During our beta testing period, one of our most requested features was a way to get OIB on the iPhone. As a first step, we created a Mobile Safari optimized website that allows all OIB users to read their messages on their iPhone or iPod Touch. Then, we released an IMAP server for premium users that allows you to add OIB as an additional email account on your iPhone, your Blackberry, or even your desktop computer. We're still thinking about the right way to do a native iPhone app.

Although we've had some bumps and bruises along the way, we recently fixed many of the problems our users reported on our support site and are confident the iPhone web app is working properly. We would love it if you would give it a try and let us know what you think!

Just point mobile Safari to my.otherinbox.com, log in with your OIB credentials, and you're all set. If a message is too large to view, tap the "Open message in new window" link above the message to view it full screen, complete with pinch-zooming and everything!

   

What do you think? How can we make the OIB iPhone web app even better? Would you rather read your OIB messages over IMAP or the web?

Over the last few months, OtherInbox has added several cool features,
and I want to make sure you are getting the most out of it.  Whether
you were one of the first beta testers or have just heard about it, there is probably something that will save you time in one of these videos. Click on the ones that are
applicable to you, or watch them all!  We would appreciate it if you
would share these videos with anyone you know who might need a little
help with email overload.

As always, thank you for your support!

(To view videos full size click on each screencast)

Connect OIB to your Gmail in 3 simple steps!

Connect OIB to your Yahoo! email

Go premium!

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 .

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!

After signing up, your OtherInbox is ready to receive messages right away. However, you may be looking at an empty OtherInbox and wondering what to do next. This guide will show you how OtherInbox works. If you already know how to use OtherInbox, by all means, go right ahead!

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to email us or visit our support site where you can search previous topics, post your own questions, and vote for new features. Please also take a look at our frequently asked questions for additional getting started tips.

Trying out our features does no good without any messages, so let’s start by creating a few to work with.

Send messages to your OtherInbox from your main email account

You can create unlimited OtherInbox email addresses, but we’re going to start by sending to a few:

delete@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com
save@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com
block@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com

Automatic mailbox creation

In a few moments, check your OtherInbox and you should see three new mailboxes. They will be found in the second column, or the mailbox list. They will be called Delete, Save, and Block. This matches the first part of the OtherInbox email addresses you just created on the fly. No need to set them up in advance!

Note: To refresh your OtherInbox, click the OtherInbox logo at the top left-hand corner.

Deleting messages

Click on the Delete mailbox in the mailbox list. The message list will show the subject line, date, and sender for each message. The selected message can be viewed in the message reading area below. Above the reading area, click the Delete button.

Where did it go? To find it, let’s look at the first column. This is the folder list. Right now, you are in the Inbox folder. Click on the Deleted folder and you will find the Delete mailbox with the message you just deleted. Want it back in your Inbox folder? Click the Move to Inbox button above the message.

Saving messages for later

Maybe you have a message you want to save for later? Click on the Save mailbox. Select the message you want to save, then click the Save button above it.

Where is it now? In the Saved folder. You can always move it back to the Inbox if you want.

Permanently blocking addresses

One of the powerful features of OtherInbox is the ability to block a mailbox! Let’s say you give one of your OtherInbox email addresses to a newsletter, and they sell your email address. Because you have unlimited OtherInbox email addresses, you can just block it and never get any messages from anyone again!

Let’s block the entire Block mailbox. Select the Block mailbox and click the Block Mailbox button above the message list. You have now blocked this mailbox completely!

Try sending a new message to

block@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com

They will never show up in your Inbox again. No need to unsubscribe, hoping that it works. Just Block All!

If you’ve changed your mind, or accidentally blocked something by mistake, the blocked messages can always be found in the Blocked folder. Or, if necessary, you can also unblock the mailbox as well.

Think of a service that sends you messages you don’t need right away, such as notifications from Facebook or Twitter. Do you have a newsletter you receive daily but don’t need to read every day? Do you get weekly coupons from stores you only shop at every few months?

Start by changing your email addresses with these social networks, online stores, newsletters, or anyone who sends you automated messages that clutter your main email account.

Don’t let these messages get lost or fill your primary inbox, making it impossible to find real messages from family, friends, and coworkers. Send those other messages to your OtherInbox and *cure email overload forever!*

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!

1. Ivor Clarke
2. Cyan Banister
3. Amy Baer
4. Ryan Pitylak
5. John Engler
6. Bijoy Goswami
7. Evan Alter
8. Aaron Scruggs
9. Joleen Sanborn
10. Rand Wacker
11. Bobby Potter
12. Ben Humphry
13. Ross Miller
14. Bradley Dean
15. Jesse Brede
16. Chris Hyams
17. Brandon Phillips
18. Arthur Meyerovich
19. Erica Tello
20. Matt Buck

Everyone on this list has given out more than 100 OtherInbox addresses!

P.S. Bjorn, Mason and Neelan — you are so close!

How many email accounts do you have? A work account? An account from your ISP? How many Gmail or Yahoo! Mail accounts do you have? If you have multiple, chances are that one of them is your “other inbox”.

It’s the one that you use to buy things online, sign up for newsletters, and anytime you don’t want the email to clutter up your work inbox. When you are on a website and it asks for your email address, you make a quick decision — Do I want this email to come to my work email address, or should I send it to the other one I don’t check as frequently?

This practice is very common – David Daniels from Jupiter Research (now Forrester Research) recently found that 75% of email users have at least 2 email addresses. Some people I know have a handful of email addresses. I won’t even tell you how many I have!

You don’t these messages coming to your work inbox for a number of reasons:

• These messages are less important so you don’t need to see them right away
• You think its likely that you will get spam from this website
• These messages are inappropriate for your work email address
• You need to provide an email address in order to get to the page you want to see
• You know you only want to see the first email they send you, and none after that
• You don’t really want these messages at all

If you’re really sophisticated, you might have one email address provided by your work, another that you use for personal communications, and a third that is your “other inbox”. Maybe you check them all separately, or maybe you configure Outlook or other email program to check all of the accounts in one place.

Another way to look at it is that your work inbox is for emails that get sent by real people and your other inbox is for emails that get sent automatically by computers. The emails from people are the ones that you want to see right away and respond to. The emails from computers are the ones that can usually wait until you are ready to look at them.

This is great because many people spend most of their day with their email open. Rather than getting distracted by the less important “other” stuff, you only get notified about new messages from real people that actually may require a response. Then once or twice a day, or once or twice a week, you can check your “other inbox” and clear it out much more quickly than if you have to scan closely for important emails mixed in with the other stuff.

Before I separated things out, I would have more than a hundred messages in my inbox when I woke up every morning. Most people were sleeping at the same time as me, so almost of all them were automated messages sent by computers. Only a handful were sent by real people. Now that I have everything separated out, I only have a few messages waiting for me in the morning instead of more than a hundred. The rest are waiting in my “other inbox” for me to review at my leisure.

Get your OtherInbox and get all that junk out of your work email account.