40Tech » Applications

Mailbox – the Friction-free Mail Client to Get You to Inbox Zero [iPhone]

Evan Kline — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:03:25 +0000

Mailbox is the new Gmail-only mail app that has been getting mostly rave reviews for the way it helps iPhone users tame their inboxes. Let’s get one thing out of the way first, though – Mailbox isn’t going to change you as a person. If you’re a master procrastinator, it won’t suddenly transform you into a wizard of the do-it-now. If, however, your habits tilt in the direction of almost staying on top of your email, Mailbox might just eliminate enough friction to get you to email hallowed ground. And if you’re already an inbox zero guru, then Mailbox will beckon to you like a desert oasis.

Mailbox’s secret sauce rests in its interface. That interface (and the guts of the app, described below) is geared toward speed. Just about every important feature of the app can be achieved with a swipe from the main inbox view. Swipe half way to the right to archive a message, and all the way to the right to delete a message. Swipe half way to the left to defer a message, and all the way to the left to add the message to a list. These same funtions can also be found when you open a message, but instead of swipes, you tap on icons at the top of the screen.

When you defer a message, a menu pops up, allowing you to pick some predefined times, such as “Later today,” or set a custom time. The ability to defer a message can be both a blessing and a curse. It depends on your mindset. If you frequently use the defer feature to put off messages for no reason (other than because you don’t want to deal with them), then your deferred message list will serve no other purpose than to help you shuffle your mess around. If you have a plan, though, and stick to it, then deferring messages can help you to stay organized.

In the few weeks that I’ve been using Mailbox, I’ve come up with a way of handling the defer functionality that works for me. I defer a message when it isn’t something that I want to handle on my phone, but know that I want to handle in the very near future. If I’m headed out the door, for example, and receive a message that I want to answer when I return home, I’ll defer it. If I can’t respond to a message without access to a particular tool, item, or person, but I still want to get to the message as soon as possible, then I’ll defer the message until a time when I’ll have what I need. For example, if someone sends me an email about an event, and I need to discuss the event with my wife, I’ll defer the message until shortly after the time that I normally arrive at home.

I can hear some of you asking what the point is of defering a message and keeping it in the app, instead of moving it over to my GTD system (I use OmniFocus). I do in fact send an email into OmniFocus, if it is an item that doesn’t fit one of the scenarios described above. But the simple fact is that I check my email more frequently than OmniFocus, so if I want to get to a matter soon, I defer it in Mailbox until a later time.

While I’ve loved the ability to defer items, I haven’t had the same love for the app’s use of Lists. In fact, I haven’t used Mailbox yet to add an item to a List, at least in the sense that the developers seem to have imagined it. For this, I already use OmniFocus. Instead, I use Lists to bring Gmail labels into Mailbox, for the many types of emails that won’t be easily found in the future when searching. When you to the full swipe to the right to add a message to a List, your Lists appear, and you tap the name of the desired List.

There isn’t much more to Mailbox, and that’s part of the beauty of it. It’s simple, and very fast. The speed is not just in the interface, but in how the app downloads messages. This speed is important, since third party mail apps can’t run in the background on iOS. When you open the app, your messages quickly download and appear. I found this to happen much quicker than with Sparrow and Gmail, the other third party apps that I’ve tried. It happens fast enough that I haven’t longed for the ability to run the app in the background. You can also receive push notifications of new messages, if that is important to you.

For those of your who are very security conscious, Mailbox won’t be an option. In order to support notifications, and to support the speed and unique features of the app, Mailbox needs your Gmail login credentials. I did give this some serious thought, and ultimately bit the bullet, but not before switching some email recovery options for other apps and services over to another dedictated email address.

So far, I’m happy with my decision. Mailbox is fast, and I have yet to finish a day without reaching Inbox Zero. That might just be a victory in my own mind, since sometimes there are items in my Later box. Still, I’ll take that tradeoff. Going to bed with a clear mind is its own reward. In sum, Mailbox is one of those rare apps that lives up to the hype.

Do you use Mailbox? What are your thoughts?

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Mailbox Needs a Monitization Strategy, for My Sake

Evan Kline — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:10:31 +0000

Mailbox needs a monetizaton strategy. For my sake. And yours, if you use the app.

