Emails are at the very root of my professional life. It needs to be “in the cloud” and accessible 24/7 from anywhere in the world.

I don’t want to download them locally,  update or troubleshoot a local application, and I don’t want a large overhead. And let’s face it; none of the email clients currently on the market can even remotely compete with GMail’s outstanding features like threaded emails, filters, labels and all those cools Labs features.

Unfortunately, this has also created a serious problem.

When I switched everything to Google Apps two and a half years ago, I archive nearly every email, but this came with a price: For the last year, I’ve been using 95% of my 7Gb quota.

I’ve read all there is to read on GMail size control. I’m:

• Using custom searches to delete old emails with attachments.
• Using filters to locate and remove repetitive messages.
• Eliminating emails and mailing lists I don’t need.

I did everything I could think of, and they did get me through the last year, but the size is still increasing all the time.

One option I read about involved downloading old emails to a local email client and deleting them from GMail. This clearly defeats the purpose of not storing emails locally, but I didn’t see any other option. Also, a friend of mine recently told me he upgraded to Ubuntu 10.4, which came with Thunderbird 3. This version seemed to be a complete rewrite with a lot of cool features and it looked good!

So, I thought I’d try to get Thunderbird on my Ubuntu 9.10 install. Well, Ubuntu 9.10 comes with Thunderbird 2.x, and you can’t upgrade to Thunderbird 3 very easily, but after some Googling, I found How To Install Thunderbird 3 Shredder in Ubuntu 9.10.

Great! And it’s easy too:

• Add the Mozilla PPA in your source list using: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
• Update source list using: sudo apt-get update
• Install Thunderbird 3 using:sudo apt-get install thunderbird-3.0

All I had to do was restart, and the Thunderbird 3 was working! I configured it to synchronize with GMail’s IMAP, messed around a bit to synchronize the ‘All Mail’ folder only, and learned how to delete a message in GMail without deleting it locally. Unfortuantely, this took ages since I had more than 100 000 emails. In the end, I simply gave up. Too much trouble, too long, and too complex!

I read about using a new GMail account to store/archive old messages. Still, complex…The last solution I had was to upgrade our Google Apps account to Google Apps Premium, which would give us (and me ) 25 Gb of storage per account, but I would still run into the limit problem sooner or later…

Suddenly it hit me!

What am I trying to achieve? I want to keep emails forever, but is that really what I want to do ? In a time where information usually loses its relevance a few hours after its release, why would I want to keep emails forever? I realized it isn’t the emails I want to save at all. I want the important information.

Now, I use Highrise to manage my interactions with the people/subjects that matter. I forward very message with value to Highrise. So I have a copy of those that matter anyway, right ? As for the rest, do they really matter? Is it really a problem if I don’t have an email someone sent me a year ago?

I’m starting to see the problem the other way around. Why should I bother trying to keep emails archived forever? Instead, I realize I should focus on making sure the emails that really matter go to Highrise. Now, instead of focusing on the 80% (and more!) of useless emails that crowd my inbox, I can focus on the 20% (and even less) that really matter!

What do you think? How do you manage your emails? How long do you keep them? And why?

If you’ve been on this blog before, then you already saw a few mentions about 37signals, creator of Basecamp, Highrise and other great products. They recently launched a book: REWORK. It’is the logical sequel of their first book “Getting Real”, where they were exploring the key concepts which they have learned and used to build their products. That first book was focusing on building an application more then anything else. But many of the concepts they were applying at building a great product, they also applied at a higher level, management a successfull business. So a few years later, it was time for REWORK to go out, a summary of pretty much every interesting concept they explored in their blog “Signal vs. Noise”, in their talks, their conferences, etc…

I’m biased, I know. I simply love pretty much everything they do. But that book was seriously awesome. It is so refreshing to see a company NOT following the “usual” path of doing business. You know, the one we see everywhere, the one they teach in business schools, the one the boomers are convinced is the only way to do business. The one with a 5 years marketing plan, and a sales VP and 200 sales representative, and 100 project managers to manage 100 developers. The one where the executive don’t talk to the “simple people”. The one where profit is the ONLY reason you do things. The one where you need a board of directors, because you brought in venture capitalists, and where you have your exit strategy all planned. The one where, to be able to give 1 million dollars bonus to the CEO, they needed to cut 20 jobs. The one that do not care about its clients. The one that tells you your call is important to us. The one you need to fight to be heard, as an employee or as a client.

