In addition to keeping you organized and in control of your inbox again, OtherInbox has many additional perks.  I wanted to share a few of the ways I use OtherInbox to help me manage my work, hobbies, volunteer activities, family, shopping, and even vacations.

How OIB helps me with my job

I’ve had many superusers tell me that OIB has helped them with their careers.  Several professionals, from hairdressers to leasing agents, have reported ways that giving on the fly email addresses and having organized mailboxes have made them more efficient and organized.  As the Community Manager of OtherInbox, I use on the fly email addresses to help me with networking, partnership activities, user feedback, and volunteer organizations that we work with every quarter.  I give each group their own email address, where they are all nicely organized and easy to access in one place, my OtherInbox account. 

My own personal encyclopedia of knowledge

I, like many people, have a lot of things I wish I knew how to do.  Being a full time employee of an awesome startup and a full time parent does not give me a lot of extra time to take classes and lessons.  However, in the last year I have managed to learn how to start my first garden, enhance my cooking skills, and stay up to date on the newest social media trends!  How did I find the time to do all that?  I signed up for the latest newsletters, blogs, and social groups like Ning and had them all go to my OtherInbox!  It’s like customizing your own virtual newspaper and reading it when you want to without it EVER overwhelming your primary inbox.

My pond

 

Coupons and other money saving tips

We all love a good bargain but not at the expense of giving out our email address.  It is not worth overpopulating your inbox with spam and risking it being sold to other companies.  My absolute favorite part of having an OtherInbox is the ability to be fearless with my email address.  I use an on the fly email to sign up for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I want.  It has become an obsession.  I sign up for all of my favorite stores' newsletters, contests, and everything else I can.  As a result, I get a ton of free stuff.  Free food, free books, and coupons to all my favorite stores.  I still have not won anything, but I check my OtherInbox daily to make sure.  It is kind of like playing the internet lottery - for free!  Now, as you can imagine, I get spammed all the time, but I don’t stress about it because I have the power to keep spammers from ever emailing me again with just one click.  I have also learned who leaks my email address out and will never spend another dime in their stores or online with them.

All this money saving has made me want a vacation

Although I have not yet saved thousands with OtherInbox, I still use it to sign up for travel sites and possible vacation destinations.  My OtherInbox notifies me of flight deals, discount vacation packages, and much more.  When it is time to pack up the family and head out of Dodge for a week or two, I know just where to go to get the most bang for my buck!

What do you do with your OtherInbox?

While I hope some of this information was helpful, I am always amazed by the creative ways other people use OIB to their advantage.  Share your story with us, and email me at myoib[at]peeps.oib.com…oh look, I used it again ;).

We need your help growing our fan base on Facebook.  We have almost 3,000 followers on Twitter but only 372 followers on Facebook.  Now how are we supposed to save the world from email overload with only 372 people following us on Facebook?!

As an incentive to follow us, and to help us get other followers, we are going to be giving away one free premium account per week to one of our Facebook friends!  We will also have t-shirt giveways, contests, and much more!

If you retweet this message, we will enter you in to win a free premium upgrade.  If you already have a year of premium service, we will add an additional year to your contract!

Thank you for helping us continue to grow.  We are ready to take on email overload around the world! Ready, set, RT!

Follow us on Facebook!

1. Brandon Hubbard
2. Thomas Terry
3. Ganesh Ram Jayaraman
4. Mister Dondi
5. Luthiano Vasconcelos
6. Earl Wallace
7. Justine Lam
8. Yoshiro Moriyama
9.  Mansi Bhatia
10. Jack Humphrey

One of my favorite features with OtherInbox is that it allows me to sign up for EVERYTHING I want to with ease.  Like most people, I love a good deal, and using OtherInbox proves there IS such a thing as a free lunch.  Every week, I find amazing deals and coupons for something free just waiting for me in my organized mailboxes.  I usually share these finds with friends and family, but I want to do more. 

Some of our users have shared these amazing finds from their OIB on twitter, and we do our best to retweet these when they come up.  However, I think we can do better than that.  I would like to ask you all to join us in using #OIBFreebie on twitter when you find something cool or free in your OtherInbox.  Then people can just search for free deals, and we can share our treasures with each other.

Feel free to share them any day of the week as well!