Right now, Mailbox, an iPhone email app that actually does live up to the hype (more on that in a future post), is free. The app is free, and so is the service, even though the app requires server infrastructure, and even though Mailbox has something like 10 bajillion people either using it, or waiting in line for it.

Perhaps the folks at Mailbox have a monetization plan of charging when it debuts on other platforms. Perhaps Orchestra, the developers behind Mailbox, plan to offer additional paid features in the future.

It doesn’t feel that way, though. I haven’t seen one mention of a monetization plan, which leads to a sneaking and scary possibility about how Orchestra plans to make money: Orchestra has developed such an awesome email app, out of hopes that Mailbox gets acquired.

If that’s true, why is that bad? The web is littered with the carcasses of promising startups that were purchased, only to be absorbed and shuttered (or ignored). Sparrow was the last email client destined to be great, but it has languished since its purchase by Google. Twitter purchased Posterous, a blogging site, and now is in the process of shutting it down. Apple purchased Lala, and then proceeded to shut it down.

There are some exceptions. For example, Apple purchased Siri, and temporarily shut it down, only to bring it back as a central part of iOS. Of course, when Apple bought it, announced development on Blackberry and Android came to an end. Some original Siri features were missing, too.

So please, Mailbox, charge us. Lots even. Just stick around.

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Let Us Know Your Favorite iOS Apps, With Applr

Evan Kline — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 02:59:52 +0000

Are you like me – a bit of an iOS app addict? I’ve never found Apple’s App Store to be particularly helpful for discovering new apps. A recent tweet by Adam Christianson of the MacCast mentioned something called Applr, which I had never heard of. It turns out that Applr is a web app that helps you find new iOS apps, by following other people and seeing what they’re using. Other users can also follow you, to see your favorite apps.

I’ve only been using Applr for about a day now, but it’s worth checking out. When you sign up, you have to decide whether to give it your Apple ID credentials, so that it can keep your app list updated automatically. I decided against this, and instead have been going the manual route.

When you put your list of apps into the database, you can mark 20 of them as favorites (10 iPad and 10 iPhone), and recommend an unlimited number of them. You can also see what other users have input, and follow users. The site parses data, giving you info on the number of recommendations and favorites that an app has received.

If you want to follow me, I can be found on my page. Feel free to input your page link into the comments below, so others can check out what apps you use.

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Are You in Line For Mailbox? [iPhone]

Evan Kline — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:59:00 +0000

If you follow tech news, it’s been hard to miss mention of Mailbox. Mailbox, as described in some glowing reviews, looks to be a new way to handle email, with a focus on Gmail. The general concept behind Mailbox is to help you get to inbox zero by letting you perform full and half swipes to the left and right to archive, delete, and defer messages. The current problem with Mailbox? There’s a long line to get it.

Although Mailbox is focused on Gmail, your mail does go through the Mailbox servers in order to be able to be processed by the app (you can decide for yourself whether you’re comfortable with the security implications of this). As a result, the developers wanted to make sure that they didn’t overload the servers, and have gone with a staggered rollout, using an invitation system. Open the app before your turn comes, and you’ll see something like this:

Cult of Mac has a story with some calculations to help give you an idea of when you might get in, based on your place in line. If the developers are right, these calculations will be a worst-case scenario, as the developers have indicated that they plan an exponential rollout as time goes by.

Are you in line for Mailbox? Or is this all a lot of hype and little substance? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Or maybe you already have it? If so, let us know what you think.

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How to Easily Add Your Contact Info to Your iPhone/iPad Lockscreen

Evan Kline — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:21:08 +0000

Katie Floyd is the host of one of my favorite podcasts, the Mac Power Users, and over on her blog she highlights an app that could help you out if you ever lose your iPhone or iPad. Contact Lockscreen Info is an app that makes it easy to add your contact info to the lock screen of your iOS device.

The app doesn’t do anything that you couldn’t do yourself, with a bit of elbow grease (and in fact, I had done this myself on my iPad). It just makes it easier. That app lets you add customized text to the lock screen, using the default water image. For $0.99, you can upgrade the app to be able to use any image of your choosing.

The app adds a nice translucent background panel for your text. You can change the background color of the panel, and also change the size of your font, and the number of lines. In the screenshot above, I’m using a custom lock screen image, with the default font and background panel.

