Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an email client for Mac and Windows, a secure document sharing service, a Web application for creating public or private discussion forums, a service that enables you to monitor social networks via email, and BlackBerry syncing software for Macs (see article below). Don't miss the next issue.
Email on Performance-Enhancing Technology
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, "Why Email No Longer Rules." The article notes that while email usage continues to grow (21% more email accounts than in 2008), social media is growing faster (31% more accounts). That hardly sounds like a dying medium. Doesn't the Wall Street Journal, the bastion of financial news, realize that a hot new medium will have a faster growth rate than a hot "old" medium because fewer people use the new one? No, email is far from dead. But it's certainly ripe for some new tools given its central role in law firm workflows.
Postbox 1.0 … in One Sentence
Postbox is an email client with a new approach to email management.
The Killer Feature
When you consider that email harkens back to the 1970s, it has a surprisingly rich structure — date, from, to, cc, subject, body, attachments, etc. Why then do so many email clients either lack the ability to search these parameters or take forever to display the search results?
Postbox claims to address this shortcoming with what it calls "ultra-fast search." Using the Search Panel, you can create narrow searches such as messages that contain a certain word within a date range. Alternatively, you can use Postbox's search syntax (e.g., from:Barack) to create these searches directly in the search box.
Postbox displays the matching messages in the left column, and highlights your search terms when you view a message. In the right column. it lists matching attachments. You can search from any window, including the Compose Message window, enabling you to find a previous attachment that you want to send again.
Other Notable Features
Postbox features an assortment of organizational tools. For example, you can list all recent messages involving a contact, and organize messages using Topics (e.g., client/matter). You can also view messages by conversation. Unlike Gmail, which gives you no alternative, Postbox enables you to toggle between a traditional view and the conversation view.
Postbox also organizes the content within messages. In the inspector panel to the right of each message you'll find attachments, addresses, URLs, etc. You can edit and annotate any message, and archive a group of messages when a case or deal closes.
Even though everyone knows you shouldn't use email messages as a task list, everyone does it anyway. Rather than scold you, Postbox enables you to mark messages as ToDos, which pins them to the top of your message list so they don't get lost among messages that don't contain a task.
What Else Should You Know?
Postbox runs on Mac or Windows. Because it's built atop Mozilla, developers can port their Thunderbird utilities to work with Postbox (e.g., calendars). Postbox costs $39.95. For an additional $24.95, you'll receive all future upgrades at no additional charge. You can try Postbox free for 30 days. Learn more about Postbox 1.0.
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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
