My most used service is email. In my case it's Gmail, so this whole post is about my point view on that. However, you could apply it to any other web-based mail platform I guess.
For some reason, we all think about our email as a temple of top secret information, and the common assumption is that email is confidential and not shared (although we actually do it all the time, by forwarding emails, for example). But what if Google gave us the tools to share and publish pictures & files right from within the email itself, and on to public services and social networks? What if I got a great post from one of the blogs that I subscribed to by email and want to share it trough Twitter, Facebook etc..?
Here's what I think the Gmail email should look like in the year of 2009:
File Viewer:
This should be the easy part for Google - Making the right connections with their own services: Picasa and Youtube. It's so crucial that Picasa hosts my email pictures automatically, like they're doing with their Blogger platform for a year or so now (don't worry, it is saved to a private folder). Also a must-have would be the ability to finally watch a Youtube video from within an email - how hard is it to enable that?
Shared Labels:
This might make you a little nervous, but try to keep an open mind about this one: I truly believe that this could be a very helpful tool for groups. If I'm working with someone on a project, and open a label where I'm gathering all the correspondence between us, I think it's only logical to allow this person access (partial or full) to those emails. I'd love to have the option to share a label with the contacts I choose, so they'll be able to review the content and conversations whenever they need to for our shared project.
Shared Files:
As mentioned above, I think this is the core of this post: a more social email is needed.
Instead of downloading then uploading a file somewhere else to be able to share it, a much more useful way would exist if Gmail uploads all the images to Picasa and allows the users to share them from the email, and even create a short URL to make it available to services like chat, microblogs, social networks and so on.
For video files, some suggestions:
1. Ability to privately upload any video file to youtube as well.
2. A nicer way to watch video file from the email - like the MP3 player but for videos.
3. If someone sent me a Youtube link by email, ability to watch it right from there - and also share it externally.
RSS Reader Gadget:
If you enabled Gmail lab, you probably saw the Googledocs and Google Calendar gadgets. I think the Calendar gadget is more useful because it can really give you a glimpse on events and occurrences that you might have forgotten. There's definitely a place for a dynamic Google Reader Gadget, I don't even think I need to explain why...
Speaking on Gmail Lab..
As you probably noticed, the list of tools in the lab is getting longer, and it's getting harder to follow all the new releases. I think Google should create a better index of those tools, make it searchable, divide it to categories, and allow other people besides them to write the applications.
Bring back the Web Search!
I seriously can't understand why Google is taking off the one thing they do best - Search. For years, I have been searching on the web from my Gmail account. They could at least explain to me (and other users) why they took this feature down, leaving us to find and get used to another less convenient arrangement. What I had liked about it so much was that it simply opened another tab (or window) and it was the easiest way to search for something especially for people who practically exist within their email account. But here's a compromise: Why not enable users to get this feature back from the Lab?
I guess I can go on like this forever, but those are the most important features that I'd like to see in my future Gmail account.
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