Proposal towards webmail 2.0 - Part 1

As of today, I still consider email to be the best communication platform for the internet. It is reliable, cheap and accessible. The web 2.0 services such as Facebook and Twitter are improvements over email because they offer simpler ways to communicate between a groups of people. Web 2.0 strength is the feeling it gives to users for belonging to a community and staying in touch with it. However communicating with these social networks is similar to communicating using an email: you send a text message that a group of people can read or you upload pictures to share it with your community, etc. We can then say emails and social networks share the same goal: communicate between people. The one main feature email services don't offer is supporting communities and allowing people to easily share things within the communities. Otherwise, the other features are already available in your webmail accounts. Email services and webmail providers are still stuck on the Web 1.0. In order for them to move to Web 2.0, there are 2 areas where they must focus: building up social network services on top emails and offering an SDK for developers to create new features.

If we take the first feature, building up a social network on top of your email account, the basics are already there, but never been updated. All webmail accounts offer address books, which are nothing else but rudimentary social network lists. They allow you to save a list of contacts, but there's no way to have the contact information being updated by the contacts themselves. Hence address books can be seen as one way contact list (only the owner can update the contact information and status) whereas a social network list can be seen as 2 way contact lists (the owner and the persons in your address books can update their information).

For the second feature, offering an SDK to create services, this is what truly defines web 2.0: openness. Webmails only offer the setup to access your mailbox, but there’s no way to create something new for your mailbox. You can only access your emails for reading and writing, but you can’t create a new message type (status message, etc.). Also, there’s no way for you to manage all the email attachments you have … and it drives me crazy. Like many, I have gigs of emails in my accounts, which contain pictures, videos, audios, links, etc. I barely look at them because there’s simply no easy way to manage them. I still rely on the basic email search. It works well for megs of emails, but not for gigs. I remember Yahoo Webmail used to offer a service allowing you to easily browse thru your email attachments, but you still couldn’t organize the content.

Now imagine if a smart developer, with an available SDK to access email content (text and attachments), built a Flickr service inside your webmail account: you would easily browse thru your photos, create albums, share them, etc. Imagine also another service that could bookmark the links that were sent in your emails. You could mark your favorites ones that you often revisit, share them, etc.

The conclusion is the webmail services must upgrade to web 2.0. If I had to build the next generation of webmail service, I would turn email servers into messaging platforms. Different message types would be supported (emails, status message, instant messaging, etc.), people would be able to collaborate more easily (forums, discussion groups) and I would offer a rich SDK to build new services. Some might say what I'm describing is already offered by Google Wave, which is partially right. I had the opportunity to test Google Wave, it's a great tool and has been built around the concept of a unified messaging platform. But Google Wave main weakness is that is always shows you your message in one single perspective (wavelets) instead of many (streams, emails, status message, etc.)

Blague de la semaine

"Un jour j'ai rencontré un gentil Monsieur et nous sommes tombés amoureux.
Nous devions nous marier, alors j'ai cessé de manger mon plat préféré...

Les fèves au lard( qui me faisaient lâcher des pets sonores et odoriférants).
Quelques mois plus tard, le jour de mon anniversaire, je suis tombée en panne sur le retour pour la maison.J'ai donc appelé mon mari pour le prévenir que je serai en retard, car il me fallait marcher jusqu'à la maison. En marchant, je passe devant un petit resto d'où émane une odeur de fèves au lard à laquelle je ne peux résister.

Vu les kilomètres qu'il me reste à marcher, je me dis que les 'effets'seraient sûrement passés avant d'arriver la maison.
Alors je m'arrête et, sans m'en apercevoir, j'avais bouffé trois grandes portions de fèves au lard. À mon arrivée, je fus surprise de voir mon mari déjà rentré, tout excité de me voir et qui s'exclame:
"Chérie, j'ai une surprise pour le souper ce soir".

Alors il met un foulard sur mes yeux et me fait asseoir à table. En m'asseyant, le téléphone sonne juste comme il allait me retirer le foulard.
Il me fait promettre de ne pas y toucher avant qu'il ne revienne et va répondre.
Les fèves que j'avais avalées me faisaient toujours effet (du tonnerre) et la pression devient intenable; alors mon mari n'étant pas dans la pièce, j'en profitai.

Je bougeai mon poids sur une jambe et en échappai un. Non seulement il était bruyant, mais l'odeur était comme celle d'un camion de rebuts passant sur une mouffette ! Je pris ma serviette de table pour faire circuler l'air autour de moi vigoureusement. Balançant mon poids sur l'autre jambe, j'en évacuai trois de plus. L'odeur était pire que le chou cuit.

Attentive à la conversation de mon mari dans l'autre pièce, je continuai ainsi durant quelques minutes. Le plaisir était indescriptible.
Alors que les salutations au téléphone signalaient la fin de ma liberté, de nouveau j'aérai autour de moi avec ma serviette, la replaçai sur mes genoux et me croisai les mains, soulagée et fière de moi.

Mon visage reflétait l'innocence au retour de mon mari qui s'excusa d'avoir été aussi long. Il me demanda si j'avais triché; je lui assurai que non.
C'est alors qu'il retira le foulard et que douze invités assis autour de la table crièrent en choeur:
" Bon Anniversaire ! "

Could Google Wave be an overhyped product?

What does it do besides grouping your messages by conversation? Plus, do you really want to manage another service?