AOL's Innovative Card-Based Email Service, Alto, Comes To iOS And Android (fastcompany.com)

Remember AOL? The company best known for its email service? Three years ago, it released a Pinterest-like platform for desktop email called Alto. Today AOL announced the release of Alto for iOS and Android -- nearly a year after it began beta testing it. FastCompany writes: The app's design is based on the idea that email has shifted from a communication tool to more of a transactional system -- today's inboxes are filled with receipts, order confirmations, and reservations, rather than personal messages. To combat this flood of data, Alto automatically sorts email into stacks, such as "travel," "photos," "files," "shopping," and "personal."

Comments

So ... folders

[raymorris]

> Innovative ... sorts email into stacks, such as "travel," "photos," "files," "shopping,"

So .. folders? Very innovative.

PS - MH had subfolders by 1979

[raymorris]

To see just HOW innovative this idea is, MH had folders, and even subfolders, by 1979. Also, certainly by 1990 procmail was automatically putting mail into different folders. I have no doubt other commenters will point out much earlier implementations.

Well there is this one app...

[Guyle]

AOL's own Google Inbox, eh? Very original and innovative.

Re:Well there is this one app...

[Guyle]

I actually enjoy it. Once I trained it a little to understand what was an update versus a promo, it does a pretty good job of sorting my stuff. Things that don't get automatically sorted stand out more to me since they don't have a category attached. Plus just checking "done" on everything helps me keep my inbox clean without actually deleting anything. I wouldn't want to go back to regular GMail.

Read the TOS - it scans your email for advertising

[generic_screenname]

According to the TOS, and common sense, this is scanning your emails to serve you ads. Granted, Gmail does the same thing, so maybe no one will care. It is still worth mentioning.

Please stop

[H3lldr0p]

I really don't know where to begin. This is another reinvention of the wheel. Something I'm seeing more and more of these days. Don't know if it's because I'm approaching a certain age or if communication is just happening faster and faster so we see more of it in a shorter amount of time.

Don't think I'm knocking it. I'm not. It's obvious someone needed this and didn't know how or where to look for the contemporary counterpart in current clients. Or because current clients made it too hard to figure out. We all have different brains and think our process out differently. Just because it's obvious to you or I how to script this in our gmail doesn't mean that everyone else sees it that way.

What bothers me is the breathless headlines. The purposeful exaggeration. The constant commercialization. That, more than anything, I'm tired of.

No wonder advertisement is in trouble.

Re:Please stop

[Neuronwelder]

Much Agreed, H3lldr0p, In the early 1950's, people used to watch TV on a 5" screen. The '90's to the Millennium age, the exaggeration was on HUGE screens. Now were back to tiny screens again.. I guess the public can be sold on ANYTHING If it is packaged correctly.

Not just any old folders

[PatientZero]

No, AOL has invented named folders.

Mind. Blown.

Remember AOL?

[Chelloveck]

I must be remembering the wrong AOL. The one I remember was best known for sending unsolicited floppy disks and CD ROMs in the mail.

Re:Read the TOS - it scans your email for advertis

[swb]

The only way you will be able to trust any kind of AI for sorting personal information will be if the software is something you buy and own.

But any AI development will be built around monetizing your information, so they will always be "free" and untrustable.