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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
by 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 agoGod, 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 agoI 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 SquirrelMail is way outdated (UI wise) so that leaves us with Roundcube.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 agoNo, 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 agoWhat 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.
- keithg 13y agoThe reason email usage is so ubiquitous is because everyone has an email address, and the protocols are well-known and universal. How else would you propose inviting people to a meeting? Put a paper memo in their mailbox asking for a written reply? Call everyone individually on the phone? Walk around the office and gather everyone together? If you're thinking about the meeting problem, do you propose a meeting/calendar app/client or protocol that is separate from email? Then the problem becomes saturating your user community with your new client. What do you do if someone doesn't use your new meeting/calendar app/client? I think what you are describing is a problem with meeting/calendars not email.
- hpaavola 13y agoBecause meetings and finding those email addresses are done through email clients, you need to take those into account if you try to write new email client. Because there isn't any other way to send those invites, figure out the meeting room and the recipients, you need to support those use cases also. Otherwise people will not user your client because then they would have to keep using the old one also.