Category Archives: E-mail Management

Inky E-mail is an Attractive New E-mail Client

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Posted in E-mail Management, Macintosh, Windows and tagged , ,

Microsoft Outlook’s e-mail is the behemoth in the legal world.  Lawyers who don’t use it are likely using one of Microsoft’s free products (Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail) or going directly to their Web e-mail.  Inky is a new e-mail application that installs on Windows and Mac and provides an attractive alternative for those not using Outlook.

Inky describes itself as cloud-enabled.  It’s a bit confusing because you don’t actually do anything on their site.  Once you install Inky (octopus logo!), you tell it how to access your Web mail or other e-mail servers.  It automatically loaded settings for both Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail, which is now common among e-mail clients, including Zimbra and Thunderbird.  It also picked up my own mail server, which has custom settings, and this impressed me because I added 3 accounts without actually configuring anything.

The cloud element of Inky appears to be entirely a processing function.  They store your Inky password on their site, but it is encrypted.  Their FAQ says that their staff can access neither your password nor information about your e-mail.  When you open Inky on your computer, the cloud servers synchronize what you see on your computer with what’s in your e-mail accounts.

I am really attracted to the interface.  It’s exceptionally clean – it reminded me of the very crisp MetroTwit twitter client – and the layout is intuitive. The default view is a unified inbox.  As you can see below in the Windows client, the feel is very much of a modern Web site.  There is a scrolling icon bar on the left with clear flags for new messages.  The icons either use a product logo, for Google Mail for example, or common icons for things like Compose Mail (envelope with pencil).  When you click the inky logo at the top left corner, the menu widens to give you full labels.

inky-unified-inboxI really liked the drop down menus at the top where I could quickly switch to view just unread e-mail or go to a specific account.  If you leave the inbox and view just the Google Mail account, you will have a folder list at the top that reflects your inbox and other Google Mail labels.

The compose mail view is also clean and easy to use.  If you are using Web mail, you’ll find the toolbar similar to the options in Google, Yahoo!, or Outlook.com Web mail sites.  It will access your contact list for auto-filling the address and you can send from any of your configured accounts.

inky-compose-screenIt lacks the integration with calendars and other tools that products like Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird offer.  On the other hand, it has some additional filtering tools to automatically flag mail as a subscription, for example, and have an icon on the left menu show you when you have new messages that apply.  You can’t customize what goes in to these so you may still want to rely on setting filters in your Web mail account and having e-mail sorted into folders before you access it with Inky.

It’s hard to know where Inky is going, since it’s a free application and very new.  If you need a lightweight, easy to read and use e-mail client, Inky will fit your bill.

 

 

Microsoft Outlook.com Android App

Outlook.com Android App Updated

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Posted in Android, Apps, E-mail Management, Outlook and tagged , ,

Microsoft updated its e-mail app for Android, allowing users of Outlook.com (Live.com and Hotmail.com addresses too) to manage their accounts.  The interface is clean – the theme is dark and not much in the way of options – and it’s nice to have the option between a unified inbox or tabs for each of your accounts.  Unlike K-9, though, you can only connect to Microsoft accounts.  The search function will retrieve matching contacts.  All in all, it’s a nice looking app if you only use Microsoft’s e-mail and don’t have Exchange.

Microsoft Outlook.com Android App

Mozilla Clips Thunderbird E-mail’s Wings

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Posted in E-mail Management, Mobile, Postbox, Thunderbird and tagged , ,

Mozilla Thunderbird has been an interesting, free alternative to Microsoft Outlook and an important replacement for those people who were using Microsoft Outlook Express.  The Mozilla Foundation has announced that they are no longer going to develop the project.

I’ve struggled to like Thunderbird.  In part, it’s because it’s interface has never really appealed to me.  It has many powerful features.  For example, you can create a search and save it as a perpetual folder, so that it will auto update with matching e-mails anywhere in your folders.  You can theme it extensively too, to make it look however you like.  For me, it was often just easier to go to the specific e-mail account I was going to use than to open up Thunderbird.  When I needed to manage e-mail or switch e-mail servers or ensure I had a backup, Thunderbird was my go to program.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Thunderbird going forward, and with any other e-mail related endeavors from the Mozilla Foundation.  Google is obviously looking at mobile mail with its acquisition of the Sparrow team.  Postbox continues going from strength to strength, although I believe it is built on the Thunderbird code.  While not free, it has some very compelling features.  But as they indicate, there may be some trouble in the desktop e-mail client world.

Unless you’re using Microsoft Outlook.

Cue (f/k/a Greplin) Updates, Adds Web Search Back

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Posted in Document management, E-mail Management, File Management, Research Management, Search and tagged , ,

Greplin changed its name to Cue and temporarily disabled its Web search, preferring instead to focus on its iPhone app.  It has now resuscitated its Web search as promised.  If you had a Greplin account before, it’s still there as are your earlier indexes.  They will be out of date and you need to relink your apps (Google Mail, Google Mail for Apps, Dropbox, etc.) to Greplin so that the indexing can recommence.

