Luis Suarez suggested something so strange, something almost heretical this weekend. He said we should use the phone and not email sometimes. Yes, I know, strange. Wait you mean I can use my Blackberry as a phone?
IBM’s Luis Suarez is the latest social networker to argue for reducing your dependence on email as a productivity tactic. Tired of spending hours a day on email, Suarez worked to stop the cycle of emails generating emails, reducing his incoming stream by 80% in a week. Among the tactics he recommends:
- Answer questions via blog postings or wiki pages, rather than email, so that future contacts with the same question can find the answer without asking you.
- Use instant messages for short answers; switch to phone if a conversation lasts more than three minutes.
- Use a feed reader instead of email to track relevant content; this gives you more control of what you receive and when.
- Encourage your contacts to follow your lead, so they cut down on the overall email glut too.
I like Suarez’s advice as a first set of concrete steps you can take to reduce one of the big productivity issues for many web workers. But I think there’s a broader context here as well. The reason so many people dream about reducing email is that email has been fabulously successful in recent years. And if you’re going to attack the email problem, you need to be careful that you don’t create other problems in its place. Source: Web Worker Daily » Archive Cutting Email Down to Size «
All kidding aside, Luis is right. We’ve gotten spoiled by email. Sarah Perez posted about Attent, which I agree with her doesn’t solve the key problem…we need to think.
From personal experience, I found that a lot of people chose to email simply because email was the absolute fastest way to send out a request for help, a question, or to share a message with a large number of people. When this became a burden, such as it was at one of my I.T. jobs, the real cause that should have been addressed was why were people turning to email instead of using the tools to them at hand? Why were people sending emails instead of logging help desk tickets? Why were people sending emails instead of referring to online documentation? Why were people sending emails instead of doing the job themselves – which they had the ability and permissions to do, but not the know-how?
The problem that must be addressed in every company are the underlying causes that lead some people to use email far more than necessary – and use it first, without thinking things through. This tool, Attent, aims to do that, but without deeper understanding about what’s wrong in the particular company. Source: Email Overload: Band-Aids Are Not Solutions | sarahintampa
Look for the answers. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can find stuff. I do a lot of searches through emails, files, the net. When was the last time you fired off and email before you through if you had the answer?
I had one of those today. I was about two seconds away from hitting send and thought for a second, maybe I have the answer.
Turned out I did.
I wonder with all our information, the information that we’re drowning in, if we’ve lost the ability to look, seek, and find.
While the solutions might not lie in technology, technology can certainly help get you there.
Tags: email, informationHow many of you have a pasword on your laptop?
I’m betting most of you do. Is it a strong password?
Now if you’re using a Mac I think all this doesn’t really apply to you, I think you might have better security than I do on Vista.
So today a friend called me. She had forgotten her password to her laptop. She had been proud of the uber cool, super strong pasword she figured out.
Well now she had a boat anchor. Well so she thought or feared.
Armed with google I found several options for, essentially, breaking in and resetting her password.
Once she had the CD burned it took all of about 10 mins to crack in. That included booting into safe mode twice to clear stuff out.
If we didn’t need to do that, 3-5 mins tops.
I told her, this is why I have a okay pasword on my machine, but not super strong.
My password is enough to keep the causal snoopre at bay, but I figure that if someone really wants in, well it won’t take much effort.
Heck after today’s thing I have a bootable USB drive with the tools and a copy of the CD image as well.
Just part of my kit now.
Yes, this goes against a lot of what security people tell us, however like I said, if someone wants in, they’ll get in.
The trick is to prevent the casual person at bay.
Gives you a whole new perspective doesn’t it?
Tags: computer security, hackers, passwords, vistaAs we complain about Twitter and other services not working, it’s great when a service just keeps getting better. Toluu wins the “let’s just make it better over time” award:
We have just launched a re-aligned ‘Match’ page with a cleaner UI and greater functionality. We have also made updates to ‘Contacts’ and feed ‘Subscribers’.
We recently made major changes to the architecture of matching to make it load dramatically faster. Today we have made design and functionality improvements. The new design is simpler and cleaner which should make it easier to hone in on the people and feeds that matter to you. Source: Toluu Blog
The site is getting noticeably faster, the results are getting better, and it’s still invite only.
