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Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

theatlantic.com

21–30 of 203 posts

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#22
post #18
post #15

Wholeheartedly agree with the article. I have absolute control of my inbox with filters, labels, and signing up for newsletters and/or updates on various subjects. There is no way a centralized end-to-end service is going to eclipse email for me, unless they radically change their business models. The value proposition is just really bad in all the services I've seen so far. "Oh, you want me to sign up for your servi…

"Something I would pay for: a rolodex social network. No centralized feed. No useless info. Your profile is 2-3 sentences and your current city (with some sort of maps integration for when you travel, to see who's near you). Two buttons, one to request to view resume, and another to request to view email. That's it. With the idea being, you use the site to enable you to keep up with people. You add people you know or…

"why I know them" is a crucial feature missing from many services (along with "what name or alias I know them under").

I have hundreds of contacts from church, school, work, video games, etc.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#23
post #15

Wholeheartedly agree with the article. I have absolute control of my inbox with filters, labels, and signing up for newsletters and/or updates on various subjects. There is no way a centralized end-to-end service is going to eclipse email for me, unless they radically change their business models. The value proposition is just really bad in all the services I've seen so far. "Oh, you want me to sign up for your servi…

A social network used explicitly for exchanging contact information would fill a perfect niche for me.

That idea is fantastic.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#25
post #20

Facebook Messenger will eclipse email. Social network is the perfect spam filter.

Spoken like someone who hasn't been invited to play FarmVille 1,000 times. And yes, you can disable these notifications, but doing so isn't any easier or automatic than training an email spam filter.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#27
post #14
post #9

What if someone designed a new email protocol/etc from scratch without any reference to the existing one. Could it be made better? Can you even define what better is?

Actually, that's exactly what we are trying to do with AirDispatch [1]. We started out intending to "fix" email with a better protocol, and ended up creating something much greater. The core problems that we tried to solve (to help define "better") were: - Security: encrypting and authenticating your messages - Control: the sender hosts the message, so they can edit or delete them before the receiver sees them - Flex…

Much as it pains me to mention DJB; that sounds very similar to the Internet Mail 2000 model. http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#28
post #3

I agree. I think there is more that can be done to enhance it, and make it a more enjoyable tool. Email clients --and I am not talking about third party services a la Mailbox, who rely yet in another server-- are still very primitive.

I feel that gmail has held back development of good desktop clients (which is what we really need). My laptop has an almost empty 1TB hard drive yet I need to wait to download an image attachment every time I want to view it. Email should be built around abundant storage, not a dependency on bandwidth.

I feel the same way. In my opionion, Outlook peaked with 2010 but they are missing new ideas. There is SO much you could do if you would think just a little bit out of the box.

One could think of contextual information added to emails, like detecting invoice numbers, intellligent attachments (e.g. recognizing Dropbox links etc.) and so on. I really hope there will be some client like this in the future, if not, we'll build it :)

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#30
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's exactly what we are trying to do with AirDispatch [1]. We started out intending to "fix" email with a better protocol, and ended up creating something much greater. The core problems that we tried to solve (to help define "better") were: - Security: encrypting and authenticating your messages - Control: the sender hosts the message, so they can edit or delete them before the receiver sees them - Flex…

Much as it pains me to mention DJB; that sounds very similar to the Internet Mail 2000 model. http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html

Good catch! We actually completely developed AirDispatch without realizing that it had many of the same tenants as IM2000.

I haven't seen any IM2000 implementations, so I'd love to check it out if you know of any.

Do you not like IM2000, or have other feelings towards it? I'd love to hear your feedback.

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