Remail: IBM is Reinventing Email

mrbarkeeper writes "IBM Research has thought about email and came up with a prototype of a better mail client. From their website: 'The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email. Not only has email become one of the most pervasive and successful collaborative tools available, it has also become a key component of IBM's Lotus Software offerings. In many ways, email can be seen as a victim of its own success - users increasingly suffer from overload and interruptions as well as use email in a manner for which it was not intended.' Several ideas worth discussing, some good, some irrelevant. But still worth a gander for anyone who spends most of their day in their inbox.

Blowtus Goats

[Anonymous Coward]

> The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email.

Yeah, and we all know IBM is the foremost authority in creating user-friendly and intuitive e-mail client interfaces. Judging by my experiences with Lotus Notes, they've got a decade or two to go yet.

key component of IBM's Lotus Software

[angryelephant]

as in Lotus Notes
as in the worst email client ever

New

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow!

New ways to try to convince me I need a larger penis!

spam

[Anonymous Coward]

does this mean we get better spam as well...?

Al Gore invented the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it is time for Al Gore to re-invent the Internet, as well. It has been a few years since he first invented it.

Re:Work?

[Channard]

Who spends most of their day in the inbox?

'Clippy', apparently, that annoying swine. I think he's the one sending all those scam emails, so he can fund his tipp-ex habit.

Irrelevant

[Andy Smith]

Several ideas worth discussing, some good, some irrelevant.

I'm sure the researchers appreciate your clear, concise, thorough, expert and well-reasoned explanation of why some of their ideas are irrelevant. They must be kicking themselves.

heh

[geekoid]

BOSS: Yoy've worked for me for nearly a decade, but All I see is you people reading email
Employee: uuhhhh...
BOSS: what is it we pay you for?
Employes: The Collaborative User Experience ...we study email, been doing it for uhhh.. nearly a decade!
BOSS:What have you found out?
Employee: "email has become one of the most pervasive and successful collaborative tools available"

BOSS: How does that fit in with IBM?
employee: It uses...[looks at mug on desk] Lotus!

BOSS: Keep up the good work!

On Demand Computing...

[Dave21212]

It appears that IBM could use some of it's own On Demand Computing [ibm.com]...

the research site [ibm.com] is already slowing to a craw [wikipedia.org] !

I've got this great email idea!!

[Savatte]

A big problem with email is that there is no way to verify that the person actually received a message. A hardcopy could easily solve this. And to prevent spam, you could charge for each message sent, maybe with some sort of stamp of authenticity. to speed up delivery, you could route each message through one of many central locations, and they can all work together, to ensure that once a message passes through one of these locations, it gets delivered to the appropriate recipient. And since encryption is important, hiding the contents of each message in some sort of wrapper could prevent unwanted reading. What do y'all think about this?

Coming Soon...

[VivianC]

The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email.

Based on this timeline, I should be on the brink of a major internet porn breakthrough any day now!

Re:spam

[s20451]

does this mean we get better spam as well...?

Now, in addition to making your penis larger, it will make everyone else's smaller.

Wow, Slashdot's even on there!

[Dlugar]

Check out the first screenshot on this page:
http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/sources.html [ibm.com]

Dlugar

Re:Reinventing EMail CLIENT

[Synn]

If you're getting SPAM, its because you're not using e-mail enough ...

Really? Is that why your email address is butchered in your user tagline, to the point where it takes 5 mins to decode it? Because SPAM isn't a problem?

Re:I need TiVo like functionality

[nerph]

"emails about personal events in lives of my fellow employes (marriage, death) etc . about which I don't care

Wow, you must have a lot of friends at work!

Re:Reinventing EMail CLIENT

[RetroGeek]

I receive over 100 spams a day.

Rookie....

Re:Prevent top quoting

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

You seem to feel strongly about this. What's "top quoting" anyway?

Just so long as this new client prevents top quoting. Those that are detected at the act of top quoting should be subject to the activation of a stun-gun embedded in their keyboards, followed by automated photoshopping of their head onto a picture of some redneck sodomizing a goat. This picture shall replace the actual content of the email (as an attachment, damnit!) and sent to all of the intended recipients. If no recipients have yet been specified, the email shall be sent to the user's congressman.

Re:Work?

[Syberghost]

I think it was phones4all, or some some such company, that recently mandated that no email is to be used interoffice communication, only the phone or face to face.

Don't bother learning the name of the company; it won't be around long enough to matter.

Re:how about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway- email is about communicating and if a little markup helps communicate, then why hold back?

Agreed. HTML only email is the most effective way to communicate "this is SPAM, delete on receipt" that I know of. The world would be a much worse place without it.