Boxbe Blog

Happy 10th birthday Yahoo! Mail and thanks for the presents. Yesterday, Yahoo! Mail announced that starting in May, it will be rolling out email accounts with unlimited storage to all users.

To put “unlimited” email into perspective, when Yahoo! Mail (initially RocketMail) started, they gave users 2 megabytes of email. Before yesterday’s announcement, they offered premium subscribers 2 gigabytes of email, a thousand fold increase. Unlimited storage, well, is a lot bigger :-).

While we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about our friends over at Google, unlimited storage definitely trumps Gmail’s 2 gigs. This is no small feature from our friends at Yahoo!

Congrats Yahoo! Mail (and happy birthday)!

Read [via TechCrunch]

Our mention in the Economist and recent Gmail integration stirred up the blogosphere a bit. Here are a few of the reactions.

Working the Crowd - IT for Financial Services @ BC
“Instead of using filters, Boxbe has developed software that essentially acts like a “toll booth”"

Monetizing the Attention Economy - Madisonian.net
“…technologies enables the user to capture some of the value now “appropriated” by marketers and advertisers competing for their attention, and “free-riding” off of their attention data.”

Daily Round Up - Crowdsourcing
“Will only people who have something valuable to say make the effort to send a message to you?”

Another cool feature from Boxbe - Ronnie’s Tech Blog
“Boxbe is on a roll lately! They now have the ability to filter your Gmail account.”

Thanks everyone for your comments!

Gratuitous kitten photo by fofurasfelinas

Continuing on off of our announcement earlier this week, we’re busy making Gmail our email nerve center. Gmail recently released the ability to download your POP email into Gmail. If you like Gmail like we do, this is a great way to make Gmail your email communications HQ.

Before you get started, you should have your outside account information handy to add into Gmail.

Here’s how you set it up:

Click on Settings in the upper right corner of Gmail.

Click on the Accounts tab

Within the Accounts tab, click Add another email address.

Enter your non-Gmail address:

Now, if you are using another major email provider, like Yahoo!, Gmail will auto-fill some of the options for you.

Otherwise, enter in the relevant data. You should be able to get this from your email provider’s website.

Applying a label as new messages come in is a good way to keep track of messages from different accounts.

To finish, click Add Account.

Gmail allows you to add up to 5 email accounts so, if you have several accounts, Gmail might be a good way to consolidate email into one central location.

One of the many strengths of Google’s Gmail service is the ability to access most functions without touching the mouse. Now, I’m a WIMP interface kind of guy, whereas company CEO Thede might be using the Unix mail application. Fortunately, Gmail has us both covered.

Navigating

/ = Search
k = Move to a newer conversation
j = Move to an older conversation
o or Enter - Opens message
x - selects message for another action (starring, printing, etc)
s - Stars a message
Tab - Navigates down relevant fields
Shift Tab - Navigates up relevant fields

Reading

u - Returns to the message list
m - Mutes messages - Archives conversations and auto-archives all messages in the same conversation.
y - Archives messages
! - Report spam
y then o - Archives the message then goes to the next one.

Writing

c = Compose new message
r = Reply to message
a = Reply to all
f = Forward a message
Tab then Enter - Sends composed message
Control + s - Saves a draft

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts
One page print view [PDF]

[Editor's Note: While this method of filtering still works for integrating Boxbe and Gmail together, we've improved the process. Take a look at this post for further instructions.]
Updated: Friday, May 11, 2007

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned that Boxbe is here to enhance your email, not replace it.

Boxbe can optimize your Gmail account to receive the messages you truly want to receive.

Assuming you have already added your Gmail ‘contacts’ and verified your Gmail account, here’s how to use Boxbe to screen email arriving in your Gmail account.

(more…)

Just in time for the weekend - we’ve made some enhancements that y’all had been asking for.

Message Preferences

Under message preferences, we’ve made a couple of tweaks:

First, you can now disable the header information on forwarded messages when either the sender is pre-approved, or the message was manually forwarded from your quarantine.

