An old school friend of mine, Alistair Speirs from Data#3 (where I worked before MS) wrote a great blog entry about his thoughts on email.

Strangely he didn't mention anything about Realtime Communicators (Live Communication Server / MSN Messenger).

Anyway check it out here.

A few of the cool take aways are:

The "LinkedIn" toolbar - "it did some fancy pattern recognition and told me that "I should follow up these 3 people" that had not got back to me. It was information I had forgotten, and now I find myself using the toolbar every day.

Before, I would try to match up my inbox with my sent folder to try and work out which ball is in what court. It is not so much the time that was wasted, but the stress and agitation that bothers me, digging through old emails. I have decided that I hate email, in a philosophical sense. "

I've downloaded the LinkedIn toolbar and I'll give it a whirl with Outlook 2007 Beta 1 Technical Refresh.

One thing in Alistair's post that I'm not sure about is "No Email Week" - see below.

"No email week". If you want an answer quickly, ask me. If you want an answer slowly, put it on the portal and I will check my "Fancy aggregating personalised site" 3 times a day for updates

No Email Week makes me feel sick - I live on email!

If I wake up in the middle of the night I check my email, when I wake up (before anything) I check my email, I "triage" emails whilst driving (or getting a coffee) on my smartphone; The only time my doesn't get read is when I'm presenting infront of customers or on a plane (and then I get separation anxiety).