Boomerang: send & receive gmail in the future

Matt Bowman · August 12, 2010 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/111b

The most important new gmail feature in years isn't coming from Google.

This has been a long time coming.

Email is a mess. As a guy who whose office is his inbox, I’m ashamed to say that I still haven’t figured out how to manage the office. I’m left with endless clutter, important emails unresponded-to, and no way to get a jump on emails that need to go out.

Very soon, gmail users can get a little closer to inbox nirvana. Boomerang for gmail lets you control when you send and receive emails. You can schedule emails to go out at a set time in the future (perfect for managers who want to frontload reminders), and tell gmail to get rid of a received email until some time in the future (perfect for those “great, this will be essential two weeks from now, and I will definitely have no idea where this is at the point” moments).

Generally, I like to poke holes in products. It's too easy to sound like an ad or a shill if your review is too one-sided. In this case, though, my enthusiasm is unreserved. I stumbled upon this review from The Next Web (TNW), I’ve had zero contact with Boomerang (that will change shortly), and I haven’t had a chance to test the product yet, but none of that matters. I have been craving this functionality, and have dug through gmail’s settings and add-ons for precisely these two functions to no avail.

TNW says the integration with gmail’s UI is beautiful and smooth. The only drawback is that it’s third-party, so you can’t get it as a Chrome or Firefox Add-in.

Here are a couple use cases:

set up birthday emails for the whole frickin year and forget about social faux pas.
Create reminders based on benchmarks for your team with “time to get started,” “This is due next week” and “WE NEED THIS YESTERDAY!!” reminders, months beforehand.
Bounce all of your family emails to Saturday evening, so they don’t clutter your inbox until you’re in the right mindset to chitchat.
Bounce the bad news emails to Friday night after you’ve had a drink so you can be properly vitriolic.

Boomerang is created by Baydin, and is currently only available for Microsoft Outlook (for $14.95). you can sign up for the gmail beta here.

Screenshots below are from TNW.