Photo
January 23, 2013
21 notes
msg: Mailbox + Sanebox is the best mobile email app to date. Mailbox is as awesome as the internet says it is. The simplicity has changed my interaction with email. Everyone has a way of dealing with their email inbox. Even if you dont deal with it, thats your way of dealing with it. No system is perfect. But mailbox is definitely on its way to getting there. A couple of years ago @Sacca framed email as “Other peoples’ to do list” I finally feel in control of this reality. Specifically the SNOOZE functionality. There are a bunch of different ways to currently hack your gmail to do this. Whether its via gmail snooze folders or boomerang while on web or followup.cc/sanebox while mobile [which made you fwd to an email address] Mailbox makes this part of the experience which is seamless. I find myself prioritizing emails in 4 categories of when I want to get to someone else’s todo. Morning Evening Weekend Specific Day And there is a tab that lets me easily see all my “later” emails. The swipe action is awesome. The simplicity of the swipe, invokes the same glorious feeling you have when you cross something off your todo list.  An action that most apps force you to tap 2-3 times and converted it into 1 swipe. At first I was prone to miswipe, swiping either too much or to little to not get desired action; trick is to start from the farthest point of the screen. I love that they dont display any of my 100s of gmail folders that ive accumulated over the years, that clutter the UI of every mail app I’ve used to date. [If you want to use an existing folder in the app you can by simply renaming it in gmail to [mailbox]-folder-name for it to show up in the app.] By default 3 folders are created. To Buy, To Read, To Watch. Over time I deleted the defaults and just created 2 folders: To Write Daily Read To Write is for email threads that I want to expound upon publicly (currently 5 emails reside in that folder). Daily Read is where the Sanebox magic helps out. Clay Shirky once beautifully remarked about the state of the world we live in “its not about information overload its about filter failure” Email definitely still struggles with filter failure. Thankfully Sanebox exists. Sanebox automatically filters out the unimportant stuff in my inbox.  [unimportant is classified as emails from people i dont know as well as “newsletters”] In 2012: I received 35,109 emails to my personal email account 11,689 emails (33%) were ‘important’ 23,420 of them were unimportant emails which Sanebox equates to 196 hours of time saved. Well worth their price tag  Daily Read is a folder that Sanebox automatically filters for “emails” that I’ve subscribed to that I want to read but dont need in my inbox. Currently the folder consists of “emails” from the following: Jordan Cooper , Ben Horowitz, Andy Swan’s Swantastic, Seth Godin’s blog , Jason Hirschorn’s Media ReDEFinded , Jason Calacanis’ Launch Ticker  You can create any folder structure you want and then add an email to the folder and Sanebox learns that you want email from this sender to be placed in the specified folder. Sometimes there is a delay between the sanebox servers and mailbox and when I open the app because I think I have received an important email the machines catch up and magically whisks away the email in front of my eyes. This “bug” puts a smile on my face every time. When I’m craving a dopamine hit and want to read email I can always view ALL my email via the ALL tab. Merlin Mann popularized the inbox zero movement and the mailbox app makes it really enjoyable to be a disciple. Since using the app this happens multiple times a day. I’ve found that when my inbox is empty I have less stress/guilt and it makes it easier to open the app to compose new email to add to someone else’s todo :) Not to mention you get to see a lovely new instagram photo that rotates daily when “you are all done” Mailbox announced today that they have created a reservation system to manage scaling.  Dearest friends, please stop sending me email asking for an invite :) I highly recommend you sign up on http://mailboxapp.com to reserve your spot.

msg:

Mailbox + Sanebox is the best mobile email app to date.


Mailbox is as awesome as the internet says it is.

The simplicity has changed my interaction with email.

Everyone has a way of dealing with their email inbox.

Even if you dont deal with it, thats your way of dealing with it.

No system is perfect.

But mailbox is definitely on its way to getting there.