Do you have experience converting Apps?  Are you familiar with OtherInbox? We need your help! We also want your help with merchant lists, outreach, and troubleshooting.

Get early access to all our new features, free premium upgrades, and much more!

This month we are looking for help with the following countries:

* India
* Australia
* Brazil
* Mexico
* Taiwan

We are also looking for:

•    UK
•    France
•    Germany
•    Netherlands
•    Etc..
We will be updating many more, so feel free to reach out if your country is not listed yet.

Gracias
Obrigada
Merci
Thank you!

This post was guest-written by Superuser Chip Riley.

Follow chipriley on twitter.

I happened to come across OIB while searching Twitter during SXSW.  I have two Google App accounts, one for personal and one for business, and I was constantly under bombardment from mailing lists and various Web2.0 service emails. 

OIB saved my inbox and allowed me to organize (via custom email addresses) and cut out the spam quickly and easily.  I actually replied to a user on GetSatisfaction that was complaining about OIB and how it "took over" his email.  I gave an example of how the service can allow you to weed out the spam (youdontgetit[at]myname.oib.com) and, lo and behold, got hit with some spam at that address a couple of weeks later.  I was able to block the address and never worry about it again.

Also, as an Austinite, I love seeing local businesses do great and wonderful things!!!

Congratulations to our “Mailbox Full of Cash” winners, Nita and Lois! We had the pleasure of meeting them at our office this week and took a few pictures with them. They are a wonderful and deserving Mother and Daughter team! Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest.
 

Dear OtherInbox,

I'd just like to thank-you for your great product!

I am a sproutcore developer, and first heard about your product through that channel, as you were developing it. I was immediately intrigued by the idea of having many email addresses to hand out. I've attempted to do this before with gmail and the "+" (ie myname+otherinbox[at]gmail.com), that failed horribly, as most email inputs don't accept '+'s.

One of my first reactions when starting to use OIB, was "oh, not another email to have to check", but I found almost right away, that you had struck just the right balance in sending out daily summaries, and notices of the first email to the account. Now I find myself checking my OIB with out even thinking.

I now have a gmail address that only gets emails that I really need to action right away, and everything else is neatly filed away for me to read in my own time. Genius!
I shared this with my work mates who also have lots of email, what got them interested is the gmail syncing, such a great idea, no need to have to hand out new addresses to all the sites already signed up for.

I've seen OIB develop from near the very start, and I'm very impressed with the way that you've handled bugs and feature requests. The choice of Sproutcore as the tech to use was, by far, the right one!

Thanks for OIB!

A very grateful user,

Geoffrey D.

                 

This morning on my way to work, I was listening to NPR.  A segment came on air about the recent rise in spam due to the mortgage crisis.  With many people worried about losing their homes and desperate to provide for their families, spammers are taking advantage of this time to steal your identity AND your money.  Right now, spammers are targeting this group of people to send them messages about mortgage protection packages and other scams that are designed to sound as legit as possible and to make people think it is a way of protection.

 Most of us read this and think, “Well, I would never fall for that.”  The problem is that we all know someone who might.  OtherInbox’s primary focus is to help you control email overload.  We do have other cool features like on the fly emails, blocking spam, and identifying who is selling or leaking your email address, but our main OIB users tend to be more technical in nature.  Our premium model and our feature roadmap focus on these more technical people and their needs. However, OIB’s simplicity and ease of use make it an ideal way for the people in our lives who are not as “tech savvy” to protect themselves from situations like the scam above. 

If you know someone who needs this protection, tell them about OtherInbox, and show them how to make special email addresses for things they sign up for and how easy it is to identify spam in these customized mailboxes. Feel free to share your funny spam headlines and stories with @mrspam on twitter!

We had a great time at SXSWi this year!  There were lots of fun activities and we even introduced our Super Hero Mr. Spam.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to signup at our booth or at home.  We also want to thank all our current beta testers for stopping by or sending us tweets and emails about how OIB has helped eliminate your email overload.  OtherInbox takes pride on our commitment to all of our users, both new and early beta testers.  We encourage your feedback and comments on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, and especially on help.oib.com.  

We would also like to encourage our Super Users to share your tips and tricks with all of our new users.  Please send us your blogs, screencasts, and reviews!  OtherInbox would not be half the company we are if it were not for all of you and your continued support of our services.  Cheers to all of you!

