5 ms·

Why The Greatest Online Tool, Email, Still Needs Disruption

24 points by mathouc 13y ago

cissou 13y ago
Good points, though the article doesn't talk about attachments, which are a terrible pain... It's seeing quite a lot of disruption, with the likes of We Transfer or infinit.io, but now that Google Drive covers this for me I haven't used those services as much.
- bluedino 13y ago
  What makes attachments a pain?
  - cissou 13y ago
    you can't attach more than 25MB... And even if you send "just" 20MB you have to wait for it to upload entirely. And sometimes the receiver will have zipped attachments blocked by her own mail client... Terrible experiences :)
  - xux 13y ago
    Because you have to upload them, wait for them to upload, limited by size, zero control over files once they're sent, etc.
bluetidepro 13y ago
Solid article. I do hope to see more people enter the client side of the Email world because personally, I think that is what is slacking. There needs to be better Email clients that are more divorce than JUST supporting Gmail or JUST being on your mobile device. I don't think that Email, in general, is broken. I would rather just see better clients out there to make it more usable. More usable by handling attachments better, or sorting, etc. I still have yet to find a good Email client that works well with various Email account types (Gmail, Exchange, etc.) on different device types (Desktop or Mobile). Airmail [1] is probably the closest, but even that has tons of flaws. My example, if you are using a fork (Email client) to eat cereal, you don't blame cereal (Email) for not working correctly. [1] http://airmailapp.com/ http://airmailapp.com/
- mathouc 13y ago
  Thanks & totally agree: E-mail is neither broken or bad and we need to construct better email clients. Airmail is really good for your individual addresses. Here at Front we try to create the first collaborative email client for companies.
  - krakensden 13y ago
    > collaborative email client for companies I read that and thought "what does that even mean? Yet-another-busted-calendar thing?" Turns out it's actually multiplayer inboxes. Neat! Are you going to release an API so the diehard Emacs users et al can work with everyone else?
hpaavola 13y ago
Email is not just IMAP and SMTP. It's much much more (even thought technically speaking the following doesn't have anything to do with email). Pretty much the only way to invite someone to a meeting at work is to send invite over email. To figure out the place for your meeting, you use "email" client for that. Because you have not sent emails previously to all participants, you use "email" client to figure out the email address of those persons. And the recipients use their "email" client to update their calendar so they remember to come to the meeting. So to disrupt email, you need to disrupt calendaring and address books and what ever it is called when you search your co-workers email address by their partial name or some wacky username. It's a mess and a huge beast.
- cissou 13y ago
  God, I remember the pre-drobox era, when I would e-mail myself different versions of .doc files... the "early days cloud" was just e-mail!!
- hpaavola 13y ago
  I think that the biggest thing email clients lack today is a decent open source web client. There is SquirrelMail and Roundcube and as far as I know, that's it. SquirrelMail is way outdated (UI wise) so that leaves us with Roundcube. That front definitely needs some competition.
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    No, no, no!! That doesn't help whoever doesn't run it's own server, which is nearly everybody. Why must the client be a web app? Why not a regular app? You just install them on your devices once and have the same interface for every server. Damn Atwood's Law! It's the reason standards exist, so that you are not at the whims of Google and the like. Just stick Thunderbird on your desktop or K9 on Android.
    - normloman 13y ago
      What if you're at the library, and you're phone is broken? I use thunderbird too, but it's nice to have a webmail back up. Somethings need to be accessed anywhere, and those things should have web apps.
saraid216 13y ago
Can we stop using "disruption" as a stand-in for "improvement"?
spindritf 13y ago
As if a sticky, following you around top bar wasn't enough, they also have a bottom bar? It's like reading from a driver's seat of a tank. Where has this terrible trend originated?
- atwebb 13y ago
  Letterbox Browsing is the wave of the future!
- dbpatterson 13y ago
  I know funny comments are frowned upon, and comments about funny comments are even more frowned upon, but this made me laugh - perhaps because it is such a ridiculous but apt description. Bravo!
pbreit 13y ago
I'd like to see the UI be more IM-like. Edit: Guess I can try to explain. Email messages have become much shorter and back-and-forths are frequent (and not always best solved with a call). IM has almost no spam so the idea would be to strike a better balance between only hearing from people you know against the need for "cold emailing". Google's new tabs sort of address this. IM still suffers from fragmentation so there'd be a benefit from using the universal email protocols (so long as unwanted messages could be contained).
vonnik 13y ago
Anyone who's trying to think of new ways to disrupt email should take a look at this: http://visualidiot.com/articles/mailappapp http://visualidiot.com/articles/mailappapp
onedev 13y ago
Please can we retire the word "disruption"
- normloman 13y ago
  We just need to disrupt the term disruption with a new word. The march of progress continues!
- gopher1 13y ago
  But, but, but improving something just sounds soooo boring.
donpdonp 13y ago
An exciting email client project is in development at http://mailpile.is/ http://mailpile.is/ - a self hosted open-source gmail work-alike. (live demo on the site)
abruzzi 13y ago
This is like watching an old movie late at night on some VHF station (remember those?) We like the story, but the ending doesn't change.
normloman 13y ago
Email's great. Your company just sucks. I've seen it before. The boss doesn't want to defer responsibility. So they have everything go through their approval. Suddenly, you're CCing the boss on every thing you send, leaving behind a train of emails to cover your ass. Soon, other bosses demand the same treatment, and before you know it, everyone's inbox is cluttered with FWDs, and Reply-Alls, making sure nobody is left out of the loop. Your company should have an email policy. The one UI improvement I can see: make the reply all button hard to find, so morons don't accidentally click it.
skermes 13y ago
I don't get the logic that starts with "Technology is moving fast but email doesn't change" and leads to the solution being papering over email's faults with some slick UI. It's like the whole city's water pressure is failing and everyone is complaining about faucet design instead of that we're using two thousand year old aqueducts. We need more out of online communication than email can give us at a really fundamental level. Suffice to say, my thoughts on this are longer than an HN comment: http://structur.al/articles/after-email/ http://structur.al/articles/after-email/

