Snooze Email: Hit Me Later

Now, this is a beauty.

Sometimes you just feel like you’re swamped by too much emails --- everything urgent, everybody trying to get your attention , and the spam button , for crying out loud , isn’t any help either.

Sure, you can call me one of those inbox clean freaks --- classifying each email ( I get tons of emails in a daily grind) and carefully tucked in separate folders, whether it be my longtime Sylvia’s forwarded messages, or my college friend’s forwarded email blast jokes, or Friendster’s horrifying load of email notifications ( finally turned it off, whew!) , until I sweep the inbox clean and spic-and-span neat. Then came a loadful again after a few hours . And my come-from-behind remorse. Now why did I subscribe to this $&*# mailing list ???

To the rescue , ta-dahh! Here comes HitMeLater .

Tech Crunch reports:

“HitMeLater is simple. Forward any email to 24@hitmelater. com and it will send it back to you 24 hours later, putting it on the top of your inbox pile. You can change the number of hours to anything you like, up to 1,000 hours ahead (3@hitmelater. com sends it back three hours later). Alternatively, put in a day (Wednesday@hitmelat er sends it back the next Wednesday).”

“If you send it something it doesn’t understand, HitMeLater sends back a polite email message saying “We’re not sure what you want.”

“If you’re like me you rely on flags to remember which emails to go back to, but they often get buried and are left unattended. From now on I’ll forward stuff I need to deal with but not immediately to Sunday@hitmelater.com, my slowest email day.”

While some are already grouching and snarling this early ( “Why should I use such a service when I can always use my desktop for some ‘Remind Me Later’ tasks?” ) , I guess it could be something like a virtual online assistant --- nudging you about that all-too-important task or event but can wait for another 24 hours or more --- because you’re currently drowning with too much ASAP work . Whew!

Philip Kaplan’s cool new service may not be that hot for some , this HitMeLater. thing has some valley wags and techie geeks raising their eyebrows in cynical fashion. But the guy is something else :

“Philip oversees AdBrite’s product management and innovation. Prior to founding AdBrite, Philip founded several businesses including PK Interactive, a software company that developed Web-based applications for Fortune 500 clients including Toyota and Mead Paper. Philip’s personal sites have earned accolades including Yahoo and Rolling Stone’s Site-of-the-Year, and #6 in TIME Magazine’s “Best of 2000.” Philip is a regular public speaker and is the bestselling author of F’d Companies (Simon & Schuster). He is on the board of the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.” (Source: AdBrite)

Oh well. If you have some comments … hit me with it later . : )