All these calls for to-do functionality, events planning, etc. Nobody needs it except the writers of these articles. Just use other applications for it. We don't need to shake up email just because you want to.
Total agreement. I think the best way to deal with this is what Apple's Mail.app does - it parses the body of the mail and puts little "add to iCal" buttons next to things it's pretty sure are dates of things to do. It's got some kind of integration with the system todo list, too, but I dunno how it works as I don't use that.
And if you want to explicitly invite someone to something, you mail 'em a calendar item, it picks it up, and you can very definitely stick it in your calendar. It understands a bunch of different calendar formats, even. I thought THAT was pretty much standard across all modern email clients?
Sometimes I wonder if the people writing these diatribes about how EMAIL IS BROKEN IT NEEDS CALENDAR/TODO INTEGRATION are still using Pine or something.
The real brokenness of email is the insecurity and spam, IMHO. Fix spam and you've done something. And good luck on that problem.
E-mail is not broken. People are unorganized and think e-mail is the right tool for the job. E-mail is essentially a communication protocol. Nothing more. I think the idea that e-mail is anything else is what is broken. Stop trying to make e-mail something it clearly isn't.
Changing e-mail, fixing e-mail, or revolutionizing e-mail boils down to a tee-up for these types of derivative services:
1) New whiz-bang client
2) New whiz-bang web-based client
3) New whiz-bang protocol that has 0% chance of replacing e-mail.
4) A segway into some other complimentary product
Generally, whomever writes a book called "Why Its You That Is Broken and How to Fix That and Stop Blaming E-mail" will make a billion dollars.
The problem with email is that it's no longer a communication tool but a representation of the things you need to do. If it was just about communication, then that's one thing, but that's not what it is anymore. That's why you see so many people email themselves or say "yeah email me to remind me". But when you go down that path it's just an unorganized firehose. If we're stuck with communication tools representing "what we need to do", shouldn't we be building better tools to support that rather than saying "eh it's good enough"?
What I don't know that I've ever seen in these kind of "replace email" articles is an investigation of why, if email is so unsuited to this task, it is so widely used this way. It may turn out that the things the author thinks are disadvantages are closely related to advantages of email. For example, the complaint that, with email, anyone can "add something to your to-do list"; sure, that's a problem, but the fact that I can just ask any person I run into to email me a reminder without having to fiddle with my email system to allow them to do that, is actually a big advantage. The challenge for an email replacement, then, would be to allow more control over this without introducing any more friction.
People are doing this because it just works. With email nobody needs to be on the same page in terms of email software stack, TODO organization, having all tools necessary to file an item in TODO list on hand, etc. It's the same thing like using plain old paper to scribble down things and do something better later on, going over notes, when time/place permits.
It may look inefficient, but it doesn't have to be 100% efficient - people are inefficient, live with it.
Comments
Email is not broken.
It does what it does perfectly.
All these calls for to-do functionality, events planning, etc. Nobody needs it except the writers of these articles. Just use other applications for it. We don't need to shake up email just because you want to.
Total agreement. I think the best way to deal with this is what Apple's Mail.app does - it parses the body of the mail and puts little "add to iCal" buttons next to things it's pretty sure are dates of things to do. It's got some kind of integration with the system todo list, too, but I dunno how it works as I don't use that.
And if you want to explicitly invite someone to something, you mail 'em a calendar item, it picks it up, and you can very definitely stick it in your calendar. It understands a bunch of different calendar formats, even. I thought THAT was pretty much standard across all modern email clients?
Sometimes I wonder if the people writing these diatribes about how EMAIL IS BROKEN IT NEEDS CALENDAR/TODO INTEGRATION are still using Pine or something.
The real brokenness of email is the insecurity and spam, IMHO. Fix spam and you've done something. And good luck on that problem.
Yes please.
E-mail is not broken. People are unorganized and think e-mail is the right tool for the job. E-mail is essentially a communication protocol. Nothing more. I think the idea that e-mail is anything else is what is broken. Stop trying to make e-mail something it clearly isn't.
Changing e-mail, fixing e-mail, or revolutionizing e-mail boils down to a tee-up for these types of derivative services:
1) New whiz-bang client
2) New whiz-bang web-based client
3) New whiz-bang protocol that has 0% chance of replacing e-mail.
4) A segway into some other complimentary product
Generally, whomever writes a book called "Why Its You That Is Broken and How to Fix That and Stop Blaming E-mail" will make a billion dollars.
The problem with email is that it's no longer a communication tool but a representation of the things you need to do. If it was just about communication, then that's one thing, but that's not what it is anymore. That's why you see so many people email themselves or say "yeah email me to remind me". But when you go down that path it's just an unorganized firehose. If we're stuck with communication tools representing "what we need to do", shouldn't we be building better tools to support that rather than saying "eh it's good enough"?
What I don't know that I've ever seen in these kind of "replace email" articles is an investigation of why, if email is so unsuited to this task, it is so widely used this way. It may turn out that the things the author thinks are disadvantages are closely related to advantages of email. For example, the complaint that, with email, anyone can "add something to your to-do list"; sure, that's a problem, but the fact that I can just ask any person I run into to email me a reminder without having to fiddle with my email system to allow them to do that, is actually a big advantage. The challenge for an email replacement, then, would be to allow more control over this without introducing any more friction.
People are doing this because it just works. With email nobody needs to be on the same page in terms of email software stack, TODO organization, having all tools necessary to file an item in TODO list on hand, etc. It's the same thing like using plain old paper to scribble down things and do something better later on, going over notes, when time/place permits.
It may look inefficient, but it doesn't have to be 100% efficient - people are inefficient, live with it.