Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
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. ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
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). -- Benny http://freron.com/crowdfund2014 ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
## 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
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 :-) -- Benny http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/ ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
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. ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
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
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 ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
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 ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
[MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
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 ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate