E-mail giving way to Web 2.0

It's Monday's IT Blogwatch in which less is more in your inbox -- when you trade up from that old messaging system (e-mail) to the new and improved messaging systems (texting, blogging, wikis, news feeds, social networks, groups, communities ... say what now?). Not to mention a little ditty ...

Luis Suarez just wants to be free (and productive):

I stopped using e-mail most of the time. I quickly realized that the more messages you answer, the more messages you generate in return. It becomes a vicious cycle. By trying hard to stop the cycle, I cut the number of e-mails that I receive by 80 percent in a single week.

The first step was to decide which social software tools were available for me to use much more extensively. The second was to encourage people to stop using e-mail themselves and to start using some of these same social software tools as well, to share their knowledge and collaborate with one another. more

Ed knows those IBM tools too:

[I] completely disagree that it renders e-mail to dinosaur status, though that has been predicted in various forms for nearly ten years.

Thus, for me at least, the right direction forward is a model that brings together all of my collaborative tools. A way in which I can work with things like instant messaging, discussions, activities, shared spaces, and external tools like web content, Twitter, RSS feeds, and widgets. If all of that comes together in an "inbox", and contains one-to-one or one-to-group asynchronous communication, too, then I can dig it. more

Mike Gunderloy has a history lesson:

The reason so many people dream about reducing email is that email has been fabulously successful in recent years. And if you’re going to attack the email problem, you need to be careful that you don’t create other problems in its place.

Email is also one of the tools (along with the spreadsheet) that just about every business computer user understands. more

John Naughton sees human ingenuity:

The mess that is organisational email is actually a symptom of the failure of ICT systems to provide software services that workers really need. Why, for example, do you find that office workers have email inboxes with thousands of messages in them? Answer: because it gives them an electronic filing system that they can use. So instead of being an indicator of how hopeless people are at managing ICT, overflowing inboxes are actually a measure of how ingenious humans are when faced with useless technology. more

philodygmn doesn't want to be rude:

Calling people is such an interruption, it's almost rude now. Everything else is fine because you keep control of your own attention; phone breaks that completely, so while I agree that "facetime" remains invaluable and voice is closer to that than text, I think the author's emphasis on it is misplaced due to usurping your control of your own time and concentration. more

And finally...

• Luis' theme song?
  

Buffer overflow:

• Pushing String: The privacy imperative
• Om Malik: Google Cloud At Work For NSF, Academia
• David Marshall: Microsoft Hyper-V gets a seat at the big table
• Coding Horror: Open Wireless and the Illusion of Security
• Hu Yoshida: Modernize IT with Agile Services: Gartner

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Seth Weintraub: Overclock your Mac Pro from 2.8GHz to 3.24GHz with easy tool
• Mike Elgan: New Alerts.com site keeps you posted
• Seth Weintraub: Canada's Rogers taking (rightful?) shellacking from Internet over iPhone pricing plans
• Mike Elgan: The new Jott: One site to rule them all
• Eric Ogren: Virtualization moving to the endpoint
• Bert Latamore: The PDA Guerrilla: Vista after Service Pack 1
• Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Using Vista instead of XP is dumb
• Robert L. Mitchell: XP downgrades are just plain dumb
• Mark Hall: Finding, not searching is what really counts
• Sharky: That's one way to guarantee business will grow
• Shark Bait: Presentations are fun

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CW blog editor Joyce Carpenter phoned in today's post. Regular blogwatcher,Richi Jennings, will be back soon.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• ICANN starts domain name free-for-all
• Intel hates Vista
• Nokia to open-source Symbian