The Mozilla Foundation has announced its latest project – a new take on the idea of a “unified inbox”.
Raindrop is based on the idea that email isn’t the only thing people need to check regularly. Many people now have multiple email addresses, Twitter accounts, a Facebook account, IM accounts and more all vying for their attention.
Raindrop aims to put all these messages in the same place and sort them automatically to make your life easier. The idea is that Raindrop will bring the most personal and important messages to the fore while allowing you to browse the rest of your messages in ready-sorted lists at your leisure.
Currently on version 0.1, Raindrop is far from being a consumer-grade product. There’s no downloadable version of the app as yet, but the real power of Raindrop comes from the fact that it’s not just an app – it’s an open source platform. All manner of apps and services could be built on the back of it.
Raindrop isn’t the only approach to a unified inbox currently in development. Threadsy, currently in closed beta, is trying to solve the same ‘information overload’ problem in a similar way.
Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.
Martin Bryant is based in Manchester, UK. A co-founder of the city's monthly Social Media Cafe events and award-winning blogger, he is Digital Content Editor for Marketing Manchester. His main interests are developments in the social web that relate to the mobile and music industries. Twitter, Personal site
