Short Cut to the Spam Folder

Pressed for time? Typing with your thumbs? Abbreviations, from leetspeak strings to corporate acronyms shorten text and save time, at least for the writer. But beyond confusing readers, a misplaced abbreviation may trigger something unexpected, like a spam filter.

Back in 2006, users of the spam filter Spam Assassin from the English county of Oxfordshire began noticing a lot of disappearing e-mails. Nothing in the body of the messages contained any suspect strings, phrases like “Nigerian bank,” “unclaimed inheritance” or “male enhancement.” They came from different users on different servers and contained no other filter-trigging attributes.

Except for one thing. The common denominator was a benign abbreviation in the users’ e-mail signatures. The accepted abbreviation for Oxfordshire is Oxon (a shortening of the old Latin name for the region). Oxon, when followed by its postal code (OX), was a close enough match for the anxiety drug Xanax to trigger a false positive and send messages straight to the trash. So, unless you live in this town, you might think twice about shortening your address.

Posted by Sherman Dickman

One More Thing To Do Today

The last thing you need at the end of a work day is one more to-do. But skipping this one last task may be making time at home as stressful as time in the office. Time management trainers at Franklin Covey recommend a to-do-list trick that helps you leave your work at the office: spend a few minutes at the end of today writing your tasks for tomorrow.

It’s a little counter-intuitive. Most of us just want to put out the last brush fire of the day and head home. The danger with that plan is what another time management guru, David Allen, refers to as walking around with too much stuff in your head. You leave the office with a head full of nagging worries about what needs to get done tomorrow. You spend the night worrying about them, distracting yourself from friends, family and fun without actually getting anything done.

The end-of-day to-do list frees your mind to focus on nothing but fun till you open your office door the next morning. It’s a way to bring closure to a work day and create a hard line between work and home life. On some days, it may even remind you that you’re actually getting things done.

Posted by Sherman Dickman

My Spammer. My Lover.

The NY Times’ David Pogue posted a e-mail conversation between a reader of his column and an e-mail spammer. The spam scam is of the “need money for a flight home” variety.

Pogue’s reader takes the bait and begins a back-and-forth that forces increasingly awkward replies from the spammer. (The good bit starts halfway through.) The reader is a playwright and the thread reads like a very short story. Here’s when Postbox’s Conversation View would come in really handy. http://nyti.ms/g9xbtC

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Christmas Eve a Paid Holiday?

A higher percentage of U.S. employers plan to treat Christmas Eve as a paid holiday for employees in 2010 than in 2009, according to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) poll. Part of the reason for the change by employers might be that the federal government will treat December 24th as a federal holiday because Christmas falls on a Saturday. Meanwhile, slightly less than half of those surveyed said their organizations will treat the Monday after Christmas as a paid holiday in 2010. Details of the study include the following tidbits:

• Christmas Eve, Dec. 24 - 79 percent; 42 percent of 542 respondents in 2009 said this was the case. Only 10 percent plan to close early in 2010 vs. 33 percent for in 2009
• Monday after Christmas, Dec. 27 - 40 percent plan to close early
• New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31 - 48 percent; 21 percent in 2009. In 2010, 16 percent plan to close early vs. 25 percent in 2009
• New Year’s Day, Jan. 1 - 98 percent; 97 percent in 2009

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Mail Like a Mob Boss

Wordy e-mails don’t just slow readers down, they may make you look like a schmuck. Take a tip from mob bosses and super villains: powerful people don’t waste time by talking too much. Nowhere is this more true than in the follow-up e-mail. If you’re following up on a proposal, don’t restate your sales pitch. Keep your message short and include an actionable question. If your recipient’s not ready to respond to your question, three more paragraphs won’t get him there. Over-explaining can push the other way, cheapening your offer and making you seem desperate. After all, would you rather do business with Don Corleone or Tommy DeVito?

