Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-11-11 Thread Bill Cole

On 29 Oct 2013, at 7:59, Ryan Erwin wrote:

The other direction that I see as a solid field to grow is simple 
message security. Something that is easier to use than PGP, more 
secure than PGP (no exposed subject lines!) but I think that requires 
rethinking the client and the server, and ultimately if you change it 
enough it's not even "email" anymore.


Correct. Or at least correct-ish...

"Subject" is a mandatory header in RFC822 and its successors. Not having 
it won't cause much breakage outside of client presentation, but there 
could be some issues with filters and access servers like Exchange that 
translate RFC822 messages into their own favorite formats. One solution 
is to use a meaningless Subject header on encrypted messages whose real 
Subject you put in the encrypted message body.


Ultimately this is a user practice issue, not something a client can 
solve. Cleartext Subject (and other) headers are useful enough that they 
are likely to be a permanent feature of standard email. The fact that 
PGP and S/MIME have both been essentially stable and closely matched in 
how much protection they provide, how easy they are to use, and how few 
people use them for many years is a strong indication that doing 
substantially better is a hard problem.

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Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-30 Thread Benny Kjær Nielsen

On 29 Oct 2013, at 12:59, Ryan Erwin wrote:

I love that I can hit "/" and my default search boxes come up, and I 
can quickly find the message that I need to reference.


Ironically, I think it's too slow to setup a quick search :-) (I have 
some ideas for that.)


If only MailMate could be made a bit more pretty. Embedding Mou's or 
TextMate's syntax highlighting, title sizing and stylization would be 
a good step, and Mou's or Marked's Markdown life preview.


Yes, that would be nice.

Sorry for skipping most of your comments. I did read and digest them.


So what is the niche?


This is the important question. My goal is to create a niche for an 
email application worth paying for. I guess this is also reflected by 
the recent price increase. It won't be an email client for everybody and 
it doesn't have to be. My goal is to find the best 
generalizations/abstractions of common tasks and make that available to 
the user. It'll often start with low level plist-hacking, but in the end 
it will/can grow into both simple and advanced GUI features.


In particular, I have great expectations to the (experimental) bundle 
system. It's undocumented, but it can already do numerous cool things 
that I'll hopefully polish and write more about in the future. It is 
currently used to integrate with other applications, but it can do much 
more than that.


For example: I have 120 crowd funding emails in a folder now. At some 
point I need to send a message to all the senders to notify them about 
an indiegogo.com crowd funding site. I could create a new message and 
bcc them all, but I would like to reply to the original messages in 
order to modify some of the replies (answering some comments) and 
keeping each thread of communication intact. To do this, I have created 
a 7-line plist file which makes this task a single-key action. A 
reply-draft is generated for each message with a prefixed body including 
a “Dear” string with the first name of the sender. This could, by 
the way, be generalized to provide some kind of system for canned 
replies.


Another high priority item on my list are settings on a mailbox level. 
Rules are partly implemented, but there are many other settings which 
belong on a mailbox/account level including many of the current settings 
in the Preferences pane.



-Ryan in Shanghai
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014


I like your signature ;-) But note that you have inherited my typo (I 
should setup redirection).


--
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http://freron.com/crowdfund2014
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Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-29 Thread Ryan Erwin

## The Hacker's Mail Client

I use MailMate more than any other program on my Macbook Air, which I 
keep with me almost all the time in my life of nearly constant travel. I 
love that I can hit "/" and my default search boxes come up, and I can 
quickly find the message that I need to reference.


![](cid:501D196C-0672-461F-8609-0F9C963495A6@mac.com "PastedImage.png")

I also love that I can use MultiMarkdown commands to quickly format my 
message as a real document - I very rarely attach PDFs or DOCs now.


If only MailMate could be made a bit more pretty. Embedding Mou's or 
TextMate's syntax highlighting, title sizing and stylization would be a 
good step, and Mou's or Marked's Markdown life preview.


## Keep your hands on the keyboard!

Over the last decade, I've noticed several Mac programs develop a 
cult-like following. LaunchBar, Quicksilver, Alfred, Notational Velocity 
and MacVim - and that's without getting into all the "keyboard macro" 
apps.


From my prospective, MailMate is already a good keyboard centric app, 
but it's still not in the same league in keyboard control as the other 
apps I mentioned above.


## Define the Target

MailMate is so close to greatness.

* It's stable enough. A few bugs, but more stable than Mail.app in my 
experience.
* It's very fast - as long as I put the 1 year timeframe around my 
message buffer. Sure would be great to be able to access all my old 
messages with a different type of index when needed.
* It's almost pretty enough, but it needs some care and attention from a 
designer.


