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A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

thenextweb.com

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Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#71

Post by borisvvz »

leepowers wrote: post #14

This is an interesting way to coax contextual metadata from senders. However, for certain senders I will always respond promptly and thoughtfully, regardless of message formatting. Senders such as friends, family, clients, etc. Which makes the auto-reply a bit tricky: Thank you "motherpowers" for sending the email titled "Happy Birthday" to "leepowers". For a faster response time please re-formulate your birthday gre…

The 'Yes/no' reply button has an option to add one tweet length of text. So my answer might be "No - but ask me again next week as I have time then". It also has a "This is not a yes/no question" button which allows me to invite the sender to reclassify the question.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#73

Post by borisvvz »

ianterrell wrote: post #11

The addition that I think would make it scalable and worthwhile is to establish an interoperability standard via mail headers. Broadcast you're using this system with X-UsesMailTickets so that compatible clients can pre-fill their emails with "X-MailTicketType: Yes/No", etc.

I'll make a note of that. Sounds very cool and useable…

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#74

Post by borisvvz »

omonra wrote: post #8

I think that most emails (probably all human relationships) can be described by the "who needs this more - sender or recipient?" paradigm (in the parlance of Seinfeld - who has the hand). An example - if a subordinate is emailing his boss, the subordinate needs the boss to read & respond. This solution would seem to work in cases when the recipient has the power in the relationship. But what about the other X% when h…

I think even Bill Gates would appreciate the extra info and know he can expect an email from me within 3 days. Then imagine his surprise when I reply within an hour.

In fact, that is what I did with every investor and journalist that emailed me. I replied to most within minutes.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#75

Post by caboteria »

kscaldef wrote: post #31
MichaelApproved wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just complaining about this problem today. If I'm CCed on an email exchange and 4 or 5 messages go back and forth then the problem is solved, i still have 5 unread measages in my inbox. In reality, I should have zero messages because the problem has been resolved but SMTP doesn't allow for that.

Unless the other participants only think the problem is resolved, and you have some additional knowledge which would be relevant.

The problem with this approach is that it leads to everyone reading every email just in case they might have some relevant insight. I see this at my current job - there's a strong "just cc the whole team" attitude which leads to a frustrating quantity of irrelevant email.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#76

Post by stcredzero »

The left 25% of the page is useless, and has a flashing corporate logo, FFS! The page is also setup so I can't zoom the page. If your site design is crippled for tablet users, to the point I'm forced to use "Reader," this is an interesting symptom and datapoint, but not one I'm sure you'd like.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#77

Post by bradmccarty »

stcredzero wrote: post #76

The left 25% of the page is useless, and has a flashing corporate logo, FFS! The page is also setup so I can't zoom the page. If your site design is crippled for tablet users, to the point I'm forced to use "Reader," this is an interesting symptom and datapoint, but not one I'm sure you'd like.

Odd. What tablet? We specifically designed the site with mobile/tablet readers in mind. Also, what was flashing? If it's an ad, then we need to have it pulled. We don't allow that.

Screenshots to brad@thenextweb.com would be greatly appreciated. This is definitely not the experience we want you to have on our site.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#78

Post by fiddly_bits »

Maascamp wrote: post #56

> ... none of these solutions try to stop stuff from arriving in the first place... While I don't agree with this particular "frighteningly ambitious" take on the issue I do agree with that the above quote represents an issue that needs solving. In my opinion, forcing the sender to conform their email to a format of your choosing simply isn't scalable. The reason email is so well used today is because it's so simple…

A recent problem I ran into was sending Xmas cards to friends and family. We had over a hundred addresses to send to and I didn't want to send them all by hand. So, I wrote a script. Of course, most of the emails went straight into the spam folders because, I guess, doing this just made them look like spam to most filters.

Granted, the emails were all sent from a shared hosting account, the mail server of which I had no control over as far as certificates and reputation were concerned. But my feeling is that anything I could have done to improve my Xmas greetings' success rate would have been exactly what spammers also try to do.

Aggressive filters assume everyone is a bad actor until proven otherwise, and I think that's a problem. Our quality of life is degraded whenever we make this calculation.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#79

Post by cryowaffle »

recardona wrote: post #40

An alternate way is to just abandon email altogether. See, for example, the #noemail movement: http://prezi.com/w5if2h-bcbcd/ncsu-noemail-why-you-couldshou...

I'm sorry but I just don't get it. I receive A LOT of email every day. Most of it is for day-to-day business and the rest is personal. When I receive an email I either archive it immediately or leave it because it represents something I should follow up on. Yes, some percentage of my day is triage-ing email, that's not a big deal. Email is just a box of messages and it works AWESOME. Everyone has it, it's UBIQUITOUS. Good luck replacing it. Email hate is the symptom, not the cause.

Re: A ‘frighteningly ambitious’ way to improve email

#80

Post by lobotryas »

fiddly_bits wrote: post #78
Maascamp wrote: post #56

> ... none of these solutions try to stop stuff from arriving in the first place... While I don't agree with this particular "frighteningly ambitious" take on the issue I do agree with that the above quote represents an issue that needs solving. In my opinion, forcing the sender to conform their email to a format of your choosing simply isn't scalable. The reason email is so well used today is because it's so simple…

A recent problem I ran into was sending Xmas cards to friends and family. We had over a hundred addresses to send to and I didn't want to send them all by hand. So, I wrote a script. Of course, most of the emails went straight into the spam folders because, I guess, doing this just made them look like spam to most filters. Granted, the emails were all sent from a shared hosting account, the mail server of which I had…

What about using BCC? The email will reach multiple recipients, but none will know about the others.
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