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Show HN: The Inbox Checkup – Compare your inbox mastery with everyone else

39 points by l_perrin 12y ago

toong 12y ago
I just tried it out on an email address that doesn't contain any sensitive information: I think there is something off: gmail lets me browse to 50k+ emails (or conversations?), your tool reports around 1k emails received. I'm not sure that 50k number is accurate, but there are a lot more than 1k.
- l_perrin 12y ago
  We only look at the last 100 days. The global ranking is based on the total number of conversations you engage: threads where you and someone else write.
  - toong 12y ago
    Right. Exactly what the tag-line says :-)
dsr_ 12y ago
I have always been so nervous about my email habits that I would happily share my private email with a complete stranger in order to receive a ranking. I would feel even better if I could win a prize!
- l_perrin 12y ago
  To address your concerns about privacy: we request an OAuth token from Gmail. While this token expires after 1h, we actually use it only once and we never store it anywhere. We analyze your email habits exclusively by looking at metadata, not at the content of emails. Now, the app is mostly an experiment on email: while most modern communication are shared by default, emails is still completely siloed. We are allowing people to compare their email habits, without, in fact, exposing private information.
  - l_perrin 12y ago
    You can check https://frontapp.com/checkup/30c7a55ba3011356dce https://frontapp.com/checkup/30c7a55ba3011356dce if you want to see how the results look.
  - eric_h 12y ago
    And as the NSA revelations have revealed, there's nothing damning in metadata... I don't mean to be trite, but I'm not giving any auth information to a Show HN any more than I would some random guy on the street. Don't get me wrong, I'm addicted to inbox zero as much as the next guy/gal, but I achieve inbox zero every day. Never mind the fact that I accomplish this by marking email I deem as irrelevant by the subject line as 'read' without ever reading it. I'm sure I've inappropriately marked email from people I care about as 'read' without reading it, but I do get a disproportionate volume of email from robots (that belong to me, my company and others), so I view it as acceptable collateral damage. Show me the source and maybe I'll share my auth tokens.
cortesoft 12y ago
Yeah, don't think I am going to provide access to my inbox to some random website. Hell, I don't think I would provide access to ANY website.
abimaelmartell 12y ago
Thanks but no thanks
Mandatum 12y ago
Tried it. Seems OK. Not worth the access to data it required. This post would do better on Reddit in dataisbeautiful or something. Here's an example scraped from Google: https://checkup.frontapp.com/9df36f035e474281931 https://checkup.frontapp.com/9df36f035e474281931 More: https://checkup.frontapp.com/ef2358ade51b29fb9fe https://checkup.frontapp.com/ef2358ade51b29fb9fe https://checkup.frontapp.com/1b68de2c4523717ee8a https://checkup.frontapp.com/1b68de2c4523717ee8a https://checkup.frontapp.com/189bdd53fc517dcd1ee https://checkup.frontapp.com/189bdd53fc517dcd1ee https://checkup.frontapp.com/72dd67265b3244f5b37 https://checkup.frontapp.com/72dd67265b3244f5b37 (Rank 9)
- presty 12y ago
  what a great way of finding other people's email addresses :)
ars 12y ago
This is gmail only BTW.
shabinesh 12y ago
are you NSA? ;)
deathanatos 12y ago
The red/yellow/green coloring to me seems to imply that you want to be above average with these metrics, but I'm not sure that above average is necessarily a good thing here. Things like "response time", quicker is probably better, but "emails sent" — the two of the links from Mandatum had someone ending ~50 emails per day! It may very well depend on your job, of course, but to me, that's too much even to receive in a day (I don't want to read 50 emails.), and your email is going to be automatically sorted and likely ignored. "Contacts reached" also seems to imply higher is better, whereas I would think that more targeted conversations might be better. (But then, courtesy might demand CC'ing a list or a person in, so harder to say.) "Emails per conversation": taking more emails to conclude whatever is needed is better? Not meeting face to face if email isn't cutting it, or being clear and concise on the first email?
neilunadkat12 12y ago
Getting a bad request error on signing in with Google.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
billforward 12y ago
This is a pretty neat tool! Could only check my personal email. Company email uses Office365.