The OtherInbox office is currently covered in T-Shirts! I can't find Joshua Baer under them all! Okay, so that might be a little dramatic, but we do have a ton of OtherInbox T-Shirts to give away. We don't have enough to give every single fan, so here are some ways you can get yours before they run out: * If you agree to wear the OtherInbox T-Shirt during SXSWi, you can stop by booth number 213 or 312 to get your free OIB T. * If you come by "Dave & Buster's in Austin tonight":http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=51211349625, you can get your free OIB T. * If you write a "blog post":http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2009/01/13/otherinboxreview/ about "your experience":http://www.thinkervine.com/blog/2009/01/21/otherinbox-for-gmail/ with OtherInbox (good or bad) by 3/09/09 and send it to us, you could get a free OIB T. * If you do a "screencast":http://blog.otherinbox.com/2009/02/great-screencast-of-otherinbox-for-gmail-by-jimmy-gardner.html or "video":http://vimeo.com/2573558 about OIB before 3/09/09, you could get a free OIB T. * If you are a fan of "OtherInbox on Facebook":http://go.otherinbox.com/facebook or "follow us on Twitter":http://twitter.com/otherinbox, you might be selected for a free OIB T. * If your name is "Joshua Baer":http://twitter.com/joshuabaer, you get a lifetime of free OIB T-Shirts. Sound good?

Going to SXSW in Austin this March 13-16th? Stop by the OtherInbox booth and sign up for an OtherInbox account that will come in handy during your SXSWi experience. There will be a lot of things to try to sign up for, so it will be a great time to use your OtherInbox for all that SXSW bacn. OtherInbox will be located at two booths, so come check us out at numbers 213 or 312. In addition to giving you the freedom of signing up for anything and EVERYTHING at SXSW, you might also walk away with a "mailbox full of cash valued at $1,000!":http://blog.otherinbox.com/2009/02/mailbox-full-of-cash.html We will have a lot of fun activities and some really cool T-Shirts as well. Keep an eye out for our "Mr. Spam":http://twitter.com/mrspam, and take your picture with him to increase your chances at winning that mailbox full of cash! See you there!

At OtherInbox, we strive to make your lives a little easier. We encourage our users to try new tricks with their OIB and to share their stories with us at myoib[at]peeps.oib.com. Recently, we received the story below, which explains how using OtherInbox can not only organize your email but can also keep you from missing golden nuggets that might otherwise be lost. bq.. Our company makes iPhone apps and we use OIB as our external communication tool. Last night I came across a mailbox we had never setup or given out, someone was "guessing" an email address. Turns out the individual was from Apple Developer Relations, and was requesting a special demo version and artwork release so they can use it in "marketing opportunities". We're thrilled to say the least. Had we not used OIB, that email would have probably bounced and/or been delayed. We were able to respond immediately to their request, and meet their submission deadline of Feb. 6th. Now we can breath for 3 days knowing there is plenty of time for them to get back to us. Best, Colin

As many of you know, we have frozen extending beta test invitations to new users recently. I want to take a moment and explain to you why this is and give you some insight into when you can expect to receive your invite or invitations to give to your friends. As many of our current beta testers will tell you, OtherInbox has greatly reduced the amount of excess email in their primary inbox, provided them a way to stop unwanted spam, and eliminated the stress of email overload. We want more than anything to continue to do this for everyone on our waiting list and anyone else who has ever dreamed of achieving Inbox Zero. We pride ourselves on making product the best and most efficient. In order to achieve this, we have temporarily stopped accepting new beta testers to ensure we can improve the signup process, enhance current and new features, and bring to life some of the wonderful suggestions our community of current beta testers have suggested. It is our goal to work as quickly as possible to allow for more beta testers as soon as possible. We will continue to push ourselves to create the best product and support available to you. Many of you have asked when you can expect to receive your beta invite or when you can pass out more invites to friends and family. Although we do not have an exact date to share with you, I can say with certainty and sincerity that it is coming soon. We will also be providing special offers and invitations to our community on "Twitter":http://twitter.com/otherinbox, our fans on "Facebook":http://www.facebook.com/pages/OtherInbox/10044456730, and our patient friends on our "waiting list":http://otherinbox.com/waitinglist/ at "oib.com":oib.com. Thank you!