Note that after you create the image using the app, you have to go into your Camera Roll, and select the photo to set it as your lock screen. Even if you’re not going to use this app to do it, it is probably a good idea to add your contact info to your screen. I do use Find My iPhone, but figure this can’t hurt as an added precaution.

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Evernote Web Clipping on iOS Made Easy [iOS]

Evan Kline — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:53:31 +0000

At this risk of sounding like a snob, I can say that user reviews of certain iOS apps seem to miss the mark at times, because of uninformed users. This often seems to occur with subscription-based apps, such as LastPass, where users don’t realize that a subscription is required to get the full features of the app. Other times, this happens when users don’t seem to understand the limitations of iOS, and the workarounds that these limitations require of developers. One example of this is EverWebClipper, an app that makes clipping web pages into Evernote much easier on iOS devices, but somehow has received many low reviews.

Safari on iOS can’t handle extensions, so EverWebClipper takes a little bit of effort to set up. It certainly isn’t rocket science, though. You have to cut and paste some code into a Safari bookmark. One you do that, you tap that bookmark ever time you want to clip a page into Evernote, and EverWebClipper will load, and clip the page into Evernote. I found this particularly useful on my iPhone, where the default Evernote clipper is too big for the screen.

I tweaked the app’s default settings, to turn off automatic clipping. Now, when I use the bookmark, I’m taken into EverWebClipper and choose my tags and notebook. I can see myself using this one all the time.

There is both an iPad and iPhone version of the app. I bought each separetely, so I haven’t seen whether the iPhone version would work on the iPad. The iPhone version is currently $2.99, and the iPad version (EverWebClipper HD) is $3.99. There’s also an Android version, but after my recent conversion back to the iPhone, I haven’t tried that one.

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13 Essential Phone and iPad Apps to Help You Stay Sane During Your Move

Guest Poster — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 12:47:10 +0000

40Tech is pleased to present this guest post by Jennifer Morehead from Moveboxer.

Moving is a tough and stressful process. You need to coordinate your things, throw items away, hire movers, switch off your utilities, and make sure everything is ready to go in your new home. It’s not easy.

We wanted to put together a list of smart phone and iPad apps that take at least some of the sting away from the stress of moving. After all, these smart phone apps seems to be able to do anything, so it’s about time that they started to help with the moving process.

Favorite Apps for Preparing to Move

When you are getting ready to move, it is important to have a moving checklist that helps guide everything and give you an idea of your timing and when to do what. You can use a couple of different apps to help you with this moving checklist. Moving List and Moving Planner will provide checklists to get you ready for moving day. Another cool app, Moving Van, helps you identify and keep track of the contents in every box you pack for moving or storage.

Travel Time Apps for Moving Day

As you get ready for moving day and the travel that will happen as you are driving around in your rented moving truck or following the moving vans to your new home, you want to be armed with apps that will help make traveling easier. Check out Around Me to locate the nearest grocery store, bank, gas station, or make a hotel or dinner reservation. You can also use Gas Buddy to find the cheapest gas prices as you are driving. And if you get lost or need quick weather information, check out Google Maps and the Weather Channel app for up-to-the-minute information.

Apps for Planning For Your New Home

You are not only packing up your old home with a move, but you are also organizing, planning, and decorating your new home. You can sketch ideas, projects, and inspirations in SketchBook Pro on your iPad. When you are ready to start thinking of where to place which items in what new room in your home, you can use the Home Design DIY Space Planning Tool to input room dimensions, create floor plans, and make shopping lists. And as you are planning the colors for your new home you can use the Benjamin Moore Color Capture app to snap a picture and match it with their paint colors.

Games and Relaxation Apps For the Entire Move Process

A smart phone is great for kicking back and having some fun and relaxing for a little bit. And what better way to use your smart phone than when you are in the passenger seat of the car driving across the country or waiting to pick up your rental moving truck. If you haven’t tried these already, check out the Scrabble-like game Words with Friends or the fun word game Wurdle. We guarantee these apps will help you pass the time. You can also try Ambiance, which lets you select from more than 2,500 soothing noises to help you get to sleep in your hotel room or your new home.

We hope these smart phone and iPad apps comes in handy for your next move. Good luck as you get settled into your new home.

