Title: One of Paul Graham's frighteningly ambitious startup ideas (http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html) is "Replacing Email". He visualizes his inbox as a disastrously bad todo list and email as the way things get into it. He shared his thoughts on what may be a better solution that can eventually replace email. Here are some points from that :<p>1. Email has to be replaced with a new protocol. This new protocol should be a todo list protocol, not a messaging protocol.<p>2. The new protocol should give more power to the recipient than email like<p>a)more restrictions on what someone can put on my todo list.<p>b)Information about what action I need to take on a to-do list item. Like, do I need to read something or take any further action on it like replying, forwarding, viewing attachment, paying attached bill, watching video etc. ?<p>c)How important it is? There obviously has to be some mechanism to prevent people from saying everything is important.<p>d)When does it have to be done? Is it urgent? Do I need to do it before a given time?<p>----------------------------<p>I would like to ask some questions about it from both PG and HN community :<p>1. In an email there are only few actions one is supposed to take, like "Read", "Read &#38; Reply", "Read &#38; Forward", "View attachments". What other actions you think that should be incorporated in new to-do list based system?If not all, what are the important ones for you?<p>2. How would you like to prioritize to-do items by importance? What are the rules? Like, giving importance to to-do items from specific "circle" of peoples you know - Colleagues, family, etc.? or by type/content of to-do item? or anything else?<p>3. What kind of things one can put on your to-do list? What kind of things one shouldn't be allowed to put in your to-do list?<p>4. Do we really need a new protocol? Can't it be done by making a distributed client/server system where anyone can setup an open source to-do list server(if they need to own and control their information for privacy reasons) and clients can communicate through HTTP protocol (REST API)?<p>5. Is there any YC company or other startup that is working on this idea?<p>Please share your thoughts.
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