During this economy downturn, all of us have been affected in one way or another. Stores are closing, unemployment rates are soaring, and the stock market is dropping fast. Through these rough times, we would like to provide you with some helpful tips for using your OtherInbox. h4. Job Search Looking for a job? There are several ways your OtherInbox can help your job search. Since knowledge is essential in getting ahead within an industry, you can become an industry expert by signing up for blogs, newsletters, and news reports. Send them all to your OtherInbox. More importantly, you can also sign up for the blogs of the companies you are seeking employment with. If an opportunity for an interview arises, gaining insight about the industry and company is crucial. The organized mailboxes OtherInbox provides allow you to find that information quickly. You can also use your OtherInbox to sign up at job sites such as craigslist, Monster, LinkedIn, and every other possible job site out there. Not only does this give you organized mailboxes to read through and pick the right job, but it also clears your real inbox. Never miss out on someone trying to reach you for an interview! h4. Starting Your Own Business Ready to start your own company? Looking to make some extra cash with a current hobby? OtherInbox will be your personal assistant. For example, if you are selling paintings online, you usually post your email address as a point of contact. However, who wants to expose their personal email address to strangers? This is where OtherInbox steps in. Post your OtherInbox email address instead: _Buy my painting[at]yourname.oib.com._ Use OtherInbox to sell a car, advertise on craigslist, or for any other situation you can think of! h4. Shopping Online When every dollar counts, don't you want to get the best deals out there? With OtherInbox, you can sign up for all of your favorite online stores. You can receive exclusive coupons, notifications of special sales events, and more, right to an organized mailbox. Those emails are a nightmare when they are piling up in your real inbox. With OtherInbox, read them only when you need them. If you are looking to buy a coffee maker or a new home, OtherInbox can help you save and compare to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck. You can also sign up for online consumer reviews right to your OtherInbox, so you can make sure you are getting quality product at a great deal. OtherInbox cares about our community of users and hopes that you will find ways to use your OtherInbox to make life a little easier. If you have an idea or would like to share an interesting way in which you use your OIB, please comment below.

Well, maybe not for everything, but it sure is making a difference in the lives of thousands of our users. OtherInbox uses social media to not only educate people on the benefits of getting control of their email again, but also to listen to what people have done with OtherInbox on their own. We have an active Twitter community that you can follow "@otherinbox ":http://twitter.com/otherinbox. We also use "Facebook":http://www.facebook.com/pages/OtherInbox/10044456730 to connect to users, communicate tips and new features, and gather suggestions and ideas. Some OtherInbox beta testers have found ways to market their talents, organize their small business email, search for wedding gowns, and even assist in developing websites like in this comment from "@hadees":http://twitter.com/hadees/status/1116790674 "@otherinbox I use it when I'm developing websites so I can sign up lots of test users each with their own unique email address." Even the community on our "support site":http://help.otherinbox.com is encouraged and active in giving advice on new uses or product enhancements. We develop our product roadmap based on user feedback as much as possible. OtherInbox is a startup with two employees who serve as full time community specialists. We work with our community on a daily basis to find what they find useful in our product and how they are using OIB. We will even be posting t-shirt ideas that were provided by our users for our SXSW launch in March. Some companies pretend to listen to what their communities say. Others, like OtherInbox, rely on the input of the community to make the best product possible. Although OtherInbox is currently freezing beta invites while we make some improvements, we have had many people reach out and ask for a beta invite. We are working to complete these improvements as quickly as possible to ensure that everyone is cured of email overload. We might not have the answers to solving the economic crisis (although Washington should consider opening an OtherInbox for suggestions), but according to our users, we have found the answer to fighting spam and gaining control of your inbox again. We give a special thanks to our active community for your constant feedback and support. Ideas, comments, questions, tips, and concerns are always encouraged! Thanks!

