Paul Kedrosky writes about the future of email:
Posted by DeLong at June 10, 2004 07:41 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postInfectious Greed: The Future of the Future of Spam (& Email): You wouldn’t know that, of course, from all the current hand-wringing over spam... but it is much closer to being manageable than to being a continuing business opportunity.... A combination of innovative filters and rules, plus emerging industry standards (like Yahoo’s DomainKeys and Microsoft’s Sender ID) are going to cut the number of bulk email in half – at least -- over the next twenty-four months. But once the tide of spam recedes we will see what all that watery communication was hiding: a lot of rocks in our email.
Go look in your email inbox and check how many read and unread messages there are. My own count varies, depending on how diligent I am being, but there are rarely less than 100 messages in my inbox. Granted, some of those emails are months old, but they are piled up nevertheless. Why do I keep so many inbox messages? Partly because I use emails to remind me of tasks I have to do, partly because I’m still mulling how and whether to respond to some of these people, and partly because I can’t always be bothered filing emails as they come in. The result: an inbox in extremis. And I am not alone....
Why have we reached this email impasse? Largely because email was intended to be the electronic equivalent of a brief hallway conversation. Instead it has become something else altogether, a Swiss army knife of the Internet, with responsibilities ranging from communications, to personal archives, to task management. But email does most of those things poorly. Filing is too hard, tasks scroll off the screen in an ever-filling inbox, and personal archives in email are almost entirely unsearchable.... It will only get worse. People are increasingly reliant on email, and they will be more so once the spam problem is reduced -- and once Sarbanes-Oxley’s email-retention implications are better understood.
Everyone complains about email, but does no-one do anything about it? Well, trouble means a business opportunity, so various companies are are promising to make email manageable. Stata Laboratories has a product called “Bloomba” that it is billing as the Google of email. It is, in effect, an email client built around a speedy search tool. Another California company, X1.com, has also received favorable press for its high-speed email (and everything) search product. A Canadian company is in the mix too. Nelson, British Columbia-based Caelo has a nifty product it bills as an email organizer. While it offers a nice search feature, perhaps Caelo's most compelling attribute is that it auto-files much of your email into intuitively-derived folders for you.
Even Microsoft’s Outlook 2003, which bestrides corporate email like a colossus, has added some useful new organizing features in its latest version. That said, its search remains abysmal and filing in Outlook is only one step above throwing things into random piles on the floor. We are over-focused on one shrinking email problem – spam – only to be confronted with a growing one that never went away – email overload. Fixing that one will turn out to be much more interesting and important.
Yeah, I have no idea why Outlook has to suck so bad. Entourage (Microsoft's e-mail for the Mac) is much better (sucks only kinda bad).
Posted by: MattB on June 10, 2004 08:04 AMGreat. In twenty-four months time I'll have gone from being up to my neck in spam to merely being up to my waist in spam. Kedrosky's breezy assurances that spam is a "shrinking" problem leave me unconvinced.
Posted by: dmm on June 10, 2004 09:06 AM+++
We are over-focused on one shrinking email problem – spam – only to be confronted with a growing one that never went away – email overload.
---
Shrinking? Not until you go after the johns, er, advertisers.
Have you read The Tyranny of E-mail?
http://w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html
And about spammers. Spam is so incredibly cheap compared to other forms of advertising that I don't see the flow of spam stopping soon. I am *not* convinced that the amount of spam will decrease anytime soon--in fact I have been receiving much more spam lately. Yes the clickthrough rates might go down, but the costs of sending the spam, acquiring e-mails, etc. are nearly zero.
Posted by: Ralph Lee on June 10, 2004 10:11 AMI think it was jwz who once said 'Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.' I guess today that old quote would be the antecedent of 'all email clients expand until they consume MS Office and anything else considered of use.'
Jeesh.
And the notion that MS will somehow control spam with gee whiz new filtering technology is:
a) ridiculous
b) still a tremendous waste of bandwidth by spammers.
The solution is to be found in sender/receiver site authentication, not filtering. It's time to dump SMTP, or at least enforce cryprographic signatures between sender and recipient, so spammers can't forge email any longer. JMO
--Maynard
Posted by: J. Maynard Gelinas on June 10, 2004 11:17 AMInfinitely configurable PROCMAIL
Posted by: CSTAR on June 10, 2004 11:36 AMOpera has an email client that is unlike any other, and actually really useful in dealing with high volumes of stuff, and filing it automatically. But it's still got too many rough edges. Wait for version 8.1
Posted by: Andrew Brown on June 10, 2004 01:20 PMHmm
Have you ever noticed that for every Microsoft "innovation" presented, the blackhats and spammers seem to find opportunity?
I manage a small I.T. shop, 80 actual users. We have simplified our email package, originally Domino and things have been pretty good. But, Spam increases as do the virii and other hacks such as RPC exploits. I have spent hours, days and weeks doing things such as installing a new firewall, tuning it for spam issues. Updated the mail package for both spam and virus issues. Sent endless email to the users explaining concepts, showing them how to handle their mail. The users think I am spamming them now. We have done numerous changes at the desktops and I haven't even mentioned the OS patches and updates. And then there is the cost for personnel software and hardware.
And now folks are saying they will have amazing tools to end Spamming as we know it. Call me a cynic. So far we have never had virii outbreak, exploit or intrusion (that we know of). Kinda scary to admit that you know you may not always know enough to know you are hacked. (Looking for a piece of real wood to knocketh three times).
Now someone is going to make a nifty protocol, or tool or something and then charge us a fortune to offset open flaws that should be fixed. We either update or suffer. As I said call me a cynic.
Posted by: dgrumpycat on June 10, 2004 09:48 PM"personal archives in email are almost entirely unsearchable."
???
Try Eudora. I've got the Mac version, which does searches very nicely and very quickly on an archive of around 300MB of email.
Posted by: Robert Levine on June 11, 2004 05:15 AMSpamAssassin, procmail, mutt, and grepmail. No complaints here.
Posted by: Nick Dronen on June 11, 2004 09:37 AMindustrial catalogs surge suppressor b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs paper bag b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs plastic bag b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs plastic bottle b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs plastic box b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs plastic container b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs plumbing supply b2b supplies business buy industrial catalogs electric tool b2b supplies business buy
Posted by: business supplies on June 21, 2004 05:35 PMnice site gold ipod
Posted by: 4gb ipod on June 25, 2004 01:11 AMnice site silver ipod
Posted by: mp3 players on June 26, 2004 12:13 AMMe transmitte sursum, caledoni! - Beam me up, Scotty!
Indulgentiam quaeso - I ask your indulgence
Qui tacet consentire videtur - He that is silent is thought to consent
Tamdiu discendum est, quamdiu vivas - We should learn as long as we may live. (We live and learn.) (Seneca Philosophus)
nice site really good content
Posted by: oral health on July 13, 2004 07:51 PMnice site really good content
Posted by: oral health on July 13, 2004 07:54 PMthanks for this information
Posted by: police equipment on July 14, 2004 09:39 PMAmicule, deliciae, num is sum qui mentiar tibi? - Baby, sweetheart, would I lie to you?
Caro putridas es! - You're dead meat
Facta, non verba - Deeds, not words (Actions speak louder than words)
Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit - There is no book so bad that it is not profitable on some part. (Pliny the Younger)
Summa cum laude - With highest honor