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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.
> 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.
as in Lotus Notes
as in the worst email client ever
Wow!
New ways to try to convince me I need a larger penis!
does this mean we get better spam as well...?
Interesting ideas except that the headline should title 'Reinventing EMail CLIENT'.
I was looking for ideas against SPAM and nothing there, just a new way to organize your messages and Inbox folder. Some ideas are really good though, like the threads.
But for me the email as we know it is slowly dying because of SPAM and lack of authentication features.
I am still waiting for a brand new EMail system and I know that's a huge debate. But if we don't do anything we will slowly die under thousand of spam messages... Too bad.
Iraq: war to save the U
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.
making email spoof-proof, killing UCE (spam), and eliminating the whole idea of HTML email...
Gee, doesn't seem to me that they thought too hard about email at all.
Although Lotus Notes has a UI that most users don't like, it runs circles around the alternative mail platforms in terms of workflow and customization. If they can somehow coordinate their efforts here with what they already have in Lotus, maybe we'll be saved from an Outlook work yet.
I must admit that I disagree with the assertion that "Pressure to Respond Quickly" is some sort of negative issue with e-mail; in fact, I'd go so far as to say that with the volume of mail in inboxes today, people are actually not feeling enough pressure to respond quickly. Sure, sometimes we're okay with waiting for a response for a while, but oftentimes nowadays email is used in the role that voicemail used to play, and if one receives a voicemail, one tends to reply directly afterwards. Sometimes, the same attitude needs to be taken in regards to email. Here, I see a much more accurate and responsible use of the priority feature in messages being used, with some type of slider built into the client to rate the priority of a message more efficiently as it is sent...
Who is John Galt?
But still worth a gander for anyone who spends most of their day in their inbox.
Who spends most of their day in the inbox? Seriously though, a decent email client is found in OS X with good junk mail filters and nesting etc... Most times it gets near 98% of the junk email and I have yet to have it reject a valid email.
Also from the article: Pressure to Respond Quickly. People report feeling pressure to be more responsive to their email. Messages arrive continuously throughout the day, contributing to the sense of urgency to respond quickly.
Why reinvent the wheel? If the message is not urgent enough to pick up the phone or in our case, ring someone up on iChatAV, then the paradigm does not need changing.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I've always liked the way most newsreaders threaded posts - IBM's threaded model is one feature that would definately make me switch over. This is a simple yet overlooked feature that Eudora and Outlook have missed. I haven't played with KMail yet and don't know if it has it. Why hasn't email threading been done up until now? -B
Like others here, I thought this would be more than "just another email client with shiny bits". I was vaguely hoping that Yahoo and IBM had decided to collabarate on the anti-spam procedures mentioned recently...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The BBC has an interesting article about the overflow created by e-mail. Where 31 billion e-mails are sent every day, you think that systems might need to be updated to handle such volume (and help cut some unessary volume out)
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Well, it looks nice enough. The dividers and threading are a nice touch. I wonder how long it will be before these features are integrated into a non-IBM browser.
I am interested in the "chat" feature in the software. It seems that it could be really useful or just replace IM for office workers whose IM software has been shut down.
A better email client is a good thing, whether being pushed by small developers with a few unique ideas, or by a group as large as IBM with decades of research behind them. However, apart from the occasional efforts from businesses like Yahoo, the whole email distribution path doesn't seem to be getting as much attention as it could.
Even if it's just theory, research and study, are there publicly accessible projects by larger groups (such as IBM) looking at how to completely overhaul email transmission, especially for the elimination of spam and the ability to drag an address with you that's not dependant (for most people) on an ISP? I'd be all for a completely new system running side by side with conventional SMTP type email for several years, even.
I was ready to be a critic of this before I RTFA--after all we're talking IBM and Lotus Notes, the worst email client ever--but they really have thought about how integrating this information would make it easier to organize and communicate.
One problem I see is that most email information is very hard to parse reliably if it's just free-format text. Sure you can tell people to send out formal meeting invitations but not all clients support that. It would be great if you received a message that said "how about a meeting next Monday at 1pm my time" and the software would pop up your schedule for next Monday at 4pm because you're eastern time and he's pacific.
The client should follow my trend of sorting emails for a couple of months and then gain enough intelligence to do it own its own.
First sorting SPAM v/s useful email :- I guess this is alsways being worked on, thunderbird does it. But its not adaptive enough.
Second Sorting based on emails that I ignore though they are not spams, like periodic reminders , baby shower notices (really do i need to care ?), emails about personal events in lives of my fellow employes (marriage, death) etc . about which I don't care., Ack. receipts etc.
A lot of time my inbox is filled with mail which is originating from my company but in a sense is junk to me. It is too cumbersome to come with filters for a lot of them. We need some AI in the email client.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I didn't spot the code to download, nor did I see if iCal is supported, or what Chat standard they are using.
Anyone care to 'flesh' this out?
After looking at some of the custom threadding options I realized that something like this would be perfect for online colleges. If you've ever taken an online course, or even just used newsgroups, you can see how far something like this would go for staying organized.
;)
My biggest problem with online classes is finding relevant threads to relate back to what it is that you're actually studying, and this would make that a ton easier. Plus, hell...it's not Outlook Express
After reading the article, the only thing I didn't like was the annotation thing. More and more mail clients are making this option worthless. Some people have a habit of making everything they send "URGENT, or HIGHEST" priority, which is rapidly becoming annoying. I suppose its' the way it has to be, but I don't think a little color box is the best way of incorporating the idea of structuring by type...
As I wrote that, I got a new message in my Notes client here at the office. Not that it told me; the pop-up alert is hidden so that in order to notice it I need to consciously switch to the Notes process. "Alert" is perhaps not the right description for this dialog box. Okay, new message -- I click "OK." I am returned to my browser instead of staying in Notes. Switch back to Notes again. Go to inbox. Which way is the inbox sorting today? Sigh... An alert that doesn't work and three or four extra steps just to see a new message. This would be the basics.
Let's not get into the philosophical difference between one's "Sent" view and the "Inbox" folder. I've tried to delve into those metaphysics with countless people who've just thrown away their "extra" copy of some crucial message, but they're so emotional then, you know?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
From its inception, Lotus Notes has come a long way down the groupware path. With the release of the next generation of Notes servers, I am sure that you will be impressed with its new capabilities.
God, Root, Whats the difference?
sPh
BOSS: Yoy've worked for me for nearly a decade, but All I see is you people reading email ...we study email, been doing it for uhhh.. nearly a decade!
Employee: uuhhhh...
BOSS: what is it we pay you for?
Employes: The Collaborative User Experience
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!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It appears that IBM could use some of it's own On Demand Computing...
the research site is already slowing to a craw !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Basically, they're doing what all good HCI (Human-Computer Interface) teams do. They're grabbing all the good stuff and throwing away all the not-as-good stuff. There's nothing particularily new here, except for the addition of certain visualizations. Most of these ideas are already implemented in M2 (Opera's email client) or in Mail.app (OS X's default mail client) or in various other Unix mail clients.
M2 is basically one big folder, and all the other folders you define are filters on the main folder. They also have a quick reply pane at the bottom of the message so you can fire off a reply that doesn't require very much input.
OS X's Mail.app has the little green dot beside a sender's name when they're online and available for chat. It threads things (like any good email client. Strangely, MOST Windows clients don't. Hmm.) can colour code things and has a pretty reasonable filtering facility (though nothing as on-the-fly as what IBM proposes.)
The thing I hate most about working under Windows is the lack of a really solid email client. Opera's M2 is the best I've found so far, and I hear Outlook 2003 FINALLY allows you to respond to emails properly, instead of the fscked up way that Microsoft has always demanded. (Yes, you can embed your replies, but it's never been quite right. Outlook strongly encourages top-posting.)
Oh, and Mozilla's was good, but I find the browser far inferior to Opera, so I gave up on it. Maybe when the forked email client is finally stable, I'll give it a try again.
In evolution you can use Ctrl+T to switch in out out of a new-group-like threaded view.
In addition Evo's VFolders seem to be same basic idea as IBM's 'Collections'. As far as I can tell, Evolution pretty much does most of the stuff they are proposing, although they have some nice GUI ideas.
Take, for example, mozilla mail.
