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Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

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Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#121

Post by bane »

superuser2 wrote: post #119
bane wrote: post #111

I'm pretty firm in my belief that one of the great marketing moves of the 21st century is convincing people that email is not a social network. It's almost on par with making people believe that diamonds are romantic and a necessary part of the marriage ritual. I think this has been helped by the general lack of innovation in the email space. From pretty basic mail, we ended up with a few (very surprisingly few) emai…

I'm convinced that Facebook took over messaging because it has one killer feature the 90s didn't: real names. Contact points on Facebook are discoverable by real name based on the social graph, which is kind of a first in the history of communication. If someone mentions a John Doe in conversation, I can get in contact with the correct John Doe with a very high probability of success and no effort. The PSTN, email, A…

Yeah, absolutely. The centralized index of people is as critical to Facebook's growth as DNS is to the Web. You don't have to remember 198.41.190.47 to get to everybody's favorite tech discussion forum, you just have to remember news.ycombinator.com.

So I wonder how hard it would be to setup a DNS-like searchable index for an e-mail like replacement? Instead of having to remember guy@foo.com I just have to remember 'John Doe' he works for Foo Inc. and I can probably narrow it down from a list of other John Does. If not, I can always call him and ask him for his explicit address as a fallback.

> but the action on Facebook is centered on the News Feed

It really seems that, much more than Twitter has ever managed to be. People's News Feeds are really their microblogs. For many of my FB friends, I can go to their feed and read back a few months to see what's going on in their lives. Just as if they had been keeping a blog. But the convention on FB seems to be short posts, so I don't have to read long-form posts, but they also aren't restricted to a tiny string of characters.

I actually think the news feed reminds me quite a bit of the finger protocol and .plan files. (there's commenting and likes and such of course also).

So what core distributed communication and web presence technologies already exist that could approximate Facebook and what and how would they have to be modified to work at least as well as Facebook? What new things would have to be created from wholecloth?

Would it be possible to integrate all this mess tightly enough that a person could set up their own "Social 2.0" node without too much fuss?

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#122

Post by jingo »

7952 wrote: post #3
Fastidious wrote: post #2

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.

Well, for what it's worth, I agree with you.

I think this goes beyond email.

Similar to the way consumer applications gratuitously became big and slow as processor speed increased and magnetic drive space increased, today we see gratuitous use of increased network bandwidth.

As such if there is even a momentary problem with the remote network, then there will likely be a problem with your application. Many of today's applications have no "offline" mode. Network availability and performance is assumed. Just as back in the 90's it became assumed that the user would have a capable PC. A "slow" PC would not run the latest software.

Many of the applications I write for my own use require very little computing power... I develop on a modestly powered machine and so my programs can run fast from old hardware if need be (i.e., can't afford the latest gear). My approach to "apps" is to periodically download bulk data from the network to keep the application updated, and this usually is scheduled for off-peak times when costs and congestion are lower. Fast network speeds and inexpensive local storage are much appreciated when performing these updates. Not to mention the ease of obtaining an internet globally reachable IP address through today's "cloud hosting" providers.

But I will never understand today's "app" and "web API" trends. Developers of these "apps" utilize the costs of storage and bandwidth a different way. Storage is mainly remote (on someone else's machines, not yours), and hence controlled by some third party, not the user. And most of these applications I see are designed to make constant piecemeal downloads, minute by minute, hour after hour, day after day (even if the same information has been requested before) when they could just as well download all the data they will ever need once, and periodically update it during off-peak periods. As such, if the network is congested or down at runtime, the user must suffer it out. Of course, by making a call to the remote network every time the user takes some action, third parties are able to track everything a user does. That, and the whole app/api approach to development has value to some people perhaps, but surely it is not users. For example, when I watch YouTube videos, I have an application that downloads them first, storing them on RAM disk or inexpensive local media storage and then serving them over a local network. I can then play them using whatever device suits me (or store them on any other device if I wish). I never see any ads. I never use Javascript or Flash. And I never have playback issues (because among other things I have control over my local network). This approach seems like common sense but I feel like I am probably one of the only people out there who does this... and it is not difficult at all to do.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#123

Post by travem »

lsc wrote: post #109
lotharbot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

yeah. Linkedin needs to implement this. Just a way to add notes that are only view-able to me would solve the problem.

