Re:Yahoo Mail’s Plan to Fix Email: Make Computers Read It
by latchkey on Monday August 05, 2019 @02:46AM
(#20611838)
In the early 90's I used something called QuickMail [1]. It was pretty awesome, especially for its time. You had the ability to do things that SMTP couldn't do, like unsend, see if message was viewed, send 'smart emails' etc. The issue was that it only worked well if other users were on QuickMail. Beyond the other dramas of acquisitions [2], it never really caught on to replace plain old SMTP.
It seems the tides have turned a bit. Now that SMTP email is everywhere, users could reverse the situation. I could say that I will only accept emails which can be parsed by a computer. I (or my provider) could then publish a schema for the types of emails that I'm willing to receive (and how they should be formatted for me). The rest would go into some other folder (ie: spam), that I could look through if I cared enough.
It seems the tides have turned a bit. Now that SMTP email is everywhere, users could reverse the situation. I could say that I will only accept emails which can be parsed by a computer. I (or my provider) could then publish a schema for the types of emails that I'm willing to receive (and how they should be formatted for me). The rest would go into some other folder (ie: spam), that I could look through if I cared enough.
[1] https://tidbits.com/1991/09/16/ce-ships-quickmail/
[2] https://www.engadget.com/2008/07/28/outspring-puts-the-final...