Joinbox - A Slick Dashboard That Brings Social, Email, And News In To One Stream [Shutdown]

UPDATE: Joinbox announced on December 17, 2012 that they have decided to discontinue the service (copy of message displayed on homepage).

Joinbox is on a mission to create a better web experience for the everyday user. They hope to merge your social activities, email, and news together to form one cohesive consumer website that does it all. This tantalizing video from last year got everyone excited for a one stream solution! One year later, a true product demo has been released along with early access.


Did that get you excited? That sure is an elegant, simple, and fluid dashboard. The founding thought of the service is to bring everything to your personal internet mailbox. Do you travel around the world picking up magazines, newspapers, and letters or are they mailed to your home? Joinbox wants to eliminate the need for you to be opening and monitoring numerous tabs and visiting countless websites every day just to stay on top of your networks and the news. It should also be just as easy to check up on your network when you are traveling or on a friend's computer.

Five founders started this mission in 2010 after they could not find an easy way to consolidate all the incoming information they were looking at while researching to possibly start a freshly baked croissant delivery service. Since then they said goodbye to the croissant world and hello to Joinbox. It has been a long. hard, and educational journey to build in Node.js and to get to where they are today after starting over from scratch this past summer. This information consumption problem is a complex one and can't be solved overnight. After two months of alpha testing with about a hundred users they are ready for a larger private beta. We have invites!

Let's take a look at what Joinbox Double Rainbow can do. Below we see the settings page where everything is setup and deleted.

• Social Networks - Connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts via OAuth. It will allow more than one Twitter connection, but no Facebook pages. LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr integration is in the works.
• Email - Bring in emails from one or more services by adding your email address and password.
• News - Search for news and follow sources. Unfortunately this does not support you to directly follow an RSS feed or import a set of subscriptions via OPML.

On the main page you are shown the total unread/unseen items with a breakdown for each stream. You may drill down using the left navigation panel to view everything, only social networks, all emails, just news, or individual accounts within each section. When you click on an item in the middle stream it opens to the right. When available, content is included in the displayed item (photos, videos, RSS stories, Twitter conversation, etc). Tweets do not automatically pull in the content from included links. It would be nice for them to do that like Parrotfish can on Twitter.

When composing a new message you are able to send it to by email, Twitter, or Facebook.

Overall the design is fast and intuitive. If your browser window is smaller it will auto expand the area on mouseover and, as seen above, grey other sections out that are not in use. The only real issue I had was upon login, sometimes I had to refresh to get my feed to come up the first time. Retweeting, replying, favoriting, liking, and commenting all work as expected. I use Gmail and replying broke the "conversation" which I don't like. For a just out of alpha release it is solid and looks very promising. I will certainly be using and testing it, but need to see more features and enhancements before exclusively relying on it.

The five founders that make up the Joinbox team are Konrad Mazanowski (CEO), Michael van der Weg (CTO), Felix Steiner (VP of development), Fabian Jordi (development), and Tobias Kneubühler (development). In the future they want to add more services, chat, enhance email functionality, and tackle news aggregation. With that they hope to eliminate double inputs (you don't need to see the same story on three different channels) and to find what is really important to you. They admittedly have a lot of work a head of them. You can follow Joinbox on Twitter, Facebook, and their blog.

Who wants to use Joinbox? Retweet the below Tweet, or email me, and tomorrow I will randomly pick ten people from those that did to give access to. Be sure to follow me on Twitter so I can direct message you.

Joinbox - A Slick Dashboard That Brings Social, Email, And News In To One Stream - goo.gl/dxLfO
— Dain Binder (@dbin78) February 28, 2012

XYDO Redefines Newsletter Relevancy And Engagement Performance

Yesterday I spoke with Cameron Brain, co-founder of XYDO [zahy-doo], about their new B2B product launching publicly today. To better understand what they have launched it is good to look at where they began.

XYDO started life in early 2011 as a next generation social news website that incorporates your social graph. By using what you subscribe to, your interests, similar users with the same interests, and much more it delivers relevant personal content from various sources that has been vouched for. Those sources are the users themselves, imports from the social sites, RSS feeds, and content publishers. Voting, commenting, and sharing on the site work with the cumulative shares and likes on connected social networks to give you a dynamic news feed.

Later in the year came the XYDO Brief, that ended up being extremely popular and useful. (Update: XYDO Brief is now known as, and can be found at, Curate.Me.) With it you can set up multiple once daily emails that combine selected topics, and if you choose, the stories shared by your contacts on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and LinkedIn. Each of the topics and networks can be given more or less weight in each brief to tailor the email content to your liking. Like the news site, the email's content is put through relevancy, freshness, and social spread algorithms to show you the best content. According to Cameron, the brief produces 40% - 60% open rates with clickthrough rates ranging from 30% to 50%. Any marketer would love to have those numbers!

Today marks the launch (press release) of their newsletter product which should monetize their extensive content curation platform. This endeavor is focused on allowing other businesses to use XYDO's proven content relevancy and ranking system to build content rich white-labeled marketing emails. The months of testing have shown amazing engagement results and a realized value to the subscriber considering an unsubscribe rate of only 2%. The test clients used their own distribution lists as well as ones purchased from third parties to try the newsletter on. The positive results prove that if you send great content people will engage with it.

How does sending an email out with other people's content benefit the business? For one, you become the authoritative figure on the subject which brings along repeat visitors and brand recognition. Your content will make it the readers as well because while building the newsletter you are able to mix in your content. Those articles will drive visitors to your web properties to learn about your business, events, products, and values. The email can have any stories in it you like, but Cameron recommends no more than 2 or 3 that link back to you peppered within.

If you are looking for a new marketing platform or want to spice up your current newsletter XYDO could be your answer. I could even see it being useful to publications like mine. Pricing starts at $250/month and includes robust engagement analytics down to the individual reader. In the future they plan on releasing an API and adding Twitter and Facebook publication capabilities so that your social streams become as relvent and useful as the newsletter. Many case studies, videos, and other information can be found on the site. Sign up for the free 30-day trial and learn more from one of their specialists over the phone.

I believe the consumer products will not be closed down, unlike Techcrunch who said "While some XYDO fans won’t be thrilled with losing its consumer-facing social news platform...". The consumer actions and social data are pivotal in my view for the relevancy provided in the newsletter and closing them down would hurt the business. When I asked Cameron about those he said they "have other plans for our consumer offerings (news.xydo.com, brief.xydo.com, and our forthcoming mobile apps)". Although that is not a definitive answer, I think they will stay active and be further developed.

Below are two videos by the co-founders, Eric Roach and Cameron Brain, from the features page; head over there for more and to learn if this service could be useful for your business. If I sound a bit excited about this launch it is because I am! I don't like boring newsletters and the email brief is has truly been of great value to me. If implemented properly this service will benefit the sender, and more importantly, the recipient.

AOL Stops Work On Project Phoenix

Less than a year ago AOL announced Project Phoenix as their solution to a better email inbox. Today, they have annouce that they are essentially stopping forward progress on the project in favor of something new.

From the AOL Mail Team:

Hey there,

We hope you're enjoying Project Phoenix and that it continues to enrich the way you communicate online.It has certainly been a great experience for the AOL Mail team and your comments and ideas have been really helpful.

Your feedback shows us that Phoenix has resolved a lot of your issues with email. But we believe that we can do more. So, the team went back to the lab and cooked up a new solution that will change your inbox forever.

As we turn our focus to creating this inbox of the future, we are no longer adding new features to the current version of Phoenix and will be removing the Feedback link. Otherwise your account will continue to function as normal.

As early Phoenix adopters, you'll be among the first to try our new offering when it's ready, so keep an eye out for your exclusive invite.

Remember, if you have any problems, you can get first class chat and community support at Phoenix Help.

Enjoy,

Joshua Ramirez
Director, Product Management - AOL Mail

Gmail New User Guide And Tips

Congratulations on making the switch to Gmail! If you have come to this post, but do not have Gmail yet, then sign up today.

Now that you visit Gmail.com every day let's go over some basic functionality and usability tips to make your experience even better. The adjustments can be found in your settings menu which is accessed by click on the gear logo at top right.

1) Inbox - There are five inbox types below to choose from to customize how you see unread and important emails. Ensure you leave the importance markers active and train them to improve the feature.

• Classic - A traditional view of all emails received with the newest on top
• Important first - Groups all the important emails together first, then everything else
• Unread first - All the unread emails, regardless of importance, are grouped together before everything else (I use this one)
• Starred first - All starred emails are shown first with everything after
• Priority inbox - Combines the unread, starred, and important styles together by having three groupings; important and unread, starred, and everything else.

