I gave this talk at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on April 23, 2008. The presentation covers historical uses of email in applications as well as some of the new and innovative ways that companies such as TripIt are integrating email in to their applications. The presentation also goes over some of the practical concerns and implementation issues you will likely encounter while building an email based web application.

2. Email Bankruptcy “ I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox.” - Michael Arrington, TechCrunch “ Wondering if I can get a Bear Sterns bailout for my email bankruptcy.” - willpate on Twitter “ (He) just declared email bankruptcy. I've read those declarations enough to know it means our email tools aren't usable.” - garrickvanburen on Twitter So, why is email still around despite all the challenges and criticism… ?

6. Prehistoric Email Apps

9. Browsing The Web Via Email “ For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have no net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.” -- Richard Stallman (2007-12-15)

10. About TripIt ?

13. ***CONFIDENTIAL***

15. Forward Any Confirmation Email Automated Online Master Itinerary Automated Weather, Maps, Guides… Trip Sharing & Social Alerts iCal & Atom Support Email & Mobile Access Add Meetings, Activities, Restaurants, etc.

17. Types Of Email App Services Command Line Interface Data Transfer Semantic Parsing Broadcast ?

19. Example: Mailing Lists Searchable knowledge base built as a by-product of natural human communication

22. Example: I Want Sandy http://iwantsandy.com/

23. Example: TripIt

26. Example: Flickr

27. Example: Blogger

29. Example: TrackMyShipments

30. Example: TripIt Timezone Online Checkin Flight Status Seat Advice Flight Details Weather

32. Caution: Email Is Full Of Problems CAUTION STANDARDS CAUTION CAUTION SPAM CAUTION CAUTION PRIVACY CAUTION CAUTION DELIVERABILITY CAUTION