Email interrupts me constantly. It’s entirely too easy to get sucked into checking it frequently, even when other projects deserve your undivided attention. Unfortunately, most of the emails I receive are simply not that important, definitely not worth breaking concentration to read. Sanebox automatically filters your emails so you only get the ones worth getting.

Sanebox is the best substitute I’ve found for email filtering service GTriage, which closed down after it was acquired by AOL. (And a sad day it was, too!)  Like Gtriage, it automatically sorts your emails for you, so you only have to interrupt yourself if something important comes in.  You can accomplish something similar in Gmail using filters and multiple inboxes, but Sanebox is much easier to use. Just link it to your Gmail account and let it work its magic… it will pick out the important emails and put them in your inbox, then put the rest in a separate folder called SaneLater, for you to peruse at your leisure. You’ll also receive a digest email that summarizes the emails SaneBox has filtered for you.

Sanebox doesn’t require any initial training (an improvement over GTriage), and I found its accuracy to be excellent out of the box. However, it’s also easy to train- just drag and drop and email in to the appropriate location, and similar emails should end up there automatically.

There are also some cool extra features, like a “black hole” folder that will automatically unsubscribe you from newsletters and such with one click, as well as the ability to make emails “disappear” from your inbox for a day or a week.  Sanebox also offers email analytics in case you want a visual representation of just how much crap email you receive.

Of course, the best things in life aren’t free…and SaneBox is no exception. 1 month of service will set you back $4.95, a year is $55 and 2 years is $100. However, if you pimp out your Facebook account and let SaneBox post on your wall, you’ll get 50% off and earn a month’s worth of credit for every friend who signs up.  There’s a free trial available so you can try before you buy. Personally, I think that’s worth it. What about you?

(via Techcrunch)

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Do you miss Picnik? Yeah, we all do. Depending on how you used Picnik, Pizap just might be a suitable replacement.

Pizap is a free photo editor that lets you do a lot of different things with your photos. You can fix the color and light balance,  of course, and you can also choose from a decent selection of filters that range from Instagram-like to surreal and psychedelic.  You can add borders, stickers, and text.  You can also use the Cutouts feature to splice images from one photo into another.  Some of these options are obviously made to appeal to my preteen cousin, but there’s enough going on to amuse people of any age.

You can also use Pizap to make collages, e-cards and Facebook Timeline cover photos.  When using each of these options, you have access to the entire suite of tools in the photo editor.

Unfortunately, Pizap’s interface is somewhat lacking. It’s busy and cluttered with ads (though thankfully just banners, nothing that pops up, sings or shouts at you). I also could not find the “Undo” button, and believe me, I looked. WTF? Overall, it ran smoothly, but it did freeze up on me once when I was trying to load a picture. Finally, you can resize a picture by clicking and dragging, but there’s no way to see how many pixels wide or tall it is.

What do you think of Pizap?

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Every blog needs a content strategy. DivvyHQ makes it easy to create an editorial calendar to keep yourself and any team members on task.

The app lets you save ideas in a “parking lot”  for future reference, along with notes about strategy, keywords, drafts and publishing information. Then, you can solicit input from your team members and create a posting schedule.   By organizing your ideas into a calendar in advance, you’ll never run out of topics or forget to cover seasonal topics like holidays that can help boost your traffic.

There are a few advantages to using DivvyHQ instead of Google Calendar or a spreadsheet. First, the real-time activity feed makes it easy to collaborate, since you can always see what your team members have been up to. Second, it’s easier to assign content to other people to complete and review. Plus, the content template makes you take a moment and think about things like keywords and your target audience.

DivvyHQ is great for  a team of bloggers or for agencies. However, since the lowest-level plan ($29.99 per month) only allows you set up one calendar, it’s not ideal for freelancers who work for multiple clients, since you’ll want to keep each client on a separate calendar and that can get expensive quickly.

It would also be nice if there were some way to save  reference material for planned posts without having to open DivvyHQ, perhaps using a browser extension or a bookmarklet.

Still, DivvyHQ is a great tool for organizations who want to keep their content flowing smoothly. What do you think of it?

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Finding the right people to staff your business can be tough, and the consequences of hiring the wrong candidate can be costly. ZipRecruiter makes it easy to find a good fit by getting your job postings in front of as many qualified candidates as possible.

