Here's a story from Inc. magazine titled "Email's Little Helpers." After getting past the extremely corny name, there is a decent listing of a handful of tools that are designed to make the email experience better in some way.

Among those listed are Xobni and ClearContext. I have beta versions of both of these tools and am trying to use them in my daily activities. I have a review of Xobni in process and will post it shortly.

Also mentioned are freebie file transfer service YouSendIt and one that I had not heard of called Reply to All Monitor. Love the name but not sure I'd shell out $14.95 to keep me from a mistaken reply all email. YouSendIt is further commoditizing the file transfer space by making transfers of up to 100MB free with fee-based services starting above that or for more "secure" (password protected) transmission.

Most of these tools are focused on enriching the inbox or mail client experience and I believe are not really getting at the core problem with email. They focus on making the existing approach more efficient through things like better search vs. getting at the root cause issues like volume and relevance.

What, sounds crazy?  To hard to believe?  Well, check out the email below and you’ll clearly see that I was awarded this based on my email address being randomly selected.  What luck! 

Look further and you’ll see this has to be official because it is from atmdesk02@gmail.com but I am to respond to atmdesk01@gmail.com – nice way to keep the outbound and inbound emails separate, I suppose.

Ok, so enough sarcasm but I believe there are two interesting points that this little gem illustrates: 

First, it is spam and was tagged as such but these things continue to be sent out because someone somewhere does think they have won something even after all the coverage and awareness around them.  If they didn’t work they would disappear. 

Second, I receive a great deal of solicitations via email as a VP of Marketing and am always dismissive of those that are “business” correspondence coming from somethingclever@gmail.com or nickname@aol.com.  We live in a day in age where buying a domain and having email for it is about as cheap as a latte so not having a business email for business makes you highly suspect in my book.

Interesting post over on ReadWriteWeb about email, the technologies challenging its dominance in personal electronic messaging, and the reality that it is not going away anytime soon.

“Even if consumers shift away from email, it is difficult to see how enterprises could.”

There is definitely innovation around the edges to improve how we message and collaborate but email is deeply embedded and will be with us for many, many years to come.  The question is really more about how to live with it and make it work for us versus replace it.

Nick recently joined LiveOffice as CEO.  I originally met and worked with him during my time at both Orchestria and MessageGate.  He use to run the Enterprise Vault product line at Symantec and we went through the twists and turns of partnership together.  He is now heading up hosted email services (Exchange, archiving, compliance, e-discovery, etc.) company LiveOffice.  Check out his new blog here.

I signed up for this yesterday and hope to get my invite here shortly.  ClearContext is attacking the "email problem" and I look forward to comparing and contrasting with my Xobni experience.  Here's their blog.  Speaking of Xobni, I finally got back up and running after fixing my "Cached Exchange Mode" issue.

So, I am back on track as a Xobni user and have 10 beta invites if anyone is interested.  They really nailed the beta program process and I congratulate them on the continued buzz they are building out there.  Lots of pain in the inbox and email is something everyone loves to hate. 

We'll see if my MS Outlook client can handle another plug-in as I love to tinker with new tools as they become available.  I have a few plug-ins loaded plus a Salesforce.com plug-in that makes Outlook jump through some hoops as it starts and operates.  Makes you wonder if the path to fixing this problem is through MS Outlook as the more I seem to load into it, the grumpier it gets.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted as I get my ClearContext access.  Here's a nice video tour that they made available for distribution (nice touch!):

This is a great post by Chris Wand over at Foundry Group about email and its painfully slow, even nonexistent evolution since it burst on the scene and has since become THE corporate communications and collaboration tool.  I agree and echo most of these points and this is a pretty succinct summary of both the obstacles as well as some of the innovation going on to address it.  About a year ago, I posted some thoughts on email being the original and ranking social network.

"…the email infrastructure is now being used for more than just
email—it’s a collaboration tool, a document exchange mechanism, and
even a de facto file storage system (to many this is a huge problem in
itself). Email is the core, and without doubt knowledge workers need a
new generation of tools to manage it effectively and get the most out
of it."

However, email is just part of the equation.  What’s missing here (I believe) is a broader discussion of how we engage, communicate, and share beyond email.  No doubt email is the common denominator that we all return and the "core" of what defines our day’s activities in the workplace but what about webex presentations, time spent in tools like salesforce, blog posts and comments, phone calls, IM exchanges, text messages, etc.? (see post below on hyperconnectivity).

Too much email and text messaging are signs of insanity (via Drudge).  Do you have any of these
four symptoms?

1. Suffering from feelings of withdrawal when a computer cannot be accessed
2. An increased need for better equipment
3. Need for more time to use it
4. Experiencing the negative repercussions of [your] addiction

If you do, then it is time to get a life.  Turn it all off, put it away, and try talking to people for a change.

Although the backdrop on this is political, it is not about any candidate rather another clear example of the "benefits" email brings to our lives.  In this case, we have the exchange between Clinton campaign press secretary
Philippe Reines and MSNBC reporter David Shuster about his questionable comments made on air.  These two gents had a snarky exchange that at least Shuster was engaged in via his Blackberry.  Here’s the link to the full exchange and note the
"Sent using BlackBerry" signature. 

What strikes me most about this is that here we have two public figures shooting nastygrams back and forth via email and now it is published for us all to see.  This type of scenario plays out every day in every organization.  Email is at best a one-sided conversation and certainly not a substitute for meaningful dialog.  Maybe someone should have picked up the phone.

I saw this a few days ago and have been meaning to do a post on it.  Google has finally packaged and released the functionality picked up via the Postini acquisition.  As anticipated, pricing is pretty reasonable but Google still needs to prove it can actually sell something besides ads:

• Google Message Filtering ($3 or €2.00 per user/year) provides basic spam filtering for any email server.
• Google Message Security ($12 or €8.00 per user/year) provides
  comprehensive email security and policy management for inbound and
  outbound messages.
• Google Message Discovery ($25 or €17.50 per
  user/year) provides comprehensive security, policy management,
  archiving, e-discovery for any email server.

Will companies take their approach to message security, filtering, and e-discovery seriously?  To be determined.   Safe to say there would be some hesitancy to having ads served up based on the indexed content of a company’s email archive (not part of the offering…but one must wonder).  Given what I repeatedly learned about the sensitivity and seriousness around corporate email, I’d imagine these needs will continue to be addressed by companies like Orchestria and MessageGate (I previously worked at both).