E-Mail Evolves
Products mentioned in this article
(4 items)
The e-mail program you're using today hasn't changed much from the time when a handful of messages--not hundreds--was a full in-box. But now, after years of stagnation, e-mail technology has gotten a second wind.
A flock of new programs and Web services promise to help you control, sort, and search your incoming message flood so you can save time and get more real work done, instead of wading through low-priority missives.
We took a look at some of the most promising members of the new breed. Though not all of them may be suitable for your needs, it is likely that one or more of them can help free you from in-box bondage.
If you're serious about solving your e-mail issues and are willing to ditch your existing e-mail application to do so,
Bloomba's interface closely resembles current versions of Outlook, with a familiar left-hand folder stack and viewing pane. The most obvious difference is the search control panel anchored above the in-box. There's no need to open a separate "advanced search" window with Bloomba--it's all advanced, and it's all there in the control panel.
Spend about half an hour learning Bloomba's shortcuts and tricks, and you'll save a ton of time later. You can search within subject lines, body text, and even text attachments; specify a date range for a search; and save and revisit recent or frequent searches. There are also buttons for one-click sorting and collapsing by thread or subscription.
To test Bloomba's chops, we searched for a specific name (in the recipient list, body text, or attachment) among all in-box documents from the past three months, collapsed the resulting list into a directory, and sorted by thread--all within the control panel. The software generated search results in the in-box as we tweaked the parameters.
Bloomba's biggest weakness: It lacks an address book, relying instead on autocomplete technology. (But the feature should be in place by the time you read this.) Another minor drawback is its relatively generic spam protection.
Apart from these issues, Bloomba is good stuff, and clearly geared toward power users who routinely maintain a deep in-box and are willing to learn a few tricks to mine it efficiently.
Eager to clean up your in-box but unwilling to part with Outlook? An add-on called Ella may offer you a better fit.
Open Field Software's
The process centers on the choices you make as a six-step training wizard walks you through your existing Outlook in-box. The wizard prompts you to provide examples of the type of messages you definitely want to keep, those you may want to keep, and those you consider junk. Based on your selections, the program places your incoming mail in 'keep,' 'maybe,' and 'junk' folders.
Ella's attempts to learn by example are interesting, but its overall performance was somewhat frustrating. The wizard kept popping up whenever we launched Outlook, even after we completed the training (a bug the company is working to correct). Another known bug prevented the program from sorting the remaining messages after we finished the training.
The program divvied up subsequent e-mail messages with some success, but the initial accuracy wasn't good enough to make us feel comfortable handing over the task full-time. Although Ella's precision should increase with use, for a while it forces you to sort through three in-boxes instead of one--not exactly a time-saver. Billed as a smart in-box assistant, the 18MB downloadable program sells for $30; a Pro version intended for enterprise users is expected to ship later this year.
A growing number of users rely entirely on Web-based e-mail services for personal correspondence, since they're easy to use and accessible from anywhere. Unfortunately, free Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are slow, force you to view ads, and tend to offer limited tools.
Created to be your new in-box, Oddpost also grabs messages from POP3 servers (you can customize your From and Reply To fields to retain your current identities). But it does not retrieve messages from non-POP3-supported Web-based services--you must autoforward those accounts.
Nicely designed, Oddpost has a drag-and-drop interface that takes advantage of technology in recent versions of the Internet Explorer browser to let you move messages between folders without having to reload the Web page. This is a significant evolutionary step for Web-based mail, as any dial-up user frustrated by slow, constantly reloading pages can tell you. With Oddpost, you can do pretty much anything--composing, sorting, filing, deleting, sending, and filtering--within a single page. The one downside: The service works only with Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher.
As for spam, Oddpost has a basic screener that stops and redirects overtly spammish mail to a junk folder. It also has a feature for individually marking messages as legit or spam. Oddpost then uses a statistical analysis technique to adjust itself to what you consider spam. Beyond that, Oddpost doesn't try to sort your mail, but its lightning speed makes doing that yourself easier and quicker.
A distinctly different type of e-mail add-on called
Kubi Client lets business users share documents, contacts, task lists, and team folders (it even lets Notes and Outlook users cross-collaborate). Team members create task-specific spaces that look much like your other e-mail folders, except that all team members can access and update them. When you are using the collaboration tools, Kubi Client opens two windows above your in-box with panes that list all active projects. You can also open panes that display e-mail threads, timelines, task lists, and shared documents.
Kubi Client is essentially a workgroup application posing as an e-mail add-on. Directed at corporate users, Kubi carries a price tag of $149 per user (enterprise licenses are available); also, some of the product's high-end features will require the company's upcoming server software.
Licensed users can invite others to participate on a guest basis at no additional cost, and Kubi Client's easy integration and potential for group projects make the slightly pricey program worth considering.
Overall, we found all four of the products useful in their own unique ways. (Click on the minichart for a full view and more details.)
For ambition and potential, Kubi Client is the standout, pushing e-mail toward workgroup collaboration.
Bloomba gets high marks as well for empowering users to employ their best filtering asset--their own two eyes--more effectively.
Microsoft feels your e-mail pain: It's no coincidence that of all the applications in the company's popular Office suite, Outlook is getting by far the most visible makeover in the next version, due later this summer.
It starts with a new look: The in-box, instead of sitting on top of the preview pane, is now a slim column sandwiched between the Outlook shortcut bar on the left and a much larger preview pane on the right. This layout creates much more room for the actual message (though in-box subject lines may be slightly truncated).
Microsoft has also greatly improved Outlook's ability to locate specific messages--important when you receive dozens a day. For example, you can save the parameters and results of a search to a folder that displays updated search results whenever you open it. And these search folders are virtual, which means that a single message can show up in multiple search folders.
Outlook 2003 also includes improved junk-mail filtering. The default 'low' setting catches only obvious spam, but if you set it on 'high', it's likely to grab the occasional nonspam message (so keep an eye on the Junk E-Mail folder). You can also turn off the filter altogether, or instruct Outlook to treat everything as spam except messages from identified trusted senders.
Another useful management tool: When e-mail arrives that Outlook identifies as legit, the program notifies you with a small, semitransparent window that shows the sender, the header, and a few words of text. The window quickly fades away, adding a charming Cheshire cat-like touch to this newly invigorated desktop fixture.
--Yardena Arar
Everybody hates spam, as the burgeoning of the spam-blocking industry shows. The latest development: Web-based e-mail with sender verification technology.
It works like this: Sign up for a service and access all of your e-mail through its Web interface (including messages received via existing POP3 accounts). The service places e-mail from persons not on your address list in a "pending" folder while it fires off an authentication request to the sender. Spammers' automated systems can't reply, so the junk message never reaches your in-box. And individual senders need respond only once for the service to recognize them in the future.
User authentication is a promising antispam strategy, but it adds some unavoidable hurdles for legitimate senders and mailings. For instance, to subscribe to an automated newsletter, you must create a sometimes problematic alias to ensure that the newsletter gets through.
We evaluated two new Web-based e-mail services:
When retrieving POP3 messages, Mailblocks worked well; Block All Spam's feature was not yet functioning at this writing.
Of the two, Mailblocks certainly felt more polished; we ran into frequent Web page stalls and browser crashes while using Block All Spam. The latter product does, however, offer more features, including a calendar and a task scheduler.
--Glenn McDonald