OtherInbox would like to share some out of the box ways we use our OtherInbox accounts. In addition to giving you back control of your regular email and organizing your life a little more, there are many new discoveries and uses you will find. Here are a few tricks for you to try. Please reach out and tell us ways you may use your OtherInbox! bq. Whenever I find something that looks interesting online, but I don't have time to read through it at the moment, I email the URL to read-this[at]yourname.otherinbox.com. This is especially handy with the iPhone's "email this page" feature. When I log on to OI, I have a handy list of stuff to waste my time. :) ??-- Matt Buck, OtherInbox?? bq. This year when I sent out our New Year's Eve Party invites, I decided to ask guests to RSVP to my OI email address. One, I didn't want the clutter in my already-cluttered gmail inbox. Even more importantly, I wanted one centralized place where all the RSVPs would live so that a few days before the party I could easily make a count of guests coming in one fell swoop. I know that people usually use Evite or Socializr for invites, but frankly I hate them both. For Evite, I hate that guests have to go to a Web site -- I find that hugely annoying myself. And I hate template invites in general -- they never seem to convey my personality or the vibe of the party. I like the clean, minimalism of an email. But I wanted the convenience of a centralized RSVP dump. So using my OI email works great! ??-- L. Walker, OtherInbox user?? bq. I am in the process of setting up an OtherInbox account for my church. They created a domain and I am adding that to an OtherInbox account. We will be using this for event-specific email addresses because no one ever wants to be the contact person for events since they have to give out their email address! ??-- Deacon Bradley, OtherInbox?? bq. There is a local "pasta maker":http://www.gourmettexaspasta.com that sells fantastic homemade durum wheat pasta. He sends a message every week with recipes and where he will be that weekend. As much as I love pasta, I don't buy it every week. I have these messages marked as read and saved as soon as they arrive in my OtherInbox. Now when it's time to buy some more pasta, I know that there's a coupon in my Saved folder. I don't need a notification that I got a message from The Pastaman. I don't even need to see the mailbox as I scroll down my list of mailboxes. It's there when I need it, and out of sight when I don't. ??-- Hoon Park, OtherInbox??

Below are some comments from real OtherInbox users on "Facebook":http://www.facebook.com, "Twitter":http://twitter.com, our blog, and other social sites talking about their experiences. We are thankful for the great community of users we have. Your comments and feedback help us build our product to serve you the best we can. Thanks to everyone for your support and participation! bq. OtherInbox just rocks - it forwards the first mail from each account, but after that only daily digests. ??-- "@w0nk0":http://twitter.com/w0nk0/statuses/1036525541?? bq. Loving otherinbox...it makes life so much easier... ??-- Facebook comment?? bq. Trying to clear my mail from regular mail I don't want. Otherinbox is great for that. Unsubscribing helps too :) ??-- "@deluzione":http://twitter.com/deluzione/statuses/1036757380?? bq. I use OtherInbox this much because it rocks. What a great product! I am sure I have well over 100 folders set up. It's absolutely amazing. My spam has decreased dramatically and I have so much control over my email! ??-- "OtherInbox Blog Comment":http://blog.otherinbox.com?? bq. I'm already using OtherInbox for quiet a while now and I like this service. At first, I was dumbfounded because I don't know what to do with OtherInbox but as the day goes on I really like OtherInbox. OtherInbox prevents spam in my true email. Whenever I try a certain service, I always use my OtherInbox account Not my real email account. Why? Because OtherInbox can block a certain mailbox and prevent it from coming again. I delete and I block. That's it. ??-- "Get Satisfaction comment":http://getsatisfaction.com/otherinbox/topics/my_experience_with_otherinbox?? bq. For me its all about organization. I get tons of notifications emailed to me and I would miss a lot of stuff w/o OtherInbox. ??-- "@KathleenLD":http://twitter.com/KathleenLD/statuses/1036979340?? bq. It took me a few weeks to start using my OtherInbox, but now that I have started, I really love it! ??-- "@soundz714":http://twitter.com/soundz714/statuses/1036967591?? bq. OtherInbox provides steller support... ??-- "@snafilter":http://twitter.com/snafilter/statuses/1036391649?? bq. From what I have read so far it sounds great... ??-- Facebook comment?? bq. Very cool service. I've been doing something functionally equivalent by creating ad hoc addresses within one of my domains and using Outlook's rules to sort incoming messages into folders,but this is much easier. ??-- "Get Satisfaction comment":http://getsatisfaction.com/otherinbox/topics/very_cool_service_intuitive_and_powerful?? bq. I couldn't praise highly enough! ??-- "@arthur_alston":http://twitter.com/arthur_alston/statuses/1035009764?? bq. Wonderful site. I have > 3 other email addresses and others at different sites and this is honestly the most organized my email has ever been. I have to say that this is probably the most genius and innovative idea for email I've seen. Good thing Google didn't make this idea first or I'd never have found you guys. Keep it up! ??-- "Get Satisfaction comment":http://getsatisfaction.com/otherinbox/topics/fantabulous_site?? bq. I use OtherInbox to control all of my "companies that I don't really want to read your email but sort of I do" emails ??-- "@breppy":http://twitter.com/breppy/status/1036842424?? bq. I would like to congratulate OtherInbox with not only providing an excellent service, but also with some of the best support I have had in a long time. I have many different accounts and am part of a fair number of different mailing lists. OtherInbox has allowed me to receive all of the updates, notifications, and other emails from each of them without having to worry about my regular e-mail box being filled with it all. Not only that, but so far my use of the OI service has been largely incident free. I have had mediocre customer support from a lot of companies and services lately and am glad to see one that not only provides great support the few times that questions or concerns arise, but that also replies in an extremely fast manner. My compliments to OtherInbox. I can't wait to see where this service is taken in the future. ??-- "Get Satisfaction comment":http://getsatisfaction.com/otherinbox/topics/excellent_service_excellent_support??