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Lost In Translation

We’ve all written e-mails we regret having sent. Sometimes, even the ones you don’t send can get you in trouble. In Wales, a government translator set his auto-responder and went on vacation. While he was gone, an English-speaking town council member sent an email requesting a translation for a new road sign. The response came back almost immediately - in Welsh. The town council member passed it on to the sign maker (another English speaker) and the sign went up. Bi-lingual locals were puzzled by the new sign. The English read: “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.” The Welsh half read: “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” The sign stayed up just long enough for a picture.

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Start Daydreaming and Get to Work

Stop reading this post and go back to what you were doing. Better yet, stop thinking about what you were doing and concentrate on this post. Aw, the hell with it - go take a nap.

Neuroscientists and productivity experts have spent the last few years busting the myth of multitasking. Humans can’t do it, we’re told. Try to do a few things at the same time and you’ll perform poorly on all of them. To make matters worse, some writers and researchers have suggested that our 21st-century flitting from Google search to Facebook post to e-mail message is sapping our ability to concentrate (the “internet is making us stupid” argument.) Productivity comes from focusing on one task at a time, we’re told. Lose focus and output suffers.

Now it looks like concentration may be over-rated. Neuroscience writer Jonah Lehrer writes about the importance of letting your mind wander. Lehrer, author of the best-selling “How We Decide,” has written about research into writer’s block, inability to recall facts and constraints on creativity.

It seems that with some tasks, more-focus, trying harder and chugging coffee leads to a cognitive log jam. Shifting into what brain researchers call a “resting state network” can often break through the block.

In fact, staring out the window may even make you smarter. Lehrer writes about a paper by two MIT researchers on links between “resting state activity” (daydreaming) and intelligence. It looks like insight and creativity require communication between relatively distant parts of the brain. And daydreaming seems to improve the mind’s ability to link those regions.

“One of the simplest ways to foster creativity, then, may be to take daydreams more seriously,” writes Lehrer. More from Lehrer on daydreaming.

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Sorry for the late reply, I was writing a book about your #%@&! e-mail

A lot of us think managing email is a full-time job. But only John Freeman found the time to write a book about it. Freeman’s The Tyranny of E-Mail is a 250+ page cry for help told through a detailed history of human communication. Freeman takes us through the unsettling acceleration in daily life that came with the introduction of the railroad and the telegraph and concludes that e-mail is stealing years off our lives. Things don’t appear to be slowing down. Had he waited a couple of years to write the book, he could have called it The Tyranny of Texting.

Posted by Sherman Dickman

To: happy@holidays.com

We can help you manage your mail better, but we can’t save you from sending ham-handed holiday e-mails. Fortunately, there are those who can. The site Business Email Etiquette (who knew) has a cost-benefit analysis.

And, Judith Martin, a.k.a Miss Manners, has advice about trying to figure out whether or not to make your message faith-specific: “Please do not go around interrogating random people about their religious affiliations and practices.” More (than you probably want to know) from Miss Manners here.

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Grammarians catch up with technology

“Email,” “email,” “e-mail,” or “email?” Believe it or not, there’s consensus on this one.

The AP Stylebook, the go-to guide for print journalists, says it’s “e-mail.” The New York Times agrees. (They have their own style book.) Chicago Manual of Style says “e-mail” too. Even Lynne Truss, the grammar curmudgeon who wrote the best-seller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, opts for “e-mail” on her blog. Or is it “Blog?”

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Postbox 2010 Holiday Sale!

To celebrate the holidays, we’re having a sale! Save up to 25% on Postbox 2 and Postbox 2 Upgrades!

Bonus Discount - Visit our Facebook Deals Tab to receive a surprise discount!

Hurry, sale ends December 24th at 7PM EST.

Thanks for all of your support over the past year, and we hope you enjoy using the new Postbox 2.1 release.

- The Postbox Team

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Postbox 2.1 Now Available with New Summarize Mode

We’re really excited to announce the immediate availability of Postbox 2.1. This release contains new features, usability enhancements, and bug fixes, but let’s dive right into what’s cool…

New “Summarize Mode” for Message Replies and Forwards

Postbox’s Conversation View simplifies message viewing, and now, “Summarize Mode” extends these benefits to message Replies and Forwards. Summarize provides a clean and beautifully formatted who-said-what-when email that lets message recipients jump into discussions with more clarity, context and insight.

