E-mail

E-mail is probably the most popular Internet application. Now wonder, it's simple, easy to use logical and off-line. There are couple of thing I miss on e-mail.

• Attachments. Large attachments - especially if sent to several people - spoil the mailboxes.  Why can't it store the attachments somewhere in one copy which I can open or download if I want too?
• Categorization. It would be good to have an easy to use categorization of topics, which make navigation among e-mails easy.
• Flow. It's hard to connect - although new e-mail clients do help - related a-mails.
• Filter: an automatic filter - much like a spam filter - should prioritize my e-mail.
• Interruption: if my e-mail client is on it keeps me occupied, if not then I feel that I my miss something important.

I think that the problems are partly cultural; we don't know how to use e-mail properly.  From the technical point of view maybe e-mail uses a wrong metaphor, it follows the physical word where it takes time to deliver mail. On the other hand newer methods seems to have similar problem.

Suggestion

I dont' think I want to throw away the god old e-mail client, we - older guys? - are used to it. What I would like to change is the server part and replace the e-mail server with a more sophisticated e-mail service, which combines, mail, search, filtering, text mining ... while protecting my privacy. What would be different then?

• Documents (attachments) are stored in a central repository. For off-line work a personal copy may be downloaded but it will be synchronized with the repository if needed. Collaboration on the document (like in Google docs or Office 365) is possible with the recipients of the e-mail carrying the documents.I don't think intensive version generation is preferable; if a document is attached to an e-mail a version is generated and then all changes saved in an other version. To make a new version it must be attached to an e-mail again. 
• Automatic categorization by topic, sender, recipient, time... etc. Naturally I can manage categories, the system tries it best to follow my categorization.
• Auto recipient: if I write an e-mail without specifying the recipient the system shell make suggestions for me.  It would be e.g. useful if I look e.g. for potential answerers of a question or people interested in a certain topic.
• Prioritization: Analise incoming mail and prioritize it according my preferences. Show important e-mail first and if I'm working (i.e. typing intensively don't disturb me with low priority mails).
• Flow: connect related mails.
• Business intelligence: mine my e-mails for useful information and relations and present it to me in an useful way.