There's a nice little button with the help text "click to display message threads" that turns the entire folder into a threaded display.
taco Taco Taco... IBM is Reinventing Email does this mean I can send my thoughts to IBM and let them compose my emails? Does this mean they're unleashing a new protocol?
People report feeling pressure to be more responsive to their email. Messages arrive continuously throughout the day, contributing to the sense of urgency to respond quickly. Sometimes I wonder where they hold these studies, and I always wonder why they don't post metadata stats on this... (Age, Profession, Sex, etc) I'd like to see who feels pressured into responding to email. Me for one inbox +300 per day mailing lists, friends, fam, work... Pressure = 0 When I get to it, I get to it. I'm human not a machine and if someone would ever attempt to pressure me I would not deal with them anymore. My sanity, and health are more important than email. If it was that important, s'what phones are for.
Losing Track of Email and the increasing fear of doing so. High volumes of email cause important items to quickly move out of view. Users must hunt down their mail, often having to scroll to other parts of their mailbox. This problem is exacerbated as email arrives in a single, undifferentiated stream. The mailbox becomes an assortment of items requiring action, informational items, and items with no value to the user at all (e.g., spam). I disagree with this. Having worked in numerous sorts of tech industry, I take stupidity to be the number one cause. Porly trained individuals who don't have enough in them to learn something new. EG I used to work on a help desk in the 90's, and remember vividly how etards would call because they didn't know where they saved something.
The headline is misguiding. I took it to be a new protocol coming out, should be changed to IBM's new email client nothing more
MoFscker
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?
The screenshots look like Outlook, but with extra windows for the calendar and other things. I suppose this will take up desktop space, but then I've been wondering how I was going to waste all this extra space I now have with a dual head video card...
From the article...
"People are overwhelmed by the volume of new email they receive each day. They report spending increasing amounts of time simply managing their email."
In MY world, I call this SPAM. I didn't need 10 years of research to know it was a BAD thing. Spam, I think, is better stopped at the servers or better yet, by blacklisting the spammers.
Outlook (and other clients) have filters that can direct email into various folders sorted by importance. In this way, the important stuff gets my FIRST attention, while the least important stuff can wait.
However, a lot of this aforementioned filtering capability is ALSO dependent on a person's ability to fully utilize their email client. I know of a number of people in management positions who are FULLY CLUELESS regarding moving files from one directory to another. Setting up a filter WOULD BE totally beyond them. Without even basic computer literacy skills, any new technology that requires interaction with a user interface is bound to stumble. Relying the smarts of the end user is simply not a good business model unless you're dealing with technically-savvy people.
I never had any problem with my e-mail...
/usr/bin/getmail > /dev/null :w :q
crontab -e
0,30 * * * *
Is all you need...
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!
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
the new thing is the graphical visualisation of the threadmap. Not dramatic but it does seem to make sense and is an innovative feature.
Alan.
>as in the worst email client ever
"Score:2, Funny"? For shame, moderators -- that was "+5 Informative", if I've ever seen it.
So how bad is Lotus Notes, you ask? So bad that The User Interface Hall Of Shame dedicated an ENTIRE PAGE to detailing LN's faults. "This single application could have formed the basis for the entire site."
Yes, it's that bad.
dang, been using groupwise (Novell) and it REALLY belows. So many basic things cant be done with this piece of crud. Bah
-
-- There is no spaam
'The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email.
May Buddha have mercy on their poor souls...
I mean, almost TEN years on email...
poor sops...
do() || do_not();
But I'll vent anyhow. My issues with e-mail are generally twofold:
1. People expect email to be a time-sensitive medium when it's really the LEAST time-sensitive medium of all. I've seen people send an email that they EXPECT a response in several minutes. If I have a time critical issue, I don't send e-mails, I start calling people directly. And how many times have you avoided even opening up an e-mail from a certain recipient because you didn't want to have to deal with that person and were afraid that it'd have a return receipt attached to it?
2. For the most part, the problem for me isn't an e-mail client. My problem lies in spending tons of hours trying to create the perfect politically correct response to a completely retarded question from the CEO that isn't going to piss off him, my boss, and the managers of the all of the departments, and everyone else in between.
Apple's default and free email client, Mail.app, will be gaining some of these advances in version two.
A quick runthrough of some of the major new features also covered in the IBM article:
* 'Collections' - Called 'Smart Mailboxes', these work almost identically to iTunes' smart playlists. Set up mailboxes which are dynamically generated from all your accounts, customised by a set of rules. Very, very useful.
* Message marking - label your emails. How often do you not want to move your emails to another mailbox, but still want to flag them for later attention? Say hello to mail labels - combined with smart mailboxes, your workflow is smooooth.
* iCal integration - not finalized yet, but look for more integration here.
They're still looking at message collapsing (by week or by day), but this may all just go into iCal integration. Some test builds allow you to just select days, weeks, or months and see the emails for those days. It's a remarkably simple but remarkably useful extension of the smart mailboxes function.
iChat integration is a little frowned on at the moment. We'll see.
quoting my website:
Domino is a database system with very cool features for shuffling documents about between databases. With such a system it is fairly simple to give each user a database containing email documents and let them send and receive these documents to and from other people's databases. If your organisation is using Domino just for email then you are not getting the benefits from it that you deserve.
http://www.dominux.co.uk
What you stupid whining fuckers always miss is the simple obvious fact that Notes is *NOT* a mail client. It's a client for an application delivery platform which just happens to offer mail as one of its applications.
Your beef is with the mail application development team inside Lotus, not with the notes client itself.
Christ, it's like saying the Macintosh isn't a good mail client - it's completely fucking irrelevant and only shows off your own stupidity!
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.
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
What I find myself wishing for the most, is when someone sends me a mail on a new subject (a selectable option on their part) a new and totally unique message-id could be generated and included in the header. This would persist for any replies, forwards, etc from either myself of anyone else on the CC list. My mail client would then allow me to do two things: 1) to thread on this ID, even if the text of the subject changed, and 2) if I no longer wanted to take part in the discussion, to send a special message to the other mail addresses in the discussion, instructing their mail clients to remove me from any more CC's on that ID. Enabling me, if I chose, to opt out of any further discussion on that subject.
I'd find this very powerful, and very useful. And I'm sure other people would come up with new and interesting ways to make this even more functional.
Macka
Did you notice?
From the screenshots it appears that they have based this prototype on the Eclipse platform.
I think projects like this are great. They address problems at a technical level rather than a legal one. Revamps of email clients and protocols are how you defeat SPAM not meaningless unenforcable laws. Way to go IBM...even if you haven't been all that great in the past.
Looks like they're packing usenet-client-style features into an email client. About time....
That's great for the PC... but it is nothing new on the Mac platform. Looks and works exactly like Mail.app (except for the visualizations, I guess)\
Nothing to see here, move along...
Check out the first screenshot on this page:
http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/sources.html
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
n/t
... email.
And if they receive one more email for enlarging sexual organs and becoming rich from home: they're going to go nuts.
what version are you using? versions that are 5 years old are probably 5 years behind the times. Big corporates which use Notes often have a really long upgrade cycle, so if your work email on Notes 4.5 looks a bit dated when compared to your Outlook Express 2003 or whatever then I am not surprised. Try Notes client 6.5 and remember that Notes is more than email just as windows is more than a word processor and Linux is more than just a development environment. Alan.
I read the whole article, and the vast majority of these features are included in Microsoft Outlook 2003. Way to play catch up, IBM!
(Disclaimer: I don't use popfile myself. I keep meaning to set it up, but haven't got round to it)
I'm also looking for this program. Popfile comes darned close. Most people think it's a bayesian spam filter. It isn't. It's a bayesian filter that can sort into any number of categories, using normal bayesian magic. So you show it a certain number of emails in a particular category and it'll then start classifying all subsequent similar ones into the same category.
