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Tray.io - powerful email assistant

tray.io

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Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#51
post #42
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically allowing a 3rd-party to read your email. 4th party. Most of their target audience is probably on GMail and has no privacy concerns to begin with.

Fair point. I don't disagree. It just bothers me to see how what little privacy we have left continues to erode.

I don't see an architectural alternative for such services yet. You'd need a client side app sandbox which allows servers to schedule routines to run locally on secret data, without leaking back data which the server can decrypt. It would also need to be cross-platform and have the same user accessibility as the web browser.

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#52
post #46
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically allowing a 3rd-party to read your email. 4th party. Most of their target audience is probably on GMail and has no privacy concerns to begin with.

Isn't Gmail a second party? If so, they are a third party.

Second party are the people with whom you're interacting, that is, the people you send emails to.

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I don't disagree. It just bothers me to see how what little privacy we have left continues to erode.

I don't see an architectural alternative for such services yet. You'd need a client side app sandbox which allows servers to schedule routines to run locally on secret data, without leaking back data which the server can decrypt. It would also need to be cross-platform and have the same user accessibility as the web browser.

You'd need a client side app sandbox [...]

Or you could use, you know, a native client. It may increasingly become a foreign concept to the "facebook generation" but your computer is still fully capable of running a mail client on its own.

Of course you don't get to sell SaaS-subscriptions when you implement tray.io as a procmail GUI...

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#54
post #49

I'd add type="email" to your input to make it easier to sign up on mobiles.

Great heads up - we'll do this. Thank you

Actually, it might be just me, but I find this incredibly annoying. I use swift-text on android and while usually when I start typing my email address I get a suggestion for my long email address, but when type=email I don't get a suggestion, just a little @ key at the bottom. Might not be this way for all keyboards though. Just a thought.

Edit: Oh and great job on the app! I think this is an awesome idea and if some of the privacy and longevity concerns were addressed, I would use it all the time!

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#55
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see an architectural alternative for such services yet. You'd need a client side app sandbox which allows servers to schedule routines to run locally on secret data, without leaking back data which the server can decrypt. It would also need to be cross-platform and have the same user accessibility as the web browser.

You'd need a client side app sandbox [...] Or you could use, you know, a native client. It may increasingly become a foreign concept to the "facebook generation" but your computer is still fully capable of running a mail client on its own. Of course you don't get to sell SaaS-subscriptions when you implement tray.io as a procmail GUI...

+1 for procmail and having the sense about you to manage these things yourself rather than trading your privacy for a bit of convenience.

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#56

Their pitch stole the show on a recent TWIST. http://youtu.be/W_6h8XWfUO8?t=57m23s I was recently asking people for a way to translate emails into SMSs, so I could route my system alerts (from various places) to a single email and ensure I always get by SMS. It's a surprisingly hard problem right now, which Tray looks like it would solve elegantly if they get SMS right.

You could use http://zapier.com for that:

  1) set up a Zapier mailbox as the trigger, send direct or forward to.
  2) set up an SMS (or Gtalk or whatever) action.
We let you set up filters which you can use to control flow or routing. I even set up an easy template for this: https://zapier.com/zapbook/mailbox/sms/2424/inbound-mailbox-...

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#57
For those who don't like 3rd parties looking into mail and only have IMAP access to mail server, there is something called imapfilter. Basically, it acts as a headless e-mail client with Lua interface.

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#58

Please figure how to do this for exchange. Then proceed to take over world.

Some later versions of Exchange have a SOAP API ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/exchange/dd877045(v=... ). I wrote this npm module to grab a user's current emails: https://npmjs.org/package/exchanger .

Would probably be better to use IMAP for this. Then it will work for Exchange systems, GMail, and nearly every other mail system out there.

