On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 12:59:40PM -0800, Elliott F. Cable wrote:
Speaking just for myself here . . . I don't need *yet another interface* for dealing with the world. It's hard enough just keeping up with email and the telephone. Frankly, I'd need newsgroups to notify me by email when something new arrived.
Try - mail, RSS, AIM, MSN, ICQ, iChat, 4x web interfaces, at least 30 forums, at least 50 wikis, IRC (usually in around 10 channels on 4 servers) Limewire/azeureus chat, SEE chat, ventrilo, teamspeak, Squeak, skype - the list goes on. Telephone? Fax? Not to mention people trying to swarm me in RL while I'm trying to communicate with the really important ones online...
Oh, yeah, I use RSS, AIM, MSN, ICQ, YM, IRC, and a boatload of web interfaces (wikis, fora, et cetera), too. I try to keep funnelling the really important stuff into email, though. Thus, I get email alerts from all the web stuff that supports it, and I don't really need to put any effort into IMs because they make noise at me when there's incoming communication.
The point, at any rate, is this: I don't want to gratuitously add yet another interface to my information overload. When I have a choice between sending something to my email inbox or adding another, separate system of communication, I'll send it to email.