The snag is that it insists on using POP and a web front end as its interface. So you need to go to the web interface to set everything up. (There may be plughins for outlook, but what use is that?). My ideal system would automatically notice which folder you put things in and put subsequent similar messages into the same folder. Ideally it'd be an IMAP server so that it works with all email clients.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
email is joining the ranks of bsd and mac ;)
Before HTML and spam were widespread, RTF (rich text format) was used for formatting. It has bold, italics, and many other word-processing markup. And it doesn't have embedded viruses and embedded image "bugs" to help spammers.
outlook has had this feature for ages, strangely hidden behind the "View" menu. try it out View -> By Conversation Topic
as a side note, has anyone actually had a look at Outlook 2003? Office 2003 is like Office XP with chunky toolbars, except for Outlook. MS have put a lot of work into Outook 2003, you should have a look at it, its not that bad!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
[i]users increasingly suffer from overload and interruptions as well as use email in a manner for which it was not intended.[/i] I know, what are all these other stuff besides the free porn I was promised?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
do you *nix fags always feel the need to show cool command line options!? it makes us winkiddies wanna hum ur ballz.. u l33t h4x0r j00.
Emacs Gnus
i would normally say "next!" here but there are sensitive souls out there (w/ whom i can identify completely) for whom re-inventing email clients is a touchy subject, ready to rail on and on about their latest 5MB grep-child. so i add this blurb around the "next!" to cushion the message somewhat. (also, slashdot bean-counting requires this verbosity, blech.)
You make some good points, but I don't think it should require an entire HTML page (and all the related bloat and overhead) to make some text bold. Most email clients already turn valid URLs into a clickable HTML link, without any a href necessary. Email clients should also take <b> </b> tags and turn them into bold text (a la AIM/Gaim).
In other words, simply include the HTML tags in your email, along with some header informing the email client of your HTML-ish intentions, and the client can do the rest. The client can even have fully configurable "tags allowed" options (yes to local images, no to remote images, tables are okay, but the blink tag definitely not, etc).
This removes the biggest problems: bloat, and lack of ability to fail gracefully. Those of us still using pine won't have any problem reading Little Timmy's <font color="neon green">colorful</font> emails--we're used to tuning out HTML tags anyway.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Sure, the people who are so de-clued they put a fucking trash can next to a deleted email instead of the obvious option used by every other mail client out there - MOVE THE DAMN THING TO THE DELETED ITEMS FOLDER.
Talk about clutter. Yes, I'm forced to use your pile of shit Notes at work. Want to cut down on my inbox clutter? Simply move the damn deleted messages out of the inbox view you stupid fucking idiots!
Sure, it's secure as hell, and maybe the backend programming of it is all good and shit, but from someone who comes into work after using Evolution at home, and has to use your bucket of shit all day long, it is a massive pile of shit.
Anybody from the Notes division that reads this: a big fuck you, have a shitty day from me!
The problem is, Lotus Notes primary selling point for the past 6 or 8 years is that it IS a mail client. From the administrative perspective, it's actually a pretty good mail client compared to Exchange. However, from the client side, Notes is a major POS. Pine, Elm, or even vi are better mail clients than Notes. (and with vi, you have to basically handle your mail manually, now that's saying something!). To be fair, Outlook or Outlook/Exchange isn't that great either in the mail arena, but from a client side perspective, there's really nothing much better out there when you consider known interfaces and user friendliness combined with corporate mail usefulness.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
What I would like to see if some kind of urgency feature. I.e. I would like to send an email and tag it with something which says "keep bugging this person till I get a reply".
To make sure that nincompoops like my manager don't abuse this when they send me an "urgent" email which says; "Please file timesheets by the 28th of this month." (Frikkin idiot - everything is "urgent"), we have the following;
Only a certain percentages of the emails from each person in your inbox is allowed to have these kind of priority ratings.
Thus, if you are an idiot like my manager then you quickly consume your quota of urgent emails and after that everything drops down into the unwashed masses section. If you are like me - I only sent out 3 urgent emails on my last project - then the email will get the attention it deserves.
I.e. I would like to be able to stop the abuse in my inbox from clueless dolts but still be able to get really important mails brought to my attention quickly.
Take a look at the mail client in Opera 7.
Now that is a real new mail client: no more tedious dragging of messages to folders, but instead accesspoints ("views") which do the work of managing your mail for you.
That is true innovation as far as e-mail clients go. (Why else would Mozilla be copying it?)
They may call it "collaborative", but email has become a major push technology. In fact, the more you "collaborate", the more the system ends up pushing to everyone involved. This is why we have trouble managing this incoming stream of mail ... because it is a stream.
In a more meta sense, email can run you over since they are many and you are just one. Now, you'd think that would mean smart programming to manage the mess, but in practice that hasn't been so. All that email clients seem to let you do is split the stream into smaller ones, which you must still and laboriously examine. Rule systems are still pathetic for managing this for you. But could lay some of this sentiment upon Internet search engines. There's always crucial few features that are absent (to sum up, I need a "do what I meant" button) that make the result a slog though link after link, like with email.
I spent a little time examining IBM's offering, and I can say from that limited exposure that they are only applying a few more piddling features that still don't address the major problem: You (not the program) are being forced to drink from a firehose.
To avoid this, the app must do more work, and it must perform that work on its own. It must watch how you work with an incoming stream of email; and with minimal prompts from you, start handling them in accordance to those guidelines.* It must constantly analyze, learn to form new rules and to adjust current ones, and be prepared to axe entire rulesets upon your demand.
That would be some hellacious programming to attain, but given the pay of the allegedly more skilled programmers around, they'll certainly earn it for this one.
*
HAL: Dave, I've noticed that you're pulling my memory and personality boards. Shall I eject the rest for you?
Dave: Yes, HAL, please pull the remaining boards while I catch up on my $%($^* email.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Try CTRL+T in evolution. It's had threads for awhile (I'm running 1.0.5).
It doesn't work quite the same (messages get put into a +/- expanding/contracting style threadlist), but the functionality is there.
I'd have to say though, that the title is extremely misleading. IBM isn't reinventing email (email in the minds of most=POP3/SMTP/IMAP/etc). In fact, they're not doing anything different to email, just making a new client with some additional features.
Notes does support a lot of open protocols CORBA POP3 SMTP HTTP SSL IIOP LDAP IMAP but NRPC which is the native protocol on port 1352 should be opened up too. Alan.
Thank you but I'll stay with Gnus (and GMANE).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
A lot of these features are already in Outlook 2003, albeit under different names. The coloured annotations, collection folders, and headers described in the article have all recently made an appearance in Outlook 2003.
At the risk of being modded down, I quite like these features and thus... *gulps* also like... the new Outlook.
Okay this time it does look like they did their homework.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I'm certainly not saying "a terminal window and pine should be the only allowable way to view email". What I am saying is that HTML has no business being the default format for email. The use of active content as a virus delivery vector alone is reason enough.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
the UI has changed significantly in 6.0.* and 6.5 6.5 is really sweet with instant messaging integration built in to the mail client and all custom applications. If I open a mail my buddy list grows a to: and cc: group with all the recipients and all my databases which have a name anywhere grow little green icons if the user is online. This is a bit hard to explain without seeing it in action, here is a link to a webcast that may be of interest. (the webcast probably needs windows, but then so does Notes. I want a Linux version of the Notes client.)
SLASHCODE!
At least that's what we called it when we were forced to use it!
Threads ("Conversation view"), collections ("search folders"), chat, calendar... sounds like Outlook to me.
The main feature I don't think Exchange does is RSS, but the IBM team's implementation is silly. In their opening paragraph they say "This problem is exacerbated as email arrives in a single, undifferentiated stream. The mailbox becomes an assortment of items requiring action, informational items, and items with no value to the user at all" yet they also tout the ability to include RSS streams appearing in your inbox just like email!
The correspondants feature looks nifty, but it looks like the kind of thing that would instantly become useless once you join a few mailing lists or other distribution groups.
there is formula language, which is what various spreadsheets use (coz Lotus invented it with 123) and there is LotusScript which is Basic, very very similar to Visual Basic. And there is Java and JavaScript. Which one is the obscure one? . . . and what are you smoking when you talk about the trash folder???
Notes might not be the most elegant piece of software in the world, but one thing that astounds me is the insistence of people to just classify it as 'email.'
It's far more than that, and to think it's just an email program is like calling the Vatican a dump because the restroom is nasty. Okay, stupid example.
Anyway, think about it. When a user has Notes installed, it is far more than just email. They instantly have access to a wide range of applications, some of which can be extremely complex. They can participate in complicated workflow applications simply by having the Notes client; they don't even need to access the databases where these applications are written.