When you Reply or Forward a message, you’ll be presented with a toolbar button that toggles between two states: Quote and Summarize. Clicking on Quote will format the message with conventional indented quoting. Click on Summarize and Postbox will quote the entire conversation in a simple and easy to read format, as illustrated below:

For more information on Summarize, please see this Knowledge Base Article.

What else is new in Postbox 2.1?

• Ability to toggle between Reply and Reply All from the compose window via toolbar button
• Quick Look is now implemented for attachments in the compose window on Mac OS X. Select the attachment(s) and use the space bar to view them
• Support for “Mail As PDF” on Mac OS X within the Mac print dialog
• Added a keyboard shortcut for Paste Without Formatting to the compose window: cmd-shift-v (Mac) and ctrl-shift-v (Windows)
• Ability to configure Quick Reply to always default to Reply All via Preferences | Compose | Advanced

For the full list of changes, please see the Postbox 2.1 Release Notes.

How to Download

Visit the Postbox website to download Postbox 2.1.  Or, you can use these direct links:

Windows
Mac OS X

If you’re already a Postbox user, simply install Postbox 2.1 and your current settings will be used, there’s nothing more to setup!

Get a Deal

Postbox 2.1 is a free update for all Postbox 2 users. If you’re using Postbox 1.x and would like be informed of special deals, see our “Deals Tab” on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our Newsletter.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who helped us with testing and feedback during the Postbox 2.1 BETA, we couldn’t do it without you!

- The Postbox Team

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Designing the Postbox Accounts and Folders Pane

One of the most innovative features in Postbox is its Accounts and Folders pane, the UI element that drives your message view. It’s completely unique, and this post will dig into how and why it’s designed differently than other offerings.

Research

When we founded Postbox, we wanted to create a product that simplified the email experience while providing more power and control. We looked at existing folder pane implementations and found two basic approaches:

Thunderbird’s and Microsoft’s Hierarchical Approach

A simple tree hierarchy of accounts and their subfolders.

Pros

• conceptually the easiest to understand, similar to file systems
• all account data is grouped together
• ability to keep all folders open and accessible

Cons

• no support for unified inboxes or folders
• difficult to jump from inbox to inbox
• requires frequent expand/collapse actions for folders and subfolders
• expanded folders increases the number of drop targets and folder pane scrolling

Apple’s Unified Folder Design

Apple’s design is optimized for viewing email within unified special folders such as the inbox, drafts and sent.

Pros

• unified views for inboxes and special folders
• ability to select individual accounts when needed
• easy to jump from inbox to inbox

Cons

• conceptually harder to understand since account data is broken up by special/functional folders
• unified views include all email accounts, which inappropriately mixes work and personal messages together
• difficult to navigate from folder to folder when working within a single account

(Note: in Thunderbird 3, Mozilla implemented Apple’s design and made it an optional view.)

A New and Improved Design for Postbox

In Postbox, we wanted to give people the best of both worlds, which included unified folders and the ability to keep work and personal messages separate. The design also needed to be quick and easy to setup, organize and maintain. 

To address these challenges, we split Accounts from Folders and positioned them within their own dedicated panes. The Accounts pane is where you set context, for example, by selecting “work” vs. “personal” accounts.

When an account is selected, only the folders that belong to that account will display, and folders from non-selected accounts will be hidden from view. This dramatically simplifies the Folder Pane, minimizes the number of drop targets, reduces folder pane scrolling, and keeps unrelated contexts (e.g., work and personal) from inappropriately mixing.

To support Unified Views, all accounts are initially positioned within an “All Accounts” group. Selecting this group provides a unified view of all messages across all accounts in the selected folder. Additionally, special folders such as the inbox, sent, drafts and trash are also unified.

Most importantly, custom unified views can be created by organizing accounts into Account Groups. For example, you can create groups for your “work” and “personal” accounts, and then unify your message views by those groups.

