E-mail As the New Database

jira writes "BBC has an article confirming the trend of using inbox as a sort of personal database. At my workplace I can personally attest to the growing sizes of those pst files and an unwillingness to erase any emails because of 'loss of information'." From the article: "The trend has become more pronounced as the services have dramatically increased their storage capacity in response to upstart Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage." Update: 04/22 23:03 GMT by Z : To reflect that the story is at respected news organization BBC, not a BBS.

Correction

[FuturePastNow]

Gmail is up over two gigabytes now.

Actually...

[eviltypeguy]

Actually, GMail is offering:

"Don't throw anything away.
2121.042690 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message."

Their new Infinity + 1 storage technology or some Jazz like that (hey their marketing words not mine) ;) At the very least 2GB. I'm sure at the time these things were created in response it was because of the 1GB thing...

Mb vs MB

[Rheagar]

Mb = Megabits MB = Megabytes

8Mb = 1MB

I hope this clears things up!

Managers never delete email

[painandgreed]

Yep. I do desktop support and nobody wants to delete anything. that's their paper trail and the one email they delete may mean their job down the line as people are looking for somebody to blame and heads to chop. Most communication is done through email with proper CCs (and sometimes BCCs) and they require it even between people sutting next to eachother just so there is that paper trail at a later date. When they've told somebody or reported an issue, they want to show proof they've done so later if somebody else drops the ball and there are people looking for blame.

Re:Guilty

[Anonymous Crowbar]

Sure, but try synching that inbox to your PDA. I will be first in line for the windows CE phones with 2 gig HDs.

Re:BBC not BBS

[Jack Taylor]

Actually, it's the British Broadcasting Corporation...

(and they turned me down for a job last week, the ignorant fools ;)

Mailinator

[calebb]

No, that's what Mailinator [mailinator.com] is for. (to hit confirm when you sign up for a service like nytimes).

Welcome to Mailinator(tm) - Its no signup, instant anti-spam service. Here is how it works: You are on the web, at a party, or talking to your favorite insurance salesman. Wherever you are, someone (or some webpage) asks for your email. You know if you give it, you're gambling with your privacy. On the other hand, you do want at least one message from that person. The answer is to give them a mailinator address. You don't need to sign-up. You just make it up on the spot. Pick [e-mail] or [e-mail] - pick anything you want (up to 15 characters before the @ sign).

Later, come to this site and check that account. Its that easy. Mailinator accounts are created when mail arrives for them. No signup, no personal information, and when you're done - you can walk away - an instant solution to one way spammers get your address. Its an anti-spam solution for everyone. The messages are automatically deleted for you after a few hours.

Let'em spam.

Re:Correction #2

[eurleif]

One gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. Perhaps you're thinking of a gibibyte?

Re:Guilty

[thegamerformelyknown]

WWWAAAAYYY off. Go read their privacy policy.

Re:I want a real RDBMS

[As Seen On TV]

Sounds just like Spotlight to me. You should consider getting a Mac.

Getting Things Done

[Rikardon]

I've just started using David Allen's system Getting Things Done (GTD) for organizing my work, mostly in response to a new position at work that has me involved in a lot more projects than before.

It's the lowest-overhead way I've found of staying organized. One of his tenets is getting your Inbox (both physical and virtual) to empty. I've done it.

Here I am on a Friday afternoon with exactly three items in my email Inbox, and none in my physical one -- although I've been working on three different projects today, and am currently involved (off and on) in a usability role in half a dozen others.

The biggest benefit so far in implementing this system has been rapid context switches: the biggest benefit so far has been faster context switches: I'm moving from project to project, meeting to meeting, and nothing gets lost - email, papers, usability test results, are all quickly and accurately accessible.

I guess my point is that even if email is being used as a personal database, it probably shouldn't be. Or at least, it should be structured in such a way that items are (1) only archived if they need to be for future reference, and there's no action to be taken on them, or (2) filed because you're waiting for someone else to do something, but you think you'll need to act once they're done.

I've only been at this for two weeks, but the benefits thus far have been dramatic, with very little overhead. Look up the book in your library or favorite local bookstore; I've been very impressed.

Re:Mailinator

[alahan27]

..Or you could use bugmenot [bugmenot.com]. Users across the internet sign up for these "you must sign up in order to view this content" sites. They have a bookmarklet that makes things even simpler.

Re:Mailinator

[psychofox]

This sound likes spamgourmet.com only not as good. What if someone has already chosen a particular mailinator.com combination you've already selected?