Think about some of the brilliant executives out there, and trying to show them how to use some new travel approval database. Then consider that all a good programmer needs to do is send the relevant info to the exec when necessary, and the exec simply clicks Yes, No, whatever and it's done. All from email. I don't know any other email programs that do that out of the box. You'll need about 5 different applications within Microsoft to do that for Outlook.
Anyway, Notes is far more than just email.
Interesting... I agree with their Web site, visual separators are good for organizing email, chatting in the mail client is great...
I guess these guys downloaded Office 2003 Beta 2 and recoded it?
This stuff has been in Outlook 2003 for almost a year now.
I must have missed a couple things so far (site is really slow) but I was sort of expecting features that were more like a product called "Six Degrees" that actually reindexes your email to find related things by attachement, conversation, and other sorts to help find buried treasures.
I think I'll go do some "research" now...
TTFN
Unbelievable. So many years studying that and still haven't got a clue on how to display threads, which mutt does perfectly (and some other MUA too).
No not spam filtering (we have a good enough filter as it is), but more "intelligent filtering" based on the project's I'm working on.
Yes, POPFile does this, but I'm on Exchange/Outlook combination and that won't work. Yes, I know POPFile will be able to do it soon (IMAP support due Q1 2004) but I'm unsure as whether I want to risk installing it and finding that it goes horribly wrong (at least if it was built into Outlook, IT support can't bitch at me for using an unsupported tool).
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Idiots... IBM did not create Lotus Notes. You cannot infer IBM's UI or CUE experience from that client. You can however, look at other products from IBM and might infer that they are less than perfect, judge for yourself. However, IBM had darned little (nothing?) to do with the design of R5, and probably only marginally influenced R6. In the words of the commedian ",It was on fire when I lay down on it.".
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
Internet Mail 2000
Solves the problem of blowing up your friend's mailbox with huge attachments.
any system can be made to look bad by the administrators really. I don't know about syncing to pocket PC but there is something hidden away on the IBM alphaworks site that allows you to sync to Palm OS. it is a Java application called Manplato it is free as in beer, and the source is available but not Free as in speech. There is an open API so you can write your own custom conduits, which is pretty cool. Sad thing is it looks like IBM has abandoned it for now. Alan.
I thought the previous post already covered a "better" e-mail client! LOL! -buf
Well, I looked at that feature and i didn't find it a particularly obvious visual metaphor, MS Outlook's 'nesting' ability seems more immediately useful to me - though I use Apple's Mail most of the time.
But, really, the thrust of this article is that IBM have reinvented email, yet the truth is that they're CONSIDERING adding some new MINOR features to an email CLIENT. If IBM has any corporate self confidence they should just release these features in a new version of Notes and be done with it - why trail them in this way? Why would a corporate Outlook user care about what a coming version of the Notes client MIGHT be like? Or has IBM put up the white flag to MS once and for all?
That was classic intercourse!
I use Lotus Notes V5 at work, and Outlook 2002 to connect to my old university mailbox (graduated, but still have a lifetime MS exchange mailbox :-) )
Basically, all the ideas are already properly implemented in Outlook 2003.
Threaded discussions
Search folders
you name it...
Btw Notes is one of the most clunky programs ever. I dont care about an open API just allow me to read my mail properly!
For Outlook users, the best current add-on IMHO is Nelson Email Organizer.
It treats the Outlook PST file as a database and all your email is lumped into
one box. After that, it allows you to set folders and other filter
criteria based to sort your mail. The same email message can appear in multiple
places based on filter criteria. But only one copy of the message is
actually saved. You can filter based on attachment type, or relative dates
(last week, last Monday) etc.
I have no association with NEO, just a happy user.
Anyone else notice that it looks like the prototype client might be based on eclipse. Perhaps the Rich Client portion. Great to see that they might be eating their own dog food.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Zoe is an interesting take on email, by doing "for email... what Google did for the web". It acts as email server/client/search engine all in one.
I think it still needs some work, but it looks promising.
I know people here will find it hard to believe, but Outlook 2003 has most of the IBM's concepts already incorporated.
There is an Open Source mail template that you can use instead of the mail template you get out of the box. (incidentally have you tried iNotes web access, that is a very good interface even if it is IE only) go look at OpenNTF for the OpenNTF mail template and also whilst you are there check out BlogSphere which is used by a whole community of Domino Bloggers.
Alan.
> The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in
> IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying
> email.
And they've almost reinvented Gnus.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I must disagree. The problem I have with e-mail is that people don't take the time to read it. Too often I get a non-sensical response because the recipient just glanced at it. This could be due to the volum of e-mail people recieve, but it compounds the problem if I have to send another e-mail and they have to send another response (hopefully after reading it more carefully.)
Of course, it might be that I just can't write worth a damn.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
> The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email.
And the Collaborative Linus User Experience (CLUE) team could have done it in a 6 weeks!
SELECT * FROM IBM WHERE heads NOT IN (a*s)
I dont like the way that threads appear to be addressed in this client; nested trees that drop down are intuitive, contextually and chronologically this looks counterintuitive at first glance, with messages in a thread appearing above AND below the root of the thread.
Once again, Mozilla does it better.
They spent ten years studying email; they would have done much better releasing this client and moulding it in line with the feedback that they get from tens of thousands of users. I think this is partly why Mozilla is such a pleasure to use; its built on the experience of many people folded into the development cycle over lots of iterations. When you have an insular group looking at a problem from only their own viewpoint, you get suboptimal results, and you end up with cumbersome features like the thread handling in this preview.
Ideally, they should be building this out of Mozilla in any case, for all the advantages this will bring to IBM and everyone everywhere.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
they sound like a great customer to me, I would love to talk to them.
So I'm sure I'll be modded away for discussing a Microsoft Solution, but here goes...
/ communicate.mspx), MS is listing chat and calendar too. They also do new views of mail by day, by thread, etc.
IBM Research appears to have come up with much the same stuff Microsoft Research has.
IBM lists threads, inbox sorting, and collections as many of the improvements. They also note integration of chat and calendar features.
Taking a look at MS's feature list (http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/prodinfo
Outlook 2003 is a different beast than the previous ones.
some valid points some invalid points, and a complete lack of an appreciation that Notes is not just an email system. Developers and users of custom applications love it. People who used 4.6 for just email were less enthusiastic. Moving back into this century Developers still love it and the UI has moved on a bit. Can people please critisise the current versions? this is like flaming Linux 2.0 for inadequate SMP support.
Gore said he invented it, in an interview with CBB. He only poured money into it years after it was invented.
In a top-top-secret bunker 1 mile below Cupertino Al is already hard at work coding Safari 2.0
"Mr. Gore did not state the he alone 'invented' the Internet."
By his use of the words "I took the iniative", he took credit for being the first of the 'Net's creators. This is false: it was around before he got involved.
"Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to validate your statement. Bet you don't."
I've seen his actual quote, have you?
He used the word "create" which means "invent" in this context.
"arguments that the whole phenomenon of people thinking Al Gore was an idiot was a creation of right-wing sensationalist (aka mainstream) media."
Gore's claim of inventing the Internet was made by Gore himself, during an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. If Franken thinks that Wolf Blitzer is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, well...
A hint: To find out the truth of these matters, go to primary news sources. Do not rely on satirists as sources of news.
The Snopes link contains mostly material about how Gore helped the internet long after its creation. However, buried in all of the irrelevant fluff in the Snopes page is a grudging admission that Gore did claim to invent it, and that he was incorrect to do so.
"Where you will find well-researched (@Harvard) arguments that the whole phenomenon of people thinking "
If Franken was really well-researched, he would have skipped Harvard and checked CNN, which has a transcript of the interview where Gore said that he invented the Internet.
Very extremely important is developing of new e-mail UI.. Especially when spending a decade of work on the research. We can see how their stoopid r&d sponges want to whitewash resources they spent on nothing.
..just to proove ONLY three self-evident (and yet solved as-much-as-possible by any email client, even ms-dos ones...) problems:
;)
Just take a look - they needede to do:
field studies,
statistical analyses of the structure of people's email,
collections of email histories,
traditional usability tests,
focus groups,
design explorations,
stories and visionary design pieces,
experimental tools that subjects could run using their own mail,
and directed functional prototypes that people can use for real work with their own mail.
