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Email Turns 34
34019 writes "The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate. From the article: 'Of course that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to build Gmail. I rely on email, a lot, but it just wasn't working for me. My email was a mess. Important messages were hopelessly buried, and conversations were a jumble; sometimes four different people would all reply to the same message with the same answer because they didn't notice the earlier replies. I couldn't always get to my email because it was stuck on one computer, and web interfaces were unbearably clunky. And I had spam. A lot of it. With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email - to build something that would work for me, not against me.'
...Socrates is to Bette Midler.
Anybody know when the term Snail Mail was first published?
I have a postmarked envelope from the early 90's mentioning Snail Mail on the front.
Anybody else?
Acording to wikipedia, network email existed prior to 1971.
The main contribution that happened in 1971 was the introduction of the "@" symbol and the use of email on ARPANET. But prior to 1971 there was email being sent between computers.
From wikipedia:
"The early history of network e-mail is also murky; the AUTODIN system may have been the first allowing electronic text messages to be transferred between users on different computers in 1966, but it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before."
I don't wish to take away any from what Ray Tomlison acheived in 1971 which was a great contribution to introduce email to ARPA net and make it really convenient.
just like I'm not fond of writing letters IRL I don't like writing E-mail and I only do it when there is no other choice (usually for official stuff or things I want to have a record of). I rather have IM. (or IRC, but that's officially dead...)
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.
I don't see how Mr. Buchheit's comment that he "designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate" negates that Google does things with the intent of making profit. Just because you do something to make a profit, it doesn't mean that you do not have hopes it will accomplish good things.
If I designed a bridge, I would hope it would help the way people transported. This does not mean that I am not doing it because I wanted to make money. It does not mean I am claiming some kind of altruism. If people didn't think gmail was improving their life in some way, there would be no one to advertise to.
Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.
.. maybe be a drg ealer. instead of investing in a company.
.. make their lives more fulfilling and whatever else crap. You need money to do this. The only way to get that money is by having a corpoaration. Then you can found The Google Foundation, or the Bill and Melinda GAtes foundation etc.
.. for one person to be rich it doenst mean another has to be poor.
..it's too hard to explain without going off in a tangent. Learn some real economics etc. instead of the malthus "finite resources" crap taught in colleges and high schools today.
Not really, if all a person want is profit they will choose a life of crime
Now, let's say you have this altruistic motive of helping pople out . helping them to communicate
See, what they taught in school and in economics class is totally false. Money and wealth isn't a finite resource
You can make yourelf rich and at the same time help others get rich as well without causing a negative detriment to them.
People don't understand that this is possible.
I am not going to get into "why" this is true
Anyway, what drives a man who works for, or founded, or owns shares in a a corporation? Sometimes it may be altruism, sometimes it can be ego? What drives a man? Some people want money. Some people want power. Some might want women. Others want respect. And some want to help others.
So unfortunately, I am not going to buy that a corporations sole motives are profit, because nobody has proved it to me. A corporation can acheive altruistic ends.
So, does anyone still have a working email address from 1971? If not, I wonder who has the world's oldest currently working email address?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Maybe he could celebrate by unscrewing Gmail's MIME handling. That would
y pe: text/html; charset=us-ascii
n t-Type: image/jpeg; name="file.jpg"
c
improve the way we communicate. Gmail does not appear to handle recursive
mime, such as a multipart/related inside a multipart/alternative. Yahoo,
Hotmail, Thunderbird, Microsoft all seem to manage it ~ Why can't Gmail?
Example:
From: someone@domain
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="[BOUNDRY]"
This is a multi-part message in MIME format with text and recursed Mime alternative.
--[BOUNDRY]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; name="message.txt";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
This is the text message. Gmail does not even show this.
--[BOUNDRY]
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="[BOUNDRY2]";
--[BOUNDRY2]
Content-T
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
<HTML>This is the HTML message with pictures. <IMG SRC="cid:whatever"></HTML>
--[BOUNDRY2]
Conte
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <whatever>
Content-Disposition: inline;
/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD/4QAWRXhpet
--[BOUNDRY2]
--[BOUNDRY]
Well, not e-mails but there is a list of 100 oldest .com domains.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Why does any message with the same subject get marked as part of the same conversation ? This is not always desired, and can cause a lot of confusion. This behavior should be configurable.
I know the gmail has a "delete-nothing" philosophy, but can we still have a keyboard shortcut to move messages to trash ?
I know google is all about searching
Don't get me wrong. I love gmail. It's right up there with pine and mutt as far as usability is concerned - and thanks to firefox/mozilla, I can use it seamlessly across platforms. I have learn't to live with it's quirks.
But my point is gmail is still lacking in the area of customization. It's like we all share Paul's gmail.conf file. Just because it works for Paul, doesn't mean it works for everyone else.
I remember in 1974 using IBM's TSO and clists to write messages and print them at distant locations at a large mfg. plant with over 6 million sq. feet under roof and 16,000 employees. Sort of email in - telegraph out, but better than nothing when you could not reach someone by phone, did not have the time to cross a 1700 acre site, needed to give precise information, or wanted a record of what was sent.
It was a few years later that true email showed up at that company, CCmail on early Macs and something else (? DSmail ?) on the mainframe terminals.
I like having access to my computer from wherever I am. But now I'm seeing people who know squat about computers who are still capable of running a file server or a game server from their home box. If they can do that (and they can barely figure out how to find a file they've just written and saved) ...
The only things stopping most people from running a home server are:
- They don't see a need to yet
- Their ISP blocks ports
When they DO see a need or a desire, they do it. They get around the port blocking by going to port 8000, or 8080. The first time that they see a coworker who doesn't have to go back home to retrieve a file sitting on their home box will sell them on it.purely out of boredom I went through the top 10 and with a little help from the wayback machine (which doesn't go far enough back!) here's my results.
.com land innit. 6 out of the top 10 have basically vanished and been replaced. hey hoe.
SYMBOLICS.COM - dead, well... it's there but is not much more a place holder
BBN.COM - blimey! it works!
THINK.COM - 1/2 dead. links to the oracle "think" project but the original site would've been Thinking Machines Corp Lisp Boxen... miss you guys!
MCC.COM - dead, 100% dead.
DEC.COM - links to HP - effectively dead REALLY miss you guys!
NORTHROP.COM - dead (merged with grumman)
XEROX.COM - still going strong.
SRI.COM - seems to still be going & the same org
HP.COM - now part of the hp/compaq/dec mega corp
BELLCORE.COM - dead, redirects to telcordia
Well, 20 years is a long old time in
The early bird may catch the first worm but he'll still be hungry by dinner time. or something...
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.