Boxbe Blog

Ok, I admit it. We love the Google around Boxbe HQ. Here’s our latest collection of Gmail tips from around the web. Sit back, relax and let the knowledge flow in.

Hack Attack: Back up your Google Apps data - Lifehacker
The power outage that took out a lot of our favorite sites on Tuesday (Craigslist, Netflix, Vox, LiveJournal and others), serves as a little reminder to all of us that putting all of our data in the cloud doesn’t preclude you from backing up those files. While Google wasn’t one of the sites that went down, there are a number of reasons to have backups of your most important work.

How do I create a mail merge in Gmail? - Ask MetaFilter
The Ask Metafilter gang pile on the answers to mailing a lot of people in Gmail.

Hack Attack: Become a Gmail master - Lifehacker
Lifehacker writer Adam Pash has put together a nice hefty post (with video) to take you from n00b to l33t Gmail user. He covers labels, filters, keyboard shortcuts and a lot more.

Top Ten Gmail Tweaks - Trendplex
Steven Price over on Trendplex goes crazy with Greasemonkey and Firefox. The post details out his favorite tweaks to Gmail including macros, colors, Gcal and more.

Now here’s a company after my own heart.

Last week, Greendimes landed $20 million in venture capital funding to expand their business.

Greendimes claims to be able to reduce junk mail landing in your snail mail box by 90%. They contact credit card, catalog and other direct mailers on your behalf to get them to stop sending you unwanted mail.

I haven’t signed up for the service yet, but I can tell you that if it works, at $36 a year, it’s probably worth it. I posted a series about reclaiming your physical mailbox back in March. My attempts to decrease junk mail at home have been only somewhat successful and I’ve spent many hours on the phone and filling out forms. While it does seem like I’m receiving less mail overall, it certainly hasn’t stopped altogether.

Having someone like Greendimes watching your back might be just the trick.

Others talking about Greendimes
GigaOm
Earth2Tech
Brian Berliner

Check out their blog for other green tips.

We’re big fans of the Firefox Better Gmail plugin Gina and the gang at Lifehacker have been working on. The Better Gmail plugin cleans up Gmail’s interface, adds functionality and makes Gmail more adaptable to your individual needs.

The “official” 1.0 release dropped today and adds the following new features:

• Nested folders
• Tools menu direct access
• Google Apps compatibility

I’m particularly stoked as a Google Apps user to get functionality spread to my domain as well.

Congrats, Lifehacker, on your 1.0 release.

Read more

We haven’t had too many email tips of late, but the blogosphere has plenty to hand out. I’ve collected some of the best.

How to Use Gmail over IMAP - Download Squad
It’s a bit tricky, but nevertheless, David Chartier over at Download Squad has instructions on how to set up Gmail to work over IMAP. Now, you will need another IMAP account somewhere else to make this work, but hey, if you love IMAP and Gmail, these are two great tastes that taste… well, you know.

How to write a 5 sentence email - Guy Kawasaki
Now, you know we love Guy Kawasaki and all his great advice so when he talks about the ten things you should learn in school, we take note. Number nine in particular caught my eye (and Merlin Mann, too), which was “How to write a five-sentence email.”

One final geek tip for today.

Move Outlook email to Mail.app - MacOSXHints.com
Any switchers out there? I know I’ve had to move email from Outlook to the Mac in the past and let me tell you, it’s not easy. If you’re handy with the Terminal, this tip is for you.

photo by Flickr user Nrbelex

Should your ISP be able to determine what email lands in your inbox? We don’t think so and neither does Slashdot.

Two recent posts by Bennett Haselton on Slashdot illustrate the problems with the approach that Goodmail and Hotmail have for certifying senders. Bennett’s take is that if you are the little email list owner, small time email marketer or have the wrong political views, you could be shut out of this brave new world of pay-per-email. Most of the little guys can’t or won’t pay fees to be “certified” by either company.

Who do you trust?

As someone who uses email to manage both my personal and business life, the question I have to ask myself is, “Can I trust my ISP to make decisions for me about who can reach me?” Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question. I do believe that they want to decrease the amount of spam their users receive, but I think this is the wrong way to do it.

Boxbe differs from both Hotmail and Goodmail in two fundamental ways. With Hotmail and Goodmail, the money collected goes to your ISP and they alone determine who can circumvent their spam filter. With Boxbe, the bulk of the money goes to the person who receives the email, and it’s the same person that ultimately controls who reaches their inbox.

Conflict of interest

From a business perspective, Goodmail must seem like a great idea. If someone came along and said, “Hey, we can curb your spam problem and you can make money while you’re doing it,” I could see how it might be hard to say no. But at some point that misalignment of interests is going to play itself out.

The EFF put it best with its position on Goodmail and the whole notion of pay-per-email:

Goodmail reduces the incentive for ISPs to improve spam filters, much less to give end users more control of the filters. It increases the incentives for ISPs to overblock, since they make money when more senders sign up for Goodmail.

Bottom line: they decide who can send you email while at the same time they solicit “protection money” from senders willing to pay.

How Boxbe fits in

So, we’ve got a different philosophy about how this should work. If you’re a Boxbe member, you know we don’t think that payment to bypass a spam filter is a bad thing. It’s our raison d’être.

We believe people should have choices in who they receive email from. More importantly, we believe if money is going to change hands to reach you, you should get most of it. It’s your inbox, you decide who you can trust.

image from Flickr user srish

Today Google acquired anti-spam and security company Postini. Postini offers a host of services for businesses around communications security, but the reason I mention them is they are best known for their hosted anti-spam solution. Sound familiar?

According to the Google blog, Google acquired Postini as Google Apps “needed a more complete way to address these information security and compliance issues in order to better support the enterprise community.”

VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall quotes Google’s Eric Schmidt saying “With the addition of Postini, our apps are not just simple and appealing to users — they can also streamline the complex information security mandates within these organizations.”

More specifically, Bill Burnham thinks that this is a pretty clear signal that Google is going after Microsoft’s Exchange business.

What does Postini do for Google’s bottom line? Om Malik on GigaOm believes that Google’s acquisitions are mirroring Cisco’s “buy and grow” strategy that built them into the networking giant they are today.

Finally, Fred Wilson (aka “A VC”) commented today on what Google ought to do with Postini post acquisition.

1 - allow me to search my quarantined mail…
2 - figure out how to stop grabbing verification emails…
3 - let me manage my quarantined mail in the gmail interface…
4 - let me see the reputation of the sender in the quarantined mailbox…

Thankfully, we’ve got Fred covered on 3 of his 4 requests (and we’ll have #3 for Yahoo! Mail soon).

Congrats to Postini on the acquisition.

More coverage of the Postini and Google announcement:

SearchEngineLand
Huffington Post
alarm clock

Web 2.0 video interviewer extraordinaire, Eddie Codel spent the afternoon in Boxbe offices two weeks ago talking to Thede Loder, Boxbe CEO about our service. Thede explains the ins and outs of Boxbe and gives Eddie the low down on what we’re all about.

Click below to watch the video.