2) Labs - This is how you get Gmail humming! Google tries out many new things here that you can partake in by enabling them. You can always turn them off or launch Gmail without labs in case something doesn't go well. You are not at risk of losing your data and I have never had to launch without labs to fix anything. Read through the entire list to see what they have to offer. Here is what I have on:

• Background Send - Gmail will send your email while you do other things
• Google Calendar gadget - Adds a box to the left which shows your upcoming events
• Google Maps previews in mail - Preview of all the addresses found in your email
• Google Voice player in mail - Play voicemails from Google Voice in Gmail
• Green Robot! - Chat friends with Android show up as robot icons
• Mark as Read Button - Creates a mark as read button that is front and center
• Pictures in chat - See your friends' profile pictures when you chat with them
• Smartlabels - Categorizes incoming Bulk, Notification or Forum messages
• Undo Send - Gives you a few seconds to stop an email after hitting send
• Unread message icon - Shoes your unread message count in your browser's tab (works with Chrome, Firefox, and Opera)
• Preview Pane - Provides a preview pane to read mail right next to your list of conversations

3) Chat - You have probably noticed the chat window to the left; if not, check it out. You can chat with your contacts right in Gmail. If you don't have any contacts yet send me a chat message at dbin78 to try it out. Back to the setting; you will see that you are automatically saving all chat history. I have found this useful on a couple occasions, but some people turn it off because they do not want the chats saved. While you are working with chat go ahead and set it up for making free calls.

4) Themes - With themes you can choose from different colors and layout designs. Some change with the time of day and weather; you can even create your own. My current choice is "Light". Scroll down to the bottom to set/update your location used for a dynamic theme.

5) General - Keyboard shortcuts can help you work faster by letting you complete certain things without your mouse. To receive pop-up notifications for new chats and emails make sure that both Desktop Notifications are on. I recommend uploading a nice headshot for your picture so that your contacts know who you are. Your signature line should be preceded by one blank line so that it is not crowding you when drafting emails. Two graduated labs, default reply and signature tweaks, are now settings on this page. I suggest checking the "Insert this signature before..." box for cleaner sent emails.

6) Labels and Filters are excellent and powerful tools for organizing your email. They can get complex and be a bit advanced; leave them alone for now until you are more comfortable with Gmail. Check out this video tutorial to learn how to use both.

7) Web Clips - You are no longer able to change these (more information).

8) Offline - Offline access is no longer supported from this screen, but you can get it by installing the Gmail Offline Chrome extension.

9) Gmail Search - The box to the right of the Gmail logo (upper left) is for searching your email. This may become your favorite feature!

Enjoy Gmail! If you have any questions please ask them in the comments below.

Email or SMS, Which Will Fall First? Will They?

With Facebook's launch of Facebook Messaging I find myself wondering what the next communication tool will be. Not just a re-envision, but a full fledged new way to communicate. Facebook Messaging (Beluga), Kik, Disco, GroupMe, etc. are all different plays on instant messaging and SMS organized intuitively across many platforms.

Do you consider a service built over, and using, an older service a new service? No; at least I don't. In a way you could end up making things more complex. People may just gravitate back to the underlying (simpler) technology, even if it means having more separate services to use.

That is not to say you can't innovate on, and make, current communication channels more streamlined, simpler, and interconnected. That is the current trend we see today.

Lets look back on the major widely adopted ways to communicate to gain a better perspective:

• Smoke signals
• Mail
• Telephone
• Fax
• Cell phone
• SMS
• Internet
• World Wide Web
• Email
• Instant Messaging
• Social Networking

What do each of these have in common? They are each in use today! It is hard to come up with a new way to communicate, and even harder to eradicate one. Email and SMS will be around for generations to come. They will fall, SMS first, but it will take a long time.

For now I do hope a company comes up with a service that seamlessly merges Email, SMS, and IM that is transparent to the end user. To work it needs to be headed by a non-profit using public protocols that gains massive adoption.

Then again, it may just be easier to come up with a brand new way to communicate.

Preview Pane Now Available In Gmail

Gmail now has my favorite feature from Outlook and Lotus Notes available in Labs. Preview Pane!


To activate it head on over to Labs to enable Preview Pane

Now you will see a drop down box at top right where you can switch between preview and list views

You can adjust the time before a previewed email is marked as read on the General tab in setting

Your inbox will now have the Preview Pane you choose

InboxFever Brings Apps Inside Your Email

InboxFever is a simple idea that can be very useful and powerful. Email is everywhere! It does not matter if you are on a desktop with Windows or Mac, using IE, Chrome, or Firefox, or enjoy being mobile with iOS, Android, or Symbian; you will always have email.

With InboxFever you can tap in to many resources just by using your email. It is the same principle as Google Talk Guru, but with much more usefulness. It could also be used as a safe way to gain information when you are behind a firewall or VPN at work. Below are the email apps available today.