Second, you can choose whether forwarded messages are sent from “forward@boxbe.com” or the original sender’s address. This should make it easier to sort messages in your inbox.

Domain Approval

To make domain approval a little bit easier, any mail sent from sub-domains will be subject to the policy of the top-level domain (unless a specific entry exists for the sub-domain). For instance, mail sent from “bounces.amazon.com” will be subject to the policy for “amazon.com.”

Approval List Search

We know your approval list is long (I’ve got 500 senders approved myself) and finding who’s on your list and who’s not can be hard. Senders in your approved list can now be searched by name in addition to email address.

Gratuitous puppy photo by mcsixth

Do you get too much (snail) mail? I do. If you would like to receive less mail, I’ve collected a few ways that can help you decrease the amount of postal mail you receive.

Unsolicited Mail

The Direct Marketing Association of America has set up a service that for $1, they will add your name and address to their “Mail Preference Service.” What does your $1 get you? The site claims that it “will substantially decrease the amount of national advertising mail you receive,” but “not all commercial mail will stop.” It does take a 30-90 days for this service to become effective, but it sounds like a good way to cut back on marketing messages being delivered to your home.

Catalogs

If you’re like me, you receive a number of catalogs in the mail every month. If you have conducted business with any of the catalogs you receive, the above DMA Mail Preference Service may not decrease the number of catalogs you receive.

To remove yourself from catalog mail lists, you’ll probably have to call the catalog company directly, as through my research, their doesn’t seem to be any quick, free way to do this online. To speed the process along, make sure that you have your customer number with you. Customer numbers are near the mailing address on the front or back of the catalog.

Services

I’ve found two services (41 Pounds and Green Dimes) that claim to do all the work for you. I’ve not used them, but using a service might be easier than what I’ve suggested.

Last, here are a couple links with more detailed information about how to shut off specific kinds of postal mail you might not want.

• How to Get Less Junk Mail - CPSR
• Do-it-yourself - Stop junk mail, email and phone calls

I’ve used a few of these techniques personally so I’ll report back as I start to see results. I’m curious to hear if about any other tips you might have. If you have other tips, please share them below.

photo by Flickr user Casey Serin

In a previous post, we talked about how much time it takes to get rid of unwanted mail. Unlike email marketing, direct marketing via postal mail is expensive as they have printing and postage costs.

Email marketers still have to pay to acquire a list of email addresses and to design the email, but largely, the cost of email marketing is carried by the recipients (READ: you and me) in evaluating that email’s value. By charging marketers for your time, many marketers will refine the messages that they send.

But what makes us think marketers will pay? We think they will pay for your attention because they already do.

US Postal Service

I get a lot of mail in my (snail mail) mailbox every day. Usually, our small mailbox is stuffed full of mail. And most of that mail I didn’t request.

Typically, I get 3 kinds of unwanted mail:

• Grocery store inserts
• Catalogs
• Letters/Fliers

I was curious about how much marketers spend to reach me, so I started doing a little research online. Poking around a bit on the USPS website, I discovered their rate calculator for sending commercial mail. They divide commercial mail into several categories.

Standard Mail

Standard mail is the mail that doesn’t seem like mail at all. Standard mail is typically composed of loose fliers from grocery and other local stores, letters sent to “Resident” or any piece of mail that you receive that isn’t addressed to a person. Standard mail is big business for the USPS as it made up almost half of their revenue last year.

Using the USPS’ handy bulk postage calculator, I determined that it costs about $.16 for a 1.7 oz grocery store flyer via standard mail. Naturally, this doesn’t include printing costs, so this isn’t a total cost, but it is a good basis to work from.

Standard mail indiscriminately targets neighborhoods, cities and regions and isn’t targeted beyond the geographic boundaries.

Catalogs

By comparison to standard mail, catalogs are very expensive. By using the same calculator, I calculated my recently received catalogs of 6, 10 and 14 oz in weight, cost $.44, $.51 and $.57 respectively to send. Again, this doesn’t include printing, but where the grocery store flyer was printed on newsprint and unbound, the catalog from the furniture store was printed on high quality glossy paper, which is substantially more expensive.

Catalogs are more targeted, so in theory, the recipient might buy more from that retailer.

So, how much are you worth?

So, what does all this mean? By calculating one cost, bulk rates for direct mail marketing, we’ve established that marketers are willing to pay to get some of your attention. From my own non-scientific study of my mailbox, those marketers are paying somewhere in between $.16 and $.57 for each piece of mail sent.

While we aren’t planning on opening a direct mail division any time soon, we think some of that money ought to be going to you.

We’ve crossed the Atlantic with our latest press mention. In this quarter’s technology supplement, the Economist mentioned Boxbe in an article about new businesses that enable users to control their personal data.

“[Boxbe] sets out to address the problem of junk e-mail. Rather than using blacklists and using blacklists and filters to stop unwanted messages reaching their in-boxes, why not charge advertisers for permission to send promotional messages? That is the philosophy behind Boxbe for its “negotiated email delivery” service. It works rather like an automatic tollbooth between the internet and your in-box, deciding which traffic to let through, and how much to charge.”

If you are a subscriber to the Economist, you can read the whole article online here.

I’ll be representing Boxbe in Austin, TX for the annual SXSW Conference today through next Tuesday.

I would love to meet up if you want to learn more about how to get rid of your unwanted email or if you have any questions, complaints, concerns, or praise for Boxbe. Give me a shout while we’re all in Austin - randy@boxbe.com.

Tags - SXSW, SXSWi, SXSW2007

We’ve talked about the cost of unwanted email in previous posts, but what about unwanted paper or snail mail?

US Postal Service

In a given week, it’s safe to say that my household receives at least 3-5 credit card offers, 5 catalogs, 4 or 5 grocery fliers and scads of other mail that we never asked for. A very small percentage of the stack of mail is something that I either asked for or actually care about.

I know that I’m not alone in this. The US Postal Service, in their 2006 annual report, states that they send over 102 billion pieces of “Standard Mail” each year. Standard mail, by the way, is composed of loose fliers from grocery and other local stores, letters sent to “Resident” or any piece of mail that you receive that isn’t addressed to someone.

This number doesn’t include the 90 billion pieces of first class mail that is sent each year. First class mail is the regular addressed messages that you receive which could include hand written notes from your aunt or pictures of your 3 year old niece. Sadly, I don’t receive many of those kinds of messages, so most first class mail is unrequested as well.

The cost of uninvited mail

Unlike email, most postal mail must be closely inspected before you dispose of it. The dozens of credit card and mortgage offers I receive monthly contain sensitive information about me or my family. That information offers up an opportunity for identity theft. All of these messages need to be shredded. G

In a previous post about the cost to my time, I established some figures for the wages of the average American, I spend another 5 minutes a day disposing of postal mail and another 15 minutes a week at the shredder.

$18.50 an hour x 21 hours per year = $388.50.  

plus

15 minutes a week x 52 weeks * $18.50 = $240

Added together, unwanted mail costs you about $628 or 34 hours per year in lost time. Ouch.

Identity Theft?

Now, you could argue that I’m overly paranoid when it comes to shredding financial documents, but the cost of having your identity stolen is considerably higher. According to a study by the Identity Theft Resource Center, it takes on average about 330 hours to recover from identity theft.

330 hours x $18.50 = $6,105

There are about 10 million victims of identity theft per year in the US and according to the U.S. Department of Justice Statistics, identity theft is now passing up drug trafficking as the number one crime in the nation.

Long story short, buy a shredder folks.

What’s next?

I’ve looked at the costs of unwanted mail for individuals, but what about the companies that send it? Finally, I’ll end with some tips on how to lower the amount of unwanted mail you receive and help regain some of the your lost time and productivity.

photo by Flickr user MrBG

Here are a few productivity tips from the web to help you be more productive this week.

