The Next Web has selected Google's Inbox by Gmail as one of its "Apps of the Year." While the app launched at the end of 2014, the publication points out that Inbox blossomed in 2015. "Inbox focuses on helping you clear your incoming email as quickly as possible," explains The Next Web. "There's no doubt the Gmail team was inspired by the likes of Dropbox's lightweight Mailbox, but what we have here is more well-rounded, polished and easy to use." It's interesting to note that as Inbox is receiving accolades, Mailbox shut down today.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has warned consumers to beware of fake shipping emails. The organization has pointed out that scammers target holiday shoppers claiming to share an order's shipping status. These spam emails are often used to spread malware or gather personal banking information, the organization said.

Dropbox is killing its email service Mailbox and its photo-sharing service Carousel. "Building new products is about learning as much as it's about making. It's also about tough choices," Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox explained in a blog post. "Over the past few months, we've increased our team's focus on collaboration and simplifying the way people work together. In light of that, we've made the difficult decision to shut down Carousel and Mailbox." Mailbox was one of the first email management apps to hit the market and the company acquired it for $100 million in 2013.

A new startup called Mainframe is hoping to bring email together with collaboration platforms. The company, which is launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt London, hopes to add structure to email to make it more able to integrate with task management platforms. The tools can highlight text within emails to suggest actions to be shared within the collaboration platform.

The Gro Company, a UK retailer of children's items, hired email marketing services firm Bronto Software last year to increase personalization and customer engagement with its email program. The retailer is now able to segment its customer data to send targeted campaigns. For example, the company will suggest the next size Grobag when a child has grown based on purchase history.

Email drove 23.3 percent of all e-commerce orders over Thanksgiving weekend, according to a new report from Custora. The research measured sales from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday. The research also revealed that 32.1 percent of the e-commerce orders made over the holiday weekend were placed on mobile devices.

Comcast and IFTTT have teamed up to allow consumers to get email alerts to their television sets. Using Comcast's X1, television owners can create a setting to receive an update from their email provider on the screen of their TV, so that they won't miss an important email while they are vegging out.

The US Postal Service is testing a new service that will email people images of letter-sized mail. The Informed Delivery service will send a roundup email of what the person should expect in their physical mailbox for the day. The images will show the front of the piece of mail. Unlike mail receiving services, USPS will not open or scan the contents of the mail.

The Washington Post has updated its style format and is now writing "email" instead of "e-mail". The publication follows other style guides which dropped the hyphens several years back. "The hyphenless email arose in a process seemingly familiar but actually unprecedented," explained the publication.

Google Russia plans to appeal a Moscow City Court decision that has required the tech giant to pay human rights activist, Anton Burkov, $754 for moral damages for delivering ads based on his email conversations. Burke complained that Gmail's ads contained links on how to find a hotel in Strasburg, obtain a visa, and even file a claim with the European Court of Human Rights.