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Microsoft Looks At Integrating Forums and E-mail
prostoalex writes "Scott Hanselman shares a document from Microsoft Research internal Web site on Gina Venolia's latest research in user interface design. Since half of the e-mail conversations require reply and then further replies, the model is not too different from current Web forums. Future Outlook versions might integrate the nested interface for e-mail conversations." Gotta say, that'd be pretty nice to have.
For most old-school netizens, the newsgroups are the best way to get spammed.
Somebody once used Netscape to forward one of my private mails to a newsgroups.
Since then, this address has become useless : too much spam.
Now, if you want to integrate both systems, mail and news, you'd rather think of a non-obvious way to obfuscate email address.
I also guess it'd be a good idea for Google to just enable anyone to EASILY get some posts mentioning his own coordinates removed.
At least, they could detect email address and encrypt these.
Until then, you won't convince me to use the newsgroups anymore.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
For example, in Outlook there are frequent problems when using lots of IMAP folders. To share calendars etc, you need to use POP3. Microsoft, however, can sell you exchange server to replace your IMAP folders and allow you to share calendars.
If Outlook had built in NNTP support, every office would have a local NNTP server doing this. Instead, they'll add a new feature to Outlook that will only be available if you're running it with MS Exchange. Big bucks.
No, it will be shot down because it has already been done (in Mozilla and Apple's Mail.app, for example, not to mention usenet).
I have no problems with MS software. I have problems with MS claiming this is innovation, when it is playing catch-up. (like pop-up supression and tabbed browsing coming in XP SP2)
Usenet is most definitely not dead. There is a big spam problem in many newsgroups but there are also many active NG's with many contributors. It will be a sad day when usenet really does die.
Well for a true Web forum style Outlook to truly work, you would want a centrallized server storing the threads. Relying on client-only (or is standard email best described as peer-to-peer with the ISP just handling delivery) programs would lead to fracture of threads. So with the wonderful XP authentication system, Passport, Messenger and now outlook only being served out of Redmond, not only will MS have a large control of your communication pathways they will be ever so close to offering the dream of the internet-gurus/techno-prophets where are applications are server/portal based and client machines are simple tty boxes with expensive processors/memory plus flash card readers but no harddrives. Hell once the world is truly wireless you will just need you Pocket PC and a good calling plan and Bill will do the rest for you.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
it hasn't. we used to call it "usenet".
Nah, not even close. Usenet is a free-for-all public discussion. Email exchange is an invitation-only private discussion. Big difference.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Mozilla Thunderbird already does this.
KMail already does this.
Evolution already does this.
Opera already does this.
Mutt already does this.
Seriously, this is the kind of thing that is only news to Outlook users who have never seen a decent email program in their lives. MS is way behind the times on this issue, some of these clients have had threading for over 2 years now.
...people will still decide to include the whole thread of original messages as mangled text in the bottom of their email, just in case you deleted all the previous emails and forgot what the conversation was about.
>Oh geez, would you look at this?
>
>> Microsoft invents threaded email
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I dunno, but where I come from, we call that a 'mailing list'.
Actually it is STILL just usenet.
You see, you CAN have PRIVATE news servers with PRIVATE newsgroups using exsisting usenet technology. You just have to not specify any news peers, and require login/passwords.
I did this years ago.
every _exit() is the same, but every clone() is different.
Innovation does not necessarily mean invention. Sometimes innovation is merely making something that already exists work better or more accessible. Gina's UI research has definitely developed somethign innovative in the field of e-mail UI design.
...but will someone please kill all the "web boards" that:
a) Require you to click on each message to view it, inviting a host of contentless posts where everything is in the title.
b) Invite the users to implant 100+k images, signatures and icons for each and every "me too" post they make.
c) Have built-in smileys. Nuff said.
A lot of people complain that Usenet is nothing but spam, but if the average "web board" is the future of online discussion I think I'll go back to pen and paper.
Litigious bastards
basic threading:
message list pane, rmb->'group by'->'conversation'
easy enough... and tons of ability to extend grouping and sorting preferences
of course they are talking about refining the threaded discussion interface to more appropriately apply to email.
Eg. preferences to show/hide how many children of a thread (paging), how to display responses best from multiple parties (group by conversation, sender, date? or conversation, date, sender?)
After all, it only takes a few dozen messages in a single thread to make you realize that a simple nested tree interface isn't the end-all.
but yeah, just about every email app has basic threading -- but there's plenty of room for improvement.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Actually it is STILL just usenet.
You see, you CAN have PRIVATE news servers with PRIVATE newsgroups using exsisting usenet technology. You just have to not specify any news peers, and require login/passwords.
No, really it isn't. This concept is that of a discussion that can evolve from a simple email exchange between a small group, to one that grows and grows as more people are invited in. Unless you can automatically and transparently convert an email thread into a private newsgroup - and then only allow admittance to those who are specifically invited by sending them a message (maybe with some sort of key) - then Usenet doesn't accomodate this at all. Sure, having a "department only" usenet group, or server is a handy thing. But it's ad-hoc discussions between a very small subset of people that you're ignoring. Easilly adding people to a discussion who are not necessarily privvy everything else a group discusses is exactly what email gives you and usenet doesn't.
What Mozilla doesn't have is a way to intergrate your responses into the message tree in your inbox. Sure, you can display stuff threaded, but it doesn't look like a conversation because it leaves out your input. I take it the proposed Outlook implementation would be different.
Microsoft invents Kuro5hin!!!
Witness the consistent interface. Marvel at the dynamic threading. Be wowed by the stimulus to content generation.
Boy howdy, I am sure glad Microsoft is innovating here. I mean right now I could access news and discussions from any computer with a web browser. Now that Microsoft has laid its innovating hand on the problem, I'll only be able to get this from my MS Windows box. Thank heaven for Microsoft because I really enjoy having to set up my email account settings on my friends' computers.
I mean if it weren't for this "thinking out of the box" idea, communication might actually take a step forward. Whew! That was close! No one wants that.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
If MS really wanted to impress me with an upgrade to Outlook, they'd take out the damned HTML mail capabilities. I've seen 3 line emails from people come at me, that were so overbloated with background images, fonts and other crap that is not only unnecessary, but, actually distracting from the message they tried to convey...
I like threaded messages, been working well for awhile, but, do it in plain text like it was meant to be..
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Except that it's the scourge of css programmers everywhere....
Oh..I can view HTML messages. My argument was that there should NOT be HTML messages....not what email was meant for...it provide unnecessary bloat, and clutter to what is essentially a plain text message.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It simply requires people to stop that horribly moronic "top-posting" style of response.
If I want to respond piecemeal to an email, the only sane way to do it is to write my responses in between your paragraphs. As responses accumulate, back and forth, other readers see an easy-to-read flow of conversation. And "other readers" will include myself, reading old mail weeks/months/years after the fact.
Trying to respond point-by-point while keeping all of your text preceeding the other person's text is hopeless. And fucking stupid to boot. English reads down the page, you top-posting mouth-breathing idiots, not "scroll all the way to the bottom, scroll up a bit, read the paragraph downwards, scroll upwards over it, read the response downwards until you get to the previous text, scroll back upwards again, lather, rinse, repeat, until eventually you get to the top." I call for the painful tortuous death of whichever "human interface engineer" thought this would ever be a good idea and made it the default mode of GUI mailers.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)