Email needs to evolve
Other than Gmail, there’s been remarkably little innovation with email applications for many many years. Here’s a wishlist of features I’d love to see:
Ability to edit the subject lines of received messages. I’m fed up with people sending emails with blank subjects, or who reply to a message with an unrelated point so the subject is no longer right. It’s my message once I receive it, why do I have to be lumbered with someone else’s choice of subject line?
An easy way to convert a message into a calendar item or todo. I want a one-click way of creating an appointment. Ditto to turn a message into a todo item.
Use the email inbox for todos. It’s my inbox, I want to create todos and put them in my inbox along with messages from other people that I need to act on.
Smart handling of outgoing email servers. Laptops that move around connect to the Internet using different ISPs. It’s no longer good enough to have a single outgoing server tied to one ISP. Email programs should take this pain away from users.
(1) is trivially available in mutt.
(4) is nontrivially available by running an MTA on your mobile device, or semitrivially available by using mutt.
I don’t use an integrated calendar/to-do list so I don’t look for (2) or (3)…
RogerBW
April 21, 2009 at 8:19 am
Will investigate #1
I wish the feature was more common. Outlook and Thunderbird can’t do it. I’ve not seen any of the webmail systems (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or ISPs’) offering the ability to edit subject lines of received messages.
Ian Fogg
April 21, 2009 at 8:51 am
Using someone else’s webmail is never going to be as good as simply running your own server.
When I was away for five days over Easter I had full access not only to email but to all my stored data. And all of it was on my own machines where I don’t have to worry about it being data-mined, or sold off when the company goes bust or gets bored with the project. The price? Learning how to use ssh.
RogerBW
April 22, 2009 at 9:16 am
I think Mail on OS X may offer some features in the “An easy way to convert a message into a calendar item or todo” / “Use the email inbox for todos” area, but I only saw Steve Jobs going on about the feature rather than actually using it, so I don’t know the details (it was after I stopped actively using OS X but before I stopped following the keynotes)
Michael Stevens
April 22, 2009 at 11:38 am