Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
People like to rag on email, and with good reason: for many, it’s a giant time-sink without a lot of productive use. But the beauty of email, and the reason I don’t think it’s going anywhere, is that everyone uses it. I can’t think of any medium other than the phone that is so universally used, accepted, and understood. Heck, my Grandma even emails me – it’s got really large text that I imagine looks like it would if she’s yelling at me from the sky, but at least she’s emailing me.
The other thing I love about email is that it’s so constantly available. You can send text messages to an email address, any smartphone can send email, any Internet Café will let you into Gmail, and so on and so forth.
Since everyone’s using it, and that doesn’t seem like it’s going to change anytime soon, I want to take a look at some of the great things you can do with an email that you might not have thought of. Since you’re likely using your email client throughout the day (and night – but I don’t judge), why not use email to do even cooler things? As the new iPad commercial says, you already know how to use it – why not use it to do more? How about…
Posterous, one of my favorite new blogging apps, is designed to turn your emails into blog posts. Write an email, and the subject is the post title and the text is the post body. Attach a picture or link to a video, and it all gets put in. It’s as easy to be a blogger as it is to send an email to a friend – so why not do it?
Most blog platforms offer this same kind of thing – Tumblr and WordPress I know for sure – but Posterous does it best.
I know people whose method of self-reminder is to call their own phone and leave a voicemail saying “hey, it’s John. Pick up the milk later.” I have so many problems with that (Really? You need to identify yourself? Just in case someone else called to say “pick up the milk later” and you forgot about it?), so I’m thrilled that the self-email has replaced the self-voicemail.
But there’s an even better way – Evernote. With your free Evernote account comes a unique email address, and by sending an email to that address you can add notes automatically into Evernote. Those notes are synced to all your devices and computers, and you can find them in a second. Plus, no clogging of your email inbox with “Hey John, it’s John. Pick up the milk later. Love, John.”
Remember the Milk, one of my favorite task managers, lets you email a task right into your list. Need to remember that your Mom’s birthday is tomorrow and you really ought to buy her a present? Send an email to your RTM account (with a few keywords, you can even file the task in the right place), and it’ll be on your to-do list when you get home. Then, when it’s due, you’ll get a polite reminder in your inbox.
If you live with your Outlook, Entourage, Gmail, Hotmail or (God forbid) AOL open all day, it’s a great place to get reminders and information. Reqall, a great service for jogging your memory and keeping basic task lists, is great for that. Send Reqall an email, and it’ll remind you when your task is due. An email reply completes the task, or deletes it, or delegates it to someone else. It’s super-basic, and works great if you need to remember the laundry, or a meeting, or that you might want to leave the office at some point.
As someone with a cell phone I hate texting with, this is a lifesaver. Every cell phone has an email address associated with it (at least in the US, find out yours here), and you can send an email to that address. It gets turned into a text message and sent to their phone. When they reply, it’ll come right back to your email. Awesome, especially for fans of unified inboxes and non-fans of their phone’s keyboard.
Some social networks, notably Twitter and Facebook, will let you update your status by email rather than having to always go to the site, log in, do jumping jacks, leap through flaming hoops and sacrifice your first-born just to post. Facebook will also let you upload pictures via email (here’s where to find your email) – for Twitter, try TweetyMail.
For a broader spectrum of applications and services, try Ping.fm. Ping.fm is quickly becoming one of my favorite services, because it connects whatever you’re using to wherever you want to send information – including your email. Send pictures or text to your account’s secret email address, and it’ll push your message to any and all of your social networks, bookmarking services, and the like. (Here’s where to find your address.)
Email’s not just for sending letters faster – it can do so much more. And I’m betting it can do even more than I’ve found. What else do you do with your emails?
