The Perfect Communication Software

posted on 05/27/04 at 12:32:01 am by Joel Ross

I've been thinking about the perfect piece of communication software. I come into work every day, and I fire up at least 3 pieces of software to "communicate" with the world around me. That seems excessive to me.


Now, what do I mean by communicate? Well, here's a list:


? Email
? Syndication Content

? IM
? VoIP

? Newsgroups
? Forums

? Contact Manager


I think that's about it - at least for now. But wouldn't it be nice if I had one program that did this all? Right now, I use Skype for VoIP, Trillian for IM - and I use Yahoo, AIM, MSN, and ICQ regularly (if you ever want to contact me, let me know. I'll give you my IM screen names). I use Outlook for email, contacts, and (formerly) RSS (IntraVnews was my RSS tool). Right now, I don't monitor newsgroups much because I don't want to open yet another program for that. And forums, well, they're pretty much web based right now for me.


I recently switched back to RSS Bandit since it supports Atom, and may support posting to newsgroups from within it.


Oh yeah - almost forgot. I want to track what blogs and forums I've posted on also. I constantly add comments (well, not constantly, but you get the idea), but never can remember where I did it. Right now, I resort to bookmarks to let me know what I've posted, but I have to go check the sites manually to know if someone replied to my comment or to see other comments.


And I want to use the same tool to post to my own blog, or create forum entries. Why hasn't that been done already? I don't use one program to read my email, and another to compose my email. Why should I read feeds in one program, and compose in another?


Now, one last request. Make it seemless. I don't care if I'm posting to a blog or a newsgroup, sending an email, or posting to a forum. I just want it to happen. Yes, I know I'll need to know it in some cases, but for the most part, those are the same. Obviously there's a difference between email and VoIP and IM, but that's fine. You want those to be different. But I want them all to come from the same address book. And that address book should be synchable with my Pocket PC. And my desktop should know that I'm available for VoIP or IM on my Pocket PC rather than the PC - well, it shouldn't just know, but I should be able to say, "I'm on my PPC now," and the change should be seamless.


I really don't think I'm taking this too far. And someday, I think this could be a reality. But I want it now. I'm sure there are other things that would be worthwhile to integrate, but that's all I can think of right now.

Categories: Blogging, General