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Dropbox is killing its Carousel and Mailbox apps
Dropbox expanded its product lineup significantly last year with the launch of its Carousel photo management product and its acquisition of the formerly-excellent Mailbox email app that originally launched for the iPhone. Unfortunately, both products are dead: the company just announced it is putting both Carousel and Mailbox out to pasture soon because it is focusing more on the collaboration and sharing features (like the new Paper app) that we've heard so much about in recent months. Mailbox will shut down on February 26th of next year, while Carousel will follow a few months later on March 31st.
Mailbox for Mac now available as a public beta to OS X owners
Dropbox-owned email service Mailbox today opened its Mac beta program to the public, allowing anyone with a Mac to test-run the desktop email client. Mailbox has been around for several years on iOS, but the company launched on OS X earlier this year. The Mac version has been in a closed beta for months with the program open only to users who received beta codes to unlock the demo software. Wait no more! Enjoy the Mailbox desktop experience today, now in open beta :) http://t.co/IFCn9oPlHo pic.twitter.com/V6uHvoCZvr - Mailbox (@Mailbox) October 13, 2014 Mailbox stands out from the crowd with its emphasis on productive management of your email. The app allows you to dismiss messages using a snooze feature that stores the message and recalls it at a later date. The desktop app also syncs with the iOS client using Dropbox as an intermediary allowing the service to store and sync drafts across platforms in an instant. Interested parties can download Mailbox for Mac beta (automatic download) from the company's website. The universal iOS app for the iPhone and iPad is available in the iOS App Store.
Mailbox for Mac beta is now open to all
After wrangling email on mobile devices, Dropbox-owned Mailbox moved on to Mac with a limited beta back in August. For folks still waiting to give it a go, the test phase is now open to everyone. There's still no word on when the final version will arrive, but at least the curious can test drive the desktop version's minimal aesthetics, hot keys and snooze feature -- without having to be one of a chosen few. If your Apple machine is running OS X Mavericks or later, you can download the beta version right here. iOS users can also grab an update that enables custom swipes, properly outfits those new iPhones and fixes push notification issues.
Mailbox for Mac begins rolling out in beta to a handful of lucky testers
The transition from mobile to desktop seems like a natural evolution for Mailbox, which began as a clever time-saving email app for iOS. Four months ago, the Dropbox-owned venture excited fans by announcing that it would soon have an option on Mac as a limited beta. Today's the day: Mailbox is ready to roll out the app to the first batch of early adopters. The service will begin rolling out to those who've signed up for the beta online, as well as a handful of current Mailbox users. If you're not one of the lucky winners tomorrow, be patient -- the rollout will come in batches, and the company assures us that you'll still get your hands on it before the final version is ready. Each beta tester will be issued a betacoin (not to be confused with other forms of digital currency), and you'll even receive additional betacoins to share with friends as soon as you download the app.
Yo and the app hype machine
Yo is a notifications app where all it does is send the word "Yo" to your friends. That's it. Just "Yo." Of course, silly single-purpose apps like these are a dime a dozen -- remember those fart apps of old? -- but the thing that sets Yo apart is that it's actually attracted a whole lot of attention. More than a million dollars' worth, in fact. Yep, this seemingly frivolous app has recently raised around $1.5 million in funding, giving it a valuation close to $10 million. It's also apparently been downloaded more than 2 million times since its tongue-in-cheek April Fools' Day debut. Crazy? Well, yes, perhaps. But it's not entirely unusual. In case you need a refresher (and probably a laugh or two), here's a look at some of the more overhyped apps in the past few years. Have any other ideas? Leave a comment and let us know of any apps we've missed.
Mailbox's Auto-swipe archives and deletes on iOS so you don't have to
When Mailbox hit Android earlier this month, it came with a new feature called Auto-swipe that wasn't on the iOS version -- until now, that is. Yes, iOS users who just can't be bothered to wrangle those cluttered inboxes anymore: Mailbox for iPhones and iPads can now learn what kind of emails you usually archive or defer until later, so it can eventually do all the dirty work for you. All you need to do to activate Auto-swipe is to link Mailbox to a Dropbox account after you've updated the app. Once that's done, the email app will also use Dropbox to remember your preferences and sync them across Android and iOS devices. While it sounds like a tool for the lazy at first blush, we hope it ends up great for nuking spam and preventing unread missives from piling up.
