In today’s society we are connected and communicating at all times. From the moment we wake up, before even getting out of bed, we start by checking our smartphones. And the day goes on the same – we are connected. We talk with people and people talk with us. On the train, at work, during lunch, going out, at home. In fact, it is claimed that we check our phones 150 times a day. That’s unlocking your phone every 7 minutes on average when awake.
We often talk about how efficient everything is becoming in our digital world. We can access information quicker than ever before; connect with anyone in the world at any time. But at the same time, we are experiencing information overload. The Internet is so vast, our networks so wide, that we are not really able the manage it all. There is simply not enough time.
And we all know that feeling. When there is so much going on, that we kind of miss those really relevant pieces of information that we should really be picking up. Be it an urgent work related email or a message from a loved one. We’re simply too scattered. It makes it hard to stay focused.
I am currently part of a project aiming to help people handle information overload on mobile. And today, we, the BHI team, are launching the iPhone apps Swingmail and Swingbook on the Apple App Store in selected countries.
Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox that receives only important email and messages and Swingbook is a dynamic contact list with inbox for your iPhone.
Instead of receiving everything, at all times, from all different channels, the Swing apps help you access the information that is actually prioritized by you. They help you stay focused.
The apps work together to aggregate messages from Gmail, Facebook and Twitter, as well as Facetime and calls from your phone, so that you have everything in one inbox. One thread per contact. Swingmail will filter out junk, spam, and messages that don’t require your immediate attention, only delivering messages from important contacts. Swingbook, the minimalistic contact list, learns, predicts and suggests the most likely contacts who you would want to get in touch with at any given moment based on past messaging patterns, current time and location. We believe a truly smart contact list should not be listed A to Z but in order of priority.
The concept revolves around defining “efficiency” in terms of “less”, not “more”, because at the end of the day humans can only do so much in a lifetime.
Swingmail can be downloaded at: http://appstore.com/swingmail
Swingbook can be downloaded at: http://appstore.com/swingbook
(Available as of today in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland)
Please give our attempt at solving information overload a try. We look forward to your feedback!