1.Pressure to Respond Quickly
2.Losing Track of Email
3.Overwhelming Volumes of Mail
..i wish i could do so much nothing and earn as muich as they do....
*sigh*
Look in the news today. Al Gore has just invented the Howard Dean Campaign.
For the facts, to go CNN not Snopes.
Click here
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Yes, it is CNN, and Gore's own words. This is not a creation of Rush Limbaugh, Scaife, Tom DeLay, or Barry Goldwater.
What you mean pour government research grants into it whilst everyone else on Capitol Hill thinks he'd mad?
Increasing funding for something long after it is created has nothing to do with creation.
Here is what he said: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
You can't get around his actual words. You seem to claim that he instead said: ""During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative getting funding to expand the Internet."
Sorry, his real words are a lie.
Ok, you guys are judging a nearly 20 year old UI. The basic UI for Notes is circa '85, and Notes 3 is early '90s. Yes, I know 5/6 updated it quite a bit, but not a lot. Anyway you look at it, it is acient.
IRIS was responsible (Ray Ozzie) for the early versions and Lotus funded IRIS. This was NOT IBM. Notes was far ahead of it's time, but Ray Ozzie has long since moved on and Lotus/IBM have milked Notes like the cash cow it is. Like Lotus Improv, Notes was too far ahead of its time and was not appropriately updated.
I am NOT a huge Notes fan, but you have to respect the innovation that it brought. (First commercial application with public key encryption!) It was far ahead in replication capability, encryption and server technology. It is easy to bash now, but Ray Ozzie and IRIS Associates were world class innovators! (As was Lotus with 1-2-3 and Improv.)
That is all...
I heartily agree. My favorite saying has become "A crisis on your part is not necessarily a crisis on my part". I think that the easier it is to access someone there are people who will immediately contact them for an answer instead of taking a few minutes to figure it out themselves. Usually they have figured it out by the time you reply. Wait a bit before sending out an email/page/etc, this is an especially good idea if you are upset. ;)
This is not to say it is ok to ignore one's email. A check once or twice a day, at least, is expected and if you can't work on it soon a quick reply saying so is courteous.
If you are the paranoid type and your group uses Outlook (not sure if all email systems support this) turn on receipts so you know they read it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I just want a mysql backend for Outlook express.
OE has one of the best user interface in my opinion.
Despite all the viruses (I've never gotten one) the biggest thing I wish it had was the ability to do more complex searches (SQL queries) Built in public/private key would be good as pgp/gpg are kind of a joke unless everyone is using them.
The only other feature I can think of is the ability to create views within folders. So maybe I have a Folder called orders and I have a view that is just a saved query and it quickly pulls all orders from any specific vendor, etc.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I should mention that the only other clients I've tried recently are Opera's and Thunderbird.
Thunderbird would be nice if they could get the mutliple email addresses tied to one account issue fixed up.
I know there are some hacks to do it, but I'd rather have it working through the UI.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Oh sure, it was great in 1985. Not so great TODAY. When I have to use it ALL DAY LONG here at work.
I may be judging a 20 year-old UI, but it's a 20 year-old UI which happens to be staring me in the face RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE, taunting me with its stupid email alerts that aren't, and attach buttons that don't. It IS easy to bash Notes now, because it sucks, and I'm forced to use it all day long in the course of my job.
Don't try to change the subject. Notes sucks, and that is all.
They have spent a decade on the subject and Notes is their best offering? I generally don't have a problem with email QOS at all, unless I am using Notes at work. Now I just use Note's POP server with Evolution (don't tell anyone, corporate requires everyone to use the Notes client.), which works a lot better than trying to run the client. It doesn't have linux support, barely works in wine, and iNotes blows just as bad and has browser support issues. Outside of work I use Communigate Pro server with it's built in webmail client. Never have problems with that.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Actually, most of the problems cited in the article are Outlook specific. Most are caused by lack of threads. This really has nothing to do with "computer literacy" and being familiar with a nasty tool like Outlook will acutally harm the user by teaching them stupid workaround tricks that no sane client would have. IBM has made a nice client that does this and offers much else, outlook is doomed.
The lack of threads in outlook is a glaring shortcoming. All outlook does is sort by to, from and date. Because most people have many projects going at once, all involving many overlapping groups of people, it is very difficult to organize your mail without threads. You end up making your own threads by hand! Having things automatically thread your messages saves lots of time, because you can respond to the most important and interesting threads first, unless someone with a brain dead client like Outloook mails you. Almost every other mail client has threads and requires no effort on the part of the user. Their work simply gets easier to manage.
IBM has also put in a gagle of awsome visulizations to further enhance the threading. I particularly like the blue lines, and think that will be a great way to determine an individual message's place in the thread. Hopefully, they have done like Mozilla, Balsa and other clients and used standard mailbox formats so that normal text searching tools like grep can be used for searches. Prety GUI faces can be put onto powerful cli tools.
I imagine IBM merging this with their good Notes system, calanders and all that. Hey, they might even provide KDE with reasonable competition.
Outlook, that misserable, insecure, featurless nightmare of vendor lockin should die a quick and painful death.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think this would make my life a lot more productive and less stressful.
IBM, where's the download link? I want to actually try it!
I've gotten into the habit of pasting the content of emails that I think I will need into related topic pages in my Wiki - which is also available to other members of my team.
The search facility is alot faster (given my near gigabyte PST files, and unlike outlook, not limited to one top level folder). I can also modify the content and provide quick links to other related information on the fly.
Once I get my wiki to recognize email headers in the text, then I'll be halfway home (now to just convince our IT dept that we should scrap our echange servers and run [insert anything else here] on the server side - preferably something configured to do POP or IMAP which I could leverage from within the wiki).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Yeah, and if you have a reasonable amount of time to do your job and your work has been reasonably prioritized, this is great. Threads segregate work by task and enable placekeeping. You can attend to the more pressing tasks and get to the less pressing ones when you have a minute.
Outlook lacks this simple tool and allmost all of the problems they described are a direct result of that lack. You can and do miss important messages when they are all scattered by date, subject or author. It is very difficult to compare letters about the same subject when all your mail is disorganized, because the subject is the default thread and people are forced to keep it the same. There's no hint of what the message contains. Even in a structured organization where document have long been numbered and systemitized, subjects fail as threads. You do indeed have to read every message when you work this way. If you are really with it, you will start to make mail directories so you don't have to go sorting throught the whole pile each time you look at your mail, though you still have to go picking through the fake directories. It's a painful mess and simple threads helps a great deal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yessir, we should all be going to the liberal conspiracy theorists for the *AWFUL TRUTH* instead of, for instance, watching or reading the transcript of the interview where Al Gore claims he created the internet-- because we all know, thanks to Franken, that the transcript was faked and the televised interview the fabrication of hundreds of republican cg artists, voiceprint analysts, and other right-wing sensationalists! These right-wing conspiracies are all over the place these days! I'm sure glad I get my information from Franken and the One True Party!
The Notes client has its issues, but so does every major program. The usual complaint is that it does not act like all other MS apps. I am surprised Slashdotters worry about that. Remember that Lotus Notes was released before MS released Windows3. It was MSWindows that changed all the key bindings from the standards used by Lotus and Wordstar. The only widespread program that did not use those keybindings was WordPerfect, and everybody required cheatsheets to use that it. MS pulled its usual "let's change everything so we can control it." Now it is considered bad that any software has survived from the pre-Windows era when dinosuars roamed.
I would guess that none of the "Notes sucks" comments come from programmers. I figured a discussion about mail clients would pull more from the techies than the comments from plain users that we are seeing. Lotus Notes mail is a programmer's dream. Every aspect of the application interface is built on open source, meaning you can read it and change it. The only closed source code is the code for the thin client, which handles security and encryption.
Development can be through interface settings and several languages: Formula, Java, JavaScript, and LotusScript. Most of the GUI can be programmed using JavaScript, for those who cannot learn advanced languages like the manager-targeted Formula Language.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
You do know, don't you, that Ted Turner of CNN is a conservative Republican?
this is /. after all - checking your facts before posting would be uncharacteristic.
working in multiple timezones is a PITA. Lots of applications assume one timezone, Notes has a native datatype for datetimes which is the best I have come across. Timezones can be confusing, but that just reflects real life.
