secure. Mimecast has a big e-mail name as its chief scientist: Nathaniel Borenstein, an original designer of the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) protocol, which enables many of the e-mail features seen as standard, like allowing non-text attachments, header information, and different character sets.
—Cambridge, MA-based PowerInbox is looking to push a slew of different activities consumers engage with online—Facebook, Twitter, and browsing daily deals, for example—into the email interface. The startup is trying to make e-mail the centralized platform for these things, and to encourage developers to create more apps that can live on top of an e-mail inbox—for functions ranging from recruiting to watching videos. The startup, which came to Boston by way of the Bay Area, has raised $1 million in funding from Atlas Venture, Longworth Venture Partners, Correlation Ventures, and angel investors.
—Speaking of making e-mail more fun, Cambridge-born Baydin is worth a mention. The startup, now based in San Francisco to be closer to e-mail titans and its investors (that’s a funny story if you have the time), graduated from TechStars Boston in 2009. It developed an app called Boomerang for helping people write e-mails now and send them later and remind themselves of e-mails they need to follow up on. Building on that idea, it also developed an e-mail game to help people have a bit more fun while attending to the dreaded task of sorting, responding to, and deleting e-mails.
