5 ms·

Someone please build this: Anti-shelving filter for GMail

33 points by mortenjust 17y ago

dbz 17y ago
Indeed this would be very useful; however, the possibilities for spam are endless =/
christiansj 17y ago
I could use this please
mortenjust 17y ago
spam, how so?
omrisiri 17y ago
I had the same idea just last week... I think it is a great idea given the amount of mail i send and have to deal with. many times i just forget to make sure i received a reply, and sometimes when i do its just too late.
shrikant 17y ago
That has to be the WORST lower-case 'f' ever. I had to make sure my laptop screen wasn't on the fritz.
jsnell 17y ago
That's one of the things that etacts (http://www.etacts.com http://www.etacts.com) does. Though when this was discussed here a few weeks ago in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144560 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144560 a lot of people seemed unhappy about it being an external service that needed to permanently store your gmail password.
- buro9 17y ago
  I still really want that service. But my gmail controls access to everything and I cannot overcome the risk associated with divulging my password to a third party. No bells and whistles on Gmail is worth risking the security of the email, and that is precisely what is being asked when we're asked to give our password to a third party. And there are examples of such abuse of trust, you only have to look at the court case about Facebook execs using passwords to login to email accounts of competitors. So yes, etacts looks wonderful. But it doesn't offer something so compelling that I would give out my password. It's actually very hard for me to imagine what could be so compelling that I would give out that password.
  - sparky 17y ago
    A valid concern. This prompted them to implement oAuth for GMail, as described here http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/gmail-imap-etacts/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/gmail-imap-etacts/ and discussed here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172211 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172211 .
andrewf 17y ago
I already do this with five labels, one for each day of the week. A plugin would be far sexier and save me 10 seconds for each sent email, but the overhead I have right now is more than worth it.
tomjen2 17y ago
Only if somebody build a anti-anti-shelving filter. I get enough offers from various places that I don't like as it is.
jgrahamc 17y ago
Funny I had been planning to build something like this. My idea was that you would forward an email to the service and just type in the start of it when you want the reminder. Using some simple NLP you'd be able to write something like "next week" or "on Monday" and the system would then email you back when it wanted to remind you. No need to have your gmail password, or even be gmail specific. Is there anyone out there who would use this? Enough yeses and I'll build it.
- pieter 17y ago
  How would this detect whether you got a reply? Relying on the recipient to also CC the reminder service seems fragile and ugly, and having to proxy through another service also seems unwanted (you're now relying on that service to be available for you to receive email).
audionerd 17y ago
What's wrong with a "follow-up" or "waiting for reply" label?
- 83457 17y ago
  "It’s adding to my load what should be in yours."
lecha 17y ago
Those thinking of building something like that should check out http://www.clearcontext.com/pro/ http://www.clearcontext.com/pro/ that adds this feature in Outlook.
billybob 17y ago
This seems really dysfunctional to me. "The ball is in your court, so I shouldn't have to do anything else..." and "right now, the person who follows up is the one who cares most about it." (not exact quotes) Well, imagine you're on the receiving end, and it's an annoying email that you don't care to respond to. Do you want to keep getting automated repeats, where all the pain is yours, or do you want it to be somewhat painful for the person sending to have to take the time to re-send? Yes, it's courteous to respond, even if to politely say "not interested, can't do it, go away." But to be auto-spammed if you don't!?
smarterchild 17y ago
You could put that together with this: http://3mindme.com/ http://3mindme.com/ Say: "I would like an email back about this email in 1 week." Disadvantages to this: * Your email goes out to them and gets stored for that long. * You have to remember to include it as a bcc on every email you care about following up with. * It doesn't automatically snooze if you get a followup. * You have no way of tracking responses (in, say, a DB). But it's a cheap solution that will do the job. Otherwise, there are special CRM packages for this. Unfortunately, I don't know much about them.
83457 17y ago
This may even be useful for Google Voice. After hanging up a call have an option to be notified after a period of time if you haven't received a call back from the phone number -- or email from that same contact.
apowell 17y ago
Even better would be to integrate the anti-shelving filter with a GTD app (I use Things) so that I don't have to create a separate task every time I want to create a followup reminder. However, I would never want to send an auto-notification to the receiving party (often they're my customers -- how rude is that?). I'd be annoyed if I was on the receiving end of the auto-reminder.

