The Raindrop project was introduced the other day at the Mozilla Labs website by the Mozilla Messaging team which also develops the email client Thunderbird. Raindrop aims to be the only software program a user needs to manage all messaging needs. It does so by allowing the user to add different data sources like Gmail or Yahoo Mail accounts, Twitter, social networking messages or RSS Feeds to the application.
The messages are then processed and categorized by Raindrop in personal and bulk categories with personal messages prioritized over the others. This concept is not only applied to email messages that the user receives (think a reply from a friend which would be sorted into the personal category versus the latest offerings of the airline you flew with in the past) but also Twitter, Facebook and everything else (not sure how this is going to be applied to RSS feeds though).
The Raindrop development team has created two design prototypes for the interface which are shown below.
Raindrop is currently not available publicly. The developers aim to release a version that can be downloaded and installed in the near future. You can read more about Raindrop at the introductory post over at the Mozilla Labs website.
The software could be useful for web users who not only receive lots of emails but participate heavily in multiple other web services and communities. What’s your take on Raindrop?
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I hope they release a standalone software and not online base. I’d would love to replace Digsby, not that Digsby is bad. They just don’t have a rep honesty.
I doubt that it would satisfy my needs. The idea is interesting, but implementation must be very configurable and flexible to make something I want to use instead of software I use now.
I cannot really see myself using any of these new services like Raindrop or Google Wave in the near future. Don’t need them at all as I’m perfectly happy with the solution I have right now. I can see a use for users who use social networks heavily.
Seems pretty neat , hope you going to make it modular so people can ad there on filtering / stuff / add-ons / enhancements and more. But ya need a rock solid system to begin with ! you give hope to people who realize that this is a biggie… Rock on
With a goal like condensing all needs into one app, they’ve really got to focus on flexibility. How well does it do in a column one-hundred pixels wide?
It does seem like a worthy project.