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 .

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!

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!!!

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!

While OIB focuses on helping you control email overload, OIB offers
several other cool things that most of our early beta testers enjoy. 
One of my personal favorites is being able to make up an email address
on the fly when I sign up for something new that I don’t want to go to
my personal email.

For example, while I was at SXSWi, I found a lot of cool prize
giveaways, newsletters, and blogs to sign up for.  Before
OtherInbox, I would have passed on most of these, if not all of them,
for fear of filling up my email.  OtherInbox allows me to be fearless
with my email addresses, so I can sign up for all of the above and
never have it touch my main email.  For every prize giveaway, I signed
up with the address prize@myname.oib.com, and for all the cool companies I signed up with, I used something like opera@myname.oib.com.  When these companies email me, the email goes to
a specialized mailbox under the company name to help me remember who
each email is from. If I win one of those prizes (keep your fingers
crossed), it will show up under my mailbox labeled “prize”.

Another cool thing about creating email addresses on the fly is that
you can use them for networking.  Going back to my SXSWi example, I
gave everybody I met that was interested in partnership opportunities
the email address partnership@myname.oib.com.  Several potential job
candidates came by, and I gave them jobs@myname.oib.com.  It’s not that
I don’t think these people are important enough to go into my “real”
inbox, but this helps me remember where we met and how I can best help
them.  When you are at a conference or other event where you meet
hundreds of people, this is a great tool for remembering and organizing
contacts.

A good friend of mine is an artist who likes to sell paintings in
public places like coffee shops.  In the past, giving out her real
email has been a hassle.  With OtherInbox, not only can she be fearless
in giving out her email to total strangers, but she can use the tricks
above to find out where she is getting the most response from possible
buyers.  She sets up email addresses using the names of the shops where
she is displaying her work to help her track the “hot spots” for her
business.  I have another friend who cuts hair for extra cash while she
is getting back to full-time work.  She gives out one email for
booking@hername.oib.com, one for cancellations@hername.oib.com, and
another for anything else she wants organized.

Another cool thing about creating addresses on the fly is that you can
easily block them if someone is spamming you.  All you have to do is
hit the block button in your OtherInbox.

There are countless ways you can use OtherInbox to control email.  We
love to share unique stories from our users. If you have a story you
would like to share, please send it to myoib@peeps.oib.com.

One last thing, if you ever want a good chuckle, you can watch
someone’s expression when you give your email address as
theirname@yourname.oib.com.  It always raises an eyebrow or two!

Being fearless with my email has shown me how different companies handle their newsletters. There are many areas of improvement needed. For example, do not send a confirmation message that does not state where it is coming from. That seems obvious, right?

Another issue in particular caught my eye today.

I signed up for a newsletter from 4inkjets.com hoping to get a heads up on coupons or great deals on printer ink. I have never heard of the site before, but I have no worries: 4inkjets gets its own OIB email address.

A few days later, I see that my 4inkjets mailbox has a new message. I am in need of some ink, so I take a look. Here’s what I see:

It’s a newsletter about printer ink, but what is LD Products?

It turns out that LD Products has been doing business as 4inkjets.com since 1999 (according to their About Us page). It has been 10 years! How many people have deleted these messages during that time, since they had never heard of the company before?

If I saw it in my regular inbox (and not my OtherInbox), I would have never made the connection. Maybe I would have checked them out. Most likely, I would have marked it as spam and waited for my 4inkjets newsletter that would never come.

It’s a big world out there. I am certain there are other oddities to find.

Recently, I was informed of a situation in which a company accidentally gave out email addresses of people who used their product. It was a simple mistake that was quickly addressed by the president of the company, but much like toothpaste, once it’s out of the tube, it’s out there. Below is the email sent out to the list of people with exposed email addresses:

Subject: Sorry_for_using_CC

Sorry for not using BCC in the previous email. This has been fixed.

We’ve been using the same process for sending email announcements for the past 6 years. A recent ‘enhancement’ has caused the announcement software to use CC instead of BCC.

This wasn’t intentional.

It won’t happen again.

Again, it’s been fixed.

I’ve responded personally to each and every person that has complained, and will continue to do so.

I personally accept the blame for this. You can direct whatever lumps you feel necessary my way by responding to this email.

Also, if you no longer wish to receive email announcements from S______ simply respond to this email and let us know.

–Mark S______, President

We have a test email account at OtherInbox where we sign up for every possible email and newsletter we come across. It is amazing to see how many companies sell your email address to other companies.

With OtherInbox, you have organized mailboxes for everything you sign up for. For example, when you sign up for company ABC’s newsletter you give them the email address ABC[at]yourname.oib.com. When you go to your OtherInbox, there will be a mailbox named ABC. One day, if you notice there is an email from DEF in your ABC mailbox, you know that somehow DEF got your email from ABC. You can fight back by blocking the mailbox.

Whether by accident or on purpose, your email is vulnerable. There is nothing more annoying to me than opening up my email client to find repulsive spam and unwanted messages piled over important email from family and friends. That is why OtherInbox is so powerful.

Now you can be in control of your email and the security of something that many of us view as personal as our social security or driver’s license numbers. Your primary email address can now be used for what it was meant for — communicating with important people.

With OtherInbox, you don’t have to be afraid to sign up for anything. If someone accidentally gives out the email address you made up for that site, just block it, and no one can send anything to that mailbox again. The same applies for companies that sell your email address without your permission. Not only can you block those emails, but you can also see which companies are betraying your trust.

Be fearless with your OtherInbox. Be free of spam. If you have questions or concerns, email me at nofear[at]lc.oib.com!

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!

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

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

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

There is a local pasta maker 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 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