Sortd – A new way to manage email and tasks in Gmail

http://www.sortd.com

by wayno • 12 years ago

10 3 12 years ago

wayno2• 12 years ago

I'm Wayne, one of the co-founders of Sortd. We are aiming to create a new email paradigm with Sortd. Happy to answer any questions...

bsg75• 12 years ago

Did not see on the site, is this another startup that has access to all of my email content, and a product that has a good chance of going away when the run out of cash, or get acquired and shut down?

Or, is this a local layer / plugin that keeps my data where I want it, and will continue to work as long as Gmail itself does not change drastically?

Questions may sound snarky, but this year more of the startup services I have used have shutdown then are still around.

wayno2• 12 years ago

We have a real desire to make a dent in the universe around the way email works, so the plan is not for this to be a fly-by-night initiative or to sell out.

There is plenty wrong with email and a lot of opportunity to change it with a completely new email app. However we decided to integrate with Gmail as a matter of practicality, having realised that for the most part people don't want to change to a new email client if they don't have to.

Re the architecture - Sortd is built as a Chrome Extension so it runs on the client, and in all honesty we don't want masses of email data going through our servers, it's just an unnecessary overhead. That said, there is a need for some server side stuff because we need to keep all the data in sync for things like a mobile experience. But we don't store any email - just references to emails so that if you click on an email on one of your priority lists we can tell Gmail to open it.

Integrating with Gmail is risky because they can change things underneath you, so we have built it in a way that it runs in an almost independent workspace. There are one or two Gmail buttons that we place inside Gmail itself, but the real meat runs in an iFrame.

Hope that answers your questions. I'm happy to elaborate if anything is not clear?

Sortd – A new way to manage email and tasks in Gmail

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