With the basic design in place, we arrived at two decision points. The first was whether to display sub-folders within special folders, as illustrated below:

We solicited advice from Postbox users through several rounds of surveys, and from 986 responses, 56% selected the simpler option on the left.

Next, we needed to determine whether storage folders should be located at the root folder level, or positioned within parent folders named after the accounts:

In this case, survey data indicated that Postbox users preferred the nested approach.

To wrap up, the design of Postbox’s Accounts and Folders Pane offers these unique benefits and tradeoffs:

Pros

• ability to create groups of unified accounts/folder views to keep work and personal messages separate
• quick to jump from group to group, account to account, and inbox to inbox
• ability to keep folders within a group open and accessible
• unrelated folders are kept out of view, which simplifies folder pane viewing and handling
• clean, simple, flexible, and powerful

Cons

• small learning curve associated with using two selectors instead of one
• when a single account is selected, moving messages to another account requires a drag-hover-drop action as opposed to drag-drop

We think it works pretty well, what do you think?

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Why Switch to Postbox 2?

We’re frequently asked, “Why switch? What does Postbox offer that others don’t?”

Here’s a handy overview of features you simply cannot find in other offerings such as Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or Windows Live Mail.

Switch to Postbox to get these awesome features:

Unified Inboxes + Account Groups
Combine messages from multiple inboxes into a single, Unified Inbox. You can even create groups of Unified Inboxes to keep your work and personal messages separate.

File and Image Search
Get instant and direct access to files and images hiding within your email accounts. No more digging through messages to find what you need.

Conversation Views
Postbox Conversation Views are more powerful, actionable, and easy to read. Quickly bring yourself up to speed and jump into discussions with more information, context, and insight.

Powerful Tagging
Postbox has a faster, simpler, and more powerful way to organize your messages by keyword. Choose from your favorites or free-form tag with ease.

Focus Pane
Break your Inbox into smaller, more manageable chunks. Focus your view by your highest priority attributes, Topics, Contacts or dates, without losing track of what’s happening elsewhere.

To-Do Tracking
Postbox provides a simple and lightweight way to use email messages to track To-Dos. Easily tag messages as To-Do, create new To-Dos, and combine them into a dedicated To-Do View.

Find by Contact
Click on any contact to find recent messages, files or images they’ve sent to you — a time saver of epic proportions!

Compact Header Mode
Have a Netbook or small MacBook? Postbox’s Compact Headers make the most of your available screen space.

Quick Reply
Quick Reply to a message without opening a separate compose window. It all happens inline within a message or conversation, so you can get right back to what you were doing.

Quick Move + Quick Folder Switch
File messages without using your mouse using Quick Move. Just type the letter “V”, enter the first few letters from the target folder, and voila! Type “G” to switch to a folder just as quickly.

Message Inspector
Postbox looks for interesting content within each message, then highlights what it finds in the Message Inspector. It’s like a smart discovery engine for email.

Message Annotation
Use the Edit function to change the message subject, edit its content, or annotate messages as easily as using a word processor. No more emailing notes to yourself!

More Keyboard Shortcuts
Navigate to any corner of the app, or initiate most any function, with a simple keystroke. Power users rejoice!

Better Mac Support
Postbox tightly integrates with the Mac, and provides support for Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Spotlight, Quick Look, and productivity applications such as OmniFocus, Things, and Alfred.

Over the next few posts we’ll explore these features in more detail, and we’ll also shed some light on how and why they were developed.  Stay tuned!

Posted by Sherman Dickman

Win a Free Copy of Alfred!

Alfred now works with Postbox 2

Alfred is a new application for Mac OS X that saves you time in searching your local computer and the web.

To celebrate, we’re giving away 5 Alfred licences today!

How to Win:

1. Follow @alfredapp on Twitter and RT the following:

Postbox is giving away 5 copies of Alfred today, follow @alfredapp and RT to win! http://bit.ly/win_alfred
Tweet

2. Follow @Postbox on Twitter so we can send a direct message to the winners.

Hurry, you have until Thursday at 5PM PST to enter!  Winners will be announced, on Friday November 5th on Twitter.

Posted by Sherman Dickman