And, so, I am in the Software Business Again or Inbox Buddy 0.90 is Available

I've been heads down, and not blogging much at all this past week, because we've all been heads down getting Inbox Buddy 0.9 ready to go.  Inbox Buddy, for those who haven't heard me allude to it in different posts over the past few months, is a Microsoft Outlook addin which dramatically improves your daily email experience.  Here are just a few of the features:

• Automatic Spam Detection
• Email Priority Ranking
• Easy, Fast Creation of New Mail
• Notification of replies -- or people that failed to reply
• A color coded inbox
• Understanding of the "relationships" found in your email
• A whole lot more

The second to last point, "relationships", needs some additional clarification.  We traditionally view an inbox as a flat list of messages.  That's just not true.  An inbox is a rich collection of your relationships including Client, Boss, Friend, etc.  Inbox Buddy is based on a quick and easy training model which lets you identify your relationships and then uses those to organize, prioritize and display your Inbox.  We call this ERM or Email Relationship Management and there will be more on this in the weeks to come. 

The website is here and the blog is here and the RSS feed is here.  And, to download it, click here.

Oh and I have to give a special thanks to Matt Mower of Novissio.  Out of the blue, when we needed a tester and didn't know where to turn, Matt popped up and has been just plain wonderful.  Thanks Matt!

Quick FAQ About Whether You Care About This?

Question: Should I Download This?

Answer: Yes depending on the answers to these:

• You use Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP (it does NOT work with Outlook Express).
• You get a lot of email or spam.
• You're willing to use a 0.90 product.  Just to clarify this, Inbox Buddy has been in daily usage by the lead developer and myself since last November by other people since July.  It has successfully processed tens of thousands of messages.  We're not saying it's perfect by any means but it does work well and has gotten lots of testing.
• You are willing to update periodically when new versions are released (we'll probably average between 1 and 2 versions per week until October 31st depending on feedback; more at first, hopefully slowing as we go).

Question: What's wrong with it right now?

Answer: We're not really aware of much at all.  There has been 1 reported instance of a possible conflict with another Outlook plugin (from Cloudmark).  Installation is probably not clear enough.

Question: How's the Documentation?

Answer: I'd describe the documentation as I do my personal life: A work in progress.  I'm teasing here -- we've written in excess of 70 pages of print equivalent and it's ok.  No documentation is ever good enough, imho, so we'll continue to make it better and better.

Question: What kind of support is there?

Answer: We have a support discussion forum here which is the best way to get support.  You can also email us of course.

Question: Given that you are a strong advocate of free software, why are you charging for this?

Answer: There's a good, albeit lengthy, answer for this which will get blogged tomorrow or wednesday.

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It'll Be Kind of Slow Here Today

Just letting you know.  Allergies, deadlines and lack of sleep all make Scott a dull blogger.

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