I found myself sending emails with links and articles to myself all the time, but they cluttered up my inbox, which I didn't like. So I built this thing that can remind me in the evenings of stuff I found during the day. It does the same thing that I used to do, sends as email, but at a time of my choosing (when there's presumably quiet time to read in-depth articles). I called it mailreminder.net :)
I also use it for reminding myself to follow up on email conversations I have. Someone writes to me that they need XYZ by the end of the week, and now I forward that mail to thursday@mailreminder.net so I don't have to see it in my inbox Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
I've had fun with the technical aspects of this - I enjoy both programming and setting up the web and mail servers. I've used the project to explore both new and old technologies that I wasn't familiar with before. Right now I'm exploring different options for a better landing page for instance - if you didn't guess by seeing the current landing page, I'm not exactly a graphical designer, but I see that as an opportunity for learning :)
A little about how it works:
1. You send an email to mailreminder.net
2. Mailreminder.net picks up your email, and saves the following, encrypted, information: A) your email address, B) the subject, C) the message-id of the message you sent, and D) the mailreminder.net address you sent the mail to. Please note: All of this information is encrypted in the database, mailreminder.net never sees the *content* of your email, and lastly the email is deleted from mailreminder.net's mailserver in the instant it has been processed.
3) Mailreminder.net uses the collected information to create a replly to your email. The reply will make the original email (that you want to be reminded about) pop up in a conversation thread along with the reminder, so you have the proper context when reminded.
That's it really, it's as simple and as private as technically possible. You only receive mails from mailreminder.net when there is something to remind you about. There's no daily digests that are essentially just spam, or otherwise annoying emails.
I hope other people will find mailreminder.net useful as well :)
mailreminder.net