33 points by mortenjust 17y ago

dbz 17y ago

Indeed this would be very useful; however, the possibilities for spam are endless =/

christiansj 17y ago

I could use this please

mortenjust 17y ago

spam, how so?

omrisiri 17y ago

I had the same idea just last week... I think it is a great idea given the amount of mail i send and have to deal with. many times i just forget to make sure i received a reply, and sometimes when i do its just too late.

shrikant 17y ago

That has to be the WORST lower-case 'f' ever. I had to make sure my laptop screen wasn't on the fritz.

jsnell 17y ago

That's one of the things that etacts (http://www.etacts.com http://www.etacts.com) does. Though when this was discussed here a few weeks ago in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144560 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144560 a lot of people seemed unhappy about it being an external service that needed to permanently store your gmail password.

buro9 17y ago
I still really want that service. But my gmail controls access to everything and I cannot overcome the risk associated with divulging my password to a third party. No bells and whistles on Gmail is worth risking the security of the email, and that is precisely what is being asked when we're asked to give our password to a third party. And there are examples of such abuse of trust, you only have to look at the court case about Facebook execs using passwords to login to email accounts of competitors. So yes, etacts looks wonderful. But it doesn't offer something so compelling that I would give out my password. It's actually very hard for me to imagine what could be so compelling that I would give out that password.
- sparky 17y ago
  A valid concern. This prompted them to implement oAuth for GMail, as described here http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/gmail-imap-etacts/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/gmail-imap-etacts/ and discussed here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172211 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172211 .

andrewf 17y ago

I already do this with five labels, one for each day of the week. A plugin would be far sexier and save me 10 seconds for each sent email, but the overhead I have right now is more than worth it.

tomjen2 17y ago

Only if somebody build a anti-anti-shelving filter. I get enough offers from various places that I don't like as it is.

jgrahamc 17y ago

Funny I had been planning to build something like this. My idea was that you would forward an email to the service and just type in the start of it when you want the reminder. Using some simple NLP you'd be able to write something like "next week" or "on Monday" and the system would then email you back when it wanted to remind you. No need to have your gmail password, or even be gmail specific. Is there anyone out there who would use this? Enough yeses and I'll build it.

pieter 17y ago
How would this detect whether you got a reply? Relying on the recipient to also CC the reminder service seems fragile and ugly, and having to proxy through another service also seems unwanted (you're now relying on that service to be available for you to receive email).

audionerd 17y ago

What's wrong with a "follow-up" or "waiting for reply" label?

83457 17y ago
"It’s adding to my load what should be in yours."

lecha 17y ago

Those thinking of building something like that should check out http://www.clearcontext.com/pro/ http://www.clearcontext.com/pro/ that adds this feature in Outlook.

billybob 17y ago

This seems really dysfunctional to me. "The ball is in your court, so I shouldn't have to do anything else..." and "right now, the person who follows up is the one who cares most about it." (not exact quotes) Well, imagine you're on the receiving end, and it's an annoying email that you don't care to respond to. Do you want to keep getting automated repeats, where all the pain is yours, or do you want it to be somewhat painful for the person sending to have to take the time to re-send? Yes, it's courteous to respond, even if to politely say "not interested, can't do it, go away." But to be auto-spammed if you don't!?

smarterchild 17y ago

You could put that together with this: http://3mindme.com/ http://3mindme.com/ Say: "I would like an email back about this email in 1 week." Disadvantages to this: * Your email goes out to them and gets stored for that long. * You have to remember to include it as a bcc on every email you care about following up with. * It doesn't automatically snooze if you get a followup. * You have no way of tracking responses (in, say, a DB). But it's a cheap solution that will do the job. Otherwise, there are special CRM packages for this. Unfortunately, I don't know much about them.

83457 17y ago

This may even be useful for Google Voice. After hanging up a call have an option to be notified after a period of time if you haven't received a call back from the phone number -- or email from that same contact.

apowell 17y ago

Even better would be to integrate the anti-shelving filter with a GTD app (I use Things) so that I don't have to create a separate task every time I want to create a followup reminder. However, I would never want to send an auto-notification to the receiving party (often they're my customers -- how rude is that?). I'd be annoyed if I was on the receiving end of the auto-reminder.