Email will last forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Email will last forever

#11

Post by silverbax88 » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #6

mrb wrote: post #2

The fact "email will last forever" is precisely why I believe it is absolutely the best protocol to build automatic services to access and share personal information. I have spoken about it here: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=76 Edit: Someone1234: you don't need to wait for companies to support my proposal. It already works today with Gmail: try my live demo on pm33at@gmail.com - it works by leveraging standard auto-res…

Does this have the classic XKCD 927 problem ( https://xkcd.com/927/ )? Also wasn't this what XML was meant to solve (a single unified standard for interop)? It could "work" but unless you got at least Microsoft (Exchange server, Hotmail) and Google (Gmail) to sign up then it won't go anywhere (which is largely the issue with all email momentum, Microsoft and Google have no interest so it cannot move forward).

XML is a markup to establish protocol, not a standard by itself (other than the basic syntactical standard). A standard would be something like MathML.

Re: Email will last forever

#12

Post by Mz » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

- Email is not sexy? Design beautiful interfaces. Mailbox has managed to make email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Sparrow was creating the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience etc.

I wish the author had not said "etc" at the end. He is obviously very knowledgeable about the topic. A lot of people, even people who spend LOTS of time online (like me) have not tried out every email client out there, and this is a missed opportunity to inform me and impress me with his depth of expertise on the domain his company is involved in.

I am sure I am guilty of this at times, where I either assume "everyone knows what I know" or I realize they don't and I don't want to sound like a braggart or something but I find myself feeling like I have been told "surely, you know all these examples and what they did different/right" and the answer is "No, no I do not -- what did they do??"

Re: Email will last forever

#13

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #6

mrb wrote: post #2

The fact "email will last forever" is precisely why I believe it is absolutely the best protocol to build automatic services to access and share personal information. I have spoken about it here: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=76 Edit: Someone1234: you don't need to wait for companies to support my proposal. It already works today with Gmail: try my live demo on pm33at@gmail.com - it works by leveraging standard auto-res…

Does this have the classic XKCD 927 problem ( https://xkcd.com/927/ )? Also wasn't this what XML was meant to solve (a single unified standard for interop)? It could "work" but unless you got at least Microsoft (Exchange server, Hotmail) and Google (Gmail) to sign up then it won't go anywhere (which is largely the issue with all email momentum, Microsoft and Google have no interest so it cannot move forward).

[deleted]

Re: Email will last forever

#14

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

grexi wrote: post #5

The single most important issue with email: Team Inboxes. As soon as more than one person works with an inbox, it sucks big time. But I agree - email will last forever, nearly none of the products you mentioned work without an email notification feature.

Is that really the single most important issue? I'd lean towards privacy and authentication as being more important. Team inboxes are not really a mandatory part of email.

Re: Email will last forever

#15

Post by xwowsersx » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

kevincennis wrote: post #10

> "People spend on average 2.5 hours per day on their emails" Source? That seems really, really high to me for an average .

What does that even mean "on" their emails? Actively reading and replying to email is very different from having email open or receiving emails on your phone, etc.

Re: Email will last forever

#16

Post by grexi » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #14

grexi wrote: post #5

The single most important issue with email: Team Inboxes. As soon as more than one person works with an inbox, it sucks big time. But I agree - email will last forever, nearly none of the products you mentioned work without an email notification feature.

Is that really the single most important issue? I'd lean towards privacy and authentication as being more important. Team inboxes are not really a mandatory part of email.

At least for me that's the main painpoint which cannot be solved by email alone.

Re: Email will last forever

#17

Post by rakoo » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #2

The fact "email will last forever" is precisely why I believe it is absolutely the best protocol to build automatic services to access and share personal information. I have spoken about it here: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=76 Edit: Someone1234: you don't need to wait for companies to support my proposal. It already works today with Gmail: try my live demo on pm33at@gmail.com - it works by leveraging standard auto-res…

It strikes me that this is all available with XMPP, which also has user@domain address; If we build the correct tools, XMPP can very well supplant SMTP.

http://sat.goffi.org/features.html

Re: Email will last forever

#18

Post by Mz » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:31 PM UTC

grexi wrote: post #5

The single most important issue with email: Team Inboxes. As soon as more than one person works with an inbox, it sucks big time. But I agree - email will last forever, nearly none of the products you mentioned work without an email notification feature.

The single most important issue with email: Team Inboxes.

Yeah, that's apparently what their product is trying to address:

- Email is not adapted to the enterprise world? Make it more collaborative. Here at Front, we introduce productivity and collaborative features in a standard email client and let companies work as a team on all their incoming emails.

I had a job where I had to deal with a team inbox. It took a bit of work to get it working well. I wasn't in that job terribly long, so I don't know very much about the problem space. But, yes, it was a pain. And I hope they really do have something better to offer.

Re: Email will last forever

#19

Post by billpg » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:32 PM UTC

Looking at the listed "Email is..." statements, an important one was missed.

Email is broken.

Disagree? I'm sure your response expressing your disagreement won't end up in the spam folder.

Re: Email will last forever

#20

Post by dunno » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

dunno wrote: post #4

No, it won't. I distinctly remember being told by many people that email would never replace letter mail because email was too impersonal.

Are you kidding me? In my lifetime, letter mail has had a longer run than email. And you presume from our brief couple years with it that email is never going to be different?