We want to get as much feedback from our users as possible. Quick survey questions like the following help us to get to know you better. Thanks for helping us prioritize what to work on next!

!

My name is Leah Chaney and I'm your new OtherInbox Community Manager. I'm looking forward to focusing on the community of OtherInbox users. OtherInbox is dedicated to listening to our community and I encourage you to follow us on "Twitter":http://twitter.com/otherinbox, check us out on "Facebook":http://www.facebook.com/pages/OtherInbox/10044456730, and read "our blog":http://blog.otherinbox.com. If you have technical questions or suggestions, please visit "our support site":http://help.otherinbox.com, and one of our team members or someone from our user community will be eager to help you. You can also contribute to the community by sharing ideas or starting a discussion. I am very passionate about community involvement and the power of user suggestions. Please stay tuned for new and exciting enhancements to your OtherInbox account. I look forward to working for you! Regards, Leah Chaney

Liz B. Davis just posted a wonderful "2 and a half minute video screencast":http://edtechpower.blogspot.com/2008/11/otherinbox-100-beta-invites.html about how she uses OtherInbox. Take a look!

We use a relatively new JavaScript framework to power OtherInbox message viewing inside your web browser called "SproutCore":http://sproutcore.com. I've begun giving a series of SproutCore talks, explaining how the framework allows you to build client-server web applications, and what this means for the future of the web. I'll be giving this talk and doing SproutCore demos at "Austin on Rails":http://www.austinonrails.org on 11/25/08. "Bryan Liles":http://smartic.us/ was good enough to take a video of my talk at Baltimore on Rails in October. Check it out below: !/entry_images/aor_mike_presenting.jpg(Mike presenting at Baltimore on Rails)!:http://s3.amazonaws.com/smarticast/Mike_Subelsky_on_Sproutcore.mp4 The slides I use in the beginning are "on slideshare":http://www.slideshare.net/subelsky/sproutcore-and-the-future-of-web-apps-presentation/.

!

Today, OtherInbox joined with other local companies such as AdLucent, Austin Ventures, BazaarVoice, Dell, Earnst & Young, Vincent & Elkins and "GiveToAustin":http://www.givetoaustin.org/ by volunteering at Govalle Elementary school in East Austin. !

Congratulations to the top 20 OtherInbox users! Besides Mike and I, these users have given out the most OtherInbox addresses and have received the most email. There are a lot of my friends and family on there who have been using OtherInbox for about a year, but there are a handful of newcomers as well! !>/entry_images/award.jpg(Award)! # Ivor Clarke # Cyan Banister # Amy Baer # Ryan Pitylak # "John Engler":http://inluminent.com/ # Bijoy Goswami # Evan Alter # Aaron Scruggs # Joleen Sanborn # Rand Wacker # Bobby Potter # Ben Humphry # Ross Miller # Bradley Dean # Jesse Brede # Chris Hyams # Brandon Phillips # Arthur Meyerovich # Erica Tello # Matt Buck Everyone on this list has given out more than 100 OtherInbox addresses! P.S. Bjorn, Mason and Neelan -- you are so close!