Bio: Jennifer Morehead is the CEO and founder of Moveboxer, a website that gives people up to 3 reputable movers, storage, and boxes. Before launching Moveboxer, Ms. Morehead’s career was in media sales. Ms. Morehead graduated from Northwestern University and received her MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

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Know When It Will Rain, To the Minute, With Dark Sky [iOS]

Evan Kline — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:31:29 +0000

There are many weather apps on the iOS platform. In the winter, I’m a weather geek, so I have several of them. One of the coolest ones out there is Dark Sky, which can tell you when it is going to rain, down to the minute.

Dark Sky shows off cool functionality (telling you when it’s going to rain!) with a pretty simple interface. I’ve only used the app on the iPad, so that’s where this screenshot comes from.

Most of the screen is taken up with a map, while the bottom of the screen has a graph area and text area that shows you when to expect rain. You can also tap the map icon in the top left of the screen to go to another area of the control.

An app like this is only cool if it works. In my experience, the app is eerily accurate. I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but the app has been reliable in predicting rain. I live in an area, though, where storms move in a fairly predictable way. Some of the complaints I’ve seen about the app are from people who live in areas where storms can pop up out of nowhere, so your mileage may vary.

Dark Sky [iTunes]

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Take Your Digital Filing System With You, and Keep it Secure, With SecretSync

Evan Kline — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Last year I wrote about SecretSync, an app that lets you securely sync files via Dropbox. SecretSync encrypts any file that you drop into your SecretSync folder, and then sends it on to your other computers via Dropbox. If those computers are running SecretSync (and you’ve set up the proper security key), the file will then be decrypted on those machines as well. I covered all that in my previous article, though, so why mention it again? After taking SecretSync for a spin last year, I stopped using it. I’ve just found a great new use, though, that makes SecretSync an integral part of my paperless document management system.

You may recall that my document management system lets me put a document into my scanner, push the scan button, and then sit back and let my Mac do the rest of the work. The document will be automatically renamed and filed into the proper folder on my machine, with no effort on my part. This can be done with Evernote, too.

That system is great, but only works if you’re sitting at your computer. Wouldn’t it be nice to make that system portable? That’s where SecretSync comes in. I wanted to be able to scan documents while away from home, and have them sync via Dropbox back to my home computer, where they’d be automatically processed. I didn’t like the idea of sending sensitive documents through Dropbox, though, which doesn’t have a stellar track record with security.

I now have SecretSync set up on all of my computers, including my iMac at home. I can now scan a document on any of those computers, and it gets sent into my SecretSync folder on each machine. On my iMac, Hazel moves any files in the SecretSync folder over to my “Action” folder, where they are automatically renamed and filed.

That’s all there is to it. This, of course, presupposes that you have a scanner when you’re away from home. My most common use for this system is when I’m paying bills over lunch at the office, where I do have a scanner. My next step will probably be to research iOS and Android scanning apps, to see if any of them offer optical character recognition. OCR is essential to this workflow, and truly would make this a “go anywhere” system.

When I last wrote about SecretSync, it was a Windows-only app. Since then, it has come to OS X and Linux.

Can you use your filing system while away from home? If so, share your setup in the comments.

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Quickly Get Your Ideas Down, and Out to Various Services, With Drafts [iPhone]

Evan Kline — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:00:00 +0000

We’ve written about Launch Center for iOS, an app that lets you quickly perform tasks on your iOS device. Launch Center largely works with text in your clipboard, allowing you, for example, to add the contents of your clipboard to OmniFocus as a task, start a blank email with the clipboard contents as the subject, or send those clipboard contents to Twitter as a tweet. Drafts is a similar app for iOS, but with one key difference. Drafts is like Launch Center for text. You start with a blank page, enter your text, and then send that text off to one of several services.

The services supported by Launch Center include Facebook, Evernote, Tweetbot, Twitter, OmniFocus, Things, Simplenote, Sparrow, The Hit List, Echofon, Due, Byword, and Simplenote. You can also output the text to Mail, Messages, Events, or the clipboard, or even use it with iOS’s “open in” functionality. You can also save the draft for later use.

Drafts supports TextExpander Touch, and has a Markdown preview feature. It has a built-in dictionary/thesaurus, and allows you to pick from a few different theme and fonts. Drafts is an iPhone app, although it runs just fine on my iPad at 2X. You are stuck with the iPhone keyboard, though.

What’s your favorite method for getting text into your iOS device?

Disclosure: we received a promo code for Drafts to try it out, as opposed to paying the 99 cents it costs in the App Store.

Drafts