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Old 26 Aug 2017, 09:19 AM   #1
Berenburger
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Join Date: Sep 2004
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New service: Topicbox

FastMail/Pobox announced a new platform Topicbox.com to help teams charge their group email discussion.

Copied (a part of) the blog here for a better explanation.

Quote:
Email has remained popular all these years because it just works.
Topicbox makes it better for businesses, professional organizations and other teams.

The problem with it is most people’s inbox is a terrible place to categorize things or find important information later.

With Topicbox, you create groups for every topic area – teams, projects or events. Each group has its own email address, and each group’s discussions are housed in one place – your Topicbox archive.

Topicbox archives let you share your best information
The reality is, most people put their best information in email every day. Most messages only go to one or two people – no one wants to be the person who is drowning their co-workers in email! That information gets locked in private mailboxes, never to be seen again.

So much of that information could be valuable to their team. But how do you avoid information overload?

Your Topicbox archive lets your team share their best information in a central place. People still get their own copy of messages, but they can easily store a copy for their team. Team members choose which groups have information important enough to get immediately, which groups should be summarized, and which they just need to be able to search later.

Topicbox builds on the parts of email you love, and puts the power to control message flow in its users' hands with a host of features that make it really exciting for teams:

• All your discussions in one place – by moving your most valuable information away from individual inboxes you can have group discussions in your Topicbox groups. All your discussions are categorized by group and searchable.

• Unlimited groups - discuss your teams, projects and events. Over time your groups help form a growing, searchable archive. You can also retire groups if you no longer need them; they will still remain searchable so that history isn’t lost as projects end.

• No more CC or BCC – there’s just one email address to reach every member of your Topicbox group. For example, set up your group ‘Office move’ and all group members simply send and reply to messages using one address: officemove AT yourorganization.topicbox.com
You can invite, add and remove members at any time and members can also leave groups that are no longer relevant.

• Control access and privacy - You determine and share access, from who can see groups to who can create them. Add members yourself, or let them join the groups they want.

• Find what you need - Refine as you go search lets you zero in on what you need, and groups make it easy to browse, too.

• Easy to use - Email is a robust, inclusive platform that works no matter whether you’re a staffer, a contractor, or a client. Topicbox works with your existing email accounts, or can be used exclusively through the web interface.

• Great support – Topicbox is brought to you by the teams behind FastMail, Pobox and Listbox. We love our customers and pride ourselves on bringing the best email experience to all of our users. We’re here for you at any time.

• Avoid the hassle and cost of self-managed applications
Move away from expensive, in-house email systems and complicated wikis. Topicbox is budget friendly with account management not reliant on individual staffers. Your information and discussions can weather any change in IT providers and resource management.

Topicbox has been a passion of ours and we truly hope you enjoy using Topicbox as much as we do. We’ll be working hard to bring even more features to Topicbox in the coming months.

Developed from an impressive email pedigree
With Listbox joining the FastMail family in 2015, one of our shared goals was to join forces in creating a better group email platform – taking the best features from Listbox and marrying these with the interface design and powerful email infrastructure of FastMail.

We love email. We don't think it is going away, and we wanted to bring more ways for teams and organizations to unleash the power of this communication medium.

As our respective teams have grown over the last year and a half, we have also been able to draw upon our expanding resources and today we’re proud to say that Topicbox powers all of our global teams.

Topicbox has been a labour of love and we truly hope you enjoy using Topicbox as much as we do. We’ll be working hard to bring even more features to Topicbox in the coming months.

We also value your feedback so be sure to share your thoughts with us too.

In the meantime, happy Topicboxing!
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Old 27 Aug 2017, 01:04 AM   #2
TenFour
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Sounds interesting, but the proof will be in trying it to see if it works with your team. One issue I have seen at various jobs is that management keeps trying to push different messaging platforms until inevitably half the team is using the correct one and the rest of the team is carrying on sidebar discussions on three others, while nobody has the complete picture. Or, you get the classic at the Monday meeting when the boss asks why you haven't taken care of something, and you find out that he messaged you on Skype, but the team was using Slack instead. At my previous position we literally had five different messaging systems going at the same time causing daily confusion.
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Old 31 Aug 2017, 08:58 PM   #3
brong
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The good thing about Topicbox is that we've been using it ourselves (alongside slack and zoom) for a while, and believe me, I've had some pretty snarky rants about things that made it unusable for our needs (like dropping messages from the wrong sender address while we were in the middle of transitioning our primary staff email addresses over to @fastmailteam.com).

It's had a fair bit of polish already, though the real killer feature that I'm hanging out for (daily summary) isn't done yet.
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Old 1 Sep 2017, 12:29 AM   #4
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
It's had a fair bit of polish already, though the real killer feature that I'm hanging out for (daily summary) isn't done yet.
Yes, IMHO message digests are really important in this kind of tool for some users.
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 08:30 AM   #5
Berenburger
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Bron wrote a new blog about Topicbox.
BTW, under the impression of the current number of employees.
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 08:32 AM   #6
brong
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Berenburger View Post
Bron wrote a new blog about Topicbox.
BTW, under the impression of the current number of employees.
That wasn't everyone, but it's more than we've had a single room before!
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 10:21 AM   #7
Terry
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Brong, we hope one day you will work on a few new Themes.
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 11:52 AM   #8
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry View Post
Brong, we hope one day you will work on a few new Themes.
That is not really Bron's line (through, of course, he could turn his hand to it if it was considered a good idea). Bron is needed to handle the more challenging projects upgrading the guts of the backend. There are few people able to do a good job in that critical area. Bron is one of the best.
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 12:40 PM   #9
brong
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
That is not really Bron's line (through, of course, he could turn his hand to it if it was considered a good idea). Bron is needed to handle the more challenging projects upgrading the guts of the backend. There are few people able to do a good job in that critical area. Bron is one of the best.
Aww. Thanks.

I don't get to do as much of that as I used to - I've built up a good team now, so I spend most of my time doing strategic management and providing code/design review rather than doing the backend work myself.
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 02:31 PM   #10
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
Aww. Thanks.

I don't get to do as much of that as I used to - I've built up a good team now, so I spend most of my time doing strategic management and providing code/design review rather than doing the backend work myself.
No doubt your team members are competent, but the best developers produce much better work much faster than regular good developers. Determining the strategic direction, of course, is an important activity, but I fear major projects on the backend may prove difficult to complete without your personal contribution. I hope I am proven wrong.
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Old 13 Sep 2017, 07:39 PM   #11
Terry
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
That is not really Bron's line (through, of course, he could turn his hand to it if it was considered a good idea). Bron is needed to handle the more challenging projects upgrading the guts of the backend. There are few people able to do a good job in that critical area. Bron is one of the best.
Oh ok.....what a shame I was hoping he would give us a few more themes.
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