So why is email such a hassle?

• It’s more than 30 years old. Email has come a long way, but its underlying protocols haven’t changed much since the 1970s.
• It’s really three different systems. Sending (SMTP) and receiving (POP or IMAP) are totally separate functions, and are often handled on different servers. That’s why I often hear comments like “I can receive, but I can’t send” from clients.
• It’s being used for a lot of things it was never designed to do, like send images and attachments, highly formatted messages, signatures and calendar entries.
• It’s been overrun by spam, and even well-designed spam filters aren’t perfect, and cause unwanted side effects, like messages that get misidentified as spam, or just go away.
• Email software is too complex. These programs that were originally built for offline use; that is, they were set up so that users could read and write messages without being connected to the internet. Sending and receiving would happen in batches. That made sense when internet connections were slow, expensive and charged by the minute. Now that most people have always-on connections like cable or DSL, that process is less necessary. Desktop email client software is a pain to set up and use; as someone who helps many people with email, Outlook is the bane of my existence.
• Many of us connect to the Internet in more than one place — at work, at home, and on cell phones. It can be very frustrating to realize that we’ve left the message we needed to reply to at the office.
• Many of us have more than one email address. I try to keep my work and personal email separate, plus I have a series of email addresses that I use when registering on websites that might try to send spam. And I have several email addresses that were given to me, such as the ones that are automatically created when signing up for instant-messaging services like Yahoo, AIM and Windows Live/MSN.

What can be done to overcome these problems? Here are some tips that might help you and your clients and friends be more productive.

• Get your email on the web. Dump your desktop email software, and switch to Gmail/Google Apps or another online provider like Yahoo. If your Internet connection is unreliable, Google Gears lets you work offline.
• Create a master inbox. If you have multiple email accounts, you can set up forwarding to receive and send email from one place.
• Use IMAP. If you need mobile access to your email, set up your phone software to use IMAP, not POP. By using IMAP, your messages will sync automatically in all of the places you check your mail.
• Use social networks. It seems like all of my friends under 30 don’t do email anymore, but they’re on Facebook a lot.
• Use instant messaging. For short, simple conversations, IM can be very efficient. In a few seconds, you can schedule a meeting or a lunch date. It’s much faster than email or phone conversations.
• Use file-sharing services for sending large documents. There are lots of such services, and new ones are popping up all the time, including Fluxiom and FileShareHQ. And Dropbox and the new Opera Unite service allow you to share files directly from your computer.
• Organize your electronic communications. Celine wrote about this recently, and I’ve talked about it, too.

Oh, and one more:

• Remember your passwords. This is obvious to you and me, but I’ve heard “I didn’t know I had a password” way too often. Online services like LastPass, or programs like 1Password, SplashID, or the free KeePass (Windows and phones; also available for Mac and Linux) can be lifesavers.

How do you keep email simple?

Image by stock.xchng user chris27.

Fluxiom is a web-based digital asset management system for creative teams that offers a nice, visually rich interface and the ability to scale depending on your needs. It has a number of useful features, and there’s a free version available, so I wanted to see if it could function as a tool for helping people collaborate on a wide variety of media including text, photo, audio and video.

Assets

Right away, you notice that Fluxiom is clearly content-oriented. By default, you launch into your assets page, and you can upload files there either using the web interface, or using fluxUp!, an app that makes uploading multiple files easier. If you’d rather not install any software, you can always zip a number of files together and upload the whole archive via the web interface. You can also upload entire folders via the fluxUp! app, which I think gives it a huge advantage over other similar web apps for file sharing.

Once you’ve uploaded some media, it quickly becomes apparent how well-designed Fluxiom is. Interacting with your uploads feels a lot like using a native OS X desktop app like iPhoto, and because of this, there is almost no learning curve to the software. There’s a search field prominently displayed in the top left-hand corner; you can choose either thumbnail or list view; and you can filter your assets using a number of pre-set fields using convenient buttons running along the top of the asset pane.

As in iPhoto, you can also preview each asset you upload. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Fluxiom even supports PSD previewing, which is a huge benefit for graphic and web design teams hoping to use the app. To test the limits of file type support, I uploaded a RAR archive and a Flash file (.fla). Both uploaded fine, but neither could be previewed, though Fluxiom did know what the Flash file was, at least.

Tags & Stages

You can add tags to any uploaded media for easy searching and organization. That will really come in handy when you start dealing with large volumes of media. While Fluxiom does not have folders for organizing media, the “Stages” feature presents another good way to drill down and focus only on the media relevant to your specific purposes. Stages is designed to help you share a limited set of material with a particular client. So if you’re designing an ad for someone, you can create a tag for that project, assign it to all relevant media, and then create a stage using the tag. You can then email a link to that stage which, once the correct password is entered, will allow them to view and download the media you’ve designated.

Stages is also a great way to parse out media for individual assignments to different team members. This is especially useful if you’re working with a consultant or external contractor, since you can then ensure any IP not pertinent to the task at hand remains safely out of reach.

Dropbox

Fluxiom is not only a great way for you and your team to share files amongst each other and with clients, it’s also a great way for others to share files with you. Using the “Dropbox” feature, anyone can upload a file or files to your account, so long as they have the proper address and can confirm that they have a valid email address. Media uploaded via this method is then stored in a queue where you can choose to accept it, thus moving it into your main asset library, or reject it, whereupon it is deleted.

I can think of a thousand different uses for that feature, with the most appealing to me being a submission form for photographic or illustration work for contribution to a publication or web site. Fluxiom even makes it easy for you to post your Dropbox link on your web site so that, if you want to, you can open up content submissions to the general public.

Pricing & Conclusions

Because of how easy it is to share and receive files via Fluxiom, and because of custom branding and API access, this is one of the most impressive and scalable asset management systems I’ve seen in a web app, and especially one that offers a free account. Paid accounts range from €9 (about $12.50) all the way up to €169 ($235) per month, and offer a variety of storage/user limitations. Definitely give the free account a shot first, since it may be enough if you just want to use it for yourself, but I think creative teams will quickly see the value of an upgrade.

Share your opinions on Fluxiom in the comments.