

SlideMail – an email app that can think - vu0tran
http://www.slidemailapp.com/

======
vu0tran
Hey guys, Vu, the founder here.

I'm a developer and my email habits are absolutely horrible. Whenever I put in
long hours of coding, I feel like the time it takes to context switch between
development and doing email is way too high.

Because of this, I'm notorious for missing emails, flights even or just not
responding to emails as it gets lost in my inbox forever.

I essentially started making this email app for myself and it's finally
working quite well. There have been times where I've completely forgotten
about a meeting and it's reminded me to show up on time. The sorting uses a
lot of NLP magic and I find it to be pretty accurate too for me to take back
control of my inbox. I just want to see how far I can run with it and already
working on trying to suggest replies to emails.

There are a lot of email apps on the market and I think their concept is "how
do we incorporate better design and work flow to solve the email problem"? My
notion is rather, "how do we use technology to solve the email problem?"

Other than that, I'm also really excited with the privacy route I decided to
take. The downside is that deploying across multiple platforms will be more
challenging without a central server side component, but if the plus is that
if one chooses the option of going "private" (essentially this turns off
server side push notifications) there won't be any communication with my
server at all.

It's been a real struggle these past few months so I'm super excited!!

~~~
Mithaldu
I can't tell for what OS this is, and unless you're planning to make it for
both android and ios, please put the fact that it's only for one, and which it
is, top and large on your site.

There is little that makes me think worse of a company than having it
breathlessly describe a product i actually want, without telling me whether i
can actually use it.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Literally every single product image uses an iPhone, and the real product
photo is also clearly an iPhone.

Just because it doesn't have a big image or text with OS compatibility does
not mean you can't intelligently determine based on the product photos what OS
it's for. If it were for Android, they'd have at least one Android photo, or
specifically mention Android compatibility. If it's a completely iOS-centric
page, you can guess /quite easily/ it's iOS only.

~~~
Mithaldu
I don't know anyone with an iphone and rarely see pictures of them. As such, i
simply am not familiar enough with them to figure out whether it's an android
or iphone just by looking at it, especially since the UI is very generic and
android mods and ISP OSes plentiful.

~~~
mynameisvlad
They're pretty different.

iOS 7 (8 is pretty much the same): [http://now.avg.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/ios7_homescree...](http://now.avg.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/ios7_homescreen1.jpg)

Android Lollipop:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Android_5...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Android_5.0_%22Lollipop%22_homescreen.jpg)

Furthermore, I doubt they'd do anything crazy if they were to show an Android
app. It's usually stock or very few mods.

------
hayksaakian
Three Practical tips to get your slidemail app more sign ups:

\- You should have a call to action at the bottom of the page. It would be as
simple as copy/pasting the code for the one-line email capture from above

\- encourage sharing. i didn't provide my email address to test this, but you
should encourage people (at some point: before signing up, right after signing
up, or in a follow up email) to share this thing.

\- I got the impression that it's iOS only. You probably got a lot of visits
from android devices (check your own logs if you don't believe me). You could
address that with a separate capture form using User Agent detection?
Something like: "Get notified when we launch the Android version"

small nit pick about the page:

\- <meta> tags are like <img> tags they should NOT have a corresponding close
tag, "</meta>"

good luck with the app Vu

(i'm still using your old "hack" parakeet so i know you make some interesting
stuff)

~ @hayksaakian on twitter

------
maelito
"All the processing happens within the SlideMail app itself. Whether you're
syncing through Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, or any other IMAP based email
service, your emails will never be stored outside of your app. If you delete
the application from your phone, your data is gone for good." This is
interesting.

~~~
alienasa
And a differentiator. Otherwise all of the functionality described is already
provided by GMail (and possibly others that I don't use frequently).

~~~
vu0tran
Yeah, totally. I think with these features, one group that it has resonated
with that was unexpected were college students and people that are less tech
saavy like my mom and my dad.

They still use Yahoo mail so Inbox / Gmail just doesn't work for them.
SlideMail sort of brings what the Gmail app has to offer, in my opinion,
enhances it and provides it for IMAP in general as well as other services.

------
oellegaard
Wish all this iOS app development would result in similar apps for OS X.