24 points by mathouc 13y ago

Good points, though the article doesn't talk about attachments, which are a terrible pain... It's seeing quite a lot of disruption, with the likes of We Transfer or infinit.io, but now that Google Drive covers this for me I haven't used those services as much.

bluedino 13y ago
What makes attachments a pain?
- cissou 13y ago
  you can't attach more than 25MB... And even if you send "just" 20MB you have to wait for it to upload entirely. And sometimes the receiver will have zipped attachments blocked by her own mail client... Terrible experiences :)
- xux 13y ago
  Because you have to upload them, wait for them to upload, limited by size, zero control over files once they're sent, etc.

bluetidepro 13y ago

Solid article. I do hope to see more people enter the client side of the Email world because personally, I think that is what is slacking. There needs to be better Email clients that are more divorce than JUST supporting Gmail or JUST being on your mobile device. I don't think that Email, in general, is broken. I would rather just see better clients out there to make it more usable. More usable by handling attachments better, or sorting, etc. I still have yet to find a good Email client that works well with various Email account types (Gmail, Exchange, etc.) on different device types (Desktop or Mobile). Airmail [1] is probably the closest, but even that has tons of flaws. My example, if you are using a fork (Email client) to eat cereal, you don't blame cereal (Email) for not working correctly. [1] http://airmailapp.com/ http://airmailapp.com/

mathouc 13y ago
Thanks & totally agree: E-mail is neither broken or bad and we need to construct better email clients. Airmail is really good for your individual addresses. Here at Front we try to create the first collaborative email client for companies.
- krakensden 13y ago
  > collaborative email client for companies I read that and thought "what does that even mean? Yet-another-busted-calendar thing?" Turns out it's actually multiplayer inboxes. Neat! Are you going to release an API so the diehard Emacs users et al can work with everyone else?

