Leena Rao picked a great title when she wrote a post about fledgling Inbox2 late last year, writing that the startup essentially aims to rule all incoming communication streams, as the Web service turns your email and micro blogging updates from friends and contacts into a single, ever-synched activity stream.
Now, the Holland-based company is launching a nifty, free software program (Windows only for now) that does exactly the same in the form of a native desktop client.
Inbox2 collects all messages, document attachments, links and contacts from your existing email and social network accounts and brings everything into one place. The app doesn’t merely import incoming streams for consumption, as it also allows you to reply, search and manage all those incoming communication streams without having to login to multiple accounts.
The list of supported services is key, and impressively long: the app boasts support for (deep breath) Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, AOL, any custom IMAP/POP3 account, and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer and Hyves.
In addition, Inbox2 allows the user to organize their inbox around people or content discovery, including through social and real-time channels. In that sense, it reminds a lot of Threadsy, one of the TechCrunch50 finalists, but they haven’t publicly launched yet. Also worth checking out for different reasons is OtherInbox.
If you even use but two of the services that Inbox2 supports, I suggest you try out the Web service to start and give the desktop client a good whirl if you’re on Windows. It might just be that messaging management tool you’ve been longing for.
Me? I’m waiting for them to integrate simple RSS reader functionality into the tool.