Apparently Gmail users like OtherInbox. More than half of the signups have come from Gmail accounts. !/entry_images/email_providers_chart.jpg(Chart of signups from different mail services)! It's really not that surprising because Gmail users are early adopters and power users who are more likely to be attracted to OtherInbox. OtherInbox works great as a companion to Gmail! Gmail is really good at handling your conversations with people, but you don't really have conversations with Amazon.com or with your Twitter notifications. Let Gmail handle your emails with real people, and let OtherInbox handle everything else. Spend most of your time in Gmail and only check OtherInbox once or twice a day. Just like Gmail is designed to handle conversations, OtherInbox is designed to handle commercial email, newsletters, and social networking notifications. They go together like peanut butter and jelly!

We normally hear from Colin Anawaty on "Twitter as pxlpshr":http://twitter.com/pxlpshr but he was kind enough to write us an email telling us how OtherInbox has saved him time and gotten the clutter out of his Gmail account! !/entry_images/screenshot_wood_desktop.jpg(Screenshot of OtherInbox)!

I have numerous user profiles across countless social websites. The sheer volume of email many of these sites serve in a single day kept four Gmail accounts flooded and practically unusable. I found OtherInbox on TechCrunch 50 and spent a few minutes converting my email at sites I visit regularly.

OtherInbox now feels more like a personal assistant than an email service. Let me explain. When I converted my email account at each of the major social sites I visit, I also turned on additional notifications. I know, it sounds crazy right? From that day forward the time I have spent combing through the social web has been cut in half. Thanks to OtherInbox's intuitive sorting method, more email has become a significant time-saver as I'm no longer visiting each site independently to check my profile and get updates about my friends!

And as you can see from my bookmark toolbar in Safari, OtherInbox is one of the first sites I now visit and a fantastic alternative to "Open All in Tabs".

Huge thanks to the OtherInbox team for such a great product!

— Colin Anawaty

Thanks for the kind words Colin! I promise this is just the beginning... lots more to come over the next few months!

Gregory Pittman is one of more than 5,000 new users to try OtherInbox since our launch at TechCrunch50 last week. He shared with us how OtherInbox has helped to cure his email overload on his Blackberry!

As a worship pastor and music professor who also blogs and maintains a lot of online activity, having access to e-mail on my BlackBerry has been an important aspect of my productivity for a long time. Since my preferred method of communication is e-mail, that meant my BlackBerry device was alerting me to a new message dozens -- if not hundreds -- of times a day. Most of these messages, however, ended up being from social networking sites I use, or sale alerts from software vendors, or some other sort of automated systems. Obviously, these messages didn't need immediate responses, but the filter system on the BlackBerry is cumbersome. I could keep the messages from coming to the device but they still clogged my inbox. Labels and filters in Gmail work only marginally well for "I want this e-mail but it isn't urgent" material.

I recently started using OtherInbox and my BlackBerry has suddenly gone silent. No more notifications from Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, or any of the other potential e-mail sources I need to keep in touch with but don't want accumulating in my regular inbox or bothering me at dinner. Instead, I took about fifteen minutes to sign into all of these services and change my contact address to an OtherInbox address. These messages are now filtered into their own folder at OtherInbox instead of piling up in one long list of unread messages in Gmail. But, most importantly, now when my BlackBerry alerts me to the arrival of a new message, I know it's one I need to pay attention to. There are fewer distractions during family time (which my wife loves) and less time spent pulling the device out of my pocket only to realize the message could have waited. I didn't realize until they stopped just how annoying that was; I had chalked up all the extra messages as part of the cost of doing business with a BlackBerry.

I'm looking forward to OtherInbox's help in maintaining sanity and productivity.

—Gregory Pittman

Thanks Gregory! I remember the first morning that I checked my email and had ZERO new messages waiting for me. I thought something was wrong! Then I realized something was RIGHT!