hpaavola 13y ago

Email is not just IMAP and SMTP. It's much much more (even thought technically speaking the following doesn't have anything to do with email). Pretty much the only way to invite someone to a meeting at work is to send invite over email. To figure out the place for your meeting, you use "email" client for that. Because you have not sent emails previously to all participants, you use "email" client to figure out the email address of those persons. And the recipients use their "email" client to update their calendar so they remember to come to the meeting. So to disrupt email, you need to disrupt calendaring and address books and what ever it is called when you search your co-workers email address by their partial name or some wacky username. It's a mess and a huge beast.

cissou 13y ago
God, I remember the pre-drobox era, when I would e-mail myself different versions of .doc files... the "early days cloud" was just e-mail!!
hpaavola 13y ago
I think that the biggest thing email clients lack today is a decent open source web client. There is SquirrelMail and Roundcube and as far as I know, that's it. SquirrelMail is way outdated (UI wise) so that leaves us with Roundcube. That front definitely needs some competition.
- JetSpiegel 13y ago
  No, no, no!! That doesn't help whoever doesn't run it's own server, which is nearly everybody. Why must the client be a web app? Why not a regular app? You just install them on your devices once and have the same interface for every server. Damn Atwood's Law! It's the reason standards exist, so that you are not at the whims of Google and the like. Just stick Thunderbird on your desktop or K9 on Android.
  - normloman 13y ago
    What if you're at the library, and you're phone is broken? I use thunderbird too, but it's nice to have a webmail back up. Somethings need to be accessed anywhere, and those things should have web apps.

saraid216 13y ago

Can we stop using "disruption" as a stand-in for "improvement"?

spindritf 13y ago

As if a sticky, following you around top bar wasn't enough, they also have a bottom bar? It's like reading from a driver's seat of a tank. Where has this terrible trend originated?

atwebb 13y ago
Letterbox Browsing is the wave of the future!
dbpatterson 13y ago
I know funny comments are frowned upon, and comments about funny comments are even more frowned upon, but this made me laugh - perhaps because it is such a ridiculous but apt description. Bravo!

pbreit 13y ago

I'd like to see the UI be more IM-like. Edit: Guess I can try to explain. Email messages have become much shorter and back-and-forths are frequent (and not always best solved with a call). IM has almost no spam so the idea would be to strike a better balance between only hearing from people you know against the need for "cold emailing". Google's new tabs sort of address this. IM still suffers from fragmentation so there'd be a benefit from using the universal email protocols (so long as unwanted messages could be contained).

vonnik 13y ago

Anyone who's trying to think of new ways to disrupt email should take a look at this: http://visualidiot.com/articles/mailappapp http://visualidiot.com/articles/mailappapp

onedev 13y ago

Please can we retire the word "disruption"

normloman 13y ago
We just need to disrupt the term disruption with a new word. The march of progress continues!
gopher1 13y ago
But, but, but improving something just sounds soooo boring.

donpdonp 13y ago

An exciting email client project is in development at http://mailpile.is/ http://mailpile.is/ - a self hosted open-source gmail work-alike. (live demo on the site)

abruzzi 13y ago

This is like watching an old movie late at night on some VHF station (remember those?) We like the story, but the ending doesn't change.

normloman 13y ago

Email's great. Your company just sucks. I've seen it before. The boss doesn't want to defer responsibility. So they have everything go through their approval. Suddenly, you're CCing the boss on every thing you send, leaving behind a train of emails to cover your ass. Soon, other bosses demand the same treatment, and before you know it, everyone's inbox is cluttered with FWDs, and Reply-Alls, making sure nobody is left out of the loop. Your company should have an email policy. The one UI improvement I can see: make the reply all button hard to find, so morons don't accidentally click it.

skermes 13y ago

I don't get the logic that starts with "Technology is moving fast but email doesn't change" and leads to the solution being papering over email's faults with some slick UI. It's like the whole city's water pressure is failing and everyone is complaining about faucet design instead of that we're using two thousand year old aqueducts. We need more out of online communication than email can give us at a really fundamental level. Suffice to say, my thoughts on this are longer than an HN comment: http://structur.al/articles/after-email/ http://structur.al/articles/after-email/