• yelp - yelp@inboxfever.com - Get search results from Yelp by emailing "Location, Search Term" in the subject line

• Google Maps - maps@inboxfever.com - Get directions and maps in your email by putting the locations in your subject line. Use "Boston to Palo Alto" to get directions or just "Boston" to receive a map.

• Get URL - geturl@inboxfever.com - Receive copy of the URL you indicate in the subject line with images, links, etc.

• Mocavo Genealogy Search - search@mocavo.com - Search billions of names for free with Mocavo Genealogy Search. Type the name you are searching or include location for better results, like "Boston, Samuel Adams".

• Stock Quotes - stocks@inboxfever.com - Get stock quotes by sending the ticker symbol in the subject

• To PDF - pdf@inboxfever.com - Convert a Word or Power Point documents to PDF by forwarding the attachment

• InboxFever Apps - apps@inboxfever.com - Search for apps on InboxFever. "All" emails you a full list, or you can search by specific term.

You can sign-up for an account for better statistics and control, but I tried using the service from another email account just by emailing the indicated addresses and it worked. They are working on more apps as well as an API which will allow developers to tap in to the service. I look forward to seeing what else can be done with some news apps. You can follow InboxFever on Twitter and Facebook.

Google+ and Gmail Integration

Gmail's user base is around two hundred million while Google+'s is around ten million. Bringing all those users to G+ will certainly help the new network expand and with the plus bar they are working towards that. The blending these two could make Google in to a communication powerhouse. Below are some of my thoughts on how to do that.

• On a reply or when sending a message (email), have the ability to send to a Circle much like things can be sent to email groups today. I could type "Family Circle" and when I send the "email" the message would post to Google+ to that circle. It should also be possible to direct a message to an individual on to the G+ platform. Any combination should be allowed; I should be able to send one message to one person via a G+ post, to another's email, and to a full circle. (Signature lines and quoted text being replied to should not be allowed when posting to G+.)

• My "from" option in Gmail should have an option to send it from my Google+ account so a reply to my email comes in to G+ as a limited post to me.

• If I choose to send from my Google+ account to a Circle it essentially becomes only a Google+ post; not an email. But, a history of the message/post should be kept in Gmail. Comments on my post would then follow my email notification settings inside G+.

• Add/integrate Google+ profile and profile data to the new area in Gmail, top right, that shows recent interactions and contacts details. The person's profile image, recent posts, and other things could be shown. This could be done for everyone, not just contacts. You could see what circles they are in and also manage the circles right there to be able to add people you do not have in circles or change what circles people are in. When mousing over the sender of an email you have open, it would display a pop up like today, but show this information.

• Gmail could automatically tag emails received from from people you have in your circles with the circle name(s).

• Have the ability to highlight an image, text, or link form an email and click on Share in the +bar. What was highlighted would automatically be pulled in to the share window for fast posting. Similar things can be done from chat to post to G+

• Have the Chat that is inside Gmail show the circle chat friends we see in plus.google.com

My vision is for Google to blur the line between emailing, messaging, and posting into one seamless communication platform.

How To Follow News And Stories Online Without The Overload

With everything I read being online I have had to become very efficient in the way I manage and interact with news and articles. When you replace your local TV news, the national news, magazines, newspapers, trade publications and everything else with the digital world you can quickly become buried in a mountain of unread stories. The number of applications and website claiming to organize all this can add to your anxiety. News is generated from hundreds of sources around the web and going to each one is impossible.

What can you do? The most important things are organization and non-duplication. You do not need to see the same story in three different locations just because the source publishes to all of them. If you follow my blog you should pick the one source that works for you; not all five.

Lets run through the primary tools I use to consume the news:

1) Twitter - This should be used for your breaking news and important resources that are time sensitive. It is best to keep the number of accounts your follow to under 100. Anymore than that you will be missing news because you can not keep up. Don't forget; just because you are not following them on here does not mean you can not follow them somewhere else. If you are following over 100, try to find some of your less urgent sources and track them another way.

2) RSS Feed Reader) - RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and the feed is usually designated by an icon like this . I have found it to be the number one way to read and organize my information intake. You are able to follow major news websites, blogs, and pretty much any website that posts stories and updates. You can even follow news aggregators like Google News so that you do not have to go to the site directly. Just look for the RSS icon at the bottom of the page you are on to find the feed (this is the one for Top Stories). Keep in mind not to subscribe to any sources you already follow on Twitter. Within any reader you can organize your feeds and I suggest you do so to group subjects and interests. Don't be afraid of clicking the "mark all as read" button; if you have over 500 items to read click the button to get a fresh start. The sooner you realize that you can not read everything the happier and less stressed you will be.

