I feel much the same way as Gabriel does, in this post.
The method of using email as a sort of alert queue is a terribly broken system. Yes, it's a system that I have to deal with every day. Yes, I get 100-200+ emails a day, between alerts and recoveries... often of which are rolled up in "alert packages", which are just as useless.
There needs to be a separation for all the to-do list, alert-spam, bullshit that typically ends up in my email inbox. I'd really love it if I could get back to using my email, ya know, like an electronic replacement for mail. Little communications or thought out letters. Not this inundation of crap that I currently deal with.
I did the same thing when cutting over our old system to the new one: I fired an e-mail for every WARN in the system, including 404s that have always existed. 1k+ emails that day plus GMail disabling SMTP from our server was the sign that e-mail is meant for alerts, not logging.
We've since tried out and signed up with NewRelic with an extremely low error threshold of 0.01%. As a result, we have more data than we had in the past for our errors, notifications on when the threshold is crossed (not for each error), and, most importantly, less dev work to manage them.
I'd like to see those other alerts brought into some sort of dashboard. I'm imagining an app that runs down the side strip of my right-most monitor, collating various business/social metrics, site/earning stats (Analytics, AdSense, etc), domain/billing reminders, etc.
The method of using email as a sort of alert queue is a terribly broken system. Yes, it's a system that I have to deal with every day. Yes, I get 100-200+ emails a day, between alerts and recoveries... often of which are rolled up in "alert packages", which are just as useless.
There needs to be a separation for all the to-do list, alert-spam, bullshit that typically ends up in my email inbox. I'd really love it if I could get back to using my email, ya know, like an electronic replacement for mail. Little communications or thought out letters. Not this inundation of crap that I currently deal with.
The startup that fixes this, wins.