Invite only lets Caleb control the user base, and sure there was a land rush on invites (I have 16 left), but now I think Toluu is one of the best kept secrets online.
Tags: RSS, toluuSince Rogers Mobile announced their iPhone pricing this week, the reaction to their plans has been less that enthusiastic (to say the least).
RuinediPhone.com has started an online petition to Rogers to change their rate plans and an open letter to Steve Jobs on what is certainly a slap in the face.
Did I sign it? You bet I did. Do I think it will make much of a difference? Yeah, not so much.
That said, this is what I left for them:
Rogers, Canada is a world leader in technology, but Rwanda has cheaper cell and data rates than we do.
Canada will be left behind in the global push towards information workers.
Have you no national pride? This isn’t about money, this is about Canada leading and not following. This is about Canadians having jobs.
Get your head out of the sand your hands out of our wallets and make Canada a competitive force.
That said…this is making a splash. Techmeme has a growing list of links—Techmeme: 10,000 Canadians petition Steve Jobs for iPhone rate relief (Philip Elmer-DeWitt/Apple 2.0)—including CNN getting into the fray:
For one thing, it comes with a mandatory 3-year contract. In the U.K., O2 offers an-18 month contract and throws in the iPhone for free. And although both AT&T (T) and Rogers offer calling, data and text messaging for $75 a month, Rogers at that price gives Canadians a third less calling time, half as many text messages, and puts a 750 MB cap on 3G data usage — with steep fees for users who go over their monthly limit. Source: FORTUNE: Apple 2.0 10,000 Canadians petition Steve Jobs for iPhone rate relief «
What I wonder, as I have before, is if the current Tory minority government really wants to increase Canada’s profile and competitiveness on the world stage.
Mathew Ingram notes that there are folks trying to get the attention of both the government and the Competition Bureau, but I think it needs more than that:
The most common response to the plans so far, at least to judge by a Twitter search and a blog search, is virtually unprintable — but you can get a pretty good idea by the domain name of this website, which is collecting names on a petition to send to the Competition Bureau (in half an hour, the number of names climbed by more than 300). There are some detailed responses here, and also here, and serial tech entrepreneur Albert Lai has a response to the plans here. Former Tory candidate Stephen Taylor calls it “a rip-off.” Source: Rogers iPhone: Get a second mortgage » mathewingram.com/work |
Here’s an interesting idea, what if the government did a little analysis of how much businesses could save if our voice and data plans were more in line with the US. Hmm, I’m betting millions, if not billions, of dollars could be saved. Something that could be put towards expanding and building business.
Just a thought.
Yeah I know, improving the economy, it’s crazy.
Image courtesy of RuinediPhone.com
Tags: data plans, iPhone, rogers mobileAh Twitter. The blogerati are raising their glasses to you in homage of your passing. FriendFeed is standing in the corner being polite, warm, and charming. At the bar, people are shaking their heads, talking about going to FriendFeed’s place after the wake…
Hold on a second here. I’m not seeing a huge decline in Tweets, course it’s a little hard to tell since I can only pull 20 reqs/hr through Twhirl.
The discussion and debate about Twitter’s untimely (maybe ironic since they just got a whack o’ cash) demise seems to focus on the Replies tab being toast since Tuesday (yeah like Allen Stern muses, why not just have it click through to Summize even with a build in search query for your ID?), okay yeah. Okay Twitter isn’t the most reliable of services at the moment. However as Steve Hodson notes..
Surely there is something else to talk about other than whether or not the Twitter bird has taken a crap on your forehead. Source: WinExtra » What’s more irritating – a dead Twitter or whining users?
Yes there is something else to talk about. We look at this as a chance to help Twitter and FriendFeed and all to follow to do some cool ass shit.
I like Twitter for its immediacy and brevity. It’s just there and (when it worked) simply elegant. I like FriendFeed as well, granted I haven’t been on it as much lately because I’ve been busy, but it’s different.
As I read the commentary about everyone moving to FriendFeed (odd no one is mentioning Jaiku or Pownce or Plurk), I’m just not buying into it. Twitter has a great place in our communications world. I believe that we’re at a point where we can see what is important for us:
I don’t see FriendFeed doing all of that right now. Pownce and Jaiku do a lot of this, but haven’t been able to capitalize on the opportunity to increase their user base (or at least participation rate).
