Month: October 2004

So Scoble points to both CNET News.com and Engadget for articles about the new Gateway MP3 player. I wonder which got more clicks?

Jeremy Zawodny asks “Is your email inbox a stack or a queue?” In simpler, less geeky terms… do you sort so new messages show up on top (stack) or bottom (queue) of your inbox?

I’m all about the stack, both at work (Outlook) and at home (Mail). First, I like to know what’s new and scan to see if I should react. Second, if the inbox gets full enough that I can’t see both the oldest message and the newest, I want to prune.

Old messages are there because the inbox is a to-do list. I’ve tried alternate methods for handling priorities, because chronology really isn’t the best method, but email continues to be the application where I spend most of my time.

My wife treats email as a queue. I never thought to ask why, but I will.

Spread the meme, either by commenting on Jeremy’s blog or blogging yourself and tracking back.

So, in reading Neil Turner, I learn about Silktide’s SiteScore. Free tool for analyzing your website on usability, popularity, and other metrics… both qualitative and quantitative. Like everyone else, I wanted to know where I stacked up, so www.pencoyd.com/clock went under the magnifying glass. The score? 6.4. Of course, the design got a 9.0, which is no credit to me (I used a default Radio template) and a poor comment on the ratings, since it’s oh-so-plain. Still, I learned something interesting: this site is the first result for a Google search for watching time. I can’t imagine that’s a common search, but doesn’t everyone want to win something? And I’m never going to be the first John Roberts in Google, so I’ll take this tiny stake on the web.

And I’m #6 for books currently waiting.

Now, in addition to the pile of books upstairs waiting to be read, I have a (smaller) stack of books next to the computer waiting to be blogged. Time to knock the pile down by one volume, with number 18 in the Aubrey-Maturin series, The Yellow Admiral.

As it’s been a few weeks, I will only call out two elements of the story, very little of which takes place at sea.

The first is the remarkable description — without dropping into a lecture — of the battle over enclosures. This practice of combining smaller parcels of land, and removing the commons (yes, see “tragedy of the…”) from, well, common usage was both a political and financial tool for the powerful, concentrating wealth and power — usually in that order — and pushing more and more of the populace from agricultural work to industrial efforts. Enclosures helped changed the face of England in the 19th century. I’ve studied English history, but never found that the boring, yet vital, details of this shift in land-ownership and usage stuck with me. But O’Brian helped enormously, and makes Aubrey an opponent, successful in this single instance in stemming the tide of concentration. Aubrey is, while ashore, a landed MP, though quite cash poor in the period this book covers, so his vote still matters more than his pocketbook. Maybe the dialogue wouldn’t have filled in all the gaps if I hadn’t somewhere remembered pieces of the historical puzzle — but I bet I would have learned the import of the facts much faster if I’d had started with fiction like this back in the day when knowing these things actually mattered, or seemed to. Ahhhh… college.

The second part of the story I recall most vividly is that Jack Aubrey’s mother-in-law finds an old stack of love letters from his dalliance in Canada early in his marriage. Sophie kicks him out of the house, and it’s only late in the book that tempers and the marriage are returned to an even keel. Combination of a shrewish, curious mother-in-law with documented evidence of infidelity makes Jack a dull (as in thick) boy. Whoops.

I’ve been here before. Probably on both sides, if I’m honest with myself. However, building web sites and applications does not require reading that far into the future. Fortunately!

Several years ago (well, at least pre-kids), I remember coming across some work from Bernie DeKoven on technography, which I remember as methods for documenting on the fly to improve meetings through technology. I printed out a sparse page or so that was a useful summary, at the time, but I can no longer find that on the web (was hosted by UserLand Software). The printout is at work somewhere, sitting on a shelf, not quite forgotten. Looks like DeKoven is recognized as a pioneer in this area, and he offers consulting on technography and other skills at Coworking.com.

More recently, I subscribed to the feed from DeepFun.com, in part because it was from DeKoven. I rarely clickthrough on the feed, honestly, and I keep considering the unsubscribe, but yesterday he posted this about Cyclecide, which I saw for the first time in Fort Collins just weeks ago… even though they are based in here in San Francisco.

DeKoven, like everyone, has at least two sides. The web is giving us the opportunity to share more of what interests us, and people are doing just that. Just remember that everything you do online is possibly public.

I watched the boy do his birthday walk today at pre-school, four times around the “sun,” through the months of the year. I’m glad I made the last-minute decision to attend, especially after I talked to someone a bit further along the parent life-cycle later in the day. I can’t and won’t be there for everything. But today I made the right choice.

Slashdot has an interview with Neal Stephenson. As someone who has the hard copy of The System of the World waiting on the bedside table, I’m an avowed fan, so I’m reading the entire thing.

Early on, I see this: “… Susannah Clarke’s wonderful book “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.” ” Not two weeks ago, my mother recommended the same book. So, when I polish off the half-dozen or so books currently waiting for me, I’ve got another one to add to the never-shrinking list.

I know quite well that mass photo storage isn’t easy or cheap, even as storage costs continue to decrease. Still, I was surprised that Ofoto decided to take the step of telling inactive customers that they were going to delete their photos if they didn’t order something. I received a series of reminder emails warning me of the policy. I checked the site, saw that I had copies of everything there and said… whatever.

From the email:

If you’d like more information about our storage policy, please visit our Help department:
http://smile.ofoto.com/659468.50917.0.9394

Annoyingly, that URL just dumps you at the general Help index page, rather than details about their storage policy. Basically, any order, of anything, resets the clock for a year.

Even knowing the costs, I remain startled that annoying a possible customer is worth the savings in storage. Yes, I haven’t bought a print in a year (or more). Deleting my data (with plenty of warning, to their credit) isn’t likely to get me to buy more prints. Business is about choices, and they made theirs. I’ll make mine: go elsewhere.

Since I’m not a del.ico.us user, my interesting links lie around, gathering dust in the e-mail inbox or in Safari. Taking a broom to the in-box, I find the following:

• Hugh Macloed of GapingVoid on Mount Everest (read the entire post… it’s not long)
  

  9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
  You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

  I often agree, but this kind of creative focus also requires a tremendous selfishness. I enjoyed the entire list of How to be creative posts, not just #9.

• Michael Tchong on Time Compression. Just some pithy stats to underline the reality of the world today, and the view that time is worth more than money.
• Selling answers to the NYTimes crossword puzzle, faster than the Times! [via paidContent]
• I beat Walt Mossberg to the punch with my radioShark review. I don’t claim I was as comprehensive, but the lack of a program guide was a common concern.
• Seth Godin in Fast Company: “There is no corporate privacy, and it’s a good thing” – Transparency wins, in part by forcing an organization to compete all the time. Not everyone is willing to do that, so if you are, you win — because customers win.

I’ll save the Safari bookmarks bar for another time.