I just caught a great article on Mashable about a startup that really ranks up there in helping you manage email overload. It is free, too. I just tried it and it was awwwsome.
It’s called unroll.me.
How sweet! Let’s you unenroll in one maneuver, and has all your remaining selected newsletters show up all at once. Love it!
Here is the whole article. http://mashable.com/2012/02/27/unroll-me/
Neat idea. Admittedly, newsletters are a secondary aspect of Info Overload, because they are a bound problem, in that one controls their arrival (by subscribing), can stop them easily (even manually), and their number is finite. I therefore suspect that this new tool is a convenience but not a lifesaver (now, if it were to stem the flow of ordinary emails, which are neither in one’s control nor finite…)
I LOVE this idea – thx for sharing. @Nathan: I respectfully submit that “newsletters” are a secondary aspect of IO. I find far too many websites and organizations require log-in information, and then I am on their list forfreakingever. They offer a free whitepaper or you want to access a page on their website, and you have to log-in. They use this information to contact me, send me product updates, news tidbits, and yes, newsletters. And don’t even get me started on their “partners/affiliates.” I routinely (daily) unsubscribe from lists (if I have time — it takes time for their website to load, time to read, time to check a few boxes, and sometimes time to type in additional information like my email address). And yet I still manage to get hundreds of emails in my InBox daily.
I do agree stemming the flow of ordinary emails would be a lifesaver. I try to follow the A-B-C method of composing emails, along with the [end of message] for a message that is fully contained in the subject line… but we don’t seem to be anywhere close to the tipping point of sending what we would like to receive.
Just my $.02. Thanks again for sharing the tool, Marsha, and thanks to Mashable for helping us reduce the number of weeds in our little technology gardens.