You could fix all of those things, and we would enjoy MailMate even 
more, but I don't think you would see a lot of growth in MailMate 
downloads and license rates. You need a SHARP ARROW. Something special 
that cuts through the noise. Something people care about, and ultimately 
something that people are willing to pay money for. "a 3rd party 
alternative to Mail.app" is a nice idea, but few of us are going to fork 
out cash to ensure "mail client diversity".


So what is the niche? Let's come up with something better than 
"MailMate: The Hackers Email Client".


The other direction that I see as a solid field to grow is simple 
message security. Something that is easier to use than PGP, more secure 
than PGP (no exposed subject lines!) but I think that requires 
rethinking the client and the server, and ultimately if you change it 
enough it's not even "email" anymore.


In any case, I hope to be using new and better versions of MailMate for 
years to come!


-Ryan in Shanghai
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014

On 21 Oct 2013, at 22:51, Ryan Erwin wrote:
I'm definitely with Zvi here. As Ghandi said, "Speed doesn't matter if 
you're not traveling in the right direction". You've got to get the 
marketing side of MailMate figured out.


If you run with the "Hacker's Email Client", perhaps you can 
capitalize on the current NSA inspired anxiety and focus on features 
that make our email more secure. Maybe it's truly SIMPLE (as opposed 
to always a PITA) GPG integration, or your own security mechanism that 
even protects subject lines. The PirateBay guys are working on HEML.is 
but it's still in progress, and seem to be more of a chat program. 
Personally, I use email because I need to search and archive.


Retroactively encrypting all of my old emails on the server and 
allowing search of those encrypted messages without the server knowing 
my key (i.e. encrypted indexing) is sort of an enterprise direction.


Or perhaps you just go the Notational Velocity route of an email 
program that is insanely fast to use without your fingers ever leaving 
the keyboard. Keep the customization coming. Make it the VIM of email.


That's enough from me. Let's see what the rest of your MailMate 
advocates have to say about it.


On 21 Oct 2013, at 22:44, Zvi Biener wrote:
I like the nascent marketing idea: MailMate is the hacker's email 
client.


Not that you need too many interjections, Benny, but I, for one, 
would much rather you spent time thinking of how to fund and 
advertise MailMate and put development off for a little bit, if only 
to ensure future development. I also think the video of the real 
power-feature, customization, and generality of MailMate would 
attract lots of hacker types, if they only new about it… A Facebook 
page can also do wonders these days (people expect it, even).


Are you aware of Scrivener? It is also a home-made piece of software 
that answers to a need most people thought was already solved: word 
processing. But Scrivener has completely taken off. The guy who wrote 
and runs it is very nice and might be responsive to another developer 
asking how he might get a non-competing sourcing campaign off the 
ground…


My 2c.

Zvi
On 21 Oct 2013, at 10:34, Ryan Erwin wrote:


Benny,

Did you send a notice about the crowd funding opportunity to all of 
your licensed users? I didn't notice one - I only saw notice through 
the mailing list.


If you don't want to 

Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-21 Thread Benny Kjær Nielsen

On 21 Oct 2013, at 16:34, Ryan Erwin wrote:

Did you send a notice about the crowd funding opportunity to all of 
your licensed users? I didn't notice one - I only saw notice through 
the mailing list.


No, not yet. I'm thinking I might postpone this until after I decide 
whether or not to make a “real” crowd funding page.


If you don't want to send an email blast, perhaps you should send a 
link inside of the MailMate updates.


Same answer.

If you get a 5-10% response rate to your offer, your doing pretty 
good. I also noticed that the crowd funding link you sent in MailMate 
wasn't a working link. The link in your emails is to 
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014 but the valid website link is 
http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/


Thanks!

Perhaps we can all work together on some ideas to help Benny promote 
MailMate, point out the features that will show why every hacker needs 
a copy of MailMate, and eventually put together a short, sweet, 3 
minute screencast of what MailMate 2.0 could be, the post it on 
indiegogo (why not kickstarter?) and try this again.


As proven by my track record then I'm really bad at taking the time to 
do a screencast. I haven't even played with screencasting software (I 
also fear a very amateurish result). But a screencast is probably a 
must-have for a real crowd funding site.


I just looked into indiegogo before Kickstarter. I'll have to compare 
them and also make sure it is not a problem that I'm located in Denmark.


Personally, I use MailMate more than any other program on my MBA, and 
I carry it around with me everywhere. I would hate to see this program 
stagnate, it's already so much better at search than Mail.app, but 
there is still so much that could be done to make MailMate truly 
great.