Using ZipRecruiter, you can instantly publish your job listing to over 25 job boards, as well as to your social networking accounts. For example, you can post to Twitter, LinkedIn (both your profile page and selected groups) and Facebook in just one click, and set them to repost automatically as often as you like. Finally, ZipRecruiter provides code for a “jobs widget,” which you can install on your own website or blog.

If you’d like, you can pre-screen your candidates by requiring an online interview.  Then, use ZipRecruiter to keep track of the resumes you receive and to review them with the rest of your hiring team.

Another cool feature for those of you who run a staffing service or otherwise handle hiring for more than one company: you can use ZipRecruiter’s “hiring companies” feature to create job listings for more than one company from the same ZipRecruiter account.

Can’t find anyone suitable in your virtual stack of resumes? You may be able to find something in ZipRecruiter’s resume database. Also, ZipRecruiter will automatically email your listing to the job seekers in its database.

ZipRecruiter is quite similar to Resfly, which was previously reviewed here. However, they arrived on the scene first and most, if not all, of the features the two sites share in common started out on ZipRecruiter. Also, ZipRecruiter has the edge when it comes to promoting your listing, with more job boards than Resfly plus their own database of job seekers.

What do you think of ZipRecruiter?

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As an analytics tool, heat maps are ubiquitous. Clickmap aims to make their visualizations stand out by updating them in real-time.

Like most analytics programs, you use Clickmap by installing a piece of Javascript on your website.  You can even copy the code to your clipboard in a single click- nice touch!

Should you have any problems installing the code, Clickmap’s freakishly bright-eyed cartoon-character mascots will be happy to assist you. Or devour your immortal soul- I’m not sure which.

Once the tracker is installed, Clickmap can generate real-time reports showing you what parts of the page attracted the most interest from visitors, how far down they scrolled, and what they clicked on. If you’d like, you can segment the reports using your choice of 20 different attributes.

Clickmap has a limited free plan and paid plans starting  at about $25 a month, though they bill in Swiss francs. Most of the website is in German, so the minimal English translation could throw you off if you don’t speak it.

One thing about Clickmap that grates- they offer a money-back guarantee for the paid plans (you have to pay when you sign up), but there’s no option to cancel (or if there is, it’s in German and/or well camoflauged). I had to send an email using the website’s contact form.

Of course, compare prices and features before you select an analytics program. If it doesn’t matter to you whether or not your heatmaps update in real-time, there are a variety of analytics services that do offer lots of other useful real-time data for about $10-$15 per month.

What do you think of Clickmap?

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It’s Friday. What are you doing this weekend? If you’re not sure, FYiFly might be able to help.  This app integrates with Facebook to show you a list of local events, as well as which of your Facebook friends will be there.

FYiFly is easy to use:  it automatically senses your location (or tries to, anyway- it was off for me by about 45 minutes driving distance) and shows you what’s going on in the area.  You can browse events by popularity, type and date. Sign in with Facebook, and you can see the events your friends are planning to attend.

Just to make sure they hit all the hot startup buzzwords, the team at FYiFly added a gamification element, as well.  You’ll earn an entry-level badge just for connecting your Facebook account, and you can collect more badges by attending specific events.

FYiFly looks great and is easy to navigate.  That said, I had a few frustrations when I tried to use it. First of all, I’m not sure where they’re pulling the events from (I assume Facebook), but there’s no way to click over to the event homepage from FYiFly. This can be annoying, especially if the event description in FyiFly is inadequate.

Also, for some reason it only picked up 2 events that my Facebook friends were attending, both a plane ride away. Now, the lack of nearby events is understandable since none of my local friends have RVSP-ed to any events on Facebook lately. (We don’t go out on the town much. We go camping. It’s cheaper.) However, even when I changed my location to “Houston,” where I have Facebook friends who are attending numerous events this month and next month, it still only pulled the same two events from the same two people.

This may be an issue with Facebook privacy settings, but it’s annoying nonetheless — especially since the social aspect is supposed to be one of FYiFly’s major selling points.

For what it’s worth, FYiFly still provides a better experience than browsing events in Facebook.

What do you think of it?

If Twitter and Pinterest had a lovechild, it would be named XSOAR. Like Twitter, XSOAR relies on user-submitted content that updates in real-time, though the content is limited to URLs, pictures and videos as opposed to people talking about what they ate for lunch.  The layout adds Pinterest’s visual appeal to the mix, with lots of large pictures.