39 points by l_perrin 12y ago

toong 12y ago

I just tried it out on an email address that doesn't contain any sensitive information: I think there is something off: gmail lets me browse to 50k+ emails (or conversations?), your tool reports around 1k emails received. I'm not sure that 50k number is accurate, but there are a lot more than 1k.

l_perrin 12y ago
We only look at the last 100 days. The global ranking is based on the total number of conversations you engage: threads where you and someone else write.
- toong 12y ago
  Right. Exactly what the tag-line says :-)

dsr_ 12y ago

I have always been so nervous about my email habits that I would happily share my private email with a complete stranger in order to receive a ranking. I would feel even better if I could win a prize!

l_perrin 12y ago
To address your concerns about privacy: we request an OAuth token from Gmail. While this token expires after 1h, we actually use it only once and we never store it anywhere. We analyze your email habits exclusively by looking at metadata, not at the content of emails. Now, the app is mostly an experiment on email: while most modern communication are shared by default, emails is still completely siloed. We are allowing people to compare their email habits, without, in fact, exposing private information.
- l_perrin 12y ago
  You can check https://frontapp.com/checkup/30c7a55ba3011356dce https://frontapp.com/checkup/30c7a55ba3011356dce if you want to see how the results look.
- eric_h 12y ago
  And as the NSA revelations have revealed, there's nothing damning in metadata... I don't mean to be trite, but I'm not giving any auth information to a Show HN any more than I would some random guy on the street. Don't get me wrong, I'm addicted to inbox zero as much as the next guy/gal, but I achieve inbox zero every day. Never mind the fact that I accomplish this by marking email I deem as irrelevant by the subject line as 'read' without ever reading it. I'm sure I've inappropriately marked email from people I care about as 'read' without reading it, but I do get a disproportionate volume of email from robots (that belong to me, my company and others), so I view it as acceptable collateral damage. Show me the source and maybe I'll share my auth tokens.

cortesoft 12y ago

Yeah, don't think I am going to provide access to my inbox to some random website. Hell, I don't think I would provide access to ANY website.

abimaelmartell 12y ago

Thanks but no thanks

Mandatum 12y ago

Tried it. Seems OK. Not worth the access to data it required. This post would do better on Reddit in dataisbeautiful or something. Here's an example scraped from Google: https://checkup.frontapp.com/9df36f035e474281931 https://checkup.frontapp.com/9df36f035e474281931 More: https://checkup.frontapp.com/ef2358ade51b29fb9fe https://checkup.frontapp.com/ef2358ade51b29fb9fe https://checkup.frontapp.com/1b68de2c4523717ee8a https://checkup.frontapp.com/1b68de2c4523717ee8a https://checkup.frontapp.com/189bdd53fc517dcd1ee https://checkup.frontapp.com/189bdd53fc517dcd1ee https://checkup.frontapp.com/72dd67265b3244f5b37 https://checkup.frontapp.com/72dd67265b3244f5b37 (Rank 9)

presty 12y ago
what a great way of finding other people's email addresses :)

ars 12y ago

This is gmail only BTW.

shabinesh 12y ago

are you NSA? ;)

deathanatos 12y ago

The red/yellow/green coloring to me seems to imply that you want to be above average with these metrics, but I'm not sure that above average is necessarily a good thing here. Things like "response time", quicker is probably better, but "emails sent" — the two of the links from Mandatum had someone ending ~50 emails per day! It may very well depend on your job, of course, but to me, that's too much even to receive in a day (I don't want to read 50 emails.), and your email is going to be automatically sorted and likely ignored. "Contacts reached" also seems to imply higher is better, whereas I would think that more targeted conversations might be better. (But then, courtesy might demand CC'ing a list or a person in, so harder to say.) "Emails per conversation": taking more emails to conclude whatever is needed is better? Not meeting face to face if email isn't cutting it, or being clear and concise on the first email?

neilunadkat12 12y ago

Getting a bad request error on signing in with Google.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

billforward 12y ago

This is a pretty neat tool! Could only check my personal email. Company email uses Office365.