Very nice implementation. In terms of pure technical features, you guys are near if not at the front of the pack. I'm hoping something makes it feel more personal eventually, because this is an incredible featureset.
Maybe emailing syntax@posterous.com could send back a lorem ipsum blog post that took advantage of every possible feature that requires special text syntax. People then could just edit that email with the contents of their post, and the reply-to email would be post@posterous.com so they could just send it off. It isn't really necessary right now since tagging is (IIRC) the only feature that requires the user to know special syntax, but if you add more features that require markup then it could be really useful in the future.
I think it's a good idea. I wonder, however, if it could be implemented like this:
Send an email to post_tag1_tag2_tag2@posterous.com
I think the (Tags: tag1, tag2, tag3) syntax is a bit harder, though I have no idea if the other one would even be feasible (some clever virtual email address and parsing thing would have to be put in place, I guess).
We could do it that way if we wanted to, but it sorta doesn't make sense. The "to" address determines where you are posting "to". We already use this for things like flickr@posterous.com to indicate you want your post on flickr. And soon we'll do post@sachin.posterous.com so you can post to various sites.
Tagging has no relationship with the "to" field of an email. However, the subject line in an email is just that, the subject of your post. Which is a perfect fit for what tags are.
If there's better syntax than ((tag: we're open to change it. but it needs to be something that can't be misinterpreted.
Well, my point was more like not having to think a lot about syntax. What about trying some work in the field of automatic tag generation? That would get rid of the problem, if successfully possible, right? ;)