On the profile page of your contact there is a "★ Relationship" button. Click that and it will let you add general notes or more detailed information about how you met.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#124

Post by dredmorbius »

bane wrote: post #111

I'm pretty firm in my belief that one of the great marketing moves of the 21st century is convincing people that email is not a social network. It's almost on par with making people believe that diamonds are romantic and a necessary part of the marriage ritual. I think this has been helped by the general lack of innovation in the email space. From pretty basic mail, we ended up with a few (very surprisingly few) emai…

There's nothing that prevents a non-Microsoft calendaring system from supplanting it, other than on agreeing on the protocol.

Email has MIME, there are calendar information formats (ical, IIRC), and various MIME handlers. The primary block was that Microsoft owned the corporate desktop, and competitors, until Google came along, couldn't agree on interoperable standards.

Facebook and Google win by being Web based and "in the cloud". Facebook had its social graph, Google had the fact that many users were relying on it for email, and increasingly, companies are.

There are any number of other problems surrounding mail, with privacy, spam, true federation (spam means residential/consumer IP space is virtually always blocked), and access from multiple devices being prime among them. Diaspora is interesting (I'm on it and active), but very small and growing slowly if at all. I do very much hope that some federated system (Diaspora, Friendica, FreedomBox, Sandstorm.io) will emerge, but it's a long and slow process.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#125

Post by huntaub »

jfb wrote: post #104
huntaub wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any reticence to mention it is likely due to the fact that djb is a bit of a polarizing personality.

I figured it had to do with something like that. However, do you or inopinatus have any thoughts on the system as a whole?

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#126

Post by pjbrunet »

timjahn wrote: post #18
jabelk wrote: 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…

Have you tried Rapportive? https://rapportive.com/ It shows additional information about the person in your Gmail sidebar.

Also you might want to check out Nimble, like Rapportive it pulls info from other social networks. If there's a feature you want, it seems they listen to ideas.

I've also used http://www.cerberusweb.com/tour for sorting email and importing additional data about people, but that might be overkill. With Cerberus you would have to import the location data info yourself, for example. It's a "power user" type of application, very versatile.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#127

Post by lotharbot »

travem wrote: post #123
lsc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah. Linkedin needs to implement this. Just a way to add notes that are only view-able to me would solve the problem.

On the profile page of your contact there is a "★ Relationship" button. Click that and it will let you add general notes or more detailed information about how you met.

who is that information viewable by?

I don't want to put in "obnoxious guy from conference" and then have that person be able to read it.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#128

Post by joelhaus »

timjahn wrote: post #18
jabelk wrote: 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…

I picture something as simple as "Gmail Directory".

Allowing you to share your contact info with people you choose and request access to others information.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#129

Post by superuser2 »

bane wrote: post #121
superuser2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that Facebook took over messaging because it has one killer feature the 90s didn't: real names. Contact points on Facebook are discoverable by real name based on the social graph, which is kind of a first in the history of communication. If someone mentions a John Doe in conversation, I can get in contact with the correct John Doe with a very high probability of success and no effort. The PSTN, email, A…

Yeah, absolutely. The centralized index of people is as critical to Facebook's growth as DNS is to the Web. You don't have to remember 198.41.190.47 to get to everybody's favorite tech discussion forum, you just have to remember news.ycombinator.com. So I wonder how hard it would be to setup a DNS-like searchable index for an e-mail like replacement? Instead of having to remember guy@foo.com I just have to remember '…

>So I wonder how hard it would be to setup a DNS-like searchable index for an e-mail like replacement? Instead of having to remember guy@foo.com I just have to remember 'John Doe' he works for Foo Inc.

But Facebook's power is the social graph. I don't have to remember "he works for Foo Inc." and I can always find him even if he's long since moved on from Foo Inc. Rather, he ranks highly in the search results for "John Doe" because we have friends in common.'

What you're describing might be better for, e.g. professional contacts you meet at conferences (which seems like LinkedIn's territory) but for organic friend-groups based on high school, college, location, etc. then mutual friend count (or degrees of separation, if no mutual friends) is a damn good indicator of relevance.

Is there a way of doing a distributed social graph with some degree of privacy and no central authority?

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#130

Post by travem »

lotharbot wrote: post #127
travem wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the profile page of your contact there is a "★ Relationship" button. Click that and it will let you add general notes or more detailed information about how you met.

who is that information viewable by? I don't want to put in "obnoxious guy from conference" and then have that person be able to read it.

According to the LinkedIn help center [1]:

"Your note will be visible in the Relationship section of the profile and will only be visible to you."

Of course you may wish to store such information in a different system to avoid the possibility of LinkedIn inadvertently leaking the data.

[1] https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/43370/kw/W...

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