Google reveals new Inbox app

Google has gone ahead and launched a new mobile app called “Inbox.” According to Google, the app is only available via invitation for the meantime. The app has been developed by the Gmail team and is intended to better organise email messages. While Africa is becoming more mobile-based, the app shows a lot of potential, especially when it comes to today’s enterprise mobility scene.

According to Google, Inbox is an entirely separate app to Google’s email product, grouping similar types of messages into what it describes as “Bundles”, categories such as Social, Travel and Purchases.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of Android, stated that: “Email started simply as a way to send digital notes around the office. But fast-forward 30 years and with just the phone in your pocket, you can use email to contact virtually anyone in the world…from your best friend to the owner of that bagel shop you discovered last week.”

“With this evolution comes new challenges: we get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks—especially when we’re working on our phones. For many of us, dealing with email has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do—rather than helping us get those things done.”

According to Google one of the features of the app is called Highlights. Inbox highlights the key information from important messages, such as flight itineraries, event information, and photos and documents emailed to you by business partners and employees. Inbox will even display useful information from the web that wasn’t in the original email, such as the real-time status of your flights and package deliveries. Highlights and Bundles work together to give you just the information you need at a glance.

Inbox also integrates Google Now reminders and allows users to create their own reminders and snooze messages so that they show up at a specific time or when in a specific location. The app is available for Android, iOS, and via Google’s Chrome browser.

Both a tablet version of Inbox and support for other browsers are said to be in consideration by Google.

Source: www.itnewsafrica.com