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Hey guys, Vu, the founder here. I'm a developer and my email habits are absolutely horrible. Whenever I put in long hours of coding, I feel like the time it ta

by vu0tran 12y ago

Hey guys, Vu, the founder here. I'm a developer and my email habits are absolutely horrible. Whenever I put in long hours of coding, I feel like the time it takes to context switch between development and doing email is way too high. Because of this, I'm notorious for missing emails, flights even or just not responding to emails as it gets lost in my inbox forever. I essentially started making this email app for myself and it's finally working quite well. There have been times where I've completely forgotten about a meeting and it's reminded me to show up on time. The sorting uses a lot of NLP magic and I find it to be pretty accurate too for me to take back control of my inbox. I just want to see how far I can run with it and already working on trying to suggest replies to emails. There are a lot of email apps on the market and I think their concept is "how do we incorporate better design and work flow to solve the email problem"? My notion is rather, "how do we use technology to solve the email problem?" Other than that, I'm also really excited with the privacy route I decided to take. The downside is that deploying across multiple platforms will be more challenging without a central server side component, but if the plus is that if one chooses the option of going "private" (essentially this turns off server side push notifications) there won't be any communication with my server at all. It's been a real struggle these past few months so I'm super excited!!

Mithaldu 12y ago
I can't tell for what OS this is, and unless you're planning to make it for both android and ios, please put the fact that it's only for one, and which it is, top and large on your site. There is little that makes me think worse of a company than having it breathlessly describe a product i actually want, without telling me whether i can actually use it.
- jmhobbs 12y ago
  Screen previews are wrapped in an iPhone, so I'm guessing iOS.
  - 51Cards 12y ago
    True but not uncommon to just use one device for the marketing. Also went looking for the platform icons myself as I would have tried this out on Android.
- halflings 12y ago
  I really do hope there's an android version planned. It'd be great to have some competition in the field of "intelligent email clients". Inbox is doing a great job, but it's for Gmail only.
- dethstar 12y ago
  Same. I added myself in the "get early access" and then thought, wait is this even for my OS?
- mynameisvlad 12y ago
  Literally every single product image uses an iPhone, and the real product photo is also clearly an iPhone. Just because it doesn't have a big image or text with OS compatibility does not mean you can't intelligently determine based on the product photos what OS it's for. If it were for Android, they'd have at least one Android photo, or specifically mention Android compatibility. If it's a completely iOS-centric page, you can guess /quite easily/ it's iOS only.
  - Mithaldu 12y ago
    I don't know anyone with an iphone and rarely see pictures of them. As such, i simply am not familiar enough with them to figure out whether it's an android or iphone just by looking at it, especially since the UI is very generic and android mods and ISP OSes plentiful.
    - mynameisvlad 12y ago
      They're pretty different. iOS 7 (8 is pretty much the same): http://now.avg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ios7_homescreen1.jpg http://now.avg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ios7_homescree... Android Lollipop: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Android_5.0_%22Lollipop%22_homescreen.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Android_5... Furthermore, I doubt they'd do anything crazy if they were to show an Android app. It's usually stock or very few mods.
Navarr 12y ago
Quick question: Does this use the Schema.org JSON+LD descriptions to trigger information (as opposed to or in addition to it's own detection?)
jlees 12y ago
Would love to hear more about the NLP approaches you've been using, and how well they've generalized to other folks. Though that may be giving away too much of the secret sauce, of course.
e1ven 12y ago
I wanted to thank you for doing the processing on-device. Too many mail clients are trying to sync you mail up to their servers, which creates no end of problems - Security, Compliance, and just general creepiness. I look forward to learning more about your app! I'll certainly try it out when it launches ;)
- grinich 12y ago
  Can you expand on this a bit? I work at Nilas, which provides sync for email, contacts, and calendar sync, along with modern REST APIs. https://nilas.com/sync_engine https://nilas.com/sync_engine We've had a lot of developers choose to use our infrastructure instead of interfacing with the various different providers and protocols (include Exchange). Usually security/compliance isn't an issue, but I'm looking to learn more about where folks have concerns, and ways we can address them. (Potentially doing everything from FHE to shipping AMIs.) Thanks! You can also ping me directly at mg@nilas.com.
  - __mp 12y ago
    I currently have 20GB of email lying around on several mail services. There is no way I want to allow an additional app to my personal mail account for email management. The fact that I'm hosting my mail somewhere else is bad enough. I'm paying money for mail hosting since I want the person running the service to keep my data safe and confidential. I'm currently happy directly accessing my email via web, Mail.app and Maildroid. Using a mail processing provider would mean that I would need to read another TOS to make sure my data is not sold/processed/used. If a mail client isn't able to speak standard imap and process the data locally then I don't even want to use it. Maybe you should license your imap/api code for these thirdparty developers.
    - urda 12y ago
      Unless you're PGP'ing everything that comes and goes from your mailbox, you have Z E R O guaranteed security. Sure your mail server host may claim that they are hosting only, but you can never be sure that an employee has not gone rouge. What if the host decides to start monitoring your mail server upstream? Host the server at home instead? Well do you trust your ISP? I imagine you don't. Trust along the entire transit of the message, as well as the final destination? Can't there either. So in the end it doesn't matter if there's yet another service in the middle. API or host or anything. If you're not encrypting it locally it doesn't matter. Period. The only point you can sell on is you are removing a service that can cause a point of failure. But don't act like it's more secure than before.
pbreit 12y ago
The main thing I'm looking for is automatic segregation in between Outlook and Gmail. I'd like 1 more bucket in Outlook so that other splits between sorta important and not important. Gmail segregates by type which is not always the best proxy for importance. I'd like a Focused bucket which is senders I know, replies to me emails and otherwise important stuff (important enough that I want the iOS notification). The middle bucket is stuff I occasionally open. The third bucket is stuff I haven't unsubscribed to yet for whatever reason.
ilyaeck 12y ago
You seem to be trying to resolve 2 different pains at once: email overload and privacy. Regarding the former, Google seems to be doing a lot of the same stuff already (categorization, calendar event extraction, ...). Do you have your unique edge? Or is the differentiation mainly in not being tied to Gmail?
- spost 12y ago
  Not OP, but I look at this not as trying to solve email overload and privacy, but as trying to solve email overload with the nifty side benefit of being more privacy-conscious than many of the alternatives.

