#44 MailMe: Simplicity at its finest
I’ve always loved simple things that make life smoother. Tools that strip away noise, and zero in on the core problem. Tools that just work.
A few months ago, we bought a summer house out in the middle of nowhere. It’s quiet. Peaceful. On the days I go into the office, the commute is an hour and a half each way, with no buses or trains. It reminds me of when we lived on a farm years ago. Similar rural area. Similar routines. And the same old problem.
Driving.
Your hands are busy, but your mind is free. Ideas come. Tasks pop up. You think of something worth remembering. But you can’t (and shouldn’t) type while driving. You need to capture the thought quickly, safely, and without breaking focus.
I ran into this same challenge back when we lived at the farm. A slightly shorter commute, but still. So, together with some friends at inUse and Oops (special shoutout to Johan Carlberg for the code and Sonja Larsson for the beautiful app icon), we built a tiny app called MailMe Voice.
One tap on the icon and it started recording immediately. One tap to stop, and it sent the audio file straight to your inbox.
That’s it.
My email has always been my primary to-do list, or at least the funnel into it. So arriving at work with a few voice notes waiting for me felt oddly satisfying. Nothing got lost. No “what was that thing I was thinking about earlier?” Everything was right there, ready to process.
Yes, iOS had Voice Memos. But it had too many steps, and too many mental buckets. I didn’t want to remember to open a different app later. I just wanted it all in one flow.
This wasn’t our first attempt at minimal tools. We also made TalkTimer, a calm iPhone timer for public speakers. It showed huge numbers that changed color as time counted down: white for most of the talk, inverted with 5 minutes left, and red at 2 minutes. No sounds. Just subtle visual cues.
Before that, we made MailMe, an app for emailing yourself with as few taps as possible. It even got reviewed in MacWorld in 2009. Brian Beam gave it 4.5 out of 5 and called it:
“Simplicity at its finest.”
We were thrilled. It was fun, and we got great feedback from all over the world.
Eventually, we shut them all down. Great side projects, but not sustainable. A dollar per download doesn’t go far unless you're a breakaway success, and we were not.
Now, I’m back to long drives and scattered thoughts. And honestly, I miss MailMe Voice. With today’s tech, a new version could keep the same simple interface but do even more: automatic transcription, geotagging, maybe even tie into the iPhone’s Action Button.
An accurate transcription would make it easier to process later, with the audio there as a backup when needed. That extra context, where you were when you recorded that note, can help spark connections later. Sometimes that’s the difference between understanding a messy voice note and losing the thread entirely.
So… maybe it’s time to rebuild it. Or something like it.
If you’ve got ideas, or know of a tool that solves this problem, I’m all ears.