131–140 of 222 posts
Is there anything out there right now that handles email attachments like described in this pitch? I would love the ability to see all the attachments ever sent to me, organized by date/sender/filetype. Or clicking on a contact and seeing all attachments I've shared with that person.
(1) why is the "We spend a huge amount of our day..." text in red? (2) why is that text smaller than the previous chunk of text? (3) why is that entire previous chunk of text italicized? (4) how is "Mark as read is useless..." at all related to "Emails aren't just emails anymore"? why are these in the same paragraph? "Mark as read" seems like it should be the beginning of a list of complaints about email, not the supporting sentence for "Emails aren't just emails anymore" -- this just comes off as extremely bad flow of thought, and the typography makes it more confusing. (5) why is the heading for each of the boxes split into all-caps tiny text and no-caps large text? the idea in itself isn't terrible, but the tiny text is too tiny, and the splitting into tiny and large text isn't consistent -- clearly it's meant so that the large text can be read on its own and the tiny text adds to the experience upon closer inspection, and so putting the "and" at the end of the "A clean and" tiny text for the first box makes sense, but then why is the "and" at the beginning of the "and clean typograhpy" large text in the second box?
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Sometimes I do want my friends to wake me up in the middle of the night: "I'm drunk, I need a ride home." "Can I stay at your house." "$emergency" "Hey, I really just need somebody to talk to..." etc. etc. I don't want to have to go through my entire contact list, individually setting people who can and can't wake me up at night. There is already a mechanism for this, it's called "human interaction". My friends know…
I've been wishing there was a layer between my phone and me that said, effectively, "You've reached David's phone - if this is an emergency or he's expecting your call, press 1; otherwise, press 2 to set up an appointment for a later call, or 3 leave a voicemail message." Where 2 would talk to my calendar and ideally their calendar and figure out a time that works for both of us without my involvement. Sure, people c…
I'd prefer something more configurable as well -- priority list of who can reach me at any time, during daylight hours, when I'm generally open to talking, and never.
As well as a way for those with at least some level of trust (and, say, emergency services) to reach out to me directly.
Combination of Mr. Number and a pretty acerbic voicemail message ("Hi, you've reached me, don't leave a message, email me instead, if you're a good friend, feel free to text") low-techs this solution for me.
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In my kitchen I have: 1. A fridge 2. A coffee machine 3. A stove 4. A microwave 5. A blender 6. Mixing bowls 7. Measuring cups All I want to do is feed myself. Why on earth do I need to have so many different things to do it? To...most people, having a separate "app" for things that do wildly different things is a good . Skype and email fill completely different roles to me, and I suspect they fill completely differe…
While I see a phone call as fundamentally different from an email, I don't see SMS as different. In fact, I see it as a really lame competing implementation of the same basic idea that deserves to die as soon as possible.
The problem is that we are using email for everything. Since Facebook, people rarely send pictures to each other anymore. Since Blogging, people rarely send long personal stories to 100 friends. Etc', etc... Slowly and carefully we find the right alternatives to the default, which is email.
If you need task management, use Asana or something. It's really good, and it integrates with email quite well. Also, Trello is excellent as a flexible Kanban board.
It's all about finding and using (rigorously) the right tool. Don't force everything you need in computing into email, and you won't have to reinvent email.
I really doubt email will change at all. Maybe it will die, or be less common. But it will not change.
It's so simple, why change it anyway?
Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…
I realise that this may sound like I'm descending into fanboyism, but this is actually something that annoys me about iOS- it's far, far too app-centric. Take Windows Phone for example: tap a contact in WP and you see their tweets, Facebook messages, your SMS and e-mail history with them. The messages app integrates SMS and Live chat seamlessly. Ideally this system would open up to allow any third party to plug into…
Here's a recent example of stuff Google did - merged my G+ circles into my contacts - ok, I can see how that'd be useful... but old or invalid email address for my mom and wife were substituted as first hits on the search when I entered the contacts in Gmail. Consequently, I've sent quite a few emails in the past few days where I'm getting bounces.
That's assuming you don't have to deal with improperly overwritten data, or time-sensitive data (ie, temporary details). Any degree of asynchronicity can create intolerable delays for example.
Abstractions can only get so far, especially for distributed synchronization across potentially adversarial vendors/systems.
Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…
I do however think that interoperability needs to be improved.
Sounds like this would be a great time for a rewrite of the UNIX Finger tool to solve a problem like this. Real-time client/address lookup and can be protected with some kind of pub/private key.
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Like a lot of snark, it's not really that bright, but it's agressive and presenting itself as clever. Not all of those things deal with the same category of work. > You might want to send a message to somebody and not care how, but I do care how. But why do people have to remember how? Why can't I send off a message and have a computer figure out the preferred way to send the message. Remember, a big stakeholder in t…
If I send 50 SMS to someone who is charged 10c per message, I have cost them $5.00. So I should care whether I send them an SMS vs. an email. Someone without a data plan doesn't have constant access to email. Maybe they only check it on a computer every few days. So if I want to send an instant message, SMS might be necessary. Randomly sending an email vs. an SMS does not "just work". Nor does forcing each person to…
Here in the UK, we pay to send them, not to receive them.
This person needs to try outlook. You see, there's a little flag you can click on next to the email with a task priority. And a todo bar/list which shows them in priority order. Not only has it existed before, but it really doesn't help that much. You still need to apply yourself to use it correctly. This doesn't change that. Sigh... but then I knew I was in for wheel re-invention as soon as I saw the "modern creativ…
The problem with email is that all information you need is everywhere! It's a matter of discipline. Labels only solve half the issue. To start with we've got improper headlines, emails with information about many, totally unrelated tasks, replies to old messages in same conversation - this breaks threading in every email client i've tried, especially if many different senders jump in and out of the conversation.
Don't fix email. Fix communication. Why, on my iPhone, do I have: 1. An email app (which required a major update to unite mail boxes) 2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems) 3. A phone app 4. A contacts app 5. Twitter 6. Facebook 7. Skype What I want to do is (a) send messages to people (I don't care how), (b) check messages I've received (from anyone, using any method), (c) manage my…
"2. A "messages" app (which abstracts out two different message systems)" Is the abstraction a plus or a minus in your opinion? I'm asking because on one hand you're asking for a unified communication app, but on the other, the way you wrote that part, it sounds like a bad thing. Taking this specific example, I think it shows that aggregating communication media is difficult and maybe not a good thing. In Messages, S…
Surprisingly few of the people I text have iPhones (or smartphones at all), so I can't easily verify this.