This is my idea (it’s just forming so forgive any gaps) … no one service can do it all. It seems to be too, too much.
Twitter, you’re great at sending messages out, so maybe become like a POP server? FriendFeed, great at aggregating, find other ways for us to get brief updates. All the other tools … FriendFeed started the trend to pull things together, take this as a the universal inbox idea.
So, the time might be right to work together. Find a way for it to become irrelevant that you prefer Twitter or Pownce or Jaiku (or whatever) just you send stuff out, people read it, they reply you get it—in the place where you sent it.
Right now I have Twitter open in Twhirl and in Firefox. I have FriendFeed in Twhirl and Firefox. And having discovered Summize this week that’s open too … now I don’t think FriendFeed has all the parts here, close, but not quite.
This might be the “what’s next” that I’ve been waiting for. The 21st century version of the email revolution.
Let’s hope so.
Tags: FriendFeed, Jaiku, lifestream, microblogging, Pownce, summize, TwitterWhen I was in Vancouver this week I was having lunch with Rebecca “Miss604” Bollwitt and Colleen Coplick and saw an iPhone ad in the Rogers store across the street. Yep, the marketing push is in full swing. Only problem is that until today we didn’t know what the plans would be like.
Now we do and all I can say is: ouch.
The official Rogers press release give us a table with all the plans:
iPhone 3G Price Plans at Rogers Wireless
—————————————-————————————————————————-
Sent Incoming
Text Text Visual
Price Voice Data Messages messages Voicemail
————————————————————————-
$60 / 150 minutes + unlimited 400 MB 75 Unlimited Unlimited
month Evening and Weekend
————————————————————————-
$75 / 300 minutes + unlimited 750 MB 100 Unlimited Unlimited
month Evening and Weekend
————————————————————————-
$100 / 600 minutes + unlimited 1 GB 200 Unlimited Unlimited
month Evening and Weekend
————————————————————————-
$115 / 800 minutes + unlimited 2 GB 300 Unlimited Unlimited
month Evening and Weekend
————————————————————————-Data Usage - What You Get
————————-————————————————————————-
Monthly
Data Usage Online Applications
————————————————————————-
400 MB up to 200,000 text emails or 3,100 web pages or 1,360 photo
attachments
————————————————————————-
750 MB up to 380,000 text emails or 5,900 web pages or 2,560 photo
attachments
————————————————————————-
1 GB up to 524,000 text emails or 8,000 web pages or 3,500 photo
attachments
————————————————————————-
2 GB up to 1,048,000 text emails or 16,000 web pages or 7,000
photo attachments
————————————————————————-
Pricing includes unlimited Wi-Fi access at all Rogers and Fido
Hotspots. Rogers Wireless will also offer two voice value packs for popular
wireless features: a $15 monthly value pack including Caller ID, Who
Called, Caller Ring Trax, 2,500 Sent Text Messages and 2,500 Call
Forwarding Minutes; and a $20 monthly value pack including Caller ID, Who
Called, Caller Ring Trax, 10,000 Sent Text Messages and 6:00 p.m. Early
Evening Calling and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes.
Mark Evans’ (turns out I’m going to be living within a few block of him) has his analysis and yeah, he’s right, the iPhone might be a dud up here, sorta.
If this reaction is typical then it’s entirely possible the iPhone could initially be a dud in Canada until pricing becomes more attractive. It could also mean the 100,000 “grey market” iPhone users in Canada could continue to expand.
If you look at the chart below, Rogers lays out the different data scenarios in terms of how many e-mail messages you can receive, for example, with each package. One thing glaringly missing is how many online videos you could watch for each data plan. What Rogers doesn’t want to admit is you could easily burn through 2GB of data (Rogers’ biggest plan) if you watched a modest number YouTube videos a month.
One other thought: why would Rogers not offer an unlimited data plan if one of the major selling points of the new iPhone is it works on a 3G network, which is fast enough to make using the wireless Web easier and more attractive? It could be Rogers is jammed because it would have to offer unlimited plans to all of its Blackberry users. Source: Rogers Unveils iPhone Pricing | Mark Evans
The sorta comes in with people like Rebecca and others with hacked iPhones already, I’m betting that the hackathon