Thursday, November 9, 2006

Shall we expect a mail client killer?

It is excellent that I can see my mail folders, and all mails in a folder (without the 25 restriction), also on just a click I can see the mail and the attachments in that. No need to go back without knowing who has send etc...

Well. I have few suggestions to get the Yahoo mail work better, works effectively; can be taken by everyone as a Personal Organizer rather than just email.

1. Its awesome that I have a calendar, attached to email. But there is no way I can enter recurring Events, Tasks.

2. When I click the calendar, its just opens a new window. I think nobody will like that. Please use one more tab in the same mail window.

3. Is there a provision to add invitees to the calendar event? So that one can send them an invitation from the calendar?

4. Is there any way the calendar event/task accepted can be shown on my calendar? (Here I need to add every activity to the calendar manually)

5. Is there any way I can adjust that the task/Event completion status like 30% or 90%?

6. Shall I have my Diary here embedded to the Calendar? So that every day I can write my diary seeing upon my calendar. All the Tasks/Events I set as completed will go to my diary perfectly. Or the person should have an option to add each task/event/anniversary/meetings/ birthday to the diary or he can postpone the event to another date. Practically you cannot postpone a birthday/anniversary but you can meet the person later and congratulate him by explaining, why you couldn’t attend the event.

7. Will there be an export to excel option available? So that the user can export the diary/calendar/event/task to excel and analyze the works done and even report his office report at the end of the quarter.

8. Is there any way users will get a better search? The search now available is very general and there is no-way I can refine my search. If I do a search on a word Tax, some 1000 mails are listed. Its great that you searched all the folders. But it doesn’t serve my purpose. I want to search the word tax in the subject and sender Ravi (he send me the tax calculations). But there is no way to do it. I mean search based on folders, senders, subject, body, attachment type/name etc? Is there any an option to search within search?

9. Notepad is good for having notes. But it annoys with opening in a separate window. It will nice if you provide the same in the mail tab.

10. The notepad gain contains folders in it. But the GUI is not impressive. What is wrong in having list of panes in the top and looking the contents in the bottom like the mail?

11. Will there be a provision to add notes to each mail we receive? In certain scenarios, I have really felt adding some notes to the file, which will be helpful while reviewing.

12. Coming to the contacts, there is a list, which was of not any help in earlier versions, now at-least, I can send a mail by just selecting a List. Thanks. But how to create a new list and add the existing contacts? There is no way one can add the existing contacts/lists to one list like multiple selection and move to the list. Will it be made available?

13. There is one field in the contacts called Birthday/Anniversary, but no use of it technically. Will the date entered will be available on the calendar under Birthday/Anniversary?

14. Its out of scope for email, but I would like to add it here. Is there any provision to add blogs, so that in a single login the user can add things to his blogs? Also provide a way by which one can update his blog just by sending a mail rather than logging there and entering the data and updating.

15. The last one is the yahoo personals, its some how disconnected information. Will there be made as a connected network? Also it can be connected to my blog. So that a person visiting my blog can see my profile, also my network of friends, if these are public rather than asking userid/pwd, just for viewing one’s page.

16. Will you please add a column in the diary for having an expense column? People can put their daily expenses in that column, and things will be integrated.
i) A planner to plan the ‘day/week/year’, and a diary to record the commitment to the plan.
ii) A calendar to visit daily and get to know about the planning for the day. An alarm (an email) to remind one of the appointments once in the day, rather than hourly or minute basis. (if its integrated to mobile or PDA, it can be an alarm for sure). An email alarm will be useful only if a person sit in the system for 24 hours that’s not likely to happen anyway. But the PDA/mobile alarm is useful as a person can keep it on with him the PDA/mobile for ever. (Yahoo can try Black Berry or others). If the person is not going to use his PDA/mobile, for one day, he can very well keep track with a printout from the alarm email (best word would be planner).

17. Having keyboard short cut is the one of the best improvements in the internet. The only think lacking in the internet is a way to click the html pages via keyboard. That is not possible right now. You need a mouse to click on html links. The problem is you cannot do everything with mouse. You need to give character inputs, you have to use keyboard. But on the other hand, an expert can live with the keyboard. Also keyboard is faster than moving the mouse. Moving the mouse is painful, it causes real pain the wrist, if you frequently use mouse, and Keyboard doesn’t. The point is that you are again popping up a window to show the shortcut for a particular action like delete, reply etc. The best way to show the keyboard shortcut would be tool tips. There is a hidden help in this. This happens while hover the mouse over the control. So the user will try the commands and he gets used to it. The other way of giving a shortcut in a separate window, after pressing the control is not useful the user, he cannot go back to the previous menu/mode to try the command again.

18. Marking an email as unread is difficult. Have to go through the menu and select Mark as unread. Rather in the header pane like the flag, spam. It will be good to keep the menu for multi selection.

Hope if you try to do this people may stick to the yahoo mails. There won’t be any necessary for email client. Shall we expect a mail client killer sooner or later?

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

First View

I were thinking about a blog for myself, where I can post my views. Views on Software, Coding, Software Industry, Country, Relion, Social, Sports whatever I come accross.

I have to give an introduction about me. Will it be a good idea to connect this to my profile at orkut, where I have a page for me? The problem is all visitors need a userid password to access the page. So arogant of me (or orkut). I will be soon writting about me and my interests. You can understand them from reading the blogs to come. That will be more realistic than what I write about myself.