3) Facebook - My news here is my friends and family only. If I like pages I hide them from my news feed to avoid information overload as things I like I already read on Twitter or in Google Reader. If you like getting your news here that is fine of course, but don't also follow it on Twitter or subscribe by RSS. If I find a compelling post or article I want to comment on from another source I can go to that page on Facebook to find the story.

4) Email - It can't be beat for daily digest emails and is an excellent way to control what information you get. You can even have some websites email you the stories instead of subscribing via RSS. Depending on the sources email frequency you can use email for urgent or low priority news like opinion articles. One thing I like to do is to get an email every eight hours from Summify. Summify scans my Twitter, RSS, and Facebook accounts to find the most important stories and is a easy way for me to ensure I do not miss important stories.

5) Buzz - I check it once or twice a day for the comments. The Buzz crowd is a insightful and thorough group of commenters. Most of the stories I would have already seen because 99% of the post are imports from Twitter and blog RSS feeds.

Happy reading! Do you consume news and information in a different way? Let everyone know what works for you in the comments section below. I am always trying new applications, extensions, and websites that claim to be able to organize the information better, but I have not been able to find one that improves on what I do above. Have you?

HelloFax Replaces Your Fax Machine And Has Google Drive, Dropbox, And Box Integration

Faxing should be phased out. Until then, HelloFax modernizes and simplifies the technology. We all know what faxing is and how it works and for those of us without a fax machine we wish businesses would embrace email for receiving documents. Even if they did that you would need a way to fill out the form, possibly sign it, and then scan it to be able to email it. Both of these issues are addressed.

HelloFax allows you to upload a digital file and fill out the form and sign it directly from the website. They support the files in the follow formats; doc, docx, pdf, tif, tiff, ppsx, ppt, pptx, tif, tiff, jpg, jpeg, png, xls, xlsx, txt, and gif.

The interface is simple. After uploading you can add text in any location. This allows you to fill out any form and even add additional notes as you see fit. For the signature you can create it with your mouse or touchpad. If you have trouble doing that, as I do, you can sign a piece of paper to take a picture and upload the photo. You can adjust the contrast and the signature gets added in a way that it looks like you signed directly on the paper; it does not look like a picture is pasted on a form. The signature can be saved for future use.

A cover page is there if you want to use one and it automatically determines how many pages you are faxing. A big plus is my book is that they do not modify the document being faxed or send additional pages to advertise their service. The cover page does say "powered by hellofax.com" which is fine, especially since you do not need to use the cover page option.

Instead of faxing you can email your document. I love this as a cloud computing solution to completing and signing forms and not needing a scanner. They allow you to send 20 pages free with no limit on email; no credit card required on signup. I need to use a fax machine once or twice a year so this limit is not an issue. If you need to use it more and require an incoming fax number you can purchase one of their plans.

I heard about the service before, but first used it a couple days ago and was very impressed with how easy it was to use. You can check your account for the status of the fax you sent to make sure it went through and a copy, inclusive of the cover page, is emailed to you for your records. Give virtual faxing a try by going to HelloFax.com.

Update August 3, 2011 - HelloFax has integrated with Dropbox so that all your faxes, documents, and signed emails are automatically saved.

Update February 2, 2012 - Integration has been expanded for Dropbox, and added for Box, to allow you to fax any document directly from your cloud storage account. In addition, you can now import your contacts from Yahoo! and Gmail.

Update April 24, 2012 - HelloFax can now send faxes directly from Google Drive. Simply set up your account and install the Google Chrome extension. The tight integration will store your incoming, as well as outgoing, faxes in a folder for safe keeping. They are offering great perks in celebration of the new functionality! Once you integrate you will get 50 faxes per month in 2012 and unlimited digital signatures until the end of the year as well as a chance to win a MacBook and 1 TB of Google Drive space.

Another Reason To Love Google

Tape backups! That's right, those cassette type things you used to backup your business and some homes with in the 90's. Google backs up their Gmail (and probably more) with this physical offline media.

Sit back for a moment and consider the logistics, the scale, planning, organization, etc. It is truly astonishing. This amazing feat paid off when Google lost some users' email across multiple backups in several data center locations.

Thank you Google for restoring our emails!

AOL Mail Project Phoenix Introduction and Tour (in images)

More information:
http://phoenix.aol.com
http://help.aol.com/help/product/project_phoenix
http://phoenixfeedback.aol.com/forums/79237-ideas
http://corp.aol.com/2010/11/14/aol-disrupts-the-inbox-with-project-phoenix-by-aol-mail