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Reinventing Email

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Re: Reinventing Email

#3
"Email is not a messaging protocol. It's a todo list."

Speak for yourself. My primary use case is to send and receive messages with others. If a message includes things to be done, I'll put them in a TODO list, like I'd do with any other messaging protocol.

The reason why reinventing email always fails is because email isn't broken.

Re: Reinventing Email

#4

"Email is not a messaging protocol. It's a todo list." Speak for yourself. My primary use case is to send and receive messages with others. If a message includes things to be done, I'll put them in a TODO list, like I'd do with any other messaging protocol. The reason why reinventing email always fails is because email isn't broken.

Amen!

Re: Reinventing Email

#5
You might want to fix the glaring typo "Re:Inveting email" at the top of the page.

As someone aptly mentioned though, the problem is you are just redesigning the email inbox and giving it some quick reply buttons (ala the Gmail canned responses).

I suggest you take a look at AOL's Alto for an example of something that is trying to tackle something similar largely through UX design. http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/18/aol-alto-email-applica...

All that being said, the design is cool. And you have a kickass domain name.

Re: Reinventing Email

#7
I'm afraid this is not reinventing email. It's more of capturing one particular use pattern. You quote pg saying it's a Todo list, which it is, but then you outline a solution that doesn't really work for my version of that Todo paradigm. And then you move on to irrelevant details like pixel perfection and retina support. I strongly suspect this is not what pg's RFP was about.

Re: Reinventing Email

#8
A todo list is one function of email. It's also an information sharing and socialization service. The right solution will contain specialized functions for these various uses. Note that a single email can fall into multiple categories. "Prep for 12/3 meeting" might contain information which should be added to a searchable library for future reference and create a to-do entry to ensure that the documents are read before the meeting.

The bigger challenge is that e-mail as a to-do list differs from a calendar in that the time and place of the to-do's is a bit more nebulous. For example, if you send someone an email with a link to your page and request feedback, you have a certain but inexact timeframe in mind. The secret to making this work is providing a heuristic ordering based on the sender's desires and the recipients priorities. The former can likely be specified with a few request classes or duration options. The latter would likely have to be learned from usage history, possibly with a VIP list used as a starting point.

Re: Reinventing Email

#9
>Pixel perfect + Retina + Cloud The trifecta of the mobile apps. Sync all your email and tasks with our cloud based mobile app.

The trifecta of buzzwords perhaps.

Re: Reinventing Email

#10
I kind of like this idea. Anything to change up how email is done. Outlook sort of has the right idea now, showing me conversations easily with lots of visual queues, but I rather like that demo from AOL that came along a few weeks ago.

What was it called? AOL built some sort of new email based client system? If anybody can share a link I'd be very grateful.

Edit: Found it, it's called Alto.

Check it out: http://www.highsnobiety.com/2012/10/21/aol-reinvents-email-u...

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