The interface looks more mobile-oriented, which is not surprising.  The search box and results are constrained in a very narrow column.  If you do a search across all of your cloud content and only want to look at one type of information – e-mail, or files, or contacts – the filter button is now within that same column rather than a separate set of tabs.

I miss the Google Chrome extension that enabled search from within the browser but it’s still a fast way to find information in my personal cloud.

Cue search results page

Cue search results page, showing a filter list of results for files found on Dropbox but excluding e-mails and contacts with the search term. In this case, I’m using IFTTT.com to copy Twitter messages to Dropbox that contain useful links in them. This search retrieves them all.

Use GPanion for Integrated View to Google Apps

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Posted in E-mail Management, GMail, Google, RSS and tagged ,

The black bar across the Google Universe provides quick access to your apps – mail, calendar, docs – but the GPanion Cloud Companion improves that by integrating your apps into a dashboard.  It works with full Google Apps accounts as well as free Google accounts.

The first thing you notice when you log in is your Google Mail preview.  This is a handy display of the most recent e-mails in your account.  You can display your favorite Google Apps at the top of the page.  If you click the small settings icon next the Favorites title, you will scroll through a huge list of possible Google products, some of which I’d forgotten about or never heard of, like Notebook or Mapmaker.  GPanion has not kept this list current, so you will occasionally find an app that no longer exists.  In some cases, like Timeline, it forwards to News.  In others, like Google Fastflip, it just spits back an error page.
You can also select non-Google services like Github and eLance.  Not that useful for lawyers, but you can create an “app” for any Web site, so you could have one that links out to Westlaw or to some other Web-based service used by your firm.  Once you have selected and created your apps, you can drag them from the app screen onto your favorites.  Since each user can have their own favorites, it allows for flexibility in pulling together an individual’s dashboard.

There is a link to search within the dashboard which, like most other apps or favorites, take you out of the dashboard to the Google search page.  Links to your big-a Google Apps – mail, tasks, calendar, docs – are listed under a heading for Google Data.  I like having quick access to Reader – an RSS feed reader that is free from Google but that does not appear on the black toolbar – as well.

The biggest drawback to this dashboard is that you can’t do anything on it directly.  Apps and other resources open in new windows.  Although you can preview your mail, you can’t delete it in this view, just click to open it.  The same for your documents, where you can open a recent document but there are no other tools available except to create a new one (you can click a compose button for mail too) and it opens up a new window in the appropriate service.  There are obvious efficiencies merely by just bringing these services together but it would seem that a bit more integration would make it more powerful.

GPanion bills itself as a business intranet tool – a single user is free but a small law firm will need to pay – and you can see how a cloud-based law firm could use it to create an online interface to many applications.  It’s Web-based so it will work on any device that can get to the Internet with a Web browser.  If you are an active user of Google’s apps, it’s worth activating a free account and seeing if this makes you more productive.

Google Mail Search Gets Better

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Posted in E-mail Management, GMail, Google and tagged , ,

If you are a user of Google’s free e-mail service GMail, you may have started to notice that your search has gotten a bit better.  MakeUseOf had a tip that GMail has added autocomplete to the search bar.  Now, when you type a search in your e-mail account, it will suggest matching words that it knows are in your e-mails, based on its indexing of them.

There has been some concern in legal circles about whether using free GMail was a potential professional breach (see yes and no) because there is automated indexing in order to provide relevant ads.  It is this indexing that is powering the auto-complete in this update.

The MakeUseOf post suggests this will eventually come to Google Apps users as well, who are not subject to the same sort of indexing so it will be interesting to see if this impacts lawyers who shifted to the paid Apps to avoid the advertising and, perhaps, the indexing.  For me, it’s a huge time saver to see suggested words as well as category labels that I may have neglected to browse when trying to find something.

YouSendIt Updates Apps, Adds Android & Mac

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Posted in Android, Apps, E-mail Management, iPad, iPhone, Outlook and tagged , ,

Lawyers struggle with confidentiality related to communicating with clients in a secure way.  While e-mail has been accepted as a reliable method, if only because of an expectation of privacy, you may be more concerned about sending an attachment.  Yousendit.com is frequently mentioned in legal technology circles as an easy and reliable way to send large files.  You upload the file to Yousendit’s Web site and your recipient accesses it there.

Microsoft Outlook users could quickly send files using a plug-in.  Yousendit has recently updated their Windows and iPad software and have now added an Android app and support (still beta) for Macintosh OS.  Yousendit supports e-signing as well as secure e-mail, and may be a good way for lawyers to send and receive files from clients and keep them in a native, electronic format.