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#59
post #26

What is the typical number of rules someone has to write if they get, say, 100 emails per day from any combination of 1000 contacts? If you have 100 common contacts (as opposed to the other 900 who email once and a while) and I need, say, a rule or two for each to cover the basics... and a rule or two to cover groups of people (because one-to-one emails are the exception in business not the rule)... isn't that hundre…

It really depends on how you manage your inbox, one of the drivers behind us building Tray was the customisation it offers. The triggers that define the rules can cover as many or as few contacts as you wish ie 'anyone I have a meeting with in the next 48 hrs' can be a trigger, or simply based on email content, pre-defined contact groups etc. In most cases this is a handful of rules. Email rules that are setup within…

I can't decide whether to focus on the interesting aspects/potential of your tool, or the fact that you circumvented the concern I presented, but thanks for the answer nonetheless.

The ease of this tool is inversely related to the need for it. i.e. — the more complex/high volume your inbox, the more you suffer while trying to set it up.

Maybe it would be worth implementing some "starter rules" or a "wizard" that allows the first-timer to leverage many basic rules at once, immediately.

It's the Pinterest approach, if you will. :) "Pick 5 things you like" and then they auto-follow 50 people based on your choices. Voilá! Good first experience.

Remember that features ≠ power ≠ satisfaction.

I apologize for the unsolicited suggestions; you hit my area of interest right in the middle. ;) Good luck with everything and congrats on getting to the alpha in the first place!

Re: Tray.io - powerful email assistant

#60
post #42
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically allowing a 3rd-party to read your email. 4th party. Most of their target audience is probably on GMail and has no privacy concerns to begin with.

Fair point. I don't disagree. It just bothers me to see how what little privacy we have left continues to erode.

I can't say you're wrong about privacy eroding but at the same time we always have a choice. If this service offers enough value then I'll choose to deal with the privacy intrusion because that's what I'm comfortable with. I'm trading a bit of privacy for the value the service offers. I can live without the service if I value my privacy more. If one really wants a service like this and there isn't another way to get what they offer without sacrificing privacy then the only options are to go without it or trade in privacy.

When you sign up for an account on most sites it's implied that you're giving up some bit of privacy for the convenience of having someone else handle your data. The alternative is building and maintaining your own system which isn't always realistic and the vast majority of people on earth cant do it.

I get that privacy is important to a lot of people and that the fact that sometimes protecting your privacy means making things difficult for yourself but I don't know if there's any way around it (actually, I don't believe there is). For example, some people Who are very concerned with privacy refuse to use Facebook and because of this they are missing out on connecting with friends, colleagues, and even potential customers because those people rely on Facebook so heavily to communicate. I've seen the people who are left out in the cold because of this then become even more vocal about privacy issues (not saying you're one of them, just in general) but in the end we all still have a choice.

Choosing to protect your privacy these days means potentially sacrificing a lot more in its place. Some people argue that this fact proves that we don't have a choice but I disagree. We may not like the consequences but the choice still exists.

Personally I'm all about privacy but not to the point of blocking cookies or other tracking on websites or avoiding services because they can potentially see my data. I think at a certain point you either have to trust that nothing is likely to go wrong by simply using a service or just not use it. I mean, there's always the risk that your personal information may fall into the wrong hands but that's life - its risk. You just have to be smart and/or realistic about it. I'll accept the risk I take storing my payment information with Amazon and I'll accept the risk of having some information willingly stored in Google's services and even be tracked by Analytics. I'll be more cautious with the risk of letting a new service like tray.io potentially reading my emails.

I don't think there's a way to offer a service like this without giving up some privacy. Do you know of a way to alleviate privacy concerns while still offering the kinds of services that, as you rightly point out, erode our privacy? The person who comes up with that could definitely profit!

Please believe me when I say I get your concern. I'm just kind of a weirdo around here. I don't hold many strong positions one way or the other on most issues. I tend to be in the center on most things. I'm a very moderate HNer which I feel is unusual but I'm definitely glad there are people like you who lean more toward either end of the spectrum instead of being in the middle on a given issue. It may turn out that my nonchalant attitude towards privacy will bite people like me one day and people like you will be there to change things (and say "I told you so" :)).

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