Apple expands its recycling program and other news from April 21, 2014
On this Earth Day, Apple has expanded its free recycling program to include any Apple product, no matter the age. While not all products will be eligible for a gift card when traded in, Apple will take any item produced in its 30-year history in an effort to avert more electronic waste from reaching landfills. You can read more about Apple's efforts to grow the use of renewable energy in its business and watch the "Better" video (narrated by Tim Cook) at the apple.com/environment page. Other stories from Monday afternoon include: The Hollywood Reporter reports that director Danny Boyle is in talks with Sony Pictures to direct the Walter Issacson-book biopic of Steve Jobs. And those talks include a possibility of Leonardo DiCaprio starring as Steve Jobs. Version 2.0 of Dropbox's Mailbox has been released, with the addition of an auto-swipe feature and the use of Dropbox to sync preferences across devices. Google Glass will be adding SMS capabilities for iPhone users later this week. Catch up with these features: Narrative Clip lifelogging camera: Hands-on with the wearable photo capture device Find Tinder too ambiguous? Heavenly Sinful is here to help. The 25 best Game Boy games to play on your iPhone Dear Aunt TUAW: Why don't my searches work in Safari anymore? Apple renewable energy use grows from 35 to 95 percent in less than 4 years Mac 101: A handy list of startup options for Macs running OS X Rumor Roundup: Validity not confirmed
Daily Roundup: Fire TV review, our first time on the web and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Dark Age of Camelot eyes mail system
Grab bag Q&As are special, because you never know what you'll get. Dark Age of Camelot has a new one up on the site with seven pressing questions from the community. One big revelation is that the team is strongly considering adding a mail system to the game: "It's (high) on our list of priorities! Mail opens up the possibilities for many many other things so we definitely want it in the game sooner rather than later." The topics covered include the devs' speculation on how upcoming changes to RvR conflict will play out, gear with specific bonuses, improvements to the server list screen, and titles for crafters.
Mr. Postman launches smart mailbox Kickstarter campaign
All right, all right, Mr. Postman really missed the 2013 holiday season, launching its Kickstarter campaign on Christmas Day. But hey, hopefully this means that the Insert Coin: New Challengers semi-finalist will have all of the bugs worked out well in advance of next year's package-mailing scrum. And hey, now that you're flush with cash from grandma, perhaps you'd consider supporting the solar-powered, WiFi-enabled mailbox you unlock with your smartphone. The Mr. Postman app works along with the smart mailbox, letting you know when new packages have arrived and when outgoing mail has been picked up. Get in now and a pledge of $180 will get you the mailbox, set to be delivered this summer -- to your curb, we assume, seeing as how your mailbox hasn't actually arrived yet.
Mailbox for iOS now handles your iCloud or Yahoo email account
Mailbox has only handled Gmail since launch, but compulsive email checkers finally have a few more account options thanks to an update. The iOS app now supports both iCloud addresses (including me.com and mac.com) as well as Yahoo, with prioritization and push notifications intact. The upgrade also introduces background syncing, which should save iOS 7 users the trouble of downloading all their new mail at once. Those who've been waiting for expanded support to try Mailbox can give it a spin today at the source link.
iOS 7 app update roundup: it's a flat, flat, flat world
Even if you don't feel like coughing up the cash for either the iPhone 5c or iPhone 5s, those eligible for an update (that's if you own an iPhone 4 or up, or an iPad 2 onward) can at least console themselves with iOS 7, which debuts today. Gone is the skeuomorphic design of the Forstall era, and in its place is a flatter interface that promises an entirely new experience for iOS devotees. As such, developers everywhere have been scrambling to get their apps redesigned to match the new mobile OS out of Cupertino. While we can't possibly cover every update, we've compiled a quick list after the break of the more substantial app revamps that have come our way.
