I am bad at email. Maybe everyone is. But I feel like I’m worse than most; or at least worse than I want to be. I feel like my inbox should do a better job helping me find emails that are important. I use Gmail and Priority Inbox, so I don’t mean “important” in that sense (emails from close contacts). By important, I mean things like:
Conversations where “the ball is in my court” (hard to discern programmatically perfectly)
Conversations that I initiated — then the person wrote back — but then I didn’t write back to (similar to #1 but easier to identify, and more important)
Emails that I have not responded to yet at all
Emails from important people, where important takes into account other data such as: twitter followers (total, in common), linkedin connection, etc.
probably a few other smart ways I’m not thinking of right now.
I have been thinking about this a bit after reading somewhere (I think in Venture Deals) that Brad Feld and his partners read and respond to every inbound email every day. That’s pretty impressive. I am not there yet. But I like the idea a lot. So today I did set up a little gmail query to try and help with that: newer_than:1d and is:important This gives me a view of all the emails that I received in the last day. It’s a start. But it’s not perfect. It doesn’t give me is a view of conversations I have not participated in yet. I tried adding a filter such like: -from:me, to try and exclude any threads that I’ve participated in, but that doesn’t do the trick. So I what I see is a list of all the emails that came in today, including every email I sent. Which is not what I’m looking for. I complained about this to Fred the other day, suggesting that there’s still an opportunity to build a product (along the lines of SaneBox or Gmail Meter) that really solves the inbox problem. It’s such an important problem for so many people, and it’s still so far from perfect. His response was that there’s a fear of investing in things that are too close to the core of the email platforms. I am not sure I agree, but it does seem that there still isn’t a perfect solution, so maybe that’s the reason. In summary, I would love to see: a) a simple gmail query parameter that lets me find conversations in which I am not yet a participant (I feel like this must exist!) or b) a smarter view of my inbox — perhaps one that is another kind of visualization besides a list — that takes into account these other important factors. I’d pay good money for that! Update: this query is pretty good: newer_than:7d is:important in:inbox
Update: I built it. I've used Highrise as a lightweight CRM for a few years now. It's fine for my needs -- basically keeping track of people who I meet on email. The thing that really made Highrise start to work for me is integration with Gmail, via Rapportive. Being able to add someone to my highrise, and add some tags and notes, right from my inbox, has been awesome. I use it every day. But there is still something I really need that I don't have. You see, tracking people and companies in Highrise works really well for people you're already connected to. I.e., people who you've been introduced to over email -- so that you can add them via Rapportive; yadda yadda. The problem wtih that is that there are lots of people and companies that I want to track in Highrise that aren't yet in my inbox. This is another version of the "strategic networking tool" problem that I wrote about a few years ago. So, for now, I have a hacked together solution that involves using Highrise for folks I meet on email, and Delicious for people and companies I don't know yet. This is an OK start, but it's missing a key feature: collaboration. The kinds of notes and tags we use in Highrise are internal -- meant for team discussion and not for public consumption. So, by using Delicious, I can write public notes & tags (which are fine most of the time anyway), or I a can save private links -- but if I do that they're not accessible via API and I can't get them into Highrise no matter how much I want to. So here's what I want, ideally. A chrome extension that gives me a delicious-like experience for adding content to Highrise. I've taken a few half-hearted stabs at making one, but haven't gotten there yet. Here's the idea in pictures (click each to enlarge). In my head, I've been calling this "Eyes on the Street". I use Highrise via Rapportive to track people I meet over email.
This give me a nice, searchable browseable view in Highrise, which I can share with my team:
For people I don't know yet and haven't met on email, I use delicious to keep track. There is a nice browser extension for this; it's really easy.
So I get a similarly nice, searchable view in Delicious. However, any links I mark as private I can't share w/ my team :(
So here's what I want: A browser extension that looks a lot like the Delicious extension, that lets me tag people and companies in Highrise (just like I can do via Rapportive in my inbox). If it's a new person, I create a new entry.
If the person is already in the system, I can add additional links / notes:
The same thing works for companies:
The extension could show a badge when other people from my team have noted a given URL and/or left notes. Conversation (in the extension and in Highrise) ensues.
This is pretty easy to make, I think. If I were a better programmer I would have made it already. But rather than burn another whole evening futzing around writing my first chrome extension, I'm writing up the idea here :). Basically, the extension can talk to Highrise directly via JS/XML, or via a proxy server that sits in the middle. The advantage to the latter (drawn below), is that you can take advantage of Highrise wrapper libraries, rather than writing directly to the raw API.
That's it! Is there anything out there like this? If so I haven't found it. If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it I would be forever grateful.
This morning while cleaning up my office, I came across an old sketchbook from one of my design classes in college, circa ~1999. In it was a gem of a product idea (if I do say so myself). Without further adieu, here it is: The Self-Hiding Alarm Clock: [caption id="attachment_1254" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="Problem: I always turn off my alarm clock and just go back to sleep. It's too easy to reach!"]
[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1255" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="One solution: move the alarm clock to the other side of the room. Problem: This doesn't work! Because you know exactly where it is."]
[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1256" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="The obvious solution is an alarm clock that hides itself!"]
[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1257" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="Each night it schemes its way to a new hiding spot..."]
[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1258" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="The next morning, you have to wake up, or it will never turn off..."]
[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1259" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="Note the sweet Pentium 4 inside!"]
[/caption]
So, who's with me to set up a project on KickStarter or Quirky and make this thing real?! Or, we could all just learn to manage our sleep a little better...
Update: (5 min after posting) the Clocky Alarm Clock on Wheels serves addresses this nicely. Amazing! via @jordan_yee
Update 2: (+2 min) then there's the Flying Digital Alarm Clock, which, in the words of the creator:
In pursuit of waking excellence... meet the alarm with a difference! Flying Alarm Clock. SAVE BIG! By its very purpose, the "perfect" alarm clock must be able to outwit the human who sets it! An interesting challenge, to say the least. This Flying Alarm Clock comes as close as I've seen. When the alarm goes off, a helicopter flies into the air, carrying the key to turn off the alarm. The only way to silence the alarm is to get out of bed and find the key! The true late sleeper has finally met their match!
Incredible! via @hoosteen