Geez ... this "new" interface reminds me of IBM's old PROFS interface ... especially the integrated calendar. Maybe PROFS meets Lotus Symphony ... =:-|
...
... why must the tools have a linear interface? Why must interruptions be immediate? Why couldn't there be a (user-defined) threshold before new message notification interrupts your day?
This isn't so much reinventing as cluttering up the UI with a calendar box, chat area and message list. At some point with this interface we'd all need 42-inch LCD screens just to read email. Don't even THINK about scaling this for a handheld
A few good thoughts about authors and groups and graphical threads, but these are just UI tweaks.
What about some powerful archiving features? Tools for automation/scripting of unstructured workflow? Anything for sender integrity (or assurance)? Why must the calendar and messages be separate? Personal interactions are non linear
-- twenty-plus years on email and still waiting for a great client
Notes is fun to program, you can very quickly and easily built a fully functional application that works both in the notes client and web browsers.
The message map feature looks very interesting to me.
l
http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/messagemap.htm
I use Mozilla and imap, mainly because it works on all the different platforms that I use and I can get my email where ever I am.
I like the idea of being able to see a calender looking map of all messages too and from a person or group of people over the last year.
I get a lot of email from different customers, vendors and people back at our main corp. office relating to different IT type projects. I try to file it in folders based on project and customer/vendor but and about once a month it seems that I am franticaly searching for for a re:re:re:re:re from someone that has some little fact that I need.
("I think I got that one in the middle of last month just after we got the new tape drive, let me see if I can find it, was that before or after Thanksgiving, did I file it by vendor?")
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
Is there no search functionality?? :(
I didn't see any in the screenshots
Where is that email about X? I think Y sent it around Z days ago....but I'm not sure, so I can't look at any of those filter by thread (X), sender (Y), nor time (Z)..... where is that search field?
Simpy
Nope, sorry. When the system generates URLs all by itself, it uses the long internal identifiers because they are the only thing available that is guaranteed to be unique, but... Any coympetent Notes developer can design applications to automatically create friendly aliases and use them instead of the system's URLs. All that is required is a short unique key for the document, either entered by the user or created by the system. That capability has been available since the very first web-aware versions of Lotus Domino in 1996. It's not often used simply because most developers don't think it's all that important. -rhs
Not to mention that most email clients won't allow you to set up which HTML tags you allow/parse.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Seriously, here's the big problem with Notes. It wasn't designed -- it just grew. It appeared back in 1973 as a simple public message system. It's gone through umteen transitions and been split into two related programs (the Notes client and the Domino server). It has thirty years of legacy features to support, and a huge bureaucratic company maintaining it. They've been struggling to make it usable ever since they decided to make it a shrink-wrap product (used to be you could only buy Notes as part of big hyper-expensive support bundle), but it's a big task. If usability were the top priority, they would probably junk the client and start from scratch. But features are what sell a product, so that's where they put the effort.
Anyway, you're right, and you're wrong. You're right that Notes is a nightmare. You wrong to think this shows any special ineptitude on the part of IBM. Do you see any mail or messaging client that isn't feature-bloated and painful to use? Outlook, Pegasus, Eudora, Mulberry -- they all ignore usability in favor of Cool Features. The only difference with Notes is that it's had a lot more time to bloat up.
The notable exception is Netscape/Mozilla/Firebird. Which has issues, but is at least reasonably simple to use. I credit it to the fact that it's a commercial failure, so there's no pressure to keep shoving in features.
"but "create" in this context clearly refers to legislative/administrative tasks"
But he is clearly wrong, as the Internet was created by others before he got to Congress. The second sentence you added is not relevant; it is just him going on about other things he said he did (and probably did do).
Creating the Internet was not one of Gore's legislative/administrative accomplishments.
This is like the current Congress taking credit for creating Medicare just because they passed that bill a few days ago.
coz I am a developer. Who cares if developers love Linux? answer - the developers.
And you can't deny the usability of having an active HTML link embedded in an email.
Almost all modern mail clients automatically recognize HTML links, highlight them with blue/colored text, and make them clickable. You don't need HTML mail to do this.
A neat Evolution trick which threads together incoming and sent mail is to create a VFolder sourced from both Inbox and Sent, and thread this display. You can create several such VFolders, filtering on subject or sender/recipient. Then, at a glance, you can follow a message thread in which you were an active participant (ala newsgroup readers). The one feature I wish VFolders would implement: an option to include the entire thread of any message matched by the search options: i.e. thread-based searching in addition to message-based searching (e.g. "Any thread with a subject including 'Meeting').
...that is the question... ...OSX, OtherNix too...
IBM did a lot of the development for Eclipse, most of the underpinnings of Websphere studio are Eclipse. IBM then "donated" the code, by founding the Eclipse organisation and releasing the code under the Common Public License (IBM's Free license). Eclipse will be the basis of the new Rich client which is a part of the IBM Workplace strategy. Future versions of Notes may well be more like Eclipse and future rich clients built on Eclipse may have more features from Notes in them. FYI the code name for the Eclipse rich client is Moscow.
Having reviewed the remail page, I would like to try out the client for real. Any available source? I agree with other comments about Lotus Notes. Unfortunately I have to grudgingly agree that even Outlook is better :-(
Enron is reinventing corporate responsibility.
I am also a happy NEO customer. I found, reading the article, that many of the improvements they recommend are features I enjoy on a daily basis.
Can your IM do this?
OK you stupid little worthless piece of shit, I will say this just once: Outlook supports threading by conversation since Office 2000 was released four years ago. And it supports sorting by just about any field. I wonder if you've actually ever used Outlook (or for that matter any Microsoft software) - do you just 'blither' whatever comes to mind as long as it's negative? I thought so. But more importantly, do you feel stupid yet? The entire premise of your troll post, invalidated. Gawd that must hurt.
I get one or two of these insulting little nasties per post, but this one is really excellent.
Yes, I had to use Outlook for two years. The last version of it I suffered under was OfficeXP. Like much esle violently promoted by Microsoft, threading did not work. In fact, Outlook's silly database did not work either. At a certian size it simply broke, and workarounds were required if you cared to keep a mail archive. Of course, it was difficult to browse those archives, but tha't just Microsoft quality for you.
How much do you get paid to write this stuff? It's not enough but you are not worth half of it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
and a name: Paul Graham
ColourlessGreenIdeas has already mentioned PopFile;
another is SpamBayes (mentioned in another thread).
Windoze or Linux--both of them. No excuses here.
gewg_
That the company responsible for arguably the WORST email/groupware client in computing history, is trying to tell us how to do it better.
I work AT IBM - the one place you'd think Notes would not suck - and it is still a piece of horse puckey.
Here's the only IBM I'm interested in...
"IBM and the Holocaust"
by Edwin Black
"War Against the Weak" is an excellent book as well, and briefly touches on IBM.
-- Spudnuts
Silly people, Lotus Notes is not the only product IBM makes....
I'm no fan of Lotus Notes, but let's face it, IBM got screwed by having to maintain legacy support.
On the other hand, IBM Research has some other tremendously usable products such as NotesBuddy. NotesBuddy is an excellent light-weight e-mail/messaging client that interfaces to POP3, Lotus Notes, and Sametime. A number of the features their new prototype has are part of or very similar to NotesBuddy.
Don't judge the prototype by the legacy of Lotus Notes. Judge it by its features and interface, which IMO look very useful and usable. Message threading is one of the most useful features coming into e-mail clients right now, and IBM Research was augmented it well with the thread map and message map features. The chat integration is solid for quick replies to small inquiries or other short tasks. The calendar on the same pane is something I would pay to have now and will definitely improve productivity.
All they need to add is really intelligent spam and PHB filtering.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32898.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The replies contained within this story are stunning. Ranging from arguments over the relative merits of Lotus Notes to how much Microsoft Exchange/Outlook sucks, I found it difficult to find a single reply with any discussion of the referenced link.
Interesting.
I found the document to be a very good read. The concepts, while not ground breaking, are well though out and I think provide an interesting look into the possible future of email/groupware systems.
