
Ask HN: Inbox for everything? - danaw
I&#x27;m curious if anyone out there knows of a tool or service that can serve as a unified inbox for email, Facebook messages, Twitter mentions&#x2F;DMs, text messages, IM, etc?<p>I&#x27;ve always wanted something like this but I&#x27;m not sure if the problem just applies to me or if someone else has solved this problem already.
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GrinningFool
I think we call 'em smartphones. THose are the only things I know of that give
a unified inbox view: at least for WP8 and BB10, they tie in contacts and
conversations across mutliple social and email platforms and give you combined
views.

However, you raise a good point - a nice cross-platform solution for desktop
use would be a great thing to have. It's kind of odd that it's been done so
well for phones, but barely touched for desktop.

One problem related will be the constant influx of 'services that may be
interesting', with disparate APIs - any solution should have a good plugin
system.

~~~
xekul
The Blackberry Hub (i.e., the unified inbox) is one of two reasons I'm still
using a Blackberry (the other reason, of course, is the physical keyboard).

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nicksergeant
I use Bitlbee as a unified messaging platform and it works great for me:
[http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html](http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html)

Obviously it's a little neckbeard-ey but once you get it setup, it's awesome
to have AIM, FB, Google Chat, HipChat, Campfire (and any other Jabber account)
all in one little box.

The only thing it's missing for me is iMessages support.

You can also wire up Twitter with it, but I found it too tricky to parse
tweets without avatars / inline images, etc.

~~~
danaw
Looks pretty sweet, especially for IM, but doesn't have Email which is
important, at least for my usecase. Thanks for sharing it!

~~~
nicksergeant
Yeah, no email. I use mutt for that :)

Sure thing!

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nathan_f77
It's a great idea. I had the idea for a unified messaging service, where you
would have one client that connected to Google Chat, Facebook Chat, Skype, IM
and SMS. When you wanted to talk to someone, it would communicate using the
best service.

But then I bought a MacBook, and Apple's 'Messages' app does everything I need
it to. It's IM when both parties are online, and SMS otherwise.

I would also love to see something that tries to unify Reddit, Hacker News,
and Google News, although I'm not sure how it could be done.

~~~
danaw
That only applies to people who have iOS devices, so it still leaves a whole
swatch of people out of the equation.

~~~
glomph
Doe you not mean swath or swathe rather than swatch? (Genuinely curious I
think this might be a locality thing)

~~~
danaw
Oops, I mean "swath" :)

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interstitial
You need a trendier, buzzier name for it, and perhaps a three-letter acronym.
"Inbox of Things" (IoT) should work to gladwellize the minions and get people
talking.

But since the chatterati think email is the spawn of old white european males,
you need to get rid of "Inbox" all together. Way too emailesque.

Also, we live in the most narcissistic, shallow society ever to have sat idly
on this good planet earth, so you need some combination of self, selfie, me,
my, myself, you, etc.

Of course, in the selfie-sphere the major issue you will face is appearing
"needy" if you respond to pings quickly or respond in a personal, non-selfish
way. The proper form of communication in narcissistic society is merely post
inane self-expressions in hopes of garnering hip-metrics of reblogs, retweets,
likes, upvotes, and other simplistic pings.

So what you really need is an one-way orifice for self-expression that merely
reports social metrics back in gamified form. Sort of like a toilet with an AI
success coach built in.

The flushing metaphor has its limtis, because "flushing" makes it seem like
you don't care about water conservation and other hip non-selfish, selfish
things that aid your image-crafting. An "air flush" would solve the water
conservation issues. So what sound would an "air flush" make? A swish, a blow?
That's it.

So we should call a universal inbox in the selfie age? How about: "Blow Me"

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DjangoReinhardt
A few years back, when web2.0 was the buzz word and RSS-based mashups were all
the rage, I believe a few websites tried offering this service.

I don't remember the names of these services now but IIRC, input.io (or
something like that) was one of them. The site is dead now - didn't get any
traction or funding and shut down. A couple of desktop based clients also
happened but fizzled out for the same reasons.

Looks like they were quite ahead of their time. :)

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DorianMarie
I never saw it but I think that would be a really good idea, I would love to
"archive", "mute" and my facebook wall, twitter, etc... If that could work as
GMail that would be perfect.