It’s funny because when I started my company in 2003, (yes, a little bit younger and a lot more naive , I had this belief: the only reason you should be in business, is to help people. That concept got me some rolling eyes from many people, probably thinking I was just another teen still lost in the Romantic age who should have read more business books and less Victor Hugo.

But I was deeply convinced of that. If your primary focus is not to solve problems, help people, make their life, their family, their business better, then you are doomed to fail, one day or another, whether it’s in 10 months or 10 years. And yes, I know, that concept can not stand alone, it needs to be backed up by a second one which is: you have to make profit. Because if you don’t generate value, if you don’t create profit, then you are equally doomed to fail, and much more earlier!

37signals is doing all this, and in a beautiful way. They create great products that solve problems, they create great value and generate profits. They have encapsulated all that they believe in, all that they have learned since their beginning into REWORK. I totally recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how to do things differently. Because yes, it is possible! You can do things a better way. And you should !

If you are even only remotely involved in web technologies or web business, you probably already heard about this book by 37signals Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. If not, well, what are you waiting for ? Have a look here.

I don’t have a lot to say right now because I really just read a few pages (it’s the week-end you know, family stuff ), but so far, as it was to be expected, I like it!  And on second page of the book (actually page 4), a nice little sentence that can explain in part why 37signals’ opinions are not well received by the hard-core old mentalities, the old business establishment who’s been doing business the same way since forever:

We also invented and open-sourced a computer-programming framework called Ruby on Rails that powers much of the Web 2.0 world.

While the old business establishment probably does not understand much of this (open-sourced, framework, Ruby on Rails, Web 2.0 ?), this sentence is clearly typical of the arrogance which 37signals have often been accused. And it’s totally true, they are arrogant! Pretending that Ruby on Rails powers the Web 2.0 era is a little bit bold, and they certainly think a lot of themselves! Ruby on Rails have been a contributor to Web 2.0 as many other concepts and technologies were. But the Web 2.0 is certainly not only powered by Ruby on Rails. In fact, there are probably more PHP “Web 2.0″ web sites then anything else…

But anyway, it’s just a simple example of their arrogance, and I totally like it. I prefer opinionated people over conformist boring folks. You don’t move forward with conformity, you don’t make progress by listening to the old same stories over and over again. You succeed by becoming an artist, by trying new things, by focusing on your success, not your failures, by being opinionated and believing in what you are doing.

So I hope to find a bit of time this week-end to read the book! Maybe when the kids are asleep ?

But in the last weeks, I got to play with Windows 7 on my wife’s laptop and I was very surprised to find out it was actually not that bad! So I decided to give our family computer a very last chance and ordered a Windows 7 upgrade. I installed it. All went fine and when I restarted, I opened Firefox and iTune. Then I looked at the Task Manager. CPU was at 2% and memory at 40%. Wow!

But what amazed me the most was the little booklet that came with the package. The title reads: Welcome to you PC, simplified”. Interesting. Then, inside, one can read:

Thank you for choosing Windows 7. We listened closely to what you wanted — a simpler PC with less waiting, less clicks, less hassles connecting, and less complexity.

With less of what you don’t need, that means your PC with Windows 7 can help you do more of what you want…

But wait a minute! This sounds really familiar…

• Build less
• Less is better
• Less mass
• Less software
• You can always do less

So my question: Did Microsoft recently subscribed to 37signals’s blog Signal vs. Noise ? It’s very interesting to see those concepts applied by one of the biggest company of all time, which culture’s always was the opposite of doing less. Microsoft always was about getting more features in. More! More! MORE!

So, maybe the culture is starting to change ? And it’s probably not 100% correlated, but I do find Windows 7 their best OS so far…

Yes, I know it, our current site is old, it’s not that pretty, frankly, it’s far more Web 1.0 then 2.0 . But you see, our problem is the love of our client. We love them so much, that they are always more important then our very own web site. And it’s normal! Without clients, you don’t need a web site, as you’ll be running out of business very soon!

But enough was enough, and a few months ago, we started to rethink. redesign and rebuild our site. We now have enough players in our team to allow some of them to work on our own site while other team members work on client’s sites. And the INBOX team has done an outstanding job so far!

Stay tuned for the all new site!

Then, few months ago, I read that they were preparing a new book which was to be called REWORK and to be released in March 2010. Well, I did not wait long and got my pre-ordered copy right away from Amazon! And now, I can’t wait to read it!

But now, there is a nice little fun trailer which got out this week. It can give us an idea of what 37signals IS NOT. And I’m glad we are not like this at INBOX neither!

