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Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

theatlantic.com

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Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#191

Post by rakoo »

walterbell wrote: post #85
inopinatus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - I have used NNTP as an eventually-reliable pub/sub message bus in an unstable mesh environment. The specific use being transport of per-device usage/billing & monitoring data. The implied Gossip algorithm of the server-to-server subprotocol was well suited to the intermittent availability of links in that particular network. Messages (articles) were PGP verified. NNTP is channelized by design, and servers like…

Thanks for that encouraging data point. We need a neutral, replicable client-side data store with standardized interfaces for automated analysis/filtering/reading. This could be an offline archive of docs, web browser history or online/cloud bookmarks, along with _private_ annotations about content and authors (e.g. killfiles, quality ratings). If the datastore is open (standard & source), there could be healthy comp…

So basically, CouchDB + PouchdB/TouchDB/Cloudant ? I'd love to see something really emerge in this domain (CouchDB is already mature).

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#192

Post by dredmorbius »

epochwolf wrote: post #181
dredmorbius wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There's nothing that prevents a non-Microsoft calendaring system from supplanting it, other than on agreeing on the protocol. Google and Apple both have integrated calendar and email systems. They just use separate apps instead of having everything in one silo.

Right. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Ironically, one of the biggest successes I've seen with Google Apps is a site which had formed from multiple company mergers, with separate MS AD/Exchange domains, which 1) couldn't be merged and 2) couldn't exchange calendaring information.

The solution (this a few years back) was to go to Gmail and Google Calendaring. Among the most successful and enthusiastically adopted mail/PIM migrations I've seen ever.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#193

Post by ejain »

yvsong wrote: post #169
ejain wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person can have multiple identities, and not all identities are associated with specific people.

Email is not a person's unique ID, although sometimes it's used to serve that purpose. The ID layer of internet is not established yet. I'm not sure if it's possible in a decentralized system. Centralized management may be necessary.

Agree, but "identity" and "unique ID for a person" are two different concepts.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#194

Post by janl »

rakoo wrote: post #191
walterbell wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that encouraging data point. We need a neutral, replicable client-side data store with standardized interfaces for automated analysis/filtering/reading. This could be an offline archive of docs, web browser history or online/cloud bookmarks, along with _private_ annotations about content and authors (e.g. killfiles, quality ratings). If the datastore is open (standard & source), there could be healthy comp…

So basically, CouchDB + PouchdB/TouchDB/Cloudant ? I'd love to see something really emerge in this domain (CouchDB is already mature).

We are ways off, but my personal goal for http://hood.ie is to be able to allow people to build gmail/gdocs competitors without having to do any heavy lifting. We could use your help, though :)

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#195

Post by lotharbot »

msh wrote: post #188
Pxtl wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like google's circles. The problem is that most folks treat their Gmail account as their "real" account and don't give it out willy-nilly. Also, that the circles thing is one-way - I can use circles to control how I see others, but can't use them to control how they see me.

I was not that big fan of circles, made sharing with the wrong people easy. I like that my personal life (facebook) and professional (linkedin) is two different networks. Its hard to accidentally share the the bad joke with my professional network.

I think something like circles could be done right -- if each circle had a custom background, etc. so that it looked and felt like a different website. I'm not worried about posting political rants to LinkedIn because it's obvious I'm on LinkedIn rather than FaceBook or Google+; I wouldn't be worried about posting to my coworkers group if there were very obvious signifiers that I was in that group.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#196

Post by dennisgorelik »

mythealias wrote: post #70
footpath wrote: post #34

Email was one's passport and identity. Before Facebook became a true alternative for verifying one's identity on the web, the email address was how one accomplished serious things on the Internet. Want to verify a bank account? Email. Amazon? Email. Forums? Email. Even Facebook in the early days? Email. Looking at Facebook's sign up page right now, and it seems that email is still required for registering a new accou…

Last I checked Gmail allowed me to create an account without providing an email address or phone number.

Gmail IS email.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#197

Post by walterbell »

lsc wrote: post #156
lotharbot wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, something that stores the data in a system I control and then pastes it on to the page with a greasemonkey script would be optimal. But, then that would be work.

Too much work for the user or the developer?

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#198

Post by Pxtl »

wdewind wrote: post #163
Pxtl wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like google's circles. The problem is that most folks treat their Gmail account as their "real" account and don't give it out willy-nilly. Also, that the circles thing is one-way - I can use circles to control how I see others, but can't use them to control how they see me.

> Also, that the circles thing is one-way - I can use circles to control how I see others, but can't use them to control how they see me. No, if you share something to a circle someone isn't in they wont see it, so they do let you control how others see you. Not a huge G+ fan, but I was a fan of circles.

I mean having a fully different profile and name, not just different posts.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#199

Post by lmm »

zokier wrote: post #183
lmm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly things I would fix. Require all servers to be 8-bit clean, and default text to UTF-8. Sort out the rendering of HTML email, either using something that's more amenable to embedding in a fixed screen frame, or some more extensible standard to allow different types of document to be attached with dispositional settings. (In fact this is something I'd want to solve in general - embedding objects in w…

> In fact this is something I'd want to solve in general - embedding objects in webpages has long been a mess, to the point where we've resorted to specific and tags rather than trying to solve "embed another file in this web page" in a general way Like and tags in HTML?

Yeah. I think the introduction of and make it pretty clear that those have failed.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#200

Post by hollerith »

nchuhoai wrote: post #97
marcosdumay wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Isn't the Web younger?

You are right, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email quotes 1982, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web 1989 Either way, my point still stands that besides the rapid development of the "internet", we have yet to see another standard emerge (besides OAuth and Bitcoin)

1982 is when SMTP was defined. Non-SMTP email on the ARPANET goes back to 1971.
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