~~~
spost
Ditto, I would love a well-designed alternative to Mail or Airmail.

------
mfkp
The name is very similar to an app that I worked on - ClearSlide Mail:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clearslide-mail-sales-
inbox/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clearslide-mail-sales-
inbox/id909142984?ls=1&mt=8)

We also did the "only check mail on the phone" implementation for security,
but it ends up hurting the user experience because Apple gets to decide when
to use background data.

It gets better (more frequent) the more you use the app, but it's hard to get
users over the initial delays in mail checking. Just something to think about
as you're building this.

------
mike-cardwell
How does it fare against
[https://emailprivacytester.com/](https://emailprivacytester.com/) ? I'm yet
to see a new Email client which doesn't fail at least one of the tests.

------
tthayer
Does it support IMAP IDLE? I've had to do some ridiculous workaround by
forwarding my work and gmail accounts to icloud accounts just so I can get
push working and none of the other email clients I have tried support it.

~~~
vu0tran
It'll detect if IMAP IDLE is supported on the provider and use it wherever it
can, so IIRC:

Gmail / iCloud: Yes FastMail: Yes Yahoo: No AoL / Exchange / Hotmail / Live:
Can't remember

------
wingerlang
I don't like that the first thing I see is an "sign up now" and the entering
of my email. Show me what you've got before trying to get (Only the
impression) my email.

------
logicalmike
Just a small issue I noticed on the landing page, you're including the
"bootstrap.js" file twice.

------
ocdtrekkie
"All the processing happens within the SlideMail app itself."

Kudos to this. Bunch of scammers like Google try convincing you they HAVE to
have your data for these things to be possible.

~~~
Killswitch
Ummm, for you to use Gmail, they HAVE to have your data... Where do you think
that email is stored?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
There's a big difference between just storing and routing it, and processing
every line and generating personal profiles off of it. o_o

~~~
Killswitch
Well you have two options, pay for email, or use gmail for free in exchange
for allowing this.

I'm all for privacy, but sometimes you guys go way overboard and complain and
act entitled like Google is obligated to offer Gmail free of charge with
nothing in return.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I'd be happy to pay for good private email service. But of course, Google
doesn't offer it. Because offering that sort of option would be a much more
obvious admission of how much they rifle through your data as an income
source.

My issue is not that they offer a business relationship where they use your
data for money, my issue is how shady they are about it.

~~~
Killswitch
Google has always been obvious about all their products and services being for
selling more advertising.. They figured out how to make a great income from
it, and nobody would pay for email at the cost it'd have to be to make the
same as they do.

Remember, all the good stuff they do, all depends on revenue dollars coming
in. And in the end, they're still a company looking to make a profit.

------
locksley
Why is this Show HN? Can a mod please remove it, so we can respect the other
Show HNs.

"... blog posts, email signups, and fundraisers can't be tried out, so they
don't count as Show HNs"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html))

~~~
vishalzone2002
I agree.. We'll soon start seeing bunch of launch rock pages in ShowHN

~~~
veb
The difference is... they offer nothing except "we made something, sign up?!"
whereas this is actually a lot different. If you read the thread, the founder
is in here commenting and you can tell that there's already a working product.
Polished and shiny it may not be, but this is not just empty space like most
LaunchRock type pages.

~~~
vishalzone2002
First difference doesn't even count. With no offense to the founder, its easy
to take part in the discussion. How can you tell that there is actually a
working prototype/MVP? These wireframes can be made in proto or PSDs.

------
general_failure
Is the app available for me to try now? Looks like this is something very far
out in the future? Why is this Show HN?

Edit: or is the intent here that I will get immediate access if I put in my
email? And the 'invites' is for the ready product?

------
_mikz
My CPU BURNS! With latest Chrome on OSX.