Email reimagined (again): Ping app to launch 9/18, renamed to Hop [updated]
Update: The app formerly known as Ping has been renamed thanks to some trademark disputes; it's now called Hop, and is available in the App Store. Access to the back-end service is by reservation for the time being. If a product is really hard to search for online, it better be pretty intriguing; the upcoming Ping app fits the bill. No, it's not a relaunch of Apple's ill-fated iTunes-centric social network for music fans; it's an iPhone app that wants to make your email experience as fun and interactive as instant messaging. Developed by Israeli entrepreneurs Erez Pilosof and Guy Gamzu, the app aims to deliver the fun and engagement of person-to-person messaging without breaking the underlying email metaphor. Ping is launching as an iOS app on September 18, with Android and web versions to follow later in the year. Pilosof was a founder of Walla, an early web email / portal company in Israel that offered a gigabyte of mail storage as early as 2004 -- well before Gmail's bottomless inbox redefined the standard for cloud email providers. Over the past few months, he's been focused on stepping back and figuring out where email went wrong. "We want to change how email is organized," he told me last week, "and the way conversations are carried through." Rather than a task-driven approach as typified by Dropbox's popular Mailbox app, Ping goes for an IM-style interface, putting people and media front and center for quick, transactional conversations. Ping's philosophy treats "traditional" email with an engage & supersede approach. There aren't folders or labels, but there are easy points of access to image search ("Use the web like an endless sticker collection," Pilosof suggested) and ad-hoc attachments for doodles, voice annotation and more. "We need to put human conversation back in the center of email if it will ever function properly again," he said. "That means making email fit to how we communicate now by creating a smart, interactive mobile messaging experience." Want a custom alert for a particular email sender, so you know whether or not to pull your phone out of your pocket? Ping's got you covered. Although Ping emails will work just fine with conventional clients on the other end, if both sender and receiver are Ping-enabled, then the app's real-time features come to bear. Instantaneous message receipt and typing / presence awareness are there, along with voice and video calling integrated with the app. In fact, you get a lot of the features of a messaging app like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger -- but without the privacy and social graph implications of sharing your mobile number or "friending" your business colleagues or clients. The initial release of Ping will work with the AOL, Yahoo, iCloud and Gmail services. Ping's feature set includes some sleek UI (a "Couch" toggle to save messages for later, a Cover Flow-esque media browser for images and attachments), but you may have to wait a while past the 18th to get rolling with it. Much like Mailbox's launch experience, the Ping team is taking pre-reservations for activation to manage the load on the company's servers.
Mailbox intros expanded search, signature and Chrome browser option
It might not be the desktop app you've been waiting for, but this newest Mailbox is still pretty notable for its new mobile features. Perhaps the most important addition is the ability to search for emails not saved locally on your iPhone or iPad. It's far from perfect -- we're unable to dig for old conversations dating more than a few months back -- but it's better than not having it at all. Once you've updated the app, you'll also notice new sections in the Settings page, including a signature box for each linked account and the ability to change the default browser from Safari to Chrome. There's also an option to link your account to Dropbox, which acquired Mailbox in March, in exchange for 1GB of free space on the cloud service. Unfortunately, there's no news on the Android app or the reported integration with other email services -- but we'll keep a weather eye on the horizon.
Mailbox iOS email client updated with cloud search
The popular Gmail email client for iOS, Mailbox, has been updated to allow for cloud searching through messages. The new feature in the version 1.5 update means users no longer have to have their emails downloaded to their device to search -- something that is incredibly handy if you have years' worth of emails. In addition to cloud-search capabilities, Mailbox 1.5 lets you set a unique signature for each email account in the app. That means if you have, for example, three Gmail accounts (Mailbox allows up to five), you can have a unique signature for each that's automatically applied. Mailbox was purchased by Dropbox last March and the company has been making rapid improvements ever since. A few weeks ago, Dropbox announced a free 1 GB of Dropbox storage when users sync Mailbox to their Dropbox account. Mailbox is a free download.
Get an extra 1 GB of Dropbox storage by syncing it to Mailbox
Dropbox users take notice: Mailbox has a deal for you. Specifically, if Mailbox users sync the app to their Dropbox account, they will receive an extra 1 GB of Dropbox storage for free. The tip was first posted by The Next Web. Mailbox is the iOS email client that took the app world by storm earlier this year. Then in March, Dropbox swooped in an bought it, so offering Dropbox users an extra gigabyte of storage is a logical step. If you don't want to use Mailbox as your email client, don't worry. Just download the app and add a single email account. Next, go into its settings and sync it with your Dropbox account. Then voila! Instantly you'll have an extra gigabyte of Dropbox space, which is yours to keep forever -- even if you delete Mailbox. Also note, if you're already syncing Mailbox to Dropbox, simply unsync it and then sync it again to receive the extra storage.
