I comfortably ignore anyone that says "email needs to be fixed" from clients to the underlying system - it's awesome and nothing about it needs to change. People just need to learn to use it better.

I run everything through gmail, but I use my own domain (via an external SMTP server), so if gmail goes down I can just route mail directly to another machine.

I use fetchmail to POP everything off from gmail and I read that in pine. It gets everything regardless of filters, except spam.

My android synchs with gmail (obviously) and using the gmail app I can send as my "real" email address (and this scales obviously so I can send as any of a number of addresses I need to). I make heavy use of filters so I only get relevant stuff on my phone.

My daily ritual is to sit down at pine and scan non-vital email (such as newsletters and mailing lists etc.) that I didn't get on my phone because I filter stuff so heavily, then for each email apply the "GTD" approach of doing anything that can be done immediately, or forwarding it to a Basecamp todo list (using mailmanagr.com) or a Highrise task (depending on whether it's sales related or actual work that I have to do).

This generally takes me less than 30 minutes and is a great triage exercise.

Instead of teaching kids how to code in schools, let's start by teaching them how to use email! We used to learn how to write letters, why aren't we doing advanced email training in schools?

The spectacularly complex system you have set up to filter your email? That would be worth a semester or so. It's worth it for you, I'm sure, but the average person probably would collapse trying to set that up.

Primarily subject line usage and interleaved replies.

The spectacularly complex system you have set up to filter your email

It's basically just GTD on steroids. Basecamp and Highrise are used by millions of non-technical people. Reading email in a text based email client isn't rocket science and, I think, would be a skill on par with learning to communicate with letters. Also gmail filters aren't advanced, and Android is pretty mainstream (as is gmail). The only tricky bits there are using an external SMTP server (made simpler through things like Mailgun, Sendgrid and JangoSMTP) and configuring fetchmail to POP from gmail.

The rest of the components are all very simple and readily available. In my experience people are able to cope with seemingly overwhelming complexity as long as they were instrumental in it's creation and the bits that make up the complex whole are themselves quite simple.

I use a far simpler method, akin to a pile.

I'll add: the same highly-formatted emails are very likely to break horribly on handheld devices as well, which are pretty much limited to presenting a small amount of information with minimal formatting -- normal, italic, bold, and possibly some colored text.

And dittos on K9Mail.

For IMAP: offlineimap seems to be a good solution (though not so much on mobile).

Directories: really should be a solved problem by now. I still find myself generally maintaining my own .mail-aliases list though.

The problem? They, along with a significant percentage of your other users, use text-based email clients.

This is the wrong way of sending text-only email:

    <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Thanks for signing up!</title> </head> <body><h1>Thanks for signing up!</h1>Click <a href="http://new-registrants.sneakystartup.net/>here</a> to finish your registration. </body> </html>

    Thanks for signing up!
    Click here to finish your registration.

    Thanks for signing up!
    ======================
    Click here[1] to finish your registration.
    
    1: http://new-registrants.sneakystartup.net

    Thanks for signing up!
    ======================
    Click here to finish your registration:

    http://new-registrants.sneakystartup.net

It sounds like a good idea- I used to think so, myself- but I've steadily been convinced otherwise by the (quite sharp) IT guys managing our directory.

(Also, partner organizations might want to share directories easily; I can see giving a full access to your directory to a contracting/temp agency you use, rather than giving them accounts. I'm sure there are better examples.)