What I find to be most interesting is the amount of thought put into how users would make use of the product, versus what new features might dazzle the executives. True, there are some new features, but they seem to be very related to obvious user input.
For anyone who has used Lotus, the document itself shows (possible) screenshots of a groupware client more closely linked to Outlook or Ximian's Evolution than Lotus Notes.
RTFA before you reply!
So many people these days treat e-mails like a phone call rather than a letter. I've had mails from people who get upset that I didn't reply immediately (and then resend the mail 3 times with more exclamatin marks added each time); I've had mail at 11pm on a Sunday night expecting me to stand in for someone at 6am next day (without any prior notice of course - I ignored that one, out of work hours on both counts). One of my co-workers has even got into the habit of sending me mails which say nothing but "urgent problem!" expecting me to then call/talk/im him and solve his problem online - rather than stating the damn problem in the mail so that I could at least have a think about it first.
Its getting so bad that I'm now experiencing an email backlash: I just ignore most email for a few hours after receiving it (unless I'm expecting something important) in the hope of educating people who mail me that I won't necessarily read it immediately.
Besides, IIRC, Notes is derivative of some work done at DEC (transplanted to a new platform).
By contrast, the original Improv (as implemented on NeXT by Pito Salas, et. al.), not the followon Windows version) was remarkably innovative and elegant in its very first release. Improv is almost the only genuinely innovative project born at Lotus after the original 1-2-3.
Please don't use Notes and Improv in the same sentence.
If you get any spam, don't use Notes.
who uses an API to build Notes apps? Most people use lotusscript (VB compatible syntax), Java, Javascript, or the built-in @macro language.
Just FWIW, there is an app that ships with current versions of Notes (I believe it started with Notes 6) that actually *does* do some of the work for you in terms of sorting e-mail. It's called Swiftfile.
i on=viewarticle&ContentID=3546 -- sorry, free registration required), we could train ourselves to make those more effective, too -- use certain keywords in subject lines, such as "information only" or "action required" -- if you got an e-mail that was sent directly to you, not cc'd and had an action required subject line, it would go directly in the inbox, but if was cc'd to you, it would go into a subfolder, or have a different color highlighting or something like that... Then you could deal with it more effectively when you were ready to do so.
When you open a message, it has a few suggested folders that it thinks the message might belong in, based on the sender, subject, and text of the message. It actually works fairly well from my personal use.
Now, it seems like it might be possible to do this sorting before things go into the inbox, especially now that you can see unread messages in folders.
Additionally, bear in mind that Notes is made to be collaborative -- if people would use it "correctly." In a perfect world, about 1/2 of the things that currently get e-mailed would live in discussion databases, quickplaces, team workspaces, etc, rather than being e-mailed. That big attachment that you need to have everyone comment on? No need to mail it, if you're using a discussion db or quickplace for your team. Post it there, and *maybe* send a link around, unless team members are using a subscription on their Notes client welcome page, which would tell them about it. For example.
But the problem is that many folks don't "get it" and understand what's possible with Notes, and so they don't use the features that are available to them.
Now, one of the things that I feel obliged to point out, not just in response to this part of the thread, but to folks who complain about e-mail in general, is that part of that is not using the client capabilities to their fullest potential. Both Notes and Outlook (and other clients) have rules and folders. Use rules to file messages with certain topics, cc'd rather than sent directly to you, or from certain users so that you can deal with them more effectively and on your own time.
As I wrote in a recent editorial (http://e-promag.com/eparchive//index.cfm?fuseact
Anyway, this was just a long-winded way of saying that there are some things (both pieces of technology and ways of using the existing technology) available that can make some of the e-mail burden less onerous.
...that Slashdotters would be fans of the single most widely used open source enterprise messaging system.
For details, check out www.openntf.org
Eventually the email client could determine how to filter or sort an entire thread based on your previous actions. Say for example you always archive "broadcast" emails that are sent by a given sender, the visualization of this thread would look "bushy" (to use the authors notation) and combined with the sender it would provide a clear trigger for the archive operation, leaving direct emails from the same person untouched by the operation.
But I insist, the beauty of this approach is the possibility of people realizing the multitude of repetitive patterns existing within their emails and taking advantage of this knowledge.
j1
Are most definitely available in the Notes mail template.
Again, FWIW.
They're also available in the Welcome page -- if you're in 6.5 and using the Workplace-style Welcome page, there's a link that says "open threads" that shows you the thread for that message.
Lotus Notes mail is a programmer's dream.
That's not what our resident email programming expert said when he was trying to write an application to convert Lotus' email format to a standard format.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Domino has been able to do POP3 for years. Just enable that task on the server.
I think IBM's recommended symbols are reversed for Thread Arcs. They plan to use solid dots for received mail and dots with holes in them for sent mails.
This is the reverse of every mail client I have seen. Received mail has no symbol, so would be the "hole". Sent mails usually have an envelope icon, making them the "filled".
I use Lotus Notes as my primary email client, although I was using Mozilla for months earlier this year, and have used other clients in the past. All of them use a "filled" envelope symbol to represent sent mail. All of them use no icon to represent received mail.
Has anybody seen a client that would suggest reversing these symbols may be a good thing? Will it confuse most users to have the visual clues reversed? Will IBM fix it before the product goes gold?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Hold the Control key when you switch views (eg from inbox to discussion threads).
If the same document selected in the inbox exists in the other view, it will be selected; otherwise Notes will beep.
Linux kernel hacking must be done in C. I believe actually having a submitted patch accepted would confer the title of "real programmer". Or does this programmer just change the options and recompile?
If programmer knows C, then writing the conversion in LotusScript, Java, or C should be relatively easy for them. The C API takes some work, because it is extremely low level, but if they can hack the kernel, they should be able to figure it out. Either LotusScript or Java allow higher level access to the Notes datastore, making the quantity of code much lower, and so a solution would be easier and quicker. This task does not require more access than those languages allow, so using C would be overkill.
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I agree that Mbox and Maildir could be called standards since most email travels through Unix-like systems. I believe Mbox is the most used format in the world. Mozilla mail is in Mbox format, so it is even being used by some Windows users.
I forget about those "standards" since few business applications use them. I have never needed direct access to the mail storage files. That is why we have APIs.
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Email is just another application for Notes. It uses its standard datastore for everything.
Most file formats that have their own APIs were designed to provide performance boosts over using a plain text format. Notes is competing against the older relational databases, which were designed for pure speed at the expense of flexibility. I do not remember any modern relational databases that used text for their datastore. Now computers have enough power that text formats are making a comeback, so we can even add extra information to the files to add flexibility. This modern text format for information is called XML.
Notes has a tool (DXLExporter) which will dump an entire Notes database into XML. (Some of the security items are lost, but that is not relevant for this discussion.) It would be possible to use a text-only processing tool to do the conversion from the XML.
I assume you would want the conversion to be incremental so it could be run multiple times and only process new documents. That might be difficult if the entire database was converted. It would be better to tell DXLExporter only to export new messages. Then the text conversion would be easy.
I could easily write an incremental conversion from Notes to Mbox that appends any unprocessed Notes mail documents to an Mbox file. LotusScript could do it in less than 200 lines of code.
I do not know the file format for messages in the Maildir format. I think it is similar to Mbox. The file naming is not difficult in any language. Once I had the file format, writing an incremental conversion would be easy. Or I could cheat and run mb2md.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Thank heavens I don't have to use it anymore!
On reading the article, the aspect that really caught my eye was the thread visualization. How I've longed for something like what's shown in the screenshots (and in the linked paper). The other two visualizations are interesting, but I'm ambivalent as to their utility. However, a mechanism for viewing only the most recent mail in a thread with a built in visualization to let me navigate to previous mails in the thread - that sounds really rather cool and useful.
Re: comments on IBM and the UI's they "own" (e.g. Lotus Notes). Keep in mind that IBM is rather a huge organization. Even if they don't necessarily have the best UIs in existence, their research departments do some novel and exciting work (viz IBM Alphaworks) in many areas.
It is not the Lotus Notes company/division/brand that is trying to shoot itself in the foot. IBM is a hardware company and considers Sun to be the competition. We were lucky that IBM left Lotus to improve the product for 5 years. Then IBM realized that Lotus has many incredible applications that could be used in the fight against Sun, so it is chopshopping the brand to use the applications for its attack on Sun.
