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Readers know that I’m personally fascinated with the productivity aspect of our favorite device. This is what led me to participate in the Alien Camel iPhone email service beta. I’ve written about how much I’m enjoying this service on the iPhone before. But what’s going on with the beta at this time?

Lurking in the background of our discussion is of course knowledge of the Web 2.0 folks known for complaining for years now that email is in itself "broken," leading many to ask where do we go now?

Clearly the revolutionary nature of the iPhone gives us a chance to rethink these basic aspects of service. Looking at the gleaming jewels in our — and to soon to be in everyone elses’ — hands, how can we leverage it to serve as a springboard towards a complete rethinking of email?

This was the question I asked camel-herder-in-chief, Syd Low, in a Skype interview very early this morning. And his answer was: first, before we start dreaming, get the basics in place.

This is the direction the Alien Camel beta is going. I’ve mentioned the innovative Pending Email feature as optimized for iPhone; the next task for the Camel team is to optimize the rest of the administration pages, no small feat considering that the iPhone hasn’t yet been released in Australia!

Syd said that he had personally only spent a short time with an actual demo phone himself. As a result, they are developing the service using the simulator. The drawback to that of course is that it really doesn’t replicate the feeling of "flow" that is so crucial and unique to the iPhone experience, and which successful iPhone apps and processes will have to incorporate.

There’s a liquid, swim-like feel to using iPhone that’s hard to
describe to those who haven’t enjoyed it. But as iPhone is rolled out,
I’m sure Syd  and the Camel team will be able to capture this in their
beta improvements.

I asked Syd why he became interested in bringing Alien Camel to the
iPhone to begin with. It turns out that Syd, who has degrees in both
law and computer science, is a long-time mobile guy, going back even to
the Apple Newton. And Alien Camel is itself a Mac shop.

But what spurred him most specifically it seems were the issues he
read about with the iPhone’s Yahoo! push mail as documented on forums
and discussion groups (such as here). And also the realization the even with Yahoo! mail, there didn’t seem a good spam solution for iPhone.

So he developed and launched the beta. While Syd definitely is
looking at different areas in email opened up by iPhone, he still has
his feet on the ground for the short term. Currently, he says, he just
wants to ensure he offers "really good" email service for the iPhone
with great usability.

I did ask Syd for more details about the way the Pending Email
function works. For example, you don’t have to use it many times –
choosing between the Whitelist, Download, Spam, and Delete options –
to start to wonder why the last two aren’t put together so that
anything you tap as spam is automagically dissolved forever into the
ether.

And the answer is: Bayesian filter training! That’s right, to keep
his spam kung-fu process trained to the knife’s edge, all email tapped
spam goes to a special folder where his Bayesian filter goes over it to
keep itself in tip-top shape against the latest and greatest spamster
tricks.

If spam were just deleted, he explained, his filter would soon become flabby and inaccurate. All bad!

Finally, I asked how many users were making the most of the beta
offer. Syd reports good adoption, altho’ he says a few people haven’t
really used the service much. Then Syd went into a bit of speculation
that maybe some users — perhaps many users — really used the iPhone
mostly as a iPod and phone, not maxxing out the email and mobile web
aspects!

Which for sure  was an idea that took me by surprise! We here at
iPhonefreak should probably run a poll on this ourselves! In the
meantime, freaks, please use the comments the below. . .I myself am
clearly an iPhone power user, short of hacking the device! But what
about you?