I have to sort of backup Dave when he mentions FutureMe (with no link?) and Mail to the Future. Sort of. First of all, why not link to FutureMe? Don’t we link to the competition? Was it an oversight? Second, while Mail to the Future did come out many years ago, I see one distinct difference between the two. FutureMe has a social software-like feature, in it’s public entries. This simple little feature, which makes your email to your future self public for all to read, is the hook. It’s the bing! that Mail to the Future missed. The fact that people will write something wacky or insightful, or stupid for others to see, makes this a site to see.
I seem to remember that Mail to the Future might have had some API‘s behind it as well, which would allow you to do some neat stuff. It doesn’t look like FutureMe has that, but most people won’t mind, they just want to try it out and read other people’s emails…
I should mention once again that none of this stuff appears as technically hard to the average geekoid, I mean, there’s some dynamic pages, they hit a database, and there’s a cron job of some sort, right? These are the kind of applications you could build in a day or two, the beauty of it is in the details, and in actually doing it. The details require some clever thinking which some people don’t really possess. That’s not to say they aren’t smart. Smart and clever are two different things… I used to know this guitarist who could play almost any song he heard, and while technically proficient knowing all the notes and chords, he lacked the creativity to write a really good song. Creativity? Cleverness? Perhaps these are some of the X’s Mark was looking for…
