June 9, 2011
The Windows version of Postbox 2.0 contained an entirely new icon set. For the upcoming Postbox 2.5 release, we’re now creating a new icon set for the Mac!
Actually, two icon sets.
You see, Apple is moving towards an iOS or monochrome style for its toolbar icons in Lion (Mac OS X 10.7). So we wanted to know if Postbox users preferred the color icon style used in Pages and Numbers, or the monochrome icon approach used in Safari and the Mac App Store.
We surveyed over 2,500 Postbox users and found that 59% of Postbox users preferred color icons while 41% preferred the monochrome icons.
So we decided to do both!
The color icon set in Postbox 2.5 is being designed by Kenichi Yoshida, who has also done some terrific work at Panic. Here’s a sampling of his color icon set:
The monochrome icon set was designed by Benjamin De Cock, who also designed the new Mac theme for Postbox 2.5:
Our next post will touch on the new Postbox 2.5 Mac theme in more detail.
Remember, Postbox 2.5 will release this summer and it will be a free update for all Postbox 2 users. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up-to-date on the latest Postbox 2.5 news.
More on Postbox 2.5:
• Message View Redesign
• Vertical View
• Unread Bubbles
• New Addressing Widget
Posted by Sherman Dickman
May 11, 2011
One of the design goals for Postbox 2.5 is to simplify its look and feel. So we redesigned Postbox’s message and conversation views to minimize the number of interface elements, and to reduce movement of these elements, as you page from message-to-message or from messages-to-conversations.
In Postbox 2.1.4, all message header elements are contained within a single envelope region, as displayed below:
The downside to this approach is that the envelope will resize whenever someone is Cc’d, causing the message content to jump vertically as you page from message-to-message. This design also includes a dedicated Topics row (even when no Topics are present), and it doesn’t make efficient use of horizontal space, which is particularly important for Vertical View.
When moving from a single message to a conversation, the envelope resizes to accomodate a single participants row, and the date field jumps from the envelope to the message row, which can cause the interface to feel “jittery.”
In Postbox 2.5, we’ve simplified the display by separating elements that pertain to both single messages and conversations (such as subject, topics, and actions) from elements that are unique to each message:
This design creates a region where elements stay fixed as you transition from message to message, while minimizing the number of elements that move within the interface:
This design also keeps elements aligned as you move between single messages and conversations:
Notifications such as the Remote Images Notification will now display just above the message content, which keeps message headers from being pushed out of place:
One final benefit to this redesign is that the message headers will now scroll with the message content, enabling you to view more message content at one time.
These improvements create an email experience that feels fast, solid, predictable, and more usable. We know you’re going to love these changes once they’re released!
Postbox 2.5 is coming this summer, and it will be a free update for all Postbox 2 users. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up-to-date on the latest Postbox 2.5 news.
More on Postbox 2.5:
• Vertical View
• Unread Bubbles
• New Addressing Widget
Posted by Sherman Dickman
May 5, 2011
One of our most highly requested features is a Vertical View message list. So without further ado, here’s a sneak peek at what it will look like in Postbox 2.5:
Postbox 2.5 is scheduled to release this summer, and it’s a free update for all Postbox 2 users. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up-to-date on the latest Postbox 2.5 news.
More on Postbox 2.5:
• Unread Bubbles
• New Addressing Widget
Posted by Sherman Dickman
April 26, 2011
Postbox 2.5 contains a number of improvements that will help round out the overall experience for Postbox 2 users.
One small change is the use of unread bubbles within the Accounts/Folders Pane, so here is your sneak peek of the day:
In addition to improving the readability for account and folder names, this addition will feel more familiar for users on the Mac.
Postbox 2.5 is scheduled to release this summer, and it’s a free update for all Postbox 2 users. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to stay up-to-date on the latest Postbox 2.5 news.