I cannot disagree with that :-)

--
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http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/
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Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-21 Thread Jason Davies

On 21 Oct 2013, at 15:44, Zvi Biener wrote:

I like the nascent marketing idea: MailMate is the hacker's email 
client.


I keep wondering how to get Mailmate-awareness to the old Mailsmith 
crowd, formerly sold by Bare Bones. THat also hit the point it could not 
support itself full-time but also ran aground because of IMAP being too 
complex to implement without a rewrite. It seems a bit rude to mention 
it on their list...;) But they are very similar in ethos, if different 
in implementation.

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Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-21 Thread Ryan Erwin
I'm definitely with Zvi here. As Ghandi said, "Speed doesn't matter if 
you're not traveling in the right direction". You've got to get the 
marketing side of MailMate figured out.


If you run with the "Hacker's Email Client", perhaps you can capitalize 
on the current NSA inspired anxiety and focus on features that make our 
email more secure. Maybe it's truly SIMPLE (as opposed to always a PITA) 
GPG integration, or your own security mechanism that even protects 
subject lines. The PirateBay guys are working on HEML.is but it's still 
in progress, and seem to be more of a chat program. Personally, I use 
email because I need to search and archive.


Retroactively encrypting all of my old emails on the server and allowing 
search of those encrypted messages without the server knowing my key 
(i.e. encrypted indexing) is sort of an enterprise direction.


Or perhaps you just go the Notational Velocity route of an email program 
that is insanely fast to use without your fingers ever leaving the 
keyboard. Keep the customization coming. Make it the VIM of email.


That's enough from me. Let's see what the rest of your MailMate 
advocates have to say about it.


On 21 Oct 2013, at 22:44, Zvi Biener wrote:
I like the nascent marketing idea: MailMate is the hacker's email 
client.


Not that you need too many interjections, Benny, but I, for one, would 
much rather you spent time thinking of how to fund and advertise 
MailMate and put development off for a little bit, if only to ensure 
future development. I also think the video of the real power-feature, 
customization, and generality of MailMate would attract lots of hacker 
types, if they only new about it… A Facebook page can also do 
wonders these days (people expect it, even).


Are you aware of Scrivener? It is also a home-made piece of software 
that answers to a need most people thought was already solved: word 
processing. But Scrivener has completely taken off. The guy who wrote 
and runs it is very nice and might be responsive to another developer 
asking how he might get a non-competing sourcing campaign off the 
ground…


My 2c.

Zvi
On 21 Oct 2013, at 10:34, Ryan Erwin wrote:


Benny,

Did you send a notice about the crowd funding opportunity to all of 
your licensed users? I didn't notice one - I only saw notice through 
the mailing list.


If you don't want to send an email blast, perhaps you should send a 
link inside of the MailMate updates. If you get a 5-10% response rate 
to your offer, your doing pretty good. I also noticed that the crowd 
funding link you sent in MailMate wasn't a working link. The link in 
your emails is to http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014 but the valid 
website link is http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/


I think those of us on this list here are the most invested in seeing 
MailMate succeed, we care enough about MailMate to get several emails 
per day about it.


Perhaps we can all work together on some ideas to help Benny promote 
MailMate, point out the features that will show why every hacker 
needs a copy of MailMate, and eventually put together a short, sweet, 
3 minute screencast of what MailMate 2.0 could be, the post it on 
indiegogo (why not kickstarter?) and try this again.


Personally, I use MailMate more than any other program on my MBA, and 
I carry it around with me everywhere. I would hate to see this 
program stagnate, it's already so much better at search than 
Mail.app, but there is still so much that could be done to make 
MailMate truly great.


Best,

-Ryan in Shanghai

On 21 Oct 2013, at 20:31, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

Dear MailMate users,

as many of you have probably seen then I posted a few times on my 
blog at the end of last week. First of all, [MailMate 
1.7](http://blog.freron.com/2013/mailmate-1-7-released/) was 
relased, but more importantly I posted a personal message entitled 
“[Changing 
Priorities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/)”. It 
describes how my financial situation changes next year and how that 
is very likely to affect my future work on MailMate. In short, you 
can thank my wife that MailMate exists at all :-)


As part of the blog post I launched a somewhat crude [crowdfunding 
page](http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/). I wanted to get a feeling 
if this was an option with respect to being able to continue 
developing MailMate full time in 2014. I set a deadline November 1st 
which is a very short time, but it was also intended to be a quick 
experiment. So far, I've received pledges for almost $5000 in total. 
I'm trilled that so many quickly showed their support and I've 
received pledges ranging from $20 to $200 — and a single pledge of 
$500!


