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Why Email Is Still The Most Adopted Collaboration Tool
An anonymous reader writes "Isaac Garcia, the founder of a Web 2.0 Collaboration Software company,
writes bluntly about why Email is still the preferred and most adopted collaboration solution around.
'So, why are Collaboration Software Vendors (Central Desktop included), keen on vilifying email and so quick to promise a practical alternative to the chaos of email? And, if the vendor's software is so much better than email, than why do users revert back to email as soon as they hit a snag in the system? Why do users refuse to adopt collaboration software?'"
Email is everywhere, it has a low overhead, it's quick and it's simple. Most of all though you don't need to know anything about the tool you are using - it's like talking to someone.
Most of these types of tools I have tried force you to do more than is required to get the job done such as cataloguing each message. Sometimes that type of functionality is useful but most of the time it just gets in the way.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
The Network Effect is at work.
The value of a network is equal to the power of the number of nodes. SMTP Email has many more nodes than any other collaboration option. In order to eclipse email another collaboration technology must have several orders of magnitude more value per node to overcome the network value added of email.
Nice way to perpertuate a myth.
Egroupware and Kolab are full featured and extremely mature, run on open standards and do not force you to change clients in order to collaborate.
But, keep repeating the same nonsense on the hope that it sticks.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
"With the current structure of email, thare's no simple way of discarding the attachment and keeping the mail body."
In Outlook 2003 (Not sure about 2000/XP) - Open mail. Right-click attachment. Select "Remove". Job done.
This involves some user interaction (and education), but it's far easier than forwarding the email body to yourself.
Thunderbird/Seamonkey - right click attachment and delete.
Admittedly, it took a long time and a lot of screaming (and votes) for it to happen, but the Mozilla guys finally got it.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
But it's a pain when distributing documents.
For short emails it works incredibly well, but if I want 10 people to get the latest version of a document, it's just not good enough. For that you just have to use a decent version-control/synchronisation system; the only problem is that they are viewed as too complex to use.
Fortunately, free software like Tortoise(SVN) are making it easier to use for even non-technical people.
http://blog.grcm.net/