More on Postbox 2.5:
• New Addressing Widget
Posted by Sherman Dickman
April 25, 2011
The next release of Postbox, version 2.5, is scheduled to release this Summer. But don’t let the dot-version number fool you… some major work is being done to make Postbox faster, simpler, and more intuitive than ever before. Best of all, Postbox 2.5 will be a free update for all Postbox 2 users!
Over the next few weeks we’ll be providing sneak peeks on what’s new and cool about Postbox 2.5.
To kick things off, we’re excited to announce that we’ve completely rewritten the addressing widget to allow for individual addressing fields:
Once an address auto-completes, it turns into a contact bubble that can be reordered, moved to another addressing field, or right-clicked to bring up a contextual menu of options. When addressing to a group/list, the addressing field will expand to display all participants, wrapping contact bubbles to the next row if needed.
To and Cc fields will display by default, but the compose window can be adjusted to show or hide Cc, Bcc, Reply-To, etc.
We’ve found the new addressing widget to be a lot more usable, and it’s tremendously convenient to see more contacts at one time. We can’t wait to start work on re-styling and finishing touches.
Stay tuned to learn more about Postbox 2.5 in the next post!
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 15, 2011
Despite the proliferation of file sending services like YouSendIt and shared cloud drives like Dropbox, e-mail remains for many the most convenient way to exchange small to moderate-sized files. But how big is moderate? Too big and your mail fails, either on its way up to your outbound server or on its way in to the recipient’s mailbox. File size limits are determined by your internet service provider and often by other gateways like in-house mail servers.
Like most policies of large communications services providers, e-mail file size limits are difficult to find and interpret. Many ISPs change their rules depending on the level of subscriber service. We assembled the list below from online and phone help desks at major U.S. broadband providers. For a definitive number, you may have to contact your ISP’s help desk.
AT&T: 25 Mb (webmail), 10 Mb (client)
Cable One: 10 Mb
CenturyLink: 10 Mb
Charter: 10 Mb
Comcast: 15 Mb
Cox: 10 Mb
EarthLink: 10 Mb (webmail), 5 Mb (client)
Frontier: 3 Mb
Gmail: 25 Mb
Qwest: 10 Mb
Time Warner Cable/Road Runner: 20 Mb
Verizon: 8 Mb (webmail), 20 Mb (client)
Bright House Networks/Road Runner: 20 Mb
Windstream: 1Gb
Optimum Online/Cablevision: 20 Mb
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 14, 2011
Steven R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has been a business best-seller for about as long as there’s been business. Covey built a leadership consulting empire around a few generalizations gleaned from studying the work habits of leaders across the ages.
While Covey’s broad generalizations may be helpful, it’s just as informative to look at the nitty gritty details of how the successful organize their days. Does Stephen King start writing before or after coffee? What time did President George W. Bush get to the office?
If you need inspiration in crafting a better daily routine, you could do worse than cribbing off the likes of Charles Darwin (short walk every morning before work) or Fred Astaire (catching up on reading while practicing dance routines). For everything you wanted to know about the seven-thousand work habits of the rich and famous, start here, or here.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 11, 2011
Sure, you’ve got an embarrassing e-mail story. But there’s not much chance it can compete with the Claire Swire affair, an e-mail related internet meme that’s 10 years old and still a good story.
It all started with a very personal e-mail conversation between British lawyer Bradley Chait and his girlfriend Claire Swire. Over the course of a brief e-mail conversation, Swire spells out her “end-game technique.” Chiat, so the story goes, can’t resist sharing the conversation with a few friends at work, who then share it with a few friends. And so on. And so on.
As the e-mail went viral and the story went public, Chait and colleagues faced disciplinary action from their law firm and nine employees of Britan’s Financial Services Authority lost their jobs. Despite being reported around the world by the BBC and other major news organizations, however, it’s not certain that the story is true.
But whether the e-mail conversation really happened or was part of a practical joke played out by Chait or his colleagues, Chait and Swire are real. Both their faces were all over English tabloids for a few weeks around the holidays in 2000. Ten years later, as the story lives on dredged up by e-mail muckrakers like us, it might as well be true.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 10, 2011
You might be one plastic tomato away from getting your life in order. If you can get past the name, the Pomodoro Technique is one of the simplest time management techniques—and according to proponents—one of the most productive.
