Great Ideas of the 21st Century (7 years in...)

[Dids]

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Threaded emails are for simple people who can't remember who said what or don't include the original message in the reply. I mean, nice feature if you're used to it, but I get along more than fine without it.

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This is very wrong. Look at the OOT thread list. As it is now = threaded Gmail. Now imagine that instead of just showing the topics, it showed the subject line and poster for every single reply of every topic. That's conventional email. (Obviously email volume is less than OOT volume, but that doesn't make it any less useful.)

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I 100% understand the premise of threaded emails, and I'm sure it makes your life easier. My impression is that it makes my inbox look more cluttered. (and trust me, I get into a lot of giant multiway conversations at work).

[CrazyEyez]

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makes my inbox look more cluttered

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Are we talking about the same thing? I'm confused now. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[kidcolin]

yeah Dids you're way off on this one. It makes your inbox much cleaner. Like CE said, it basically turns it into OOT's front page. Each conversation has one entry, instead of each mail.

[davebreal]

1) make your own milkshake machines @ wawa, quickcheck, etc.

2) abundance of veggie burgers in major restaurant chains

3) the rise of the dvdrw drive - backing up storage is much easier

4) holecard cam!

[Dids]

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yeah Dids you're way off on this one. It makes your inbox much cleaner. Like CE said, it basically turns it into OOT's front page. Each conversation has one entry, instead of each mail.

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I get this, it just isn't how I like to sort my email at all. Given how I work, each individual email being its own entry >>>> larger thread.

[kidcolin]

Here's another nominee: wifi/wireless networking. While obviously invented in the 20th century, wasn't really commonplace until a few years ago. It's helpful in the home setting I guess, but it's really good for offices. Where I work, instead of everybody having desktop workstations, we all have laptops. We can use LiveMeeting or whatever from conference rooms to share diagrams and such. If I just need to get out of the cube for a bit, I can take my laptop to the cafe or to an empty conference room and work there with no hassles, while still having access to my email/IM in case someone needs to get in touch.

[sirtimo]

POS debit/credit cards

Not invented in the 21st century, but widespread availability has revolutionized commerce. I haven't written a physical check in 2 or 3 years.

[kidcolin]

Dids,

Fine, I guess. Given that you like including original message (huge data waste = huge money waste.. you work for the state so I guess no biggie), I just don't see the difference. A properly threaded email client you can just click a button and it essentially looks like one long email chain. The only difference is you have 3 entries all at the top of your box, where the only difference between mail 1 and mail 2 is one line saying, "my report will be available at 1 o'clock."

Ideally, I'd want my email client to have an interface like gmails, but also have outlook's ability to pop open an email message in a separate window. There could even be an option that makes the new window version look like a mail chain where everyone replied on top of the original message. That'd be pretty neat.

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I don't know if there's a huge data storage difference because gmail still puts the original text in the email.

That being said, threaded > unthreaded and it really isn't close.

[kidcolin]

hmm.. yeah I just checked. I had never noticed before because I never "new window" and clicked "show quoted text". They must have some optimization on it. Maybe not. I know data storage has always been a concern with emails. I haven't read up on it in a while. Maybe compression algorithms and such are so far along that it handles the "include original text" issue very efficiently.