I use messaging a great deal, from sms to email to instant messaging to Twitter to video chat to voice mail (unfortunately), I spend a lot of time communicating.  I was thinking recently when will we see messaging apps evolve again?  I’m hoping Google Wave will help but I don’t think it will take it as far as I’m thinking.  I would really like to see what Googles Gmail does.  Gmail right now just puts your email and IM (it’s an option you have to turn on) in one overall inbox.  Also Google Voice shows you all your voicemail and sms in one inbox.  So when do we get ONE inbox for everything???

I use emoze (a client of mine) and Nokia Messaging for email, Ovi Contacts and Nimbuzz & Fring for IM, the built in text message (sms) app and Dabr for Twitter on my mobile phones and would really like to see an overall inbox that we can see all incoming and outgoing communications.  I would like to see my email, sms, voicemail, IM, and @/direct messages (I use Topify) in one place.  This could be similar to what Nokia has in it’s messaging folder already where it includes email and sms.  I’m sick of going to all different in-boxes.  When can I just have one.  Things should be color coded, easily filtered and have sub folders so it looks more traditional the way some would like to see it.  I for one would really like to have one of these messaging apps include it all.  It may need to be something more like emoze that is heavily embedded in my phones messaging folder so it can access sms and voice messages too.

I’m envisioning something with tiny logos and colors for each different means of communication but a standard view with different lines for each message showing who it’s from and a time/day stamp.  Maybe when I highlight the message the first few words of the message would appear.  I would also like the address book from the phone to include all the contact info from each contact platform but we’ll save that for another blog post.

So basically when will it all come together in one place but include awesome filtering for divided views too.   I hope we get this very soon and on both the desktop and mobile platforms.  It would really be great if it was all done with something like IMAP so it was all in sync to.  I may be asking to much but come on it’s 2009 and if we can’t have flying cars this decade can’t we at least have one inbox?

By: Jeb Brilliant
Jeb is a technology enthusiast and mobile communications junkie.  He works in the industry as a writer, consultant and event producer.  Follow Jeb on Twitter @JebBrilliant