The system is built on the assumption that we waste time because we have too much of it. By working in short, timed bursts in which you’re not allowed to do a dang thing but work on what you’re working on, you can finally bring an adequate level of focus to your tasks to really make headway.
The technique was invented by an easily-distracted economics student at the University of Rome in the 1980s. He found that working in short, intense bursts (which he timed on a tomato-shaped kitchen timer) combined productivity with a sort of mental agility that comes from switching from work to rest.
Like every other get-productive-quick scheme, it has its adherents and detractors. But it seems to be working for its inventor Francesco Cirillo, who has found the time to run a couple software consulting firms, launch a foundation and hawk his plastic tomatoes at www.pomodorotechnique.com.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 9, 2011
BusyCal now works with Postbox 2
BusyCal is a desktop calendar that allows families and small workgroups to easily and cost-effectively sync calendars with MobileMe, Google, the iPhone, and with other Macs on a local area network.
To celebrate, we’re giving away 5 BusyCal licenses!
How to Win:
1. Follow @Postbox on Twitter and RT the following:
Postbox is giving away 5 copies of BusyCal, follow @postbox and RT to win!
2. Follow @BusyMac on Twitter so they can send a direct message to the winners.
Hurry, you have until Friday at 5PM PST to enter! Winners will be announced next weeek on Twitter.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 8, 2011
If you look closely, you’ll notice the telltale signs: bits of grey around the sides of your inbox, folders getting a little fuller around the middle and a slight groaning noise when launching the application. Your e-mail’s hit middle age.
E-mail as we know it turns 40 this year. While we may have not recognized it in its youth, e-mail started out with a single, not-very-inspiring message between hosts on ARPAnet. Until that e-mail, written and sent by a programmer named Ray Tomlinson, it had been possible to send messages to terminals on the same computer but never between computers on different network hosts.
The message, the contents of which Tomlinson has forgotten, made it ten feet across a room from one computer to another and the communication medium was born. Offers for discount Viagra quickly followed.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 4, 2011
How do you deal with e-mail? Everybody’s got an answer. And nobody’s satisfied with it. Like making the perfect martini, finding the perfect e-mail management strategy is a lifelong pursuit. The truth is, there’s no secret solution to e-mail workflows. Much of it comes down to personal preference. Some people like to work out of their Inbox, using e-mail as a message storage and retrieval system. Others want as little in their e-mail client as possible, constantly processing messages out of mail and into some other sort of file system.
E-mail researchers (yes, there are such people) have tracked the ways in which people interact with e-mail. They’ve observed, interviewed, run experiments and generated a mountain of conclusions in the process. As part of the Postbox design process, the Postbox team dug through this research (and we even met with some of the researchers) and outlined three basic e-mail user types. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be covering each of these e-mail styles and suggesting workflow improvements designed specifically for each style. For now, we’ll describe the three main groups that e-mail users fall into. Which one are you?
1. The Inbox Archivists
Inbox Archivists work out of their Inbox. They see no reason to clean it out. After all, if everything’s in the Inbox, you know exactly where everything is. Finding an old e-mail is as easy as searching, sorting and filtering. It’s a great system if your e-mail client is up to the task. If your client’s search capabilities are limited or slow, it could take forever to find the right message, let alone that one attachment you’re pretty sure somebody (you can’t remember who) sent you six months ago. Or was it more like 18 months?
2. The File-As-You-Goer
File-As-You-Goers are the opposite of Inbox Archivists. The File-As-You-Goer doesn’t trust his e-mail client. He’s been burned too many times by failed attempts to find something he knows is somewhere in his e-mail store. The file-as-you-go solution is to let nothing linger. Actionable e-mails get dealt with ASAP. Anything with a longer life cycle gets ported to a to-do list or saved for reference (in a mail folder or outside the mail client). This system is similar to the “Inbox zero” philosophy of Merlin Mann and shares some of David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity method. Done right, it can keep you on top of your game. But it requires a lot of discipline and is probably more a reaction to the limitations of e-mail clients than it is a holistic solution to dealing with e-mail.
