Give more power to benevolent senders. I've had similar thoughts.
I don't want to waste other people's time, but the current email protocol forces me to. There is no way to specify if your email is...
1. "Check this out sometime during the week, it's funny stuff, if you have time. You need a 24"+ screen and 10 mins, so don't even look at this email on your phone"
2. "I NEED A REPLY ASAP, ARE YOU THERE?"
It appears as a (1) on your phone and I have no power over that to make things easier for the recipient... (other than perhaps send an email at a specific time which is less likely to interrupt your work)
Your first one is way to specific to be signaled by some kind of flags, the recipient might as well just read the subject line of your email if its well written.
But basically every e-mail client implements some kind of Priority/Importance header, that solves your problem. Nobody uses it though, and the few times someone decides to set "high priority" it might be in their opinion but not in mine. A more complex system won't see more adoption.
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/3313/imagekm.png
Give more power to benevolent senders. I've had similar thoughts.
I don't want to waste other people's time, but the current email protocol forces me to. There is no way to specify if your email is...
1. "Check this out sometime during the week, it's funny stuff, if you have time. You need a 24"+ screen and 10 mins, so don't even look at this email on your phone"
2. "I NEED A REPLY ASAP, ARE YOU THERE?"
It appears as a (1) on your phone and I have no power over that to make things easier for the recipient... (other than perhaps send an email at a specific time which is less likely to interrupt your work)