We just want to say thank you to all our friends on Twitter and share some of our favorite Tweets! "Follow us on Twitter":http://twitter.com/otherinbox to get an exclusive beta invitation! bq. everyone should be using otherinbox.com i'm a beta tester now, its amazing ??--kurtm85?? bq. @otherinbox Thanks so much. It looks awesome and I will be using the heck out of it. Converting all my Bacn over to it. ??--merlik?? bq. Great service from @otherinbox who noticed my gripe on Twitter and responded within 30 mins. ??--philmorle?? bq. OtherInbox, you're proving to be truly awesome, but please, for me, make a viable mobile version. Please? ??--geekgrrl?? bq. @otherinbox it's a very useful service. I've been moving my newsletters and other non-important mail over there as it comes in. ??--Eyebee?? bq. Yessss! Got an invite to @otherinbox. Great idea, guys! ??--rickfu?? bq. @otherinbox how did I live so long without you? ??--kurtm85?? bq. Other Inbox, in the tech crunch 50, has to be the best concept since sliced bread. http://www.otherinbox.com ??--do_re_mi?? bq. okay, just got my first "real" notice from @otherinbox about junk I'd received. Totally bad ass. ??--benkimball?? bq. Wow OtherInbox is such a brilliant idea! ??--JayC_?? bq. I have been testing http://otherinbox.com for the last two days now and find it really useful. They are also on twitter @otherinbox ??--FabianPattberg?? bq. @otherinbox Your interface design is so simple and clean. I can't wait to get my hands on it! - http://bit.ly/3iSYQA ??--chadpaulson?? bq. otherinbox.com is pretty cool. now i can use it to sign up for also these beta sites ??--jcataldo?? bq. Checking out @otherinbox. I think I'll be using this service often. ??--twofivethreetwo?? bq. @bindela you are right otherinbox.com sounds interesting. I'd love to have my email arrive sorted. ??--hravan?? bq. @otherinbox you guys rock! Totally awesome service, I hope you guys get the prize money @ TC50! ??--digitalknk?? bq. holy cow @otherinbox support is fast. ??--benkimball?? bq. I just used my @otherinbox for the first time, making a campaign donation. I desperately want OtherCellPhone. @joshuabaer pls build kthx. ??--benkimball?? bq. Just signed up for OtherInbox; no more sending all e-mail to my filter gmail account! Yes! ??--snafilter??

Here are some of my favorite quotes that we've received from beta users over the past few months. bq. I love this service! I've found myself willingly signing up for things that require an email address to receive more information – all while feeling safe about my personal email address. The organization of incoming emails makes it very easy to see if someone is abusing the email address. I look forward to seeing more features as you develop the service. Keep up the good work! ??--40 year old technology executive?? bq. Now I'm wishing that all my existing newsletters would switch to OtherInbox automagically! ??--35 year old technology executive?? bq. It is soo awesome I am working on changing all of my acccounts over to it. The good thing about you testing this on me is that I have absolutely no knowledge about computers. I know the basics and that's about it. Thank you for introducing me to this! ??--22 year old receptionist?? bq. Ok, been moving over a few of my newsletters over and LOVING the service. This truly changes the way one approaches having other people contact you. ??--35 year old technologist?? Let us know what you think by posting a comment!

!/entry_images/msg_spam_experiment.jpg(The SPAM experiment)! It's been somewhat of a running joke in the email marketing community that the spam filtering companies don't really have any incentive to "solve" the spam problem. After all, if they were to fix it, then they would be out of business! In many ways, the spam filter companies could be compared to weapons manufacturers. Now, McAfee certainly isn't as bad as Haliburton, in fact I think they are a good company that helps protect millions of people from spam and viruses. But like the weapons manufacturers don't really want the wars to end, I don't think the executives at McAfee are really interested in solving the spam problem. This week "BBC reported on the results of a study commissioned by McAfee":http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7482991.stm to try and justify their perpetual existence. They came to the conclusion that you need a spam filter. *"Surfing the web unprotected will leave the average web user with 70 spam messages each day."* Wow, that was a striking conclusion. Who doesn't have a spam filter? Every free email account, broadband email account, and most corporate email accounts have spam filters. The BBC article ended with a quote that shows how self serving the whole thing was, *"It is such an immense problem and it's never going to go away. It's no longer a question of solving it but one of managing it,"* said Mr Dave De Walt, chief executive of McAfee. Well Mr De Walt, _we haven't given up yet_.

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