A couple of years ago @Sacca framed email as “Other peoples’ to do list”

I finally feel in control of this reality.


Specifically the SNOOZE functionality.

There are a bunch of different ways to currently hack your gmail to do this.

Whether its via gmail snooze folders or boomerang while on web or followup.cc/sanebox while mobile [which made you fwd to an email address]

Mailbox makes this part of the experience which is seamless.

I find myself prioritizing emails in 4 categories of when I want to get to someone else’s todo.

  • Morning
  • Evening
  • Weekend
  • Specific Day

And there is a tab that lets me easily see all my “later” emails.

The swipe action is awesome.

The simplicity of the swipe, invokes the same glorious feeling you have when you cross something off your todo list. 

An action that most apps force you to tap 2-3 times and converted it into 1 swipe.

At first I was prone to miswipe, swiping either too much or to little to not get desired action; trick is to start from the farthest point of the screen.

I love that they dont display any of my 100s of gmail folders that ive accumulated over the years, that clutter the UI of every mail app I’ve used to date.

[If you want to use an existing folder in the app you can by simply renaming it in gmail to [mailbox]-folder-name for it to show up in the app.]

By default 3 folders are created. To Buy, To Read, To Watch.

Over time I deleted the defaults and just created 2 folders:

  • To Write
  • Daily Read

To Write is for email threads that I want to expound upon publicly (currently 5 emails reside in that folder).

Daily Read is where the Sanebox magic helps out.

Clay Shirky once beautifully remarked about the state of the world we live in

“its not about information overload its about filter failure”

Email definitely still struggles with filter failure.


Thankfully Sanebox exists.

Sanebox automatically filters out the unimportant stuff in my inbox. 

[unimportant is classified as emails from people i dont know as well as “newsletters”]

In 2012:

I received 35,109 emails to my personal email account

11,689 emails (33%) were ‘important’

23,420 of them were unimportant emails which Sanebox equates to 196 hours of time saved. Well worth their price tag 


Daily Read is a folder that Sanebox automatically filters for “emails” that I’ve subscribed to that I want to read but dont need in my inbox.

Currently the folder consists of “emails” from the following: Jordan Cooper , Ben Horowitz, Andy Swan’s Swantastic, Seth Godin’s blog , Jason Hirschorn’s Media ReDEFinded , Jason Calacanis’ Launch Ticker 

You can create any folder structure you want and then add an email to the folder and Sanebox learns that you want email from this sender to be placed in the specified folder.

Sometimes there is a delay between the sanebox servers and mailbox and when I open the app because I think I have received an important email the machines catch up and magically whisks away the email in front of my eyes. This “bug” puts a smile on my face every time.

When I’m craving a dopamine hit and want to read email I can always view ALL my email via the ALL tab.

Merlin Mann popularized the inbox zero movement and the mailbox app makes it really enjoyable to be a disciple.

Since using the app this happens multiple times a day.

I’ve found that when my inbox is empty I have less stress/guilt and it makes it easier to open the app to compose new email to add to someone else’s todo :)

Not to mention you get to see a lovely new instagram photo that rotates daily when “you are all done”

Mailbox announced today that they have created a reservation system to manage scaling. 

Dearest friends, please stop sending me email asking for an invite :)

I highly recommend you sign up on http://mailboxapp.com to reserve your spot.

Link
September 19, 2012
7 notes
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

factoidlabs:

This is just a little slice of a refreshingly clear-eyed view of the way Republican extremism has grown to dictate American politics, media literacy and - in the end - multiply the number of wilfully ill-informed voters:

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America’s plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than Obama’s offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society’s overclass.
Read it. Forward it. Favorite it. It may not change anyone’s mind, but it shows how numb and complicit we have all become in the false equivalency of red-vs-blue ginned up by a party bent on power regardless of the cost. Truth and reality lie in ashes because of this shit - along with Americans’ faith in the very system they claim to love and defend.

(via gregcohn)