Hey sailor, welcome to Toolbox. This is the place where Motherboard'll be telling you every week about this or that bit of software that you really need to have on your computer or phone-computer now. Requirements for something to be in our toolbox: 1) It is actually useful, like in the sense that you might turn to it on a regular basis and for hopefully more than one task, 2) It is free, or really, really exceptionally cheap (or cheap relative to function, like a smuggled tethering app), and 3) it is useful to most people, relatively speaking. Please send your suggestions to michaelb@motherboard.tv.
Boomerang is simply an email scheduler. It adds a neat drop-down menu to Gmail from which you can select a certain time/date for your message to be delivered. Like, perhaps you want to send all of your email in the middle of the night. That could be fun. It’s got a "random time" option on top of that, which could be an entry point into all sorts of mind games with yourself or others.It’s wicked user-friendly: installation takes a second (for Firefox and Chrome) and it slips into the Gmail interface easily enough that it doesn’t stand out or look awkward. I tested it out several times: twice with no attachments, and twice with attachments. Everything arrived on-time and intact.Now for the thing that I’ll actually use, and probably use constantly. It allows you take take an opened email and send it back to yourself at a later time. Like, sometimes you just know you might forget about something. And then do. It happens to me all the time. My entire life would probably be different if I returned this or that email that went forgotten.Finally, and maybe not-so-importantly, Boomerang will remind you about things you’ve sent that you haven’t received replies to. Say, Boomerang me if I haven’t heard anything from this guy in one day. I can see that being helpful, particularly if using it becomes a habit.Also note that Boomerang doesn’t add promotional junk to your messages or "sent by Boomerang" or anything like that. Which is smart and ups the chances that this will become a regular thing for me from about 40-percent to 70-percent.Download here.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.Image:Richie Graham.
