One of the earliest email client’s I used was a Unix program called Pine. It was suppose to be a better alternative to Elm, another popular Unix mail package. These email clients were text based, as most Unix programs during that time. That was back around 1994. Back then, email was pretty incredible – even though not many people used it for business (or personal, unless you were part of a university). However, to be able to quickly send someone a message and get a response within the same day was pretty amazing. We really didn’t have “spam” back then and our inbox was definitely never full. The interface was a huge improvement over mail, the built-in alternative – but it wasn’t exactly sexy.
I recently found a new service called Joyent. Joyent puts sexy back into email in my opinion.
What you’ll first notice about Joyent is that it’s sleek, elegant and modern.
After Pine, I eventually moved on to Eudora mail. When I switched from Pine to Eudora finally, was around the time I moved to Mindspring for dial-up Internet access and then later for 128K ISDN (and that was really fast, with two channel bonding!). Eudora was a very big step up from Pine, and was available as part of the CD that Mindspring gave you when you signed up. Eudora was Windows GUI (back in the Windows 3.1 days) and you still had to have the Winsock utilities to run the TCP/IP stack during that time. Eudora allowed you to create richer email and integrated along with your other Windows applications. It was an essential application during the day and came along around the time that email was starting to get really popular — I remember with Eudora I could setup special folders and actions for my incoming email.
Of course, eventually, Microsoft began to start to dominate the desktop and started distributing free email and browser and the demise of email started to occur. Email applications became boring, complicated and bloated. Outlook became a dog and I dreaded using email. Outlook never had good spam support – when spam became the next big thing in email (unfortunately). And, even though Outlook had a search email function, why was it you could never find the email you were looking for? It was slow and the more messages you got, the worse it got. I always remember that in every organization that I was part of that used Exchange, I would also be on the frequent “clean out your inbox” mail message from the system admins. Why is it that with Exchange and Outlook, the more mail you get, the “worse email citizen” you are and the more fragile you help the system become? At one point last year, I rarely even could read and respond to my email on a consistent basis and struggled with all the spam flooding my inbox. I hated email.
Enter Google’s Gmail. By now, everyone on Planet Internet has heard of Gmail and most are using it probably. My wife and I signed up for Google’s Gmail almost 2 years ago after my wife purchased an invitation to Gmail off EBay (for around $5). Today, that seems totally strange. In 2004, that was necessary if you didn’t know someone with an invitation. For whatever reason, we didn’t at the time. However, I didn’t really start intensely using Gmail until early last year when I left Vocalocity. At that point, I no longer had the shackles of Exchange and I was free to use something better. Gmail has been a wonderful experience. I can always find an email within one or two searches. I’ve never had to worry about deleting my email, although I routinely mass delete some types of email I get – probably out of habit and worrying that one day I’ll get an email from some poor Google sys admin warning me that I have too much mail. The UI for GMail is not wonderful and it’s got a long way to go to be a sexy application – however, in its utility, it’s a great application.
Email in itself hasn’t changed all too much since 1996 – except for how many messages are transmitted on a minute-by-minute basis and how many more spam messages clog our inboxes. When I switched to Gmail, I almost completely eliminated spam. I actually got the first spam message today in my inbox – for at least the past week. That’s pretty amazing.
If Google is Email 2.0, Joyent is Email 2.1 or 2.2. The Joyent Connector modernizes email and it makes it fun and sexy. Joyent combines some social web ideas with an age old idea, email. With Joyent, tagging content and people is built-in and natural. The UI is beautiful and very intuitive. Calendaring, Email, Contact, Files and Bookmarking are all core applications within one interface. With Joyent, it just makes sense and things fit neatly together. Collaboration is just part of the system.
And, I’m paying for Joyent. I’ve told many people that if Google starting charging for Gmail, I’d be the first to send in my payment. While I love the fact that Gmail is free, I almost wish they would charge money – and use the billion or so that they would generate to upgrade their interface and make it better. Joyent starts to address the front-end of email and related applications and I’m excited to begin using it.
If you haven’t checked out Joyent, I urge you to take a few minutes and do so. I’m switching over to using Joyent, with Gmail on the backend for now. I’m hoping I can get the best out of both. With Joyent, it’s a beautiful, integrated application which is fun. With Gmail, it’s the reliability and spam control that you can’t get from anywhere else.
technorati tags: email, mail, joyent, gmail, outlook
Popularity: 6% [?]
Other popular articles you might enjoy:
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