The Notes client could have been released free for home use. More people would use it, and more businesses would use Notes because it is familiar. Instead, they changed R5 so it could not be started without an ID file, and it is impossible to create an ID file with just the client software. Imagine if the client setup asked if you were part of an organization, and if you answered negatively, it created an ID file and completed the setup.
The Remail interface should be released as a Notes application. The Notes datastore was created for groupware applications, and Remail is attempting to put groupware functionality into the email application. I would like the ability to handle graphics in Notes to be improved so that the demo could be written natively.
Instead IBM will release it as a Java app to attack Sun's control of Java, yet it will probably not affect Sun in the slightest. But,
- Remail will not help market Notes.
- Remail will not integrate into corporate applications like Notes mail.
- Remail will not be as customizable as Notes mail.
- Remail will probably have a tiny audience, mostly MS and Mozilla developers looking for technology to steal.
The only reason IBM will even release Remail is as part of the attack on Sun. From any marketing standpoint, it will be a failed product. The technology deserves a better home.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
User interface is not a compatibility issue
...
User interface is the ONLY compatibility issue.
No one cares that the datastore is different. (Notes changes it with every major release.) No one cares that the search algorithm is different. (Notes changed providers for R5.) No one cares that the indexing was rewritten.
Everybody cares that F9 refreshes the document or view. Everybody cares that CTRL+M opens a new memo, and CTRL+S saves the document, and CTRL+F opens a Find dialog. Everybody cares that F4 moves to the next document. They learned the keys to do what they need, and they would get very upset if those keys stopped working.
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As everybody has noted, Lotus used the original standard key bindings. Microsoft created their own standard key bindings around 1990. Now people complain that Notes and any other program from pre-1990 is non-standard.
I like [to build] applications that allow complete customization, but key bindings should rarely be changed. Customizable key bindings may be very useful in games, but they are typically single-user. It could be very bad for productivity software, and worse for applications like Notes where multiple users are expected to use the same computer.
Notes could have a Preference that allows every CTRL+key to be remapped. Add buttons to set all to "classic" and "microsoft-like". Also allow the customizations to be saved to a file and linked to the ID, and even uploaded to the server in case you log in from a different computer. (They could be included in the ID file, but that is used for security and Lotus dislikes messing with it.)
The problem is that people get comfortable with their mappings, and many of the standards conflict badly.
MSOffice and Notes use F9 for refresh.
- MSExplorer uses F5 for refresh.
- Notes uses F5 to lock the ID (like signing off). It requires you to enter your password again.
- MSWindows4/2K/XP use CTRL+ALT+DEL for signing off.
- MSWindows3.1/95/98 use CTRL+ALT+DEL for choosing programs to close.
- Notes uses CTRL+W to close windows, but it also allows
- Alt+F4 closes windows in Notes, and most other Windows programs.
CTRL+S is save. MS also sometimes uses F2. (I think they tried to force the change, but everybody insisted on the older method.)
"Find" is even more fun:
- Notes, most older programs, and MSOffice use CTRL+F for Find.
- But MS sometimes uses F3. (Again, everybody insisted on the older method being available.)
- Notes allows quick search in Views just by typing. No command key is necessary, but CTRL+F opens the same dialog box.
- vi and Mozilla use / for quick search without opening a dialog box. I like the lack of a screen-blocking dialog box. I dislike have to remember the keys to navigate to the next instance, or the previous instance, or the first or last instance. (Do the last 2 even exist in Mozilla?)
I bet you still use the old CTRL+ X, C, V for Cut, Copy and Paste. MS wants you to use CTRL+DEL for Cut and CTRL+INS for Paste. (I forget if MS even allowed for Copy.)
At least now I can know that THIS application can be used THIS way. If we allow the keys to be remapped, I would have to use the menus because I would be afraid that any key could destroy my current work.
Many Notes key mappings do not have standard equivalents. CTRL+N is often "New"; in Notes it is "New Database". CTRL+M is "New Memo". Should CTRL+N be context-sensitive? Would that be less or more confusing?
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I wish the Notes innovation for double-right-clicking closing the current window would be used by other programs. Specifically, I want Mozilla to implement this. Then I would be able to use the tabbed interface (very similar to Notes) without accidentally closing the entire window where I just opened 10 tabs that I want to read. [Yeah, I know. If I want it enough I could add it myself, but my C skills are rusty and I have tons of other tasks with higher priorities.]
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Lotus (actually Iris) once wanted to hire me to do the mail template development. They had noticed that I knew more about Notes than anybody they had, and were hoping to benefit. They were a little concerned that I am willing to ignore "features" of Notes when those features make something impossible, but if I was an internal developer, than I could assist in making those features more usable. Then IBM froze hiring while considering the best ways to destroy Lotus, and my plane ticket for Boston that was supposedly already in the mail never arrived.
I have rewritten pieces of the mail template for every version since R4. Usually to add functionality, but occasionally to fix bugs. Lotus keeps changing it, but not all the changes are improvements.
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Since IBM took control, they are dedicated to clean room interpretations of everything. I doubt they actually borrowed code from OpenNTF, even though OpenNTF wants Notes to improve, and would willingly sign any waivers.
I recently completely rewrote the user interface for one of their common applications. I had to send a list of all the improvements so they could be reimplemented because they refused to even look at my code.
They are also doing this with internal applications. I am responsible for several applications that run at IBM, and needed to upgrade one of them. I had to write a list of all the changes and how to implement them. I included the code, but they had to manually retype it. Many bugs resulted that I had to troubleshoot, even though my template had been fully tested and did not have any of the bugs.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I missed this option, probably because I rarely install Notes and always create an ID file first. I assume it must happen if you specify your name rather than an ID file, and I have not used that option for many years.
Could you provide some details?
- What version gained this functionality?
- Which options trigger the ID creation?
- Can you set a password?
- Can you encrypt databases locally?
- Why isn't IBM shouting this from the rooftops? (Yes, I know. IBM does not care about Notes.)
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It would still help if it was free for home use. Having annoying 90-day trials will not win home consumers. They can get enough of the communication functionality using Mozilla that they would never jump through hoops for a database program. Most think MSWord is good for record-keeping, although some use MSExcel, and masochists attempt to use MSAccess. Free Lotus Notes for home consumers would eliminate this industry. The next release of Quicken might even include a Notes version if enough people had it.
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Now all we need is to remove the need for servers:
- client-to-client selective replication. (Give me document stubs, then choose which to fully replicate, and it is a P2P file-sharing network.)
- client-to-client instant messaging (without requiring a SameTime server.)
Notes could still conquer the home consumer market (if IBM cared to let it be a success.)
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
The R6 interface is better than R5, which as you correctly state sucked less than 4.6. The current release is 6.5 which sucks even less than that. Bitching about an old version of software X when a new version exists which sucks less is a bit pointless IMHO.
Alan.
which will be cross platform but initially there will be some plugin components that only run on windows.
get the book
Thank you for the information about stand-alone clients.
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I am much like you. I have never used P2P file trading. A friend forced me to try ICQ once; my "trial" lasted less than 20 minutes.
I was looking for methods to market Notes to the home consumer. Unless all standalone IDs use some special IBM certifier and work through IBM (or third-party) servers, domain policies could not exist. The great thing about consumer products is that us corporate types do not need to fix them; they would call IBM for help. No home consumer could afford my rates. That does not stop my family from expecting assistance, but I can usually list the paying projects I need to finish this week, and they will wait patiently.
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As far as overhead, my very selective MSOffice program directory is about 60MB. That does not include Outlook and Access and many of the extras.
My all-clients Lotus program directory is about 100MB. I did not include the data directory because I have tons of large databases. Notes could replace Outlook and Word and Access and most use of Excel.
Hard drive space is cheap; some games install close to 1GB. Notes uses about the same amount of memory as MSWord. I doubt resources will be an issue.
A simple Notes database with a Subject and a RichText field can replace MSWord. The documents can be emailed easiliy, and searched for words, or by creation date, modification date, or other fields. You could have automatic version creation, so previous versions are available. (I use databases like this for my resume and my songs.)
The technology is there. The problem is how to market it to the home consumer, and whether IBM is willing to push it.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
And Opera is also a nicer Browser :)
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.