How I use Gmail and why it really is so great

Gmail - Inbox

Gmail is getting ready to go public. I have about 50 "invitations" to handout. Good time to mention how my use has evolved.

1. My desktop email has become a repository and backup store. I do most of my work in Gmail. Messages go out with a return address to my public (spamcop) account but my Gmail account is well known to spammers so this is not critical.

2. I don't use the "labels" much. I thought I'd use 'em more. I'm very post-hierarchy these days. (Labels are an attribute that can be used to emulate a non-hierarchical folder with multiple inheritance.)

3. I "fork" my mailstream. (Relatively few people can do this, I control my mail domain.) Mail to my primary address is replicated to my POP box and to Gmail. So there are two copies everywhere. Works very well with two downsides:
- I have to remember to cc myself if want my replies or messages to be in both repositories. (I wish auto-cc was a Gmail feature, it's not.)
- I have to deal with spam twice, fortunately the filtering I use works pretty well. Gmail keeps a steady level of about 6000 spams in my spam box -- about 30 days worth.

4. Gmail is also a repository for files of less than 10MB that I want to quickly backup or pass around.

5. I use the "star" feature quite a bit.

6. My Inbox is emptied on reading. If I want to come back to a message I "star" it.

Things I really like about Gmail:

1. speed, speed, speed.
2. did i mention search speed?
3. no filing
4. keyboard shortcuts (see speed)
5. smart address book and adress completion
6. elegance
7. reliability
8. useful and interesting ad links

Things I want:

1. auto-bcc feature so I can copy replies to my personal repository
2. IMAP support (I'd pay)
3. more capacity -- 1GB will last me about another 2 years. (I'd pay)

Udell on screencasting

InfoWorld: Let's hear it for screencasting: February 11, 2005: By Jon Udell : APPLICATION_DEVELOPMENT : APPLICATIONS : BUSINESS : DATA_MANAGEMENT

Udell (uber guru) writes about screencasting:

I’m now using screencasts — that is, narrated movies of software in action — to showcase application tips, capture and publish product demonstrations, and even make short documentaries. And I’m seeing others around the Net starting to do the same. Now’s a good time to explain why I think this mode of communication matters and will flourish.

Experts use software far more effectively than novices. This knowledge is very rarely communicated in manuals; only a few books are good at providing this information. Sharing brief task-based usage is a valuable tool for building effective users.

Google's one page guide to becoming a Google Guru

Google Help : Cheat Sheet

This is very impressive. It's a single page summary that captures the key high value user interactions with a range of Google services. Memorize it and impress ... ummm ... ok, impress noone. But get more done faster.

The tedious response to having one's identity stolen

Has Your Identity Been Stolen? - What to do if it happens to you. By Daniel Engber

Next: a web business that outsources the response to identity theft. Fill out a form with the specifics, enter your credit card number, and sign stuff in the mail.

Since identity theft is becoming rather prevalent, we might as well automate the response to it.

Ajax: thickening a web client

adaptive path » ajax: a new approach to web applications

It's not easy to make JavaScript do all this stuff, and Safari is missing some of the key pieces (shame on Apple), but it is astounding when it works.

There's a fair bit of history here. Years ago we used to speak of "thin clients" (Citrix) and "thick clients" (conventional apps). Thin clients were easy to deploy but put a lot of processing burden on servers and suffered from communications latency.

Web browsers were thicker than Citrix but still suffered the effects of latency and had a much more limited GUI than a Citrix thin client. Both Sun's Java and Netscape's Javascript/HTML extensions were supposed to address the GUI and latency issues, but Sun and Netscape stupidly fought tooth and claw; two dogs fighting while a tiger chuckled nearby. Once Sun and Netscape had just about done in each other in Microsoft waltzed off with the browser. IE's DHTML framework threatened to finish what Netscape had started, but then the Office/.NET vs IE wars started at Microsoft. Office won and it looked like .NET would be the only path forward. Nonone could trust Microsoft to keep IE/DHTML healthy; it was a platform without a future.

But the vestiges of the old wars survived , in the IE/W3C document object model and in Javascript that was slowly getting less buggy. Different people in different places and times figured out how to get this rickety architecture working. Then came the rise of Firefox. Now even if IE stopped supporting this .NET alternative, it could still work on Firefox.

Of course it might also work even better on gBrowser ...

And now we have Ajax vs .NET for the variable weight browser-client title.

And so it goes.

Update: a colleague mentions the alternative approach to reducing latency - unbelievable server and network performance:

I would point out that several of the techniques Google is using don't require an
elaborate client side DHTML approach. They are, instead, leveraging
their incredible load capacity and low latency server array. Google maps is
a perfect example of relatively low tech client, plus an incredible tech
server architecture. If you look carefully you can sometimes see upwards of
20 GET requests being spun off, each with a latency response that is way way
sub second.

Update Again 2/23: Udell has much more on this topic, including more on how Google got its server latency to unprecedented levels.

Right wing fruitcake's "most unwanted" page

A guide to the political left

I loved the photo of Ted Kennedy. It has to be among the least flattering of the 250,000 pictures taken of him in the past 50 years. Among his many crimes: "Described the 2003 war in Iraq as “a fraud”".

This site hosts a right-wing fruitcake's "most unwanted" list. It has links to the Zawahiri and Betty Friedan. A Java applet is supposed to allow one to browse the network of connections (degrees of separation) but it didn't work on Safari.

I realize I'm just encouraging these folks by linking to this type of page, but it's a good reminder of how many reasonably intelligent people are really quite nuts.

Sheesh.

Dedication: Free Mojtaba and Arash Day

BBC NEWS | Technology | Global blogger action day called

Free Mojtaba and Arash Day.