by vu0tran 12y ago

Mithaldu 12y ago

I can't tell for what OS this is, and unless you're planning to make it for both android and ios, please put the fact that it's only for one, and which it is, top and large on your site. There is little that makes me think worse of a company than having it breathlessly describe a product i actually want, without telling me whether i can actually use it.

jmhobbs 12y ago
Screen previews are wrapped in an iPhone, so I'm guessing iOS.
- 51Cards 12y ago
  True but not uncommon to just use one device for the marketing. Also went looking for the platform icons myself as I would have tried this out on Android.
halflings 12y ago
I really do hope there's an android version planned. It'd be great to have some competition in the field of "intelligent email clients". Inbox is doing a great job, but it's for Gmail only.
dethstar 12y ago
Same. I added myself in the "get early access" and then thought, wait is this even for my OS?
mynameisvlad 12y ago
Literally every single product image uses an iPhone, and the real product photo is also clearly an iPhone. Just because it doesn't have a big image or text with OS compatibility does not mean you can't intelligently determine based on the product photos what OS it's for. If it were for Android, they'd have at least one Android photo, or specifically mention Android compatibility. If it's a completely iOS-centric page, you can guess /quite easily/ it's iOS only.
- Mithaldu 12y ago
  I don't know anyone with an iphone and rarely see pictures of them. As such, i simply am not familiar enough with them to figure out whether it's an android or iphone just by looking at it, especially since the UI is very generic and android mods and ISP OSes plentiful.
  - mynameisvlad 12y ago
    They're pretty different. iOS 7 (8 is pretty much the same): http://now.avg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ios7_homescreen1.jpg http://now.avg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ios7_homescree... Android Lollipop: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Android_5.0_%22Lollipop%22_homescreen.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Android_5... Furthermore, I doubt they'd do anything crazy if they were to show an Android app. It's usually stock or very few mods.

Navarr 12y ago

Quick question: Does this use the Schema.org JSON+LD descriptions to trigger information (as opposed to or in addition to it's own detection?)

jlees 12y ago

Would love to hear more about the NLP approaches you've been using, and how well they've generalized to other folks. Though that may be giving away too much of the secret sauce, of course.

e1ven 12y ago

I wanted to thank you for doing the processing on-device. Too many mail clients are trying to sync you mail up to their servers, which creates no end of problems - Security, Compliance, and just general creepiness. I look forward to learning more about your app! I'll certainly try it out when it launches ;)

grinich 12y ago
Can you expand on this a bit? I work at Nilas, which provides sync for email, contacts, and calendar sync, along with modern REST APIs. https://nilas.com/sync_engine https://nilas.com/sync_engine We've had a lot of developers choose to use our infrastructure instead of interfacing with the various different providers and protocols (include Exchange). Usually security/compliance isn't an issue, but I'm looking to learn more about where folks have concerns, and ways we can address them. (Potentially doing everything from FHE to shipping AMIs.) Thanks! You can also ping me directly at mg@nilas.com.
- __mp 12y ago
  I currently have 20GB of email lying around on several mail services. There is no way I want to allow an additional app to my personal mail account for email management. The fact that I'm hosting my mail somewhere else is bad enough. I'm paying money for mail hosting since I want the person running the service to keep my data safe and confidential. I'm currently happy directly accessing my email via web, Mail.app and Maildroid. Using a mail processing provider would mean that I would need to read another TOS to make sure my data is not sold/processed/used. If a mail client isn't able to speak standard imap and process the data locally then I don't even want to use it. Maybe you should license your imap/api code for these thirdparty developers.
  - urda 12y ago
    Unless you're PGP'ing everything that comes and goes from your mailbox, you have Z E R O guaranteed security. Sure your mail server host may claim that they are hosting only, but you can never be sure that an employee has not gone rouge. What if the host decides to start monitoring your mail server upstream? Host the server at home instead? Well do you trust your ISP? I imagine you don't. Trust along the entire transit of the message, as well as the final destination? Can't there either. So in the end it doesn't matter if there's yet another service in the middle. API or host or anything. If you're not encrypting it locally it doesn't matter. Period. The only point you can sell on is you are removing a service that can cause a point of failure. But don't act like it's more secure than before.

pbreit 12y ago

The main thing I'm looking for is automatic segregation in between Outlook and Gmail. I'd like 1 more bucket in Outlook so that other splits between sorta important and not important. Gmail segregates by type which is not always the best proxy for importance. I'd like a Focused bucket which is senders I know, replies to me emails and otherwise important stuff (important enough that I want the iOS notification). The middle bucket is stuff I occasionally open. The third bucket is stuff I haven't unsubscribed to yet for whatever reason.

ilyaeck 12y ago

You seem to be trying to resolve 2 different pains at once: email overload and privacy. Regarding the former, Google seems to be doing a lot of the same stuff already (categorization, calendar event extraction, ...). Do you have your unique edge? Or is the differentiation mainly in not being tied to Gmail?

spost 12y ago
Not OP, but I look at this not as trying to solve email overload and privacy, but as trying to solve email overload with the nifty side benefit of being more privacy-conscious than many of the alternatives.