[MlMt] Crowd Funding 2014
Ryan Erwin
ryanerwin at mac.com
Tue Oct 29 07:59:10 EDT 2013
## The Hacker's Mail Client
I use MailMate more than any other program on my Macbook Air, which I
keep with me almost all the time in my life of nearly constant travel. I
love that I can hit "/" and my default search boxes come up, and I can
quickly find the message that I need to reference.
I also love that I can use MultiMarkdown commands to quickly format my
message as a real document - I very rarely attach PDFs or DOCs now.
If only MailMate could be made a bit more pretty. Embedding Mou's or
TextMate's syntax highlighting, title sizing and stylization would be a
good step, and Mou's or Marked's Markdown life preview.
## Keep your hands on the keyboard!
Over the last decade, I've noticed several Mac programs develop a
cult-like following. LaunchBar, Quicksilver, Alfred, Notational Velocity
and MacVim - and that's without getting into all the "keyboard macro"
apps.
From my prospective, MailMate is already a good keyboard centric app,
but it's still not in the same league in keyboard control as the other
apps I mentioned above.
## Define the Target
MailMate is so close to greatness.
* It's stable enough. A few bugs, but more stable than Mail.app in my
experience.
* It's very fast - as long as I put the 1 year timeframe around my
message buffer. Sure would be great to be able to access all my old
messages with a different type of index when needed.
* It's almost pretty enough, but it needs some care and attention from a
designer.
You could fix all of those things, and we would enjoy MailMate even
more, but I don't think you would see a lot of growth in MailMate
downloads and license rates. You need a SHARP ARROW. Something special
that cuts through the noise. Something people care about, and ultimately
something that people are willing to pay money for. "a 3rd party
alternative to Mail.app" is a nice idea, but few of us are going to fork
out cash to ensure "mail client diversity".
So what is the niche? Let's come up with something better than
"MailMate: The Hackers Email Client".
The other direction that I see as a solid field to grow is simple
message security. Something that is easier to use than PGP, more secure
than PGP (no exposed subject lines!) but I think that requires
rethinking the client and the server, and ultimately if you change it
enough it's not even "email" anymore.
In any case, I hope to be using new and better versions of MailMate for
years to come!
-Ryan in Shanghai
http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014
On 21 Oct 2013, at 22:51, Ryan Erwin wrote:
> I'm definitely with Zvi here. As Ghandi said, "Speed doesn't matter if
> you're not traveling in the right direction". You've got to get the
> marketing side of MailMate figured out.
>
> If you run with the "Hacker's Email Client", perhaps you can
> capitalize on the current NSA inspired anxiety and focus on features
> that make our email more secure. Maybe it's truly SIMPLE (as opposed
> to always a PITA) GPG integration, or your own security mechanism that
> even protects subject lines. The PirateBay guys are working on HEML.is
> but it's still in progress, and seem to be more of a chat program.
> Personally, I use email because I need to search and archive.
>
> Retroactively encrypting all of my old emails on the server and
> allowing search of those encrypted messages without the server knowing
> my key (i.e. encrypted indexing) is sort of an enterprise direction.
>
> Or perhaps you just go the Notational Velocity route of an email
> program that is insanely fast to use without your fingers ever leaving
> the keyboard. Keep the customization coming. Make it the VIM of email.
>
> That's enough from me. Let's see what the rest of your MailMate
> advocates have to say about it.
>
> On 21 Oct 2013, at 22:44, Zvi Biener wrote:
>> I like the nascent marketing idea: MailMate is the hacker's email
>> client.
>>
>> Not that you need too many interjections, Benny, but I, for one,
>> would much rather you spent time thinking of how to fund and
>> advertise MailMate and put development off for a little bit, if only
>> to ensure future development. I also think the video of the real
>> power-feature, customization, and generality of MailMate would
>> attract lots of hacker types, if they only new about it… A Facebook
>> page can also do wonders these days (people expect it, even).
>>
>> Are you aware of Scrivener? It is also a home-made piece of software
>> that answers to a need most people thought was already solved: word
>> processing. But Scrivener has completely taken off. The guy who wrote
>> and runs it is very nice and might be responsive to another developer
>> asking how he might get a non-competing sourcing campaign off the
>> ground…
>>
>> My 2c.
>>
>> Zvi
>> On 21 Oct 2013, at 10:34, Ryan Erwin wrote:
>>
>>> Benny,
>>>
>>> Did you send a notice about the crowd funding opportunity to all of
>>> your licensed users? I didn't notice one - I only saw notice through
>>> the mailing list.
>>>
>>> If you don't want to send an email blast, perhaps you should send a
>>> link inside of the MailMate updates. If you get a 5-10% response
>>> rate to your offer, your doing pretty good. I also noticed that the
>>> crowd funding link you sent in MailMate wasn't a working link. The
>>> link in your emails is to http://freron.com/crowdfunding2014 but the
>>> valid website link is http://freron.com/crowdfund2014/
>>>
>>> I think those of us on this list here are the most invested in
>>> seeing MailMate succeed, we care enough about MailMate to get
>>> several emails per day about it.
>>>
>>> Perhaps we can all work together on some ideas to help Benny promote
>>> MailMate, point out the features that will show why every hacker
>>> needs a copy of MailMate, and eventually put together a short,
>>> sweet, 3 minute screencast of what MailMate 2.0 could be, the post
>>> it on indiegogo (why not kickstarter?) and try this again.
>>>
>>> Personally, I use MailMate more than any other program on my MBA,
>>> and I carry it around with me everywhere. I would hate to see this
>>> program stagnate, it's already so much better at search than
>>> Mail.app, but there is still so much that could be done to make
>>> MailMate truly great.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> -Ryan in Shanghai
>>>
>>> On 21 Oct 2013, at 20:31, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:
>>>> Dear MailMate users,
>>>> Thanks to everyone pledging money (or buying MailMate license
>>>> keys)! I know that some of you are probably even worse off
>>>> financially than I am and I truly appreciate your support.
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