But (unfortunately there is a but) this is only 10% of my unofficial 
goal number ($50K) and it's not very likely that I'll get to 100%. 
We'll see. In any case, it has inspired me to look into crowdfunding 
services such as [http://indiegogo.com](http://indiegogo.com) for 
crowd funding development of MailMat

Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-21 Thread Zvi Biener
I like the nascent marketing idea: MailMate is the hacker's email 
client.


Not that you need too many interjections, Benny, but I, for one, would 
much rather you spent time thinking of how to fund and advertise 
MailMate and put development off for a little bit, if only to ensure 
future development. I also think the video of the real power-feature, 
customization, and generality of MailMate would attract lots of hacker 
types, if they only new about it… A Facebook page can also do wonders 
these days (people expect it, even).


Are you aware of Scrivener? It is also a home-made piece of software 
that answers to a need most people thought was already solved: word 
processing. But Scrivener has completely taken off. The guy who wrote 
and runs it is very nice and might be responsive to another developer 
asking how he might get a non-competing sourcing campaign off the 
ground…


My 2c.

Zvi
On 21 Oct 2013, at 10:34, Ryan Erwin wrote:


Benny,

Did you send a notice about the crowd funding opportunity to all of 
your licensed users? I didn't notice one - I only saw notice through 
the mailing list.


If you don't want to send an email blast, perhaps you should send a 
link inside of the MailMate updates. If you get a 5-10% response rate 
to your offer, your doing pretty good. I also noticed that the crowd 
funding link you sent in MailMate wasn't a working link. The link in 
your emails is to http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014 but the valid 
website link is http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/


I think those of us on this list here are the most invested in seeing 
MailMate succeed, we care enough about MailMate to get several emails 
per day about it.


Perhaps we can all work together on some ideas to help Benny promote 
MailMate, point out the features that will show why every hacker needs 
a copy of MailMate, and eventually put together a short, sweet, 3 
minute screencast of what MailMate 2.0 could be, the post it on 
indiegogo (why not kickstarter?) and try this again.


Personally, I use MailMate more than any other program on my MBA, and 
I carry it around with me everywhere. I would hate to see this program 
stagnate, it's already so much better at search than Mail.app, but 
there is still so much that could be done to make MailMate truly 
great.


Best,

-Ryan in Shanghai

On 21 Oct 2013, at 20:31, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

Dear MailMate users,

as many of you have probably seen then I posted a few times on my 
blog at the end of last week. First of all, [MailMate 
1.7](http://blog.freron.com/2013/mailmate-1-7-released/) was relased, 
but more importantly I posted a personal message entitled 
“[Changing 
Priorities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/)”. It 
describes how my financial situation changes next year and how that 
is very likely to affect my future work on MailMate. In short, you 
can thank my wife that MailMate exists at all :-)


As part of the blog post I launched a somewhat crude [crowdfunding 
page](http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/). I wanted to get a feeling if 
this was an option with respect to being able to continue developing 
MailMate full time in 2014. I set a deadline November 1st which is a 
very short time, but it was also intended to be a quick experiment. 
So far, I've received pledges for almost $5000 in total. I'm trilled 
that so many quickly showed their support and I've received pledges 
ranging from $20 to $200 — and a single pledge of $500!


But (unfortunately there is a but) this is only 10% of my unofficial 
goal number ($50K) and it's not very likely that I'll get to 100%. 
We'll see. In any case, it has inspired me to look into crowdfunding 
services such as [http://indiegogo.com](http://indiegogo.com) for 
crowd funding development of MailMate 2.0. This could perhaps be a 
$25K goal for 6 months of development to make it more likely to be 
reached. If I do that then I'll naturally send an email to everyone 
who has pledged money and point them in that direction. If you have 
any good ideas for “perks” (other than MailMate license keys) 
then please send them to me.


Note that I have also announced a price change for MailMate. Later 
today the price changes to $49.99. See my comments about that in the 
[blog post](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/) if you 
like.


And finally, note that I also posted on the blog about the 
configuration of [multiple 
identities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/handling-multiple-identities/).


Thanks to everyone pledging money (or buying MailMate license keys)! 
I know that some of you are probably even worse off financially than 
I am and I truly appreciate your support.


--
Benny
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014
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Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-21 Thread Ryan Erwin

Benny,

Did you send a notice about the crowd funding opportunity to all of your 
licensed users? I didn't notice one - I only saw notice through the 
mailing list.


If you don't want to send an email blast, perhaps you should send a link 
inside of the MailMate updates. If you get a 5-10% response rate to your 
offer, your doing pretty good. I also noticed that the crowd funding 
link you sent in MailMate wasn't a working link. The link in your emails 
is to http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014 but the valid website link is 
http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/


I think those of us on this list here are the most invested in seeing 
MailMate succeed, we care enough about MailMate to get several emails 
per day about it.