From the BBC (with link):

The global web blog community is being called into action to lend support to two imprisoned Iranian bloggers.

The month-old Committee to Protect Bloggers is asking those with blogs to dedicate their sites on 22 February to the 'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day'.

Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are both in prison in Iran.

... The group has a list of actions which it says bloggers can take, including writing to local Iranian embassies...

Taller babies and confusing correlation with causation

BBC NEWS | Health | Taller babies earn more later on

A study shows 1 yo height correlates with income. Interesting, but then the study's author is quoted saying something startling:

Report author Professor David Barker said he hoped the findings would make people realise the first year was critical in a child's development.

I can't imagine how this study, as reported, could possibly support this conclusion. He's making all kinds of logical leaps to get from a relationship to causality to therapeutic intervention.

When we have studies showing that interventions in wealthy nations in the first year of life affect later income, or even 1 year height, then let's talk along these lines ....

Grand Old Payola Party

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Frank Rick looks at at how much money the Bush administration paid for PR/propaganda. Based on the numbers, the fake journalism scandal may be quite large. A quarter of a billion dollars would pay for a several thousand mouthpieces. Lawyers are doubtles looking for ways to open up the Ketchum budget, and tell us what portion of that fortune was paying for illegal propaganda.

... The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

The pre-fab "Ask President Bush" town hall-style meetings held during last year's campaign (typical question: "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?") were carefully designed for television so that, as Kenneth R. Bazinet wrote last summer in New York's Daily News, "unsuspecting viewers" tuning in their local news might get the false impression they were "watching a completely open forum." A Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide propagandistic news items, some of them possibly false, to foreign news media was shut down in 2002 when it became an embarrassing political liability. But much more quietly, another Pentagon propaganda arm, the Pentagon Channel, has recently been added as a free channel for American viewers of the Dish Network. Can a Social Security Channel be far behind?

... The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press...

The Bush policy wouldn't work if we had an aggressive and active free press left. I don't see any evidence of that -- outside of a few old pros like Frank Rich and the under financed and unread blogosphere. We, the American people, just aren't interested any more. We'll get the nation we deserve.

The top 100 gadgets of all time

Mobile PC - Features - The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

Find out where your favorite gadget is. This is a terrific site and will be insanely popular.

Planet sorrow

A Devastating Decision for Ill Ethiopian Mothers (washingtonpost.com)

A world of sorrow.

...Six-year-old Radeat Behonegn used to spend hours at the window of the Hope for Children orphanage, waiting for her parents to return. They left her here two years ago, and soon afterward died of AIDS related illnesses...

...Children dropped off at the orphanage can grow hysterical, sending others into a panic. Recently, Tamrat had to start a new policy, telling parents they should bring their children in to play a few times and then, on the last day, just leave quietly. Later, the children are told that their parents are dying.

The fathers in these stories are often despicable. CARE is open for business.

Bush the deity

Salon.com News | Among the believers:

Indeed, Goebbels is topical:

In January, Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the treasury during the Reagan administration and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal's far-right editorial page, published a damning column in the progressive Z Magazine about fascist tendencies in the conservative movement. 'In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush,' he wrote. 'Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush … Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy.'

Privacy? Surely you jest. A web site for those who would resist.

No Place to Hide - The Center for Investigative Reporting

I came across this site via Gillmor. It's a foundation funded site about privacy loss:

When you go to work, stop at the store, fly in a plane, or surf the web, you are being watched. They know where you live, the value of your home, the names of your friends and family, in some cases even what you read. Where the data revolution meets the needs of national security, there is no place to hide.

I think this is a futile effort, but I admire the sentiment.

How to steal identies: method #5

MercuryNews.com | 02/16/2005 | 145,000 Americans' identity data stolen

A company that sells personal data on consumers said Wednesday that it's alerting 145,000 Americans -- including 35,000 Californians -- that they might be vulnerable to identity theft after a crime ring paid for their credit reports, Social Security numbers and other sensitive information.

ChoicePoint, a Georgia company that boasts it has compiled the deepest database in the nation, said Tuesday that it had alerted 35,000 Californians that they were vulnerable, as required by state law. But it balked at first at notifying a far larger number of potential victims outside California.

About seven years ago a group of scammers set up a California bank so they could purchase credit card account information. This is a variant on this technique.

It's much more effective to subvert the legal trade in identity information than it is to go out and steal the information oneself. The companies selling this information have to held liable for its misuse. That will, of course, increase the cost of the information for legitimate users. One wonders, however, how many legitimate uses of this information are truly essential.

Aging drivers: a vast growth industry

DeKalb Medical Center - Providing Healthcare Services in Decatur, GA and DeKalb County

DeKalb medical center (Atlanta) offers driving skills assessments through their rehab center:

Driving Solutions Program (Inpatient and Outpatient)

This specialty program provides driver assessment, training and adaptive equipment recommendations for vehicle operation. The assessment process includes tests of vision, visual perception and reaction time, as well as assessment of cognitive and physician functioning. Driver training is available to new and experienced drivers to promote safety and competency behind the wheel. Training in the use of adaptive equipment is available.

When I was in practice the aging driver was one of my tougher management challenges. It's not only that driving ability decreases with advanced age, it's also that judgment often deteriorates in parallel with visual, sensory and motility loss.

As we boomers age, we're going to turn the roads into a slaughterhouse. For a time no-one will dare take the wheel from our voting hands. Bicyclists will become extinct (I suspect rising bicycle fatalities is a leading indicator of aged drivers), until finally the survivors will rise up. We'll then have to go through regular (q1-2y) examinations. Ultimately there will be enough of us near-suicidal 75+ yo non-drivers that we'll actually get a decent transit alternative going.

Or maybe cars will get "smart" enough that they can be "driven" by a fairly impaired person...