Although it’s interesting to see how a lot of consumer communications are brought to other platforms now, email will stay as it is for a while at least for corporate uses.

I just wish everything can be more integrated. Truly managing these communication channels are becoming hell.

Here are trends that are happening now (we announce that we have it and Google then says they will have it):

1) Anti-Phishing Icons in the Inbox: The first thing you would see after installing our add-on would be Twitter and Facebook favicons representing their authentic email in your inbox. Their emails, and any reputable authentic email given favicon status, would be rescued from the spam box if it was sent there (one really should unsubscribe from that which is not really spam but you can ask the plug-in to send that sender back to spam forever if you want).

2) Email Sorting according to your past behavior and the behavior of others in the network. This cures email overload and you can be sure that SenderOK does not think all emails are equal. A smart algorithm designates some as VIP and verbally announces the email’s arrival, while routine emails can be ignored until they are checked once per day or week.

3) Social Networking Profiles in the Email Header Pane (we compete with xobni this way). Social networks must get out of the browser prison they are now in – that separates them from Email – or they will suffocate and die.

All of the above are major trends and our startup is going after all three “markets” at the same time. The WebCEO programmers are now making sure we can provide real time anonymous statistics to companies on what really happens to their email and whether they can reach people another way (such as starting a conversation via the social networking portal inside the email header pane).

Here are my blog posts and a Washington Post article on this:

http://senderok.wordpress.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/01/AR2009040100070.html

I do like what I am seeing with Postbox (what I use for all my personal email). The mission of this company appears to be focused on extending the user experience with email – it’s not just headed towards being just another “me-too” client.

Aside from the powerful search and organization features, which I think are the client’s most compelling leg-up over other email programs, there are several other interesting features that suggest continued innovation to come…e.g. seeing my friends’ Facebook status messages when I click on their names in the “from” field…being able to sign directly into Adium to message a friend (who Postbox lets me know is online)…being able to drag a Google map or Yelp review right from the sidebar into an email message I am composing.