Suffocation by principle

We need to move beyond the "inbox/sent items" metaphor for email, because it doesn’t reflect the way that people use email anymore. Google was the first vendor that I am aware of to recognize that the "inbox/sent items" metaphor sucks and visually present each email along with all of its replies and re-replies as a single item. Since email has evolved into a conversational tool rather than a correspondence tool, this is a far more interesting and useful method of categorization for me.

In fact, since I have become accustomed to using that layout, I organize my Outlook email at work to resemble it. I no longer have an inbox and a sent items folder. I just have categories and subcategories with messages in them from myself and others interspersed so that I can view entire discussion threads as I initially experienced them.

I still wish that Outlook would do it for me, though, so I am going to hold my breath until it does.