WTF: What is the best email program?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the sad state of email. In response, Ruth in Michigan asks:

Question: What IS the best email program?

The Detailed Answer:

There are many different email programs (call them clients if you want to sound like a knowledgeable geek), but they fall into two categories:

1. Web-based.
2. Not Web-based.

The Web-based ones include the very popular GMail, Google's free email service that works in any browser as long as it's Chrome. You can also read GMail with other email programs, but you have to be geeky enough to know words like client. Anyway, reading GMail in Chrome isn't so bad, as long as you don't mind:

1. Google is reading your mail to see if it can show you any ads relating to what you’re emailing about.
2. Google is showing you ads when you’re trying to read your email.
3. Long messages get cut off.
4. Some other stuff that I put in my other post. Go read it.

On the other hand, the not-Web-based programs have some issues of their own. Thunderbird is one of the more popular of these, especially because it pretended to replace a popular one called Eudora when the Eudora people got bored and stopped working on it. Thunderbird wasn’t really a Eudora replacement, but it did come in at the same price-point ... free.

Thunderbird can be set up to read email from a bunch of different email services, including GMail, and there’s plenty of information on the Web about how to do that. I won't repeat that, but just mention that Thunderbird works with something called POP3 (post office protocol) and with something else called IMAP (Internet Message something something), so whatever you chose, it will probably be wrong.

Of course, you may be stuck using a program called Outlook, from the good people at Microsoft. Outlook was designed to talk to a Microsoft mail server, called Exchange, using a Microsoft language, called MAPI (Microsoft’s All-Purpose something-that-starts-with-I-and-I-don’t-think-the-all-purpose-part-is-right-either.) If your employer or loved one or other important person is using Exchange, just use Outlook and deal.

The Short Answer: Thunderbird.

Remember to send your questions to wtf@techcurmudgeon.info, and we will promptly respond to, though not necessarily answer, them, usually with sarcasm, irrelevance and perhaps a smattering of humor.

Facebook vs. Everything Else

Facebook is trying to become the Internet itself, enticing users to send messages, post statuses, create photo albums, etc. These are all capabilities that are available freely or very cheaply elsewhere, and have been for years.

But now, thanks to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and company can check out everything you post. You can allow them to use your name and picture in their sponsors’ ads. And they can decide what your friends and followers will see according to their own secret rules.

So just in case you don't want to give Facebook the keys to your home, here are some other options.

Facebook Feature	Alternative
like	phone call
messages and inbox	email
groups	Yahoo! groups, Google groups, mailing lists
status post	blog
photo album	web page, Picasa, Flickr and many others
news feed	RSS
wall	email, text message, sticky note
timeline	blog
notifications	email, RSS
games	Oh, please!
pages	web page
friends	um … real life?

Man's Best Friend

The Conversation

Phone Tag

Don't mess with my email!

So Facebook is going to revolutionize electronic communication? Again? The New York Times quotes Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as saying that, in The Times's words, e-mail was too formal, too slow and too cumbersome, especially for young people who had grown up communicating using online chat and text messaging systems.

Too formal?  Have you seen some of the email that ends up on various lists?  Even such staid groups as children's writers, cross-stitchers and cat lovers have email lists liberally peppered with obscenity, vitriol,  innuendo and just plain bad writing. The philosophical conundrum of the age is whether the anonymity of email causes all the mild-mannered Doctors Jekyll on the internet to post like Mr. Hyde.  Formality is not one's first impression.

Perhaps Mr. Zuckerberg is referring to the fact that e-mail encourages you to use actual words and sentences.  Granted this degree of formality seems excessive, but certainly not all e-mailers feel bound by these shackles. I personally receive many e-mails written in reckless disregard for convention or grammar (though admittedly a large percentage of these are proposing sexual hook-ups or various aids for same.)

Too cumbersome, especially for young people?  Evidently, Mr. Zuckerberg does not have parents, and has never seen any.  Young people do not find email cumbersome at all.  They can do it in their sleep.  It's the parents (and grandparents) who barely manage to muddle through.

There may be a case for "too slow" though.  Certainly the anxiety of waiting 30 or even 45 seconds for an e-mail message to cross 11 timezones is too onerous for anyone, let alone an impatient youth.  Surely instant messaging is a necessity in today's world.  Unfortunately, Facebook's track record does not suggest that whatever Mr. Zuckerberg has in mind will be anywhere near instant.

If you ask actual people what's wrong with email, they don't cite speed and convenience as problems.  Rather, the usual complaints are about privacy, security and spam prevention.  Not exactly Facebook's strengths.  Can you imagine sending a private message to your BFF, and having your boss comment and your mother "like" it?