6 apps that make email more productive
Everybody loves to complain about email. We get way too much of it, we can’t tell what’s important from what’s not, we never have time to respond.
But all of a sudden, we’re seeing a new round of efforts to fix it. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen new email apps from big players like IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft. They join some other efforts that have been around for a while, plus a bunch of startups that would like to kill email entirely.
Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some try to tame your inbox, others try to make it easier to
Whatever the case is, they all have one common goal: making email less painful.
IBM’s Verse creates a one-stop destination for all communications
It can also show the full correspondence with a particular group or individual by analyzing other sources like instant messages and calendars, and even display the organizational chart of people included in email threads.
IBM says it also plans to add Watson, its analytics solution, to the platform so users could search for any particular topic and get answers immediately. It’s free for now, and IBM will add a paid version with more storage and other bells and whistles in January.
Google’s Inbox makes email management a lot easier
It also gives the option to “snooze” or “pin” certain messages, or even set up “reminder” emails that show up at the top of your inbox. Inbox is currently on beta and you can only add Gmail accounts to it.
Microsoft Office 365 cleans up a lot of “Clutter”
Microsoft says it uses machine learning to determine what’s important, and stores all emails that it thinks are unimportant in a separate folder called Clutter. Users can move certain emails to the Clutter folder on their own and go into the folder and see if they missed anything important, too.
This feature is only available to Office 365’s business users.
WeMail shows how emails can be managed on mobile
According to its founder Philip Yuen, WeMail allows users to manage their inbox with 80% fewer screen scrolls and 33% fewer taps. It sorts every email by sender, which decreases the clutter in your inbox, and even allows users to create emails with voice-messaging.
TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that WeMail has raised $1 million in funding from an investor group that includes Twitch co-founders Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, and Reddit founder Steve Huffman.
Dropbox’s Mailbox lets you think outside the box
It’s much easier to sort emails with Mailbox, as you can simply swipe through messages to archive or trash them. It even lets the user “re-deliver” less important messages at a scheduled time.
It syncs with Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and other email accounts, and is available for both the iPhone and Android.
Hop turns your email inbox into one giant chatting app
Its chat-like interface makes it easier to scroll through messages and you can send a file or photo by simply dropping it in the chat box. You can see in real time when someone’s responding to a new email, and also make voice and video calls.
Bonus: These apps want to replace email altogether
Cisco’s Project Squared: Cisco revealed a new app called Project Squared on Monday. It basically does everything Slack does, only with video and audio features. Users can communicate through the chat box, and even start a video conference right within it.
Quip: Founded by Bret Taylor, Facebook’s former chief technology officer, Quip is a work collaboration app that lets users to create documents and spreadsheets and communicate right within them. Users can edit and leave notes on the same file simultaneously, reducing the need to send email attachments.
Evernote’s Work Chat: Evernote released a new feature called “Work Chat” last month, which allows users to share files without having to leave the Evernote app. It creates a chat box within the app, so users can talk to each other and share files, ultimately killing the need to send any email attachments.
Published in collaboration with Business Insider
Author: Eugene Kim is an Enterprise Tech Reporter for Business Insider.
Image: A Blackberry Bold smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy Note phablet, and an Apple iPad 2 tablet are displayed in this illustration photo. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
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