How I Fell (Back) in Love with Email - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBlogger

So, it was a wild and torrid romance - me and email. First, it was one account, then two, then, well, lots. I had company emails, personal emails, specialty emails ... I was (cringe) an E-MAIL-A-HOLIC.

I know you know what I mean.

But then, there were the computers. Lots of them. My desktop. My laptop. My office machine. My home office machine. And each of them got email.

At first I was in control. I could control it. I would delete. I would forward. I would 'manage.'

Then, it started. The excuses. To my friends. "Your email was caught in my spam filter." That was true, but with five computers (and five different spam filters), well, the odds of me reading all my email was getting slimmer every day.

Oh, yes I know - there are solutions. I tried GTD (getting things done). I tried a bunch of scripts and folders. But nothing worked. I was reading the same offers to hold a check for a Nigerian prince four times a day. I was on the verge of an E-MAIL BREAKDOWN.

What to do?

Well, I'm a Mac person - so I felt like I'd already chosen the platform that gave me the most comfort and protection with a spam-free and virus-free lifestyle. So my Apple friends weren't helping. I tried Mobile Me. God knows, I couldn't get that to do anything useful (my bad I'm sure).

So then, with email strangled and not moving - I found...

IMAP. (Insert here: clouds parting, sun shining, and harp-like sounds of delight and glee.)

Ok, don't get scared. This is a very good thing.

IMAP is an alternative to POP, which is how I've always set up my mail in the past. When I last visited IMAP (4 years ago) it was a live connection with my mail server, and so nothing was stored on my desktop. That meant that I couldn't do mail if my mail server went down (or if I was not online on my phone). Or so I thought.

But, IMAP is a new and wonderful thing.

First off - now all my devices look at the same email accounts on my mail server. That means, if I read a message on my desktop, or phone, or home, it's marked 'read' (read once, very nice).

But the best part are the IMAP folders.

Now, I've got folders that automatically manage my mail:

One is called: To Read and Respond (for important stuff)

One is called: Read / Responded / Filed

And then a whole series of folders for newsletters, mail groups, and other regular incoming info like server notifications and such.

I've set up a series of Apple Mail scripts that search for keywords or specific senders and then neatly tuck them in folders on my mail server - and viewable from any device on IMAP.

In the past, I'd open my desktop computer after reading mail over the weekend, and there'd be 500 unread messages. Ugh. Now, because I use my iPhone, laptop, home computer, and desktop to manage things, I never have more than a few messages waiting to be read, filed, and managed.

And, now that I'm using my "Junk" filter more, I'm teaching my mail server what junk is - so my junk folder seems to be getting smarter. Really.

IMAP. My email love affair is re-kindled. Oh sure, I still flirt with instant messaging all day, and Twitter is rapidly encroaching on my messaging as well - I'll never go back to being faithful to email, that was so 2002. But with IMAP I'm able to keep the flame alive... and email is now back to being part of my digital harem of bits and bytes.

Thank you IMAP. Wish I'd met you years ago.

Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well know innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarding as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net