Survey: E-mail remains important but is overdue for a major overhaul

E-mail has become a royal pain in the neck.

Today, during my morning ritual of going through my inbox, I deleted all but one of the three dozen or so new messages that had arrived in the overnight hours. Why? Because they were completely irrelevant to me - press releases sent my spamming PR rookies (who, by the way, are being blacklisted by me), random newsletters that I don't recall signing up for and other "junk."

I started thinking about the value of e-mail. Yeah, it's still an important communications tool - but something has got to give. The amount of crap that's polluting my inbox everyday is becoming unbearable. And I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The results of a new survey found that e-mail is still the most frequently used tool for collaborating with others, according to 91 percent of the respondents. But 40 percent complained that they receive too much irrelevant e-mail (AMEN!) while 21 percent said that large volumes of mail come into the inbox with no organizational structure.

The survey, conducted by Harris Research on behalf of Cisco System, is centeredP more around the demand for collaboration tools. Cisco noted in its press release that other collaboration tools in the workplace, such as web conferencing (55 percent), video conferencing (35 percent), instant messaging (34 percent) and social networking (17 percent) are among the other ways employees are collaborating. Among the respondents, 59 percent said their use of social networking as a means of collaboration and communication has increased over the past year.

Still, you cannot ignore e-mail. It's the one widely used, standardized form of communication that most everyone has access to. But that doesn't mean we have to like it.

I'm already creating filters and folders in my work inbox, as well as blacklists of what I call legit spammers - mostly PR folks who blast their releases to as many press folks as possible, in hopes of catching a nibble or two. In my Gmail account (which uses a "conversations" format to give an appearance of reduced clutter), I have applied labels and rules to try to keep things organized.

It's an ongoing battle.

So, I'm asking for your input here. What do you do to reduce the amount of crap in your inbox. Better yet, to the startups and other entrepreneurs, are any of you working on ways to fix or - better yet - replace e-mail?  Here's hoping you'll share your tricks in the talkbacks - instead of an e-mail.