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Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

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41–50 of 135 posts

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#41
post #39

I'll be blunt: Anything that promises me a "more enjoyable" inbox, and then advertises with cat pictures and what-do-we-do-for-lunch threads is missing the mark for me. I don't want more fluff in my inbox. I especially don't want anything that helps people "email faster". It's not productive, it just makes more noise. E-mail is a medium for half-baked thoughts quickly dashed off to put them on somebody else's plate.…

Keep in mind that the alternative to sending an email is not sending nothing... it's usually to send a text, or a Slack message, or something else that is even less thought through. We try to consolidate all of your communications in one place and give you the tools to write thoughtful things.

Don't be confused by the fun examples. Everyone likes cats (those are my actual cats) so we put them in the post, but you certainly can send more important emails :)

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#42

From the article: > Inbox Zero might be impractical every day, but Inbox Organized happens without breaking a sweat. My experience is the absolute opposite. Organising mails is a strange game, and the only winning move is not to play. I get the information out of the emails as soon as I can, and put it into a system that is actually manageable. GTD had it right from the start. Thank you David Allen. You want harsh fe…

I’ve been keeping my inbox perfectly organized for years, and it is my todo list.

If I want to add an item that didn’t originate from a third-party email, I email myself.

A pin/star means it’s waiting for me to be done. No pin/star means it came in but I haven’t assessed it yet, these tend to be on top.

I get email notices for voicemail so it’s a central funnel.

I extensively use filters/labels to keep automated mail out of my main inbox. I aggressively unsubscribe from anything non-essential.

Everyone has their own preferences but this works great for me.

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#44
Just as one data point, this looks great but there is no way I could use a web mail client for security reasons (as a security consultant, we use PGP a lot and need a local email provider). In the comments I see it only works with Google servers to boot. I'm not sure if this will ever be for me as well, but I'd love something like paying a small fee for a version of Thunderbird with one or more of these features patched in.

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#45

From the article: > Inbox Zero might be impractical every day, but Inbox Organized happens without breaking a sweat. My experience is the absolute opposite. Organising mails is a strange game, and the only winning move is not to play. I get the information out of the emails as soon as I can, and put it into a system that is actually manageable. GTD had it right from the start. Thank you David Allen. You want harsh fe…

I've been using Shortwave in Alpha for about five months and I think you're reacting far too strongly to one line in the blog post. The product does a bunch of things that encourage an Inbox-zero workflow. Emails are organized as a to-do list, and the archive feature is way more prominent than in Gmail, so the most natural workflow is to go down your inbox and check things off. Most of the organization described happens automatically. And the organization helps getting to zero - all of the confluence notifications I get, for instance, are grouped in a single thread and I can scan and archive them quickly.

I get to inbox zero 2-3 times a week, and that wasn't happening before when I was using the Gmail client.

> I need systems that make it easy to extract the relevant informations from them, and put the result in one central organized place for action, and another one for archive. A system that filters noise, and get me in control. That's it.

Yes! In my experience Shortwave is better at this than the client I was using previously. I think it actually addresses some of your issues with email.

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#47
post #43

I would be really interested in this if it had a focus mode, that hides e-mails and delivers them to me in batches. I loved Tempo[1], but unfortunately they ran out of money, which shows how tough this space is. [1]: https://www.yourtempo.co

Shortwaver here! We've had a few former tempo users switch over to Shortwave and are enjoying the product. We have a few features with bundles that we really want to build that would allow you to replicate a Tempo like workflow of triaging your email in batches.

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#48
I must say I loved it. In 10min I cleared my inbox which I was postponing for a few weeks.

I actually love that this is tied to Gmail. The integration means I can move back at any time by just deleting my shortwave account so it's very low risk for me. Also it's top notch, it imported all my aliases and signatures.

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#49
post #44

Just as one data point, this looks great but there is no way I could use a web mail client for security reasons (as a security consultant, we use PGP a lot and need a local email provider). In the comments I see it only works with Google servers to boot. I'm not sure if this will ever be for me as well, but I'd love something like paying a small fee for a version of Thunderbird with one or more of these features patc…

Shortwave cofounder here. We totally get that. Gmail is just the start for us. We plan to support more providers in the future and even become our own provider long-term. Read more about our company mission on our blog [1].

[1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/future-of-messaging/

Re: Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox

#50

It seems like an absolutely critical flaw to build a business entirely dependent on another company's proprietary service, which also is technically a competitor.

Shortwaver here! There are a number of other companies that have started out exclusively on Gmail like us. It's also a risk to stand up a new SMTP service while trying to stay off SMTP blacklists, greylists, and keeping mail out of spam filters. Building on Gmail has allowed us to prove out our product market fit more quickly without spending as much time on getting these deliverability issues solved. However, in the future we'd love to have our own SMTP service as an option in addition to Gmail.
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