3. Spring Cleaners
Somewhere in the middle live the Spring Cleaners. Less disciplined than the File-As-You-Goers but not entirely comfortable with an overloaded Inbox, they let things pile up, dealing with some messages quickly and leaving others for later. Messages pile up until an overwhelming feeling of disorganization triggers a clean-up. The backlog of old messages is processed, filed or discarded and the mail store is brought back to a more manageable and less ominous level. Then the cycle starts all over again.
None of these systems are bad ones. Each has its pros and cons. Each one, though, places different demands on the user’s e-mail applications. And each one, like every other system, has room for improvement. Next week, we’ll look at the Inbox Archivist system in more detail and share some tricks for making that system work to its full potential.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
February 3, 2011
Communication media come and go but humans never change. As soon as you tell somebody not to do something, they’re bound to go and do it. Which is why Chris Faliszek found that he was getting thousands of e-mails sent to a domain he had innocently registered as part of an online marketing business.
“We started thinking of all the stupid e-mail names we could register, and we all thought it would be funny to send e-mail from an account at donotreply.com,” Faliszek said.
The funny part turned out to be the e-mails coming in, thousands of replies to the phony “donotreply.com” domain used by spammers, marketers and IT guys who don’t want to hear back about their system announcements.
Before he shut down the domain for good, Faliszek got inside information on bank security holes, reports of troop movements in Iraq from a Halliburton subsidiary and folders full of angry e-mails complaining about junk e-mail.
At the beginning, Faliszek tried to contact some of the companies referenced in the misdirected e-mails but all he got for his trouble was threats of lawsuits from managers who couldn’t understand why he was receiving “their” mail.
“I’ve had people yell at me, saying these e-mails are marked private and that I shouldn’t read them,” Faliszek said. “They get all frantic like I’ve done something to them, particularly when you talk to the non-technical people at these companies.”
Posted by Sherman Dickman
January 31, 2011
Depending on your point of view, James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake is either the writer’s greatest work or a failed experiment. In either case it’s full of puzzles, word-games and mysterious references. One of them crops up again and again on Joyce fan pages: “emailia.” As in the sentence “Speak to us of Emailia.” As with much of this famously untraditional novel, the meaning is hard to parse. It comes in a passage about a postman and most scholars think it’s nothing more than a play on the word mail and the name Amelia, a student of the author’s who he pretty clearly had a thing for. Or maybe he saw something coming?
Posted by Sherman Dickman
January 28, 2011
Like a lot of inside-the-White-House information, definitive data on which president first used e-mail is hard to come by. Working backwards, the Obama, George W. Bush, and Clinton administrations most certainly used e-mail as a daily part of their workdays. For select White House staff, e-mail, in fact, goes back as far as 1982 when National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and his deputy, Admiral John M. Poindexter were hooked in to an early IBM office e-mail system. The rest of the Reagan White House came online in 1986.
There’s not much evidence, though, that presidents themselves used e-mail on a regular basis before President Obama, who lobbied to keep his Blackberry despite recommendations from advisors. According to a BBC report on the Obama Blackberry, “neither George W. Bush nor Bill Clinton used e-mail during their presidencies.”
According the the Clinton Presidential Library, however, Clinton was the first president to send an e-mail – two in fact. The first was a test e-mail to see if the president could work the system. He could. The second was an actual e-mail message sent to 77-year-old Senator John Glenn aboard the space shuttle Discovery during Glenn’s 1998 return to space. Glenn replied, making him the first senator to e-mail a president from space. As if being a war hero, astronaut, senator, the first man to orbit the Earth, and the oldest man in space wasn’t enough.
Posted by Sherman Dickman