I use spamgourmet all the time, and it is fantastic. You set up an account like [e-mail] and decide where emails will be forwarded to. You can then create email address on the fly like [e-mail] which will direct the first 5 messages towards your normal email box. It also does clever things like masking the from address if you reply to an incoming email. You can reset the number of messages allowable to particular alias at any time, and you can create a 'watch word' which will only allow new aliases to be created when they contain the watchword (to stop people just creating nonsense aliases for your account, after they realise you are using spamgourmet).

Check it out!

Re:Getting Things Done

[cpeterso]

I forgot to add that my favorite GTD-related blog is 43 Folders [43folders.com].

Gmail error

[nilbog]

Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage
Gmail doesn't offer 1gig anymore. They offer 2.1gigs and the number is always increasing.

Re:...just like the entire planet is guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. It is particularly useful with "virtual folders" or "saved searches" as Thunderbird calls them. I do not do anymore hard filtering anymore, I only categorize with virtual folders. Not only does it allow me to find a given e-mail in more than one category, but it does so without duplicating disk usage.

The file folders, I keep for archival by date. I have a Folder per year, with one subfolder per month. as the mail on one entire month gets into the "old mail" in the grouped view in Thunderbird, I move it into its physical folder.

This allows me to backup to CD-R once a month that Archive Folder, which adds the latest month to the CD-R. This way I can quietly delete from hard drive the older files as needed. The data is not lost.

I love Virtual Folders

Re:Mailinator

[bigsmoke]

What's even better: someone has written a Bugmenot Firefox extension [roachfiend.com] that makes life simpler still. I use it and it is fantastic!

All the time

[KJE]

I do this all the time with GMail.

I have a filter set up that checks for

"From:[e-mail]" and "To:[e-mail]"

basically checking if I sent the message to myself. If this is the case, it's filed under the "notes to self" label. Quite handy, although searching for what I want usually gets me there too.

Re:if it's on a server...

[Qzukk]

Mail and Usenet are the two hardest things to backup. A large mail system or a usenet feed can have hundreds of thousands of tiny files being added and removed per minute (if you use a single mail file, a few kilobytes written to the end of the file every couple of seconds, followed by 1 GB of data being copied over itself because the user finally erased that first email from the head of the file since they were over quota.

Seriously attempting to keep a backup of this mess means mailservers that refuse to delete a message that hasn't been on the server for more than one backup cycle. It means using either a checkpoint/snapshot filesystem or mirrored RAID array then pulling out one of the drives to perform the backup from, then putting it back and hoping that it synchs up before it's time for the next backup.

This is why nobody bothers doing this for usenet. Too much work just to save some porn.

Re:Mailinator

[metamatic]

What if someone has already chosen a particular mailinator.com combination you've already selected?

Someone else might see my spam? Or I might look at the account and find there's spam there already? Oh, the humanity!

Re:Mailinator

[word_virus]

Yeah, there are several services like this out there already. My favorite (and the original, I believe) is dodgeit.com. You can create an address on the fly for any site that requires one, then check it through their slim and unobtrusive web interface or (and this is my favorite part, any other service offer this?) via RSS.

Re:I want a real RDBMS

[_egg]

It acts as an IMAP client as well... The website's out of date. The Wiki has lots more information:
http://zoe.omara.ca/

Look, I'm guessing I have the same problem you have with managing mail, and I'm trying to solve it for both of us. My solution doesn't exactly match what you described but I think I hit all the salient requirements:

* You don't want to change e-mail addresses - so just let Zoe read your mail from your current account
* You want saved searches server-side so you have them wherever you are - keep bookmarks to the Zoe search, or post a page containing links to them up right next to Zoe
* Google-like searching - given
* Relational searches - results have most useful relationships accessible as side links without a special query; lucene search query syntax is supported, and Zoe has extended the fields you can use in that syntax
* You like to use IMAP - fine, use it for reading your mail as it comes in, but don't blame both your provider and your client author for not teaming up to give you *your* ideal relational search interface! Instead accept that search like you describe is an adjunct function requiring an interface that doesn't look like mail, and be willing to click on a URL rather than a folder icon to see your saved search.

It may be that I'm just less fussy, but I think Zoe's actually a more elegant way to handle your implied need than what you suggest.

If this isn't it, then fuck, you're never going to get everyone else teaming up to write what you want, so it's time for you to go write it/fund it yourself!