So I posted on the Ubuntu forums to ask people what email client software they were recommending on Ubuntu. Some recommended Evolution, others Thunderbird or some other software I don’t recall. But one guy said something like:

Dude, why do you need an email client software? Use Gmail! What more could you possibly need ?

Interesting… I had not thought of it. We were already using Google Apps at INBOX since 2006 and our mail was already all managed by Google. But I was previously using Outlook to fetch emails from my Google Apps email account. Outlook… now that I think of it, what an amazing un-productive tool! Everything sucks in it… Anyway, I’m diverging.

So I decided to give it a try. I started using the web interface of Google Apps emails. Fist, you can access it from anywhere in the world. You only need an Internet connection and a browser. Second, it comes free with 7 GB of storage. 7 GB! Although for me it will soon not be enough, still, for 80% of people, it’s about 7 times more then what they’ll ever need in 10 years!

And then come the true great features. While I was used to sort in Outlook, now I can actually use Google powerful search to search through my emails. I can use ” “, [], -, AND, OR, basically any operators to find virtually anything!

More, while I was used to categorize emails in folders, now I can label them! And any email can have more multiple labels!

And you think it’s enough ? Hell no! Filters!!! You can create any kind of filters you want to automatically label, move, delete, archive or even send a predefine reply to any emails coming in!

Oh and another very unique feature of Google mail: the threaded messages. You know when you receive an email and you reply and then others reply as well and you reply again and so on ? Well, in Outlook, this would create 15 new messages in your inbox. In Google email, they would all be displayed into a single thread. You click on it and all the messages that were exchanged with this same subject will be displayed one after another.

And then you archive it, so it will get out of your inbox. But then, 6 months later, someone will reply in this thread. Well, it will pop again in your inbox for you to read, with all the previous messages collapsed for you to uncollapse if you need to remember what this discussion was all about.

Bloody brilliant as my friend David from the UK would say!

So in conclusion, switching to Ubuntu was a great move, but starting to use Google web mail interface was simply a life saver!

Much has been accomplished since 2003! We served hundreds of customers, got involved in hundreds of projects, did a lot of errors, and a lot of great things! But I have to say that 2009 marked a very important milestone in the development of our organization. For the first time in our history, I am finally able to focus less on the production and more on business development!

In most starting companies, the founding entrepreneur is usually doing all by himself in the beginning: finding the clients, getting the job done, invoicing, administration, etc… It’s normal, he’s usually alone. In my case, I was very lucky to have a long time business man by my side looking after me and making sure I was not doing any obvious mistakes. That allowed me to not focus to much on the administrative tasks and dedicate my time on our products and services. Which I did for a few years. Then, when we started to grow and added a few people in the team, we could get more things done, but I was still very caught up in the day to day production tasks. Which was fine by me because coding was probably what I liked the most!

But as the years passed and we got more and more clients, I discovered something I did not expect: I was enjoying more and more the business things! Finding clients, closing deals, making strategies, thinking of new products, new services. I always have a passion for the actual coding parts, but the true business things became much more fun!

In 2009, we got more people on board and finally, there are people much better then me for the actual production parts. This means I can now focus on business development to get more clients, close more deals, create more partnership, and most of all, taking care of clients, listening to them, help them, solve problems to generate more revenues or help them become more efficient.

2010 will definitely be a great year for INBOX. We have a great team, we have great clients and we are evolving in a fantastic industry where opportunities are absolutely everywhere!

First, you can now notify people on your team when you add a new note to a contact. So let’s say you talked to a prospect and, of course, you are documenting it on your Highrise account, and you want a Project Manager to be informed that the deal is soon to be closed. Simply select the name of that person in the note’s option and you’re all set !

Second, daily email digest for cases or deals. Another awesome feature! You can now receive a daily email summarizing what happened in a specific case or deal. That way, you can get inform directly in your inbox, without even having to log on Highrise.

Finally, as you may know, you can easily send or forward email to your Highrise email dropbox, for those emails to be automatically added to the related contact. A few different emails can be use to add a message to a contact, create a task for today, tomorrow, next week, etc.. There are different email addresses you need to know and add to your contacts book. Well now, you can do this in 30 seconds as they have added a feature to automatically generate a vCard with all these addresses for you. Then you can simply import that vCard in your contacts book!

Again, great job by the 37signals team! Here is the full article on their site if you are interested: New in Highrise: Email Notifications, Daily Digests, Dropbox vCards.