categories. Gmail, for example, adds Social Updates, Promotions, and Forums as SmartLabels in the left menu. The "Notifications" SmartLabel corresponds to the Updates tab (I wonder why they didn't just call the tab Notifications), but SmartLabels are not the same as Categories. Gmail's pre-designed SmartLabel filters makes it seem like that, but they're really two different things.

I also noticed one problem where certain messages would show up under a SmartLabel, but not a category. For example: Some auto-labeled "Notifications" didn't show up under my "Updates" tab.

It turns out the tabs only include emails from your inbox, not archived emails. In other words, the tabs are really just another view of your inbox. You can have more emails in the corresponding label than in the tabs if some of those emails are archived.

So, a few things we've discovered from testing:

If you have filters for daily deals emails and similar emails that would get categorized by Gmail as "Promotions" but have it set to skip the inbox (archive them), you won't see them in the Promotions tab unless you change those filters. The same goes for the other tabs.If you want to filter messages into a specific tab, you'll have to use the new "Categorize" option, not the labels. Gmail has added a new "Categories" label in the left menu with sub-labels for the categories, which match the tabs. In other words, all the messages under specific tabs are also in the corresponding Categories sub-label. Tip: If you want to briefly switch away from tabbed view and see all the emails at once across all the tabs, click on the Categories label.Now you'll have labels and categories with the same names. If you want to avoid confusion, you can just delete the old SmartLabels, since you can still access them through the categories in the sidebar. Alternatively, you could just hide them from the sidebar so they don't clutter it up.If you want to see the unread count for messages in the tabs, you have to click the Categories label name to expand the sub-labels. The tabs themselves only show when you have new messages, not the number of unread messages.Continuing on that theme, the unread count in the inbox label and browser tab only show the Primary tab number of unread messages, not all of your unread messages. That is by design.As mentioned above, when drag-and-dropping across tabs, you can create a new filter for future messages. However, this doesn't work if you select multiple email messages and drag them, unfortunately.Confused yet? Gmail's SmartLabels aren't perfect, and neither are the tabs. Gmail has been consistently labeling some personal emails as Promotions and putting some promotional emails in the Primary tab for me. It also seems like there's a fine line between Social and Forums messages.All of this said, it may be possible to harness the organizational power of the new tabbed interface to suit your needs better.

As mentioned above, you can now create your own filters to categorize messages, thus putting them in one of these tabs. So if you have no use for the "Forums" tab, you can instead use it to collect messages from specific senders or keywords. Unfortunately, there's no way to change the tab name.

The key is to make sure the filter doesn't overlap an existing filter that might counteract what you're trying to do. For example, you can't have "Skip the inbox" on a matching filter, otherwise it won't appear in the tabs at all (since the tabs are organization for the inbox).

To customize the tabs:

Create a new filter for the messages you want moved to one of the tabs. (For example, since I have no use for the Social tab on my work email, I'm using it instead to store emails I send to myself from my personal email address. In the search box, I put in "from:[my email address]" and click the down arrow in the search box to find the "Create filter with this search" link.)In the filter options in the next screen, choose the category that matches the tab for the "Categorize as" option. (E.g., I chose "Categorize as: Social.")You'll also have to check "Exclude from SmartLabels" just in case Gmail tries to categorize your email differently (as it did for one of my test emails to myself). Then hit "Create filter."If you also want to prevent Gmail auto-categorizing other messages in that tab, you could also go into your Settings > Filters and scroll to the bottom for the SmartLabel Filters and disable or edit the corresponding filter. However, do this with caution, as it seems there's no easy way to restore the built-in filter. It might be better to configure Gmail's SmartLabels so they skip the inbox and thus skip your tabs. About.com's Email site has the list of each SmartLabel (e.g., "label:^smartlabel_promo" for Promotions). When creating your filter, search for that "label:^" term to filter it out as you'd like.At the very least, the new "Categorize as:" filter can help you correct any Gmail errors when it comes to SmartLabels. For example, by creating a filter to categorize fellow Lifehacker editors' emails as "Personal," they now appear in my Primary tab, instead of, oddly, the Promotions or Forums one. They're still strangely "Smart"Labeled as Promotions, but at least they're in the right tab.

