Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Is email really broken or are people looking for things to change?

Reason I ask is because I see this "let's fix email" so often, peeps build something new then it either gets acquired & killed or goes no where.

What if email isn't broken. Instead email as we think we see it is merely a feed with or without action and its up to us to manage it.

PlainEmail appears like an attempt of changing our habits of reading a feed with GTD concepts. I'd much rather prefer to see my feed and an algo/machine learning identify action emails and suggest to me the best method (GTD or not) to handle it. Otherwise I'd carry on with my usual habits.



> What if email isn't broken.

I tend to agree. The problem is that we choose to spend our time in a suboptimal manner. The email inbox is just a tool that makes it easier to waste our time. It's not like getting rid of the email inbox will keep others from sending us stuff we don't want or keep our bosses from asking us to do crazy things. If you want to fix email, recognize that you can't respond to everything, and hit the delete button more often.


I love email, but I'm still not really in love with any of the email clients I've used. I'd really like something with high information density ([0] for example) and fast keyboard shortcuts, but that has some of the soft edges that come with a gui client, such as drag and drop attachments and displaying images inline. I think astroid [1] is heading there but isn't widely supported and doesn't play nice with syncing changes back to a standard mailstore.

[0] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/schmeisers/sup-colors-redt...

[1] https://github.com/gauteh/astroid


There's the cultural aspect too...

People tend to over-rely on email, and on communication in general...

If people stopped work at a sane hour and limited messaging to times when it is actually necessary...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: