Keeping your Email inbox count at zero– We all strive for it, but for most it’s been out of reach for years. When the Internet dumps an unwieldy pile of miscellany on you, managing Email can become an impossible goal. It’s no easy task to stay on top of your Email list, and when messages are so varied in topic and chronological relevancy, it’s inevitable that a couple will be lost in the jumbled cascade of read and unread emails.
MIT class of 2005 graduate, Alex Moore (26), is attempting to solve the problem of lost and forgotten Emails with his application, Boomerang. The app currently integrates with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and a Gmail integration is in production.
True to its name, Boomerang allows users to take currently irrelevant Emails, pull them out of the inbox, and designate a more pertinent time for them to fly back in, unread.
Driven to start his own company to supply solutions like this, Alex drafted up the concept for Baydin and was accepted into the TechStars program last May.
As Alex puts it, Boomerang lets you “focus on Emails that matter now.” So if I get a message about a meeting one week from now, and I get that feeling I’m going to lose it in the Email waterfall, I can just plug in a return time (lets go with a day before the meeting), and Boomerang will throw it back, marked as unread, on that date. Messages marked for return stay out of your way in the “Boomerang Folder,” so that you can hold off on responding or deleting, while still keeping your inbox at zero.
Return times for “Boomeranged” Emails can be any day, minute, or year you want to plug in, and you can also ask for a random return if you want a little surprise within a given date range.
Alex’s company, Baydin, actually started as a different Outlook app designed to group emails automatically by content.
However, development of the original app proved time consuming and difficult to conquer. The idea for Boomerang had been knocking, but the Baydin project was monopolizing Alex’s resources. That was until he missed an important Email due to a cluttered inbox at which point he said, “I’m building this thing.”
Thus, production of Baydin was shelved and re-routed to Boomerang, while Baydin remained the company name.
Whether Boomerang is a productivity tool, or a procrastinators dream, we’ll have to see.
Personally I don’t see why it can’t be both. If used responsibly, Boomerang could be a great way to reserve Emails for times when you can best respond, and even turn your Emails into timely reminders of events. Conversely, if you throw Emails for the instant gratification of that clean inbox you’re going to have them all flying back to hit you in the face and then you’ll be back to square one.
Boomerang is set to launch May 12th and is presenting at Mass Innovation Nights that day. I’m definitely eager to try the Gmail version once it comes out. After all, even if I get clocked by a Boomeranged Email once in a while, at least that would eliminate the chance of forgetting about or losing it altogether.
