Hands down, Google's e-mail platform, Gmail, has the best e-mail interface out there. It's fast, clean and easy to use.
One of my favorite features offered is their simple bookmarking system, the "Star":
Got an e-mail you want to check it out later? Star it and respond at your convenience. Not only that, but other notification-sending Google Apps are subject to it as well.
Got a new Google Calendar reminder and want to check it out later? Star it and respond at your convenience:
Got a new Google Voice notification and want to check it out later? Star it and respond at your conveniece:
Got a new Google Chat notification and want to check it out later? Star it and respond at your convenience:
Got a new Google Buzz notification and want to check it out later? Star it and respond at your convenience:
Uh...wait a second. Dude, where's my star?
That's strange, you can't add stars to Google Buzz items. At least not while viewing the buzz item itself. You can, however, add them at the higher-level inbox view, just like any other items in your inbox.
I can't imagine this to be a mere oversight on Google's part; they have way too many smart people working for them. But if it's intentional, what's the rationale behind it?
There's a relatively-new web-journal, OhLife, that I've been using lately. It has a clean, simple interface and it's similar to Posterous in that you can do everything through email. They send a daily "How did your day go?" message to your inbox and adding a new private entry is a simple as replying. Another thing about those emails is that they contain random entries from the past. Each one starts off with "Oh snap, remember this?", and maybe it's just the Biz Markie fan in me, but the "Oh snap" makes me chuckle every time. Web apps are often kind of bland, but that copy does a good job personifying their product. The site works well in conjunction with 750words.com, too. 750words is a great way to start the day and OhLife is a nice way to recap it in the evening. I have no idea how they'll make money, but it's still a nice service to have.
After writing about Posterous' "New Post" button yesterday, I dropped them a line saying the same thing. Today--less than 24 hours later--I received this email:
Hi Ebun, Thanks for the feedback - I've shared it with our product team and agree that it makes sense. Thanks for using Posterous! Rich
Woohoo! I'm keeping my fingers crossed but here's to hoping they make the change. And props to them for the prompt, human response.
I enjoy using Posterous to blog. It's clean, simple and very easy to use. But there's one thing that's irked me from day 1: their "New Post" button.
There are two ways to create blog posts: via email and via web interface. I would think that pressing this button would navigate users to the web interface. It doesn't. Instead, it tries to open up an email client and send an email.
Posterous built itself up around email blogging, so I realize only a minority of other users probably prefer using the web interface. But still, if you're already on a Posterous blog, having that button send an email just seems counter-intuitive
This is embarrassing to admit, but I still struggle to use Japanese characters on my computer. Despite installing Microsoft's East Asian Language support over a year ago, I still occasionally have problems toggling between roman characters and kana.
Needless to say, I was happy to discover Typd.in, a website that makes it easy to type the characters from the web. 例えば、私はそれがこの文章を書いていた (for example, I used the service to write this sentence). In addition to the web interface, there's also a JavaScript Bookmarklet that you can use to convert text fields on other web pages into kana input fields.
すばらしい!
About a month and a half ago, I created a twitter bot, @tweologian, that searches the Twittersphere for religious-oriented tweets and retweets them. I've always had a fascination with religion and thought it'd be interesting to see how people talked about faith on Twitter. For example, here are some retweets from the last 24 hours:
- RT @: Religion IS Restriction -
- RT @: **NEWSFLASH** didn't hang with perfect people.
- RT @: RT @: RT @ I Love Allah, I Love Muhammad, I Love Islam and I Love My Dad ♥
- RT @: Christianity-The First Two Thousand Years
- RT @: RT @: BuddhaNet Audio: Buddhist Meditation
People are pretty open on Twitter so there have been some really interesting tweets. But another interesting part has been the response!
After creating it (with this PHP bot framework) and setting it to auto-follow any new followers, I took my hands off and let it run. I didn't expect to attract too much attention but almost immediately, people started reacting to the tweets.
Most were positive: I've been been retweeted, recommended on Follow Friday, blessed and engaged. But there's also been some negative ones: I've been questioned, accused, cursed at (again and again and again) and even threatened. Don't shoot the messenger!
After about 3,900 tweets, I have close to 500 followers and have been added to a handful of lists. I'm going to continue running the bot in the same, hands-off way while studying the reactions, but for now, I've gotten a couple of key take-aways:
- People are still very vocal about their faiths and Twitter makes it easy to share their beliefs with the world.
- The best way to get someone's attention--for better or for worse--is through a retweet.
Facebook's Suggestions feature is a novel idea. It provides real value, reminding users of their friends from days gone past. But if you've listed someone as a sibling or parent, does it really make sense to suggest for us to "Catch up on Facebook"?
I professed my love for 750words.com a few posts back but found something else pretty interesting about the site: you can only log on with 3rd party accounts. There's no native user account system; you're forced to use Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect or Yahoo!ID.
This is the first time I've ever seen a web app configured this way and it has both its upsides and downsides:
The pros: Less code to maintain and one less username/password for users to remember
The cons: 3rd party dependency/limitations and a lack of user anonymity
The most interesting part is the lack of user anonymity, that is, forcing users to use their real names or ID's (though people can still create fake handles at those sites). It's probably not a huge concern for most 750words users since the application is not heavily community-centric (by default, your posts are private), but I wonder...how would this approach affect other sites and apps?
Here's the dilemma: for community sites, there's "an inverse relationship between the level of anonymity and quality of conversation". But at the same time, when you disallow anonymity, people are less likely to participate, meaning you might not have a conversation anyway.
Both approaches come with consequences. But with the growing popularity of Facebook, Google and other sites that let users take their accounts elsewhere, maybe the trade-off is worth it.
For community/social sites where real names are the norm (e.g., LinkedIn), why create a native user account system when most users already use those other sites? And for sites that advocate dialog and conversation, could losing anonymous posters be written off as collateral damage if the health of the community's conversation has an overall upswing?
There will always be a place for anonymity because some sites--especially those related to anything taboo--just can't survive without it. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of sites without their own user account systems continue to increase in the future.
I was stoked to hear about 750words.com, a website that supports and encourages morning pages. Morning pages are 3 pages of unfiltered prose written daily to clear your mind and get your thoughts on paper.
I first heard about morning pages in college from an actress friend and later tried them for myself. I quit shortly thereafter since I was neither disciplined nor honest enough to keep up the habit. But after coming to Japan, and after reading Getting Things Done, I started doing a variation of them. If by a computer, I'd type in whatever thoughts were running through my mind; if away, I'd use my trusty moleskine. It worked well and helped me get rid of tons of mental clutter.
Though similar, noting everything that comes to mind, at any time, isn't the same as writing morning pages. So when I was reminded of them through 750words, I thought I'd give it a try. The results have been amazing. I can't type 3 pages without tapping into my subconscious and so I've been unlocking rants and thoughts trapped in the back of my mind. Putting them out there allows me to proceed throughout the rest of the day with a heightened sense of clarity.
This sort of web app also reminds me of the beauty of both creativity and technology. The application's single creator, Buster Benson, used both to bring forth to the world a valuable product which is already benefiting and impacting so many.
Google Voice gives us have one phone number for life, FB gives us one social playground for life and email doesn't tie us down to any single location.
Would it be possible to create a similar physically-independent middle layer for physical addresses? A unique address that stays with us and always reaches us whether we're at home, temporarily relocated or traveling?
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