I'm the kind of reading every post on Twitter and Facebook and
unfollowing/muting people that post too much useless things so that would be
perfect for me.

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notduncansmith
I'm pretty sure you can get email notifications from all of these services.

Text/IM really doesn't belong in the inbox in my opinion, because as others
have stated these are in a different category of communication, with different
urgency levels. IM and SMS are for when you need to get in touch instantly or
near-instantly, email is for more asynchronous and/or one-way communication.

That said, IFTTT sounds like the perfect solution:
[https://ifttt.com](https://ifttt.com)

"If This Then That", or IFTTT, lets you trigger actions from events. So, if
you get a Twitter mention, or an SMS, you could have it email it to you.

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gspyrou
[http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp7/people/what-
is-...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp7/people/what-is-the-me-
card)

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pepijndevos
Mozilla Raindrop, now inactive used to do that. [https://mozillalabs.com/en-
US/raindrop/](https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/raindrop/)

~~~
danaw
Know if the open-sourced it or is it just dead and gone?

~~~
joshka
[http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/raindrop/file/42b1a25c3061/LICENS...](http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/raindrop/file/42b1a25c3061/LICENSE)

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neovive
Once the volume surpasses decent threshold, the UX would be quite difficult to
build without some sort of complex grouping or intelligence. The key to a
successful unified inbox would be learning what is "important" to each user
and customizing the experience accordingly. Otherwise, people would start
ignoring busy twitter feeds and focusing on individual emails, IM's, etc,
which they could achieve by simply opening each service in a separate browser
tab.

~~~
sixFingers
Agree completely. It would be possible to abstract away all of these services
into a common dialect (so that grouping and filtering works across multiple
services) and then let the user "build" different UX approaches by allowing
one to group and filter different sources into specific view: ex, group tweets
and irc messages and have that group display only some UI stuff, group rss/fb
posts and have the UI display some other stuff.

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wellboy
There is one and it's called...wait for
it...[http://unifiedinbox.com/](http://unifiedinbox.com/) :)

But they are in beta still afaik.

~~~
danaw
Nice, I'll signup for their beta and give it a look-see

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dustingetz
Half the value of all these platforms is they each provide a different
experience and thus are good for different things. SMS is urgent, Facebook
messages are not, email for important thoughtful things, tweets for helping
get attention of busy people with the viral factor. UX is critical to shape
your users behavior.

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ArekDymalski
There was a really nice thing called Engagio but I'm not sure of it's still
alive
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/engagio/odlmlfcabm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/engagio/odlmlfcabmeeigaadlnooehikkbonnfd)

~~~
mikejarema
Acquired then shutdown earlier on in the year.

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adambom
[http://www.wuphf.com/](http://www.wuphf.com/)

~~~
danaw
Nice one ;)

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olegp
Do you need a unified inbox where you can read all the messages, or do you
actually want to be able to search across all your inboxes (like you could
with Greplin) or aggregate notifications that you received a new message
(Chime)?

~~~
danaw
Ideally it would be an inbox in it's simplest form where I can communicate on
any platform from one simple interface.

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kilroy123
I don't know of a service that includes everything, including email... but
someone I know made this aggregator for twitter, facebook, and instagram.

[https://dwibbles.com/](https://dwibbles.com/)

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pagade
For integrated Google Apps: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/integrated-gm...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/integrated-gmail/)

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sp332
Something like Trillian could work.
[https://www.trillian.im/](https://www.trillian.im/) It's more of an IM client
but it includes email integration.

~~~
visakanv
haha oh man this brings back memories... I used to use this as a substitute
for MSN messenger on my school computers when I was a teenager

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kingnothing
If you're looking for a business solution, try something like Desk.com. It
doesn't handle text or IM, but it works well for email, Facebook, and Twitter.

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volaski
First thought you were talking about Inbox for everything as in literally
everything, including physical mails

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ramykhuffash
Cloudmagic? [https://cloudmagic.com](https://cloudmagic.com)

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ChikkaChiChi
Lots of ideas, not a lot of products.

Niche? :)

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rnochumo
Chimeapp.com?

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porter
Browser tabs?

~~~
danaw
The idea would be to have something with a bit more sophistication.
Associating contacts on multiple platforms into one thread. Reply to people on
multiple platforms from one location. Having a conversation trail with each
person on multiple media.

