I agree with you almost entirely. Although I do have one specific minor off-topic feature I'd love to have in email that I haven't seen anywhere.
I want the ability to "like" an email, and have the sender know that I "liked" it. I don't want to write "yes, I agree", or even worse, a terse response of "like" as I feel that's a waste of my time, the sender's time, an unnecessary "+1" in their inbox.
I just want a way to say "I read your email and it sounds good to me" without having to actually write anything. Just click the "heart" or whatever symbol, and the sender is notified next time they open their email client with the heart showing next to the thread. Would work out nicely for lists and group emails as well.
I suppose there are clunky workarounds that would allow such a thing dependent upon client implementation, but it's just not that significant of a thing.
As for shared inboxen for task management, I'd recommend Asana (with whom I've no affiliation, besides being a happy customer).
What about an UI which mimic a social network in the Facebook style but which uses email as backend? It would be decentralized for free, and entirely interoperable with people using plain email (those who uses this UI would see that you liked there message, others would see a reply that says "I liked your email", for instance). Comments would be responses to email (using the In-reply-to header). The interface could easily creates groups of contact or post to all of them (equivalent to posting on your "wall"), etc. The action of "friending" someone on this UI could optionally be mutual GPG key signing behind the scene which would enable encryption of messages between friends.
I have wondered if you could build a federated social network (or something that is more like an inter-social-network) with email as the underlying transport. You'd need to layer a lot of top of this, of course, but it would be kind of fun.
I like the idea. There is many ways to extend e-mail functionality by building additional layers on top of it. But imagine having a group e-mail conversation for a large number of people where just a fraction of them is using the featured e-mail client. How would you communicate this additional information to the other? More e-mails? Or just completely skip it?
At http://www.mailcloudapp.com We're currently working on new ways to use e-mail. Always hungry for feedback and new ideas! ;)
My first attempt at a solution, were I to actually try something like this - say, with my hypothetical chrome/firefox extension called LikeMail - would be to send out a canned email with custom headers.:
"enobrev has read and 'liked' your message with the LikeMail chrome extension! Download it _here_ so you can do the same with your emails."
Then on the recipient's client, if they have LikeMail, consume that message and hide it, while showing the appropriate signaling in the inbox, etc.
Definitely a clunky workaround, and can easily be considered spammy, I suppose, although if that automated message were customizable, maybe less so. I think the reason for the email (as opposed to skipping it) is to convey the info the action of "liking" is meant to convey. Essentially if I hit "like" button in LikeMail I'm trying to tell the sender "I read and liked your email". Sending nothing would go against that intention.
This in general is one of those things that I thing's been growing in the background of the internet: the utility of fake Internet points as social feedback. This includes karma, likes, +1's, retweets and more.
It's the ability to give pure positive reinforcement without actually using words, and it's one of the most powerful ideas to come out of the Web.
I want the ability to "like" an email, and have the sender know that I "liked" it. I don't want to write "yes, I agree", or even worse, a terse response of "like" as I feel that's a waste of my time, the sender's time, an unnecessary "+1" in their inbox.
I just want a way to say "I read your email and it sounds good to me" without having to actually write anything. Just click the "heart" or whatever symbol, and the sender is notified next time they open their email client with the heart showing next to the thread. Would work out nicely for lists and group emails as well.
I suppose there are clunky workarounds that would allow such a thing dependent upon client implementation, but it's just not that significant of a thing.
As for shared inboxen for task management, I'd recommend Asana (with whom I've no affiliation, besides being a happy customer).