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So, there'd be another layer of indirection, and not only would I have to download the email, I'd also have to fire up a browser? And the link would point to s

So, there'd be another layer of indirection, and not only would I have to download the email, I'd also have to fire up a browser? And the link would point to something that's never guaranteed to remain there, or remain the same? Something next to impossible to archive or download for later reading? No, thank you. If I want a collaboration platform, I will use something that's designed to be one. I want my emails as emails. Something I can store on my computer, something that does not change. Something I can archive, and quote from later.

jrussbowman 15y ago
Building plugins for major email clients would be a necessity. How to get people to install those plugins would be a bigger challenge than building them. Right now I'm thinking that at least for read messages, archives of revisions would need to be kept. If a message was never read I'm not sure it's necessary to keep a revision of it though.
- madhouse 15y ago
  It's still a pain to archive, and requires extra network roundtrips even in the best case. I not only need to be able to access my mail host, but wherever else the link is pointing to aswell. When I'm checking my mail on my mobile phone, I'm sure as hell do NOT want to make extra network roundtrips just to be able to see my mail. It's also far harder to index, sort and search in the proposed scenario: while I can quickly file an email under any label or folder I choose, and be sure that it will stay there, have the same contents forever, and I can search it easily, the proposed scenario does not allow for that. While I can still file and label the emails that have the links, I cannot easily search in the contents, unless I archived that separately, or I go online. Again, a lot of indirection for no real gain. I can already use something like http://gist.github.com/ http://gist.github.com/ or the various pastebins, and a multitude of other solutions if I have a particular problem where they are appropriate. But for everyday mail? Why would I want to do that? It just makes things more complex, for no purpose or gain at all in the vast majority of cases.
  - jrussbowman 15y ago
    I didn't even consider mobile access, which of course these days should be one of the first things considered. You've given me a lot to think about, thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I'm still convinced I can turn this into a marketable product, but the challenges will be bigger than I first thought and it definitely will not be for everyone. Maybe I should approach it more of being a collaboration platform that can use email as a form of initial discovery for participants rather than as an enhanced email platform. Then I could also expand it to include other delivery methods as well. Want to collaborate with someone on Twitter and don't know their email, send it to them via Twitter. Thanks!

jrussbowman 15y ago

Building plugins for major email clients would be a necessity. How to get people to install those plugins would be a bigger challenge than building them. Right now I'm thinking that at least for read messages, archives of revisions would need to be kept. If a message was never read I'm not sure it's necessary to keep a revision of it though.

madhouse 15y ago
It's still a pain to archive, and requires extra network roundtrips even in the best case. I not only need to be able to access my mail host, but wherever else the link is pointing to aswell. When I'm checking my mail on my mobile phone, I'm sure as hell do NOT want to make extra network roundtrips just to be able to see my mail. It's also far harder to index, sort and search in the proposed scenario: while I can quickly file an email under any label or folder I choose, and be sure that it will stay there, have the same contents forever, and I can search it easily, the proposed scenario does not allow for that. While I can still file and label the emails that have the links, I cannot easily search in the contents, unless I archived that separately, or I go online. Again, a lot of indirection for no real gain. I can already use something like http://gist.github.com/ http://gist.github.com/ or the various pastebins, and a multitude of other solutions if I have a particular problem where they are appropriate. But for everyday mail? Why would I want to do that? It just makes things more complex, for no purpose or gain at all in the vast majority of cases.
- jrussbowman 15y ago
  I didn't even consider mobile access, which of course these days should be one of the first things considered. You've given me a lot to think about, thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I'm still convinced I can turn this into a marketable product, but the challenges will be bigger than I first thought and it definitely will not be for everyone. Maybe I should approach it more of being a collaboration platform that can use email as a form of initial discovery for participants rather than as an enhanced email platform. Then I could also expand it to include other delivery methods as well. Want to collaborate with someone on Twitter and don't know their email, send it to them via Twitter. Thanks!