Speed up Mail.app (Mac OS X)
Hawk Wings describes a quick trick to slim down Mail.app’s SQLite database and getting a snappier email client as a result.

Send Gmail to your cell phone
Ben Murphy describes a great way to send email selectively to any cell phone (hopefully, your own). Not quite a Blackberry, but great for getting important messages on the go. [via Lifehacker]

Turn Gmail into your personal nerve center
Does anyone just use it for email anymore? Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion documents 5 ways to make Gmail the center of your productivity universe including:

1. How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database
2. How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
3. How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
4. How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal + GTalk + iMified)
5. How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)

Hope you had a great weekend. Now, get back to work! :-)

The personal access price is one of the key technologies we use to help people remove unwanted and unsolicited email. Effectively, it puts a price tag on your attention. Senders who are not pre-approved must either take a short test or pay a small fee to reach you.

When Boxbe collects a fee, we share with you the amount you specify. You can donate the funds you collect to a charity of your choice (we make it easy), or keep them for your own use.

Personal Access Price

So, why a personal access price? There are a lot of solutions out there for refining the contents of your inbox. Most solutions center around spam detection and removal. But spam detection doesn’t really work if your goal is to eliminate unwanted email.

Besides the obvious arms race between spammers and anti-spam tools, we believe that the actual definition of spam is a personal one. To me, spam is unwanted email. Unwanted email is any email that didn’t add some value to my day. Rather, those emails cost me something, my time.

People ask, aren’t you just another spam solution? In short, no. Boxbe makes it easier to receive valuable emails and decrease the emails you don’t want to receive. As a result, a delightful side effect of our service is spam removal.

Your time, your money

In the end, we’re trying enable people to take more control of their attention. Like Tivo and the iPod, we want you to have choices about how you spend your time. Life is too short to be dealing with unwanted email.

Boxbe helps you trade (and be compensated for) your time and attention. Your attention is valuable to advertisers if an offer you read influences what you or someone else later buys. If reading an offer makes you just slightly more likely to make or recommend a purchase, it may be worthwhile to send, even if an advertiser must pay.

We have more information about the personal access price in the FAQ.

By now, you know how the Boxbe system works. Sign up for a protected email address and only people that pay, prove they are human or you pre-approve get through to you. But what does it look like to the sender?

Pre-Approval

Setting up your pre-approval list is important to ensure people that you know and trust can still email you. The easiest way to do this is to upload your address book. We’ve made uploading your address book easy.

Non-Approved Senders

When you receive an email from someone you don’t know, an email is sent to the sender.

The email says the following:

Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

The message you sent to randy@boxbe.com was not delivered.

randy@boxbe.com uses Boxbe to limit inbox access. You
are not pre-approved to deliver from randy_stewart@yahoo.com
and your message has been placed in a quarantine.

To complete delivery
——————–

Authenticate your message (click on link):
https://www.boxbe.com/crs/test?sender=sendersemail%40yahoo.com
&recipient=randy&40boxbe.com&qmlid=100100410780111986
&subject=Hi%20there

Pay a refundable(*) fee of USD $0.15 (click on link):
https://www.boxbe.com/ama/post_payment?sender=sendersemail%
40yahoo.com&recipient=randy%40boxbe.com
&qmlid=100100410780111986&subject=Hi%20there

(*) randy@boxbe.com has the choice to grant a refund.

About Boxbe
———–
Boxbe is a communications marketplace built on top of today’s
email. By using a price as a screen and letting you share your
interests, Boxbe helps you get the messages you want and
avoid the ones you don’t. Friends continue to reach you for free.

Get a cleaner, more useful inbox.
Join Boxbe today! Visit http://www.boxbe.com/

They can take a test to prove they are human or post a bond that you set. If you have allowed senders to take a test, your new friend will get a screen that looks like this:

[Click for full size image]

If not, they will be required to join and post the bond you have set.

[Click for full size image]

Setting the bond low will ensure that people won’t mind risking a few cents. This will, however, deter emails that you aren’t likely to want.