I would love to see email turned into a knowledge worker’s dashboard,” she says. “It should be integrated with SMS and voicemail and social networking… and your system should have the capability to recommend these things that might be a priority.

I am amazed by how ineffective email is, given that (a) its been around for soooo long and (b) its definitely the most used product (not just communication medium) for most knowledge workers. The only reasonable answer to why innovations such as automatic prioritization and this "dashbard" that Bellotti speaks of haven't happened yet is because its a really really hard problem to solve. Gmail's priority inbox is nice, but doesn't quite cut it. Specifically its missing the workflow integration that Bellotti describes as one of the biggest time-wasting parts of email - which email do i need to act on, when, who am i depending on for what, etc. If anything Outlook's flags do a better job of this than Gmail. I am still waiting for the ultimate email productivity manager...