[Klug-general] The Problems with EMail (Re: Talk at the next meet)

[J D Freeman]

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On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 12:23:08PM +0000, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> This is what I want to concentrate on. Email is only one part of it my
> vision of the future desktop requires massive changes and computers
> employing lots weird underlying tech to solve most of out data
> management problems. Data management is only one part of it, and the
> interaction is another major aspect.

Are you sure the desktop concept is the future?

> One example of how we (free desktop developers) fail at user interaction
> is in one of the user testing tasks.
> 
> 1. Close the open document
> 2. Re-open the document you just closed
> 
> This seems like a pretty simple task right? Well it is, except that once
> the user completes the first task, there's 50 files on the desktop all
> similarly named...

vi emailtokarl
:wq (closing the file)
<up arrow><enter>

Oh wow, they solved this one how long ago? Ah yes, BASH, written 1978...

> Apple did this user test, and solved it. In 1981! They created an
> animation between the desktop item, and the application closing.
> Essentially the window border shrinks to the object. Cool huh! Simple
> but solves an actual interaction problem. 
> 
> It's things like this that I'm learning in a few books I got while I was
> in Boston at GNOME summit, the yearly pilgrimage to the MIT bookshop :)

So that we can all expand our knowledge, could you share the ISBN
numbers. I ask cos I am curious and interested.

> Yeah, why don't those files get pulled out of the email client, reducing
> the amount of inbox usage and placed into a file system where the
> language semantics of the email they were received in, and the meta data
> of the file itself are used to put it in a sensible place!

Cos if it's done automatically, it saves LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOUR.TXT.vbs to
your executables store, then randomly executes it, then emails itself to
all your contacts...

How hard is it to save as, and store things sensibly? Ooh look, a pdf on
this project, save -> ~/Projects/ProjectX/Documents/doc12345.pdf etc...

> Yeah, on the client side we have issues, but the server portion of email
> is a rotten dead dog, exploited by spammers et al. 

The server side is an amazing work of beauty. 

Spam and phishing is more a fault in poorly designed clients, and
appallingly stupid users, than it is the result of poor protocol design
on the servers.

Julia
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