Is it time for email to change? There have been some exciting new apps appear over the last few months that hint to a change in the process of how we deal with email. Should the way we deal with email change? At kc web design kent we think it should.
Email is now over 40 years old and the first email was sent by engineer Ray Tomlinson, on Wednesday 8th June 1971. In that time it has changed very little but the way we use it is now integral to every business on the planet. There can’t be many people in offices now that don’t check their email in Outlook at least every ten minutes, every day, 5 days a week. Thats a lot of email usage for a system that hasn’t changed much in 40 years.
Normally, email comes in to your inbox, you deal with it (or ignore/delete it) then store it in an appropriate folder. There are many, many email clients that let you do this (at kc web design kent we’re big fans of Postbox) but they all mostly deal with it in exactly the same way. An inbox and then subfolders for filling. When we use email here at kc web design kent its more than just an inbox. It becomes a filling system to store messages, sometimes from many years ago. It becomes part of a to-do or GTD system. It’s a way of sending files and images. It does all of these things in a kind of ok way but isn’t really made for doing any of them properly. This is why email should change. We use it differently now, not just to send a quick message but to organise and run our whole day or even our businesses.
A few new apps have appeared that are trying to change the way we use email, to make it behave more like the thing it has evolved into and to create something beyond just email sending and recieving. There are ways of using standard email apps that can improve the process and integrate email into more of a business process for getting things done. There’s a great article on Appstorm about using smart folders and a whole new method called The Secret Weapon that are both worth reading. But, new apps may be the way forward and the 2 main contenders are Mailbox and DotMail. I think DotMail is a little way off yet but Mailbox has starting rolling out a limited preview of it iOS app. Currently, kc web design kent are number 754,280 in the queue so it might be a while before we can do a full review!