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Comment by verganileonardo | Hacker News Reader

Email is OK as a communication tool. But companies use it as a task/to-do list and to work together on tasks.

Email is terrible to achieve this. You will end up with lots of emails and multiple versions of the same documents...

That is why I wish someone fix email! :)

I don't think that's a reason to "fix email". Rather, it's a reason to use the right tool for the job. If you need a to-do list, use an app that does to-do lists well. If you need to keep track of changes to documents, use a version control system. What's needed, of course, is a tool that integrates all these other tools into a manageable workflow. But that's not "fixing email", either, it's just another tool.

I agree with this. The business context is really the one where email is most broken.

Tools like Basecamp and Trello do a good job with project management, but they aren't a 100% substitute for all the various functions of email. I sometimes think that a hybrid between email and a forum/bulletin board would be the best way to manage complex communication, instead of convoluted cc lists...

You do realise that you've just described Notes, right? If it were a new product, without all the baggage of having to be backward-compatible to the late paleolithic (R2 in '93) and with a UI consistent with everything else on the host OS, folks'd be all over it.

Email is not the problem here.

The problem is people doing task management/version control with the wrong tool. So how do you get managers (in my case the are called professors) to use proper tools? They already know how to use email and they are convinced that it is sufficient.

Maybe a simplified bug/issue tracker for task management?

Maybe something like Dropbox or Time Machine for version control?

If that's what you're using it for, someone has fixed email:

http://trello.com

I'm using Trello! :) It is great if you don't have lots of leads :)

Maybe in outlook...aren't most of those problems solved by gmail? :)

How does gmail solve this problem?

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