A look at apps with waiting lists
The way we look at new app launches is changing thanks to the cloud. Rather than a full-scale launch that invites everyone to download and try an app, developers are rolling out their apps slowly, opting for a waiting list that meters access to a service. Several high profile apps recently used this new wait list paradigm and The Verge chatted with them about their experience. The conversation focuses on the challenges of storing data remotely and dealing with the unexpected outliers who push a service beyond its tested limits. "Two hundred and fifty [beta testers] is a decent data set, but when you increase that several orders of magnitude you find edge cases," said Mailbox CEO Gentry Underwood. Underwood notes that Mailbox was not prepared for that one user who tried to transfer 40,000 messages into the service on launch day and caused the Mailbox servers to almost buckle under the load. You can read additional commentary from Loom CEO Jan Senderek and Jonathan Benassaya, CEO of Stream Nation in The Verge article.
Dropbox announces the Dropbox Platform, syncing with third-party apps, Mailbox integration
At Dropbox's first DBX developer conference in San Francisco, CEO Drew Houston announced the Dropbox Platform, a suite of developer tools that makes it easier for apps to sync data -- not just files and folders -- across devices and operating systems. Built on top of the Sync API, Houston said the new Dropbox Platform is designed to "replace the hard drive" and that "sync is the new save." A key component of this is the Datastore API, which lets you sync data like contacts, to-do items and game state -- so you can save your Angry Birds progress across your different gadgets for example. Another tool is known as a "Drop-in," which consists of a few lines of code that developers could use for cross-platform compatibility. Two such drop-ins are the "Chooser," which gives apps instant access to files in Dropbox, and the "Saver," which provides one-click saving to the cloud. These have been around already for the web, but are just now available for native iOS and Android apps. Some of the third-party companies that have already signed onto the new Dropbox Platform include Shutterstock, PicMonkey, Asana, Yahoo Mail, Animoto, 1Password, CloudOn, FedEx and Fargo. As part of the announcement, Dropbox also touted a new feature for Mailbox -- that much-hyped email app that Dropbox bought in March. It'll finally be able to send attachments directly from within the app, which is something that even the default iOS client can't do. All you'll have to do is tap the paper clip icon to open a list of Dropbox files, select your item and away you go. However, we've not yet heard just when this app update will roll out -- we've included a screenshot of the Mailbox interface after the break to sate your curiosity for now. As for the developers amongst you, feel free to head to the source to get more details on how to get your app to play nice with the new goodies from Dropbox. Update: Looks like the Mailbox app has been updated with Dropbox integration. We've included a link to the app in the App Store link below.
Mailbox for iPhone adds landscape, Gmail aliases
Orchestra, Inc.'s Mailbox app has been updated to version 1.3.2, bringing with it a slew of new features and fixes. The first major addition is the inclusion of landscape view support, making the app just a little easier for users who prefer a sideways keyboard. The update also brings a new "send as" alias functionality with Gmail. With this feature users can now send messages with a different email address listed as the sender instead of their official Gmail address. Mailbox was purchased by Dropbox this past March. The Dropbox app was also updated earlier this week. You can see a video of the new Mailbox features below. Meet Mailbox from Mailbox on Vimeo.
Mailbox co-founder hints at desktop app
Although Mailbox can play nicely with Gmail on iOS, one of the bigger gaps in its resume is the lack of desktop availability. During a keynote at the DEMO Europe conference, CEO Gentry Underwood hinted that might change soon, saying that a desktop app "is something we have to do in order to stay competitive," and that "it's on our roadmap." The Mailbox app -- which promises "inbox zero" -- is currently limited to iOS devices and Gmail, whereas Dropbox, which recently purchased it for a rumored $100 million, is available on virtually all platforms. With the need to add Android and desktop clients, not to mention support for other email services like Outlook, Mailbox's roadmap is now bumper-to-bumper -- we'll just have to wait and see which drops first.