Stories are sorted into topics, and each topic has its own column on the screen. You can customize the topics that appear, and change the order by dragging and dropping. You can also search for stories by keyword, and your search will be updated as new stories come in.

If you get dizzy watching the stories fly by in real-time, don’t worry- you can slow  the speed down or even stop it completely.

Another welcome feature is the ability to comment on stories anonymously, if you choose.  While you have to sign up and create a profile to submit stories and to comment, you don’t have to connect every comment you make to your profile.

There’s also an element of gamification, if that appeals to you, as you can earn points, or “cred” and level up by submitting stories and comments.

Look, sometimes the apps that get submitted for review leave me feeling kind of jaded.  This one, I like. I think that if it can get past the initial hurdle of attracting users (no small feat considering how many other social networks are competing for our time and our attention these days), it has a lot of potential.

So, go check it out. And then come back, and let me know what you think!

Trying new restaurants can be a crapshoot. That new place down the street could turn out to be too loud, too quiet, or too snooty for your needs. Depending on where you live, Hoppit may be able to help you find one that’s just right.

Hoppit lets you search for bars, coffee shops and restaurants based on the type of food served, the ambiance of the establishment and the people you’re with.  For example, if you’re looking for a romantic cafe where you can curl up with a good book and a macchiato, you should be able to use Hoppit to find one.  Ditto for trying to find a pizza place suitable for your toddler, or an upscale venue to impress your boss.

I like the idea, but unfortunately I can’t vouch for Hoppit’s recommendations because it doesn’t work in my small, southern city at all. It’ll search for area restaurants, but when you try to add filters it comes up with nothing.  When I tried to do the same thing on the mobile site, the closest establishment that came up for the “upscale” filter using the “Map Results” feature was an hour and a half away.  We may not be the Big Apple, y’all, but we do at least have a Melting Pot!

It did a little bit better for Houston, where I grew up…but for some reason it only brought up two restaurants in the “Hipster” category, and while Benjy’s might fit the bill, there are plenty of other establishments in Houston that would also be attractive to hipsters (and probably soak up less of their monthly Pabst Blue Ribbon budget, to boot!)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the app seems to perform best (or at least pull up the most results in each category) in New York City, where its founders reside.

There are a couple of things that the Hoppit team could definitely improve. First and foremost, work on the search feature. People aren’t going to use the app if it only directs them to a few of many possibilities in their area. Second, although the mobile site is well-designed, making it into an app might make it more accessible and easier for people to use on the go.

What do you think of Hoppit?

Sometimes, you just want to relax and watch some music videos. TubePlayer makes that easy by automatically curating videos from the artists of your choice.

All you have to do is enter in the artist’s name in the search bar, then sit back and watch the show. According to the developer, TubePlayer uses social signals to choose the videos that appear in each playlist. Videos play seamlessly, one right after the other, and you can customize them by “liking” and “disliking” each individual video. If you register, you can also save your favorite artists and shuffle through them for more variety.

I thought the algorithm did a decent job of selecting videos for each of the artists I put in, though some weird stuff came up for one artist, like a “Broadway musical” version of a metal song. Interesting. Guess that’s what the customization feature is for.

Anyway, TubePlayer is a fun little app if you have some time to kill and want to hearken back to the glory days of MTV, minus the annoying VJs and commercials. What do you think of it?

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Whether you’re planning a group camping trip, a keg party or going in on a gift, there’s always some deadbeat who won’t pull their own weight. Crowdtilt comes to your rescue with a combination of subtle peer pressure and technological wizardry.

Crowdtilt is a lot like Kickstarter, except that instead of shaking down friends, family and strangers alike to fund your pet project, you’re collecting contributions from people you know to go toward a group effort. The type of group effort is up to you: vacations, parties, presents and special occasions seem like the most common applications, but get creative: people have used to fund everything from community gardens to fixing potholes.

Creating a campaign is quick and easy, and once you’re done you can share it via Facebook and Twitter. People can see who has contributed, so you’ll know everyone has at least contributed something (and you can set a minimum contribution amount if you’d like). Like Kickstarter, the money isn’t collected unless the campaign “tilts,” or meets the minimum goal you set when you started. After it’s over, you can collect the money via direct deposit or through PayPal. Crowdtilt takes a 2.5% transaction fee.

I can definitely think of more than one occasion in which Crowdtilt would have been incredibly useful. What about you?