Thinking about Gmail's new tabs, SmartLabels, regular labels, and filters can feel like you're trying to solve an annoying circular reference error in Excel. However, the new tabbed view might come in handy if you know how to harness it.

And, if it's not for you, it's easy enough to get back the old, non-tabbed view if you prefer that Priority Inbox or other option.

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How to Learn All About a New City Without Leaving Your House

If you're thinking about picking up and moving to a new city, you have a lot of research to do before you even begin looking for jobs there. The average salary, rental or real estate prices, crime statistics, best and worst neighborhoods, transit situation—they're all things you'll have to dig into before you decide if a city is right for you. Here's how to make that research go quickly so you can go back to job hunting in what'll hopefully be your future home.

Moving to a new city can go one of two ways: You can either take a risk, throw everything to the wind, and see where you end up, or you can do your homework ahead of time, consider your options, and research extensively before you move.

Most of us don't know the ins and outs of a city before we ponder moving there—we just know we have friends in town, or family nearby, or maybe we like something we've heard about, like the city's overall atmosphere or popular industries and companies nearby. If that's where you are, let's look at some tools you can use to research a town through and through before you book plane tickets to go visit.

Cities and towns are big places, and you'll probably want an idea of where in town you should live before you even begin looking at stats, prices, and other data. We've offered some great tips to help you pin them down, including visiting sites like StreetAdvisor, which is entirely dedicated to neighborhood reviews and information. We'd also suggest checking out neighborhood details on Foursquare or Yelp, even if you're not specifically looking for nightlife or restaurants—both apps have a wealth of information entered by locals for locals, and don't be fooled, there are reviews for entire neighborhoods at Yelp, and some of them are both hilarious and useful.

Similarly, City Data offers a wealth of information about the entire city, as well as specific neighborhoods. The site includes cost of living, average home prices, and even local attractions or famous destinations in the area. Plus, their forums are an invaluable resource—a treasure trove of information and locals who are willing to help you decide where in town you'd like to move, visit, or just learn more about. Similarly, Neighborhood Scout can help you learn more about specific neighborhoods once you've pinned down a few you'd like to live in. You can start with a bird's eye view of a city, and then zoom in on popular neighborhoods, up-and-coming ones, or test your luck with neighborhoods that are more affordable but offer a more authentic and less glossy experience. Whatever you're looking for, both sites will help you find a few neighborhoods you might want to look into.

Once you have an idea where in a city you might want to live, your next step is to see how much it would cost you to actually live there. Some of the previous sites will give you averages, like the average home price and average income in the vicinity, but there's no substitute for looking at what's on the market or available to rent right now. Here are a couple of options:

For home buyers, Trulia, Zillow, and Redfin all offer virtually every real estate listing in a given city. If you've bought a home in the past, you're familiar with them, but if not, looking for home prices on the market in an area is as simple as typing in the zip code or name of the area you're interested in. You'll see active listings, their asking prices, and even get to see photos of the home and the surrounding neighborhood. Obviously you're not putting in an offer just yet, but it's a great way to familiarize yourself with the real estate market in your preferred neighborhoods.For renters, Apartments.com, MyApartmentMap, Padmapper, and HotPads all collect the best of a city's rental listings and make them easy to browse. The real estate sites like Trulia and Zillow also offer rental listings, but go to the source. These are some of our favorite apartment search sites for good reason. There's always Craigslist too, but many of these sites pull in Craigslist listings. Still, if you don't see them, Craigslist has finally added maps, so they're worth checking out. There's also Lovely, which also caters to top-down neighborhood-browsing. In any event, the best feature of all of these is that they can help you figure out which neighborhoods have rentals you can afford and amenities that you'd enjoy while you live there, and they do it all on a map that you can click and drag around (or drop down into Google Street View with) easily. Many include information on transit options, walkability data (like how close a rental is to transit, shopping, dining, etc), and others, like previously mentioned AutNo, helps you find transit friendly neighborhoods and rentals directly.Once you have an idea of how much it'll cost to rent or buy a home in a specific neighborhood, take a street view tour of the neighborhood and look around. Check out what kinds of shops and restaurants are nearby. The more amenities like transit, dining, and retail are nearby, the higher you'll know the cost of living will probably be—but all of the tools we've mentioned will help you pin down exact numbers.

A Google Street View tour will help you determine whether a neighborhood looks a little rough or looks a little too clean for your tastes, but there's no replacement for real, public crime data and police blotter aggregators for the areas you're thinking about moving to. Crime Reports is a great first stop for information on any city in the United States, and Family Watchdog lists convicted sex offenders. SpotCrime is another great database of crime statistics and data, and signing up even gets you regular alerts from a neighborhood or town so you get to see what's going on there before you even visit.

Beyond online databases and search tools, you can (and should) reach out to the local police department for the city you're thinking about moving to and ask them for a crime report. You may have to find the precinct or district that covers the neighborhood you want to move to, or you may have to give the department a specific address to get a report of all activity within a given radius of that location, but it's worth doing. It's the only way you'll get completely accurate information, and you'll be able to dig through the reports yourself and judge with your own eyes. Some police departments only provide aggregate data, so keep that in mind when you ask—but almost all of them are willing to give you some information so you can make an educated decision about moving.

If you have children or are planning to start a family, you'll naturally want to find the neighborhoods with the best schools—or at least with schools that are well regarded but are still affordable to live in. A good first stop is GreatSchools, a site that helps you find good schools in a specific area, or will guide you to schools within a certain vicinity. The site is more than a search engine: You'll find tools that will walk you through defining "good" or "bad" schools look like, tips on how to assess a school, and even tips for navigating tricky school systems to get the information or help you need.

Similarly, Neighborhood Scout's school district ratings page can help you find the best public schools in any area, complete with aggregate data like test scores, class sizes, and student achievement. SchoolDigger is another resource with free, complete metrics on school districts and systems around the country. Before you start piling up statistics though, this old op-ed in the Washington Post, although some of its information is specific to DC residents, is worth a read—it'll calm your nerves and help you focus on what's really important when picking a school system, especially since the competitive rush for exclusive private and charter schools can get out of hand in some cities.

Finally, once you have the details you need to decide whether a neighborhood sounds like a good one, take a step further and really dig into the local culture, attractions, and atmosphere. City-Data's forums are perfect for this, because you can probably find someone who's local to where you'd like to live to speak with directly. Look at the city from this perspective: If you moved there, what would you do for fun? The answer doesn't have to involve the city's famous destinations or popular locales (although it certainly should—if you're moving to a new city, we have plenty of tips to help you get the lay of the land once you're there), but it should also involve your own interests and passions. If you're a movie buff, look for movie theaters close to your preferred neighborhood, and check out which movie theaters are the most popular and well loved by local movie fans.

Ask yourself what the city is known for, cuisine-wise, and check Foursquare, Yelp, and Google Local for reviews and recommendations. Then think about your favorite foods, and check out where you can get them near your future home. If you're a big fan of Japanese food, make sure you can find a decent restaurant somewhere nearby. If you find a half dozen and a couple of ramen shops to boot, you're in great shape. Repeat the process with your other interests, whether it's live music, nightlife, museums, even local festivals and block parties. Some neighborhoods even have their own Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and websites designed to alert locals to events happening in their backyard. Pretend it's your backyard too, at least for the time being. Before long, you'll feel like a local.

Photos by ollyy (Shutterstock), Perfect Vectors (Shutterstock), Andy Dean Photography (Shutterstock), Carl Wycoff, Seattle Municipal Archives, and dumbonyc.

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Deadspin The Six Saddest Things About Martin Brodeur's Biggest Twitter Fan | Gizmodo Four Glamorous

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Ask About Repositioning Flights and Cruises to Get a Better Deal

When searching for a vacation online, you might not get the best deal. Susan Johnston, writing for US News, reports that asking about repositioning flights and cruises can save you a lot.

Airlines use repositioning flights to move aircrafts from one airport to another, and the same applies to cruise lines, which typically reposition ships twice a year. These flights or cruises tend to be cheaper but provide services similar to traditional offerings, according to Greenberg. He suggests asking about these options on the phone.

Next time you're taking a vacation and the cost seems a bit high, call your airline(s) of choice and ask about repositioning flights. You might just save some hard-earned cash.

5 Budget Travel Tips You Haven't Heard Before | US News

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Ask an Expert: All About Your Summer Fitness Goals

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