Perhaps we can all work together on some ideas to help Benny promote 
MailMate, point out the features that will show why every hacker needs a 
copy of MailMate, and eventually put together a short, sweet, 3 minute 
screencast of what MailMate 2.0 could be, the post it on indiegogo (why 
not kickstarter?) and try this again.


Personally, I use MailMate more than any other program on my MBA, and I 
carry it around with me everywhere. I would hate to see this program 
stagnate, it's already so much better at search than Mail.app, but there 
is still so much that could be done to make MailMate truly great.


Best,

-Ryan in Shanghai

On 21 Oct 2013, at 20:31, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

Dear MailMate users,

as many of you have probably seen then I posted a few times on my blog 
at the end of last week. First of all, [MailMate 
1.7](http://blog.freron.com/2013/mailmate-1-7-released/) was relased, 
but more importantly I posted a personal message entitled “[Changing 
Priorities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/)”. It 
describes how my financial situation changes next year and how that is 
very likely to affect my future work on MailMate. In short, you can 
thank my wife that MailMate exists at all :-)


As part of the blog post I launched a somewhat crude [crowdfunding 
page](http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/). I wanted to get a feeling if 
this was an option with respect to being able to continue developing 
MailMate full time in 2014. I set a deadline November 1st which is a 
very short time, but it was also intended to be a quick experiment. So 
far, I've received pledges for almost $5000 in total. I'm trilled that 
so many quickly showed their support and I've received pledges ranging 
from $20 to $200 — and a single pledge of $500!


But (unfortunately there is a but) this is only 10% of my unofficial 
goal number ($50K) and it's not very likely that I'll get to 100%. 
We'll see. In any case, it has inspired me to look into crowdfunding 
services such as [http://indiegogo.com](http://indiegogo.com) for 
crowd funding development of MailMate 2.0. This could perhaps be a 
$25K goal for 6 months of development to make it more likely to be 
reached. If I do that then I'll naturally send an email to everyone 
who has pledged money and point them in that direction. If you have 
any good ideas for “perks” (other than MailMate license keys) then 
please send them to me.


Note that I have also announced a price change for MailMate. Later 
today the price changes to $49.99. See my comments about that in the 
[blog post](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/) if you 
like.


And finally, note that I also posted on the blog about the 
configuration of [multiple 
identities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/handling-multiple-identities/).


Thanks to everyone pledging money (or buying MailMate license keys)! I 
know that some of you are probably even worse off financially than I 
am and I truly appreciate your support.


--
Benny
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014
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[MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014

2013-10-21 Thread Benny Kjær Nielsen

Dear MailMate users,

as many of you have probably seen then I posted a few times on my blog 
at the end of last week. First of all, [MailMate 
1.7](http://blog.freron.com/2013/mailmate-1-7-released/) was relased, 
but more importantly I posted a personal message entitled “[Changing 
Priorities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/)”. It 
describes how my financial situation changes next year and how that is 
very likely to affect my future work on MailMate. In short, you can 
thank my wife that MailMate exists at all :-)


As part of the blog post I launched a somewhat crude [crowdfunding 
page](http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/). I wanted to get a feeling if 
this was an option with respect to being able to continue developing 
MailMate full time in 2014. I set a deadline November 1st which is a 
very short time, but it was also intended to be a quick experiment. So 
far, I've received pledges for almost $5000 in total. I'm trilled that 
so many quickly showed their support and I've received pledges ranging 
from $20 to $200 — and a single pledge of $500!


But (unfortunately there is a but) this is only 10% of my unofficial 
goal number ($50K) and it's not very likely that I'll get to 100%. We'll 
see. In any case, it has inspired me to look into crowdfunding services 
such as [http://indiegogo.com](http://indiegogo.com) for crowd funding 
development of MailMate 2.0. This could perhaps be a $25K goal for 6 
months of development to make it more likely to be reached. If I do that 
then I'll naturally send an email to everyone who has pledged money and 
point them in that direction. If you have any good ideas for “perks” 
(other than MailMate license keys) then please send them to me.


Note that I have also announced a price change for MailMate. Later today 
the price changes to $49.99. See my comments about that in the [blog 
post](http://blog.freron.com/2013/changing-priorities/) if you like.


And finally, note that I also posted on the blog about the configuration 
of [multiple 
identities](http://blog.freron.com/2013/handling-multiple-identities/).


Thanks to everyone pledging money (or buying MailMate license keys)! I 
know that some of you are probably even worse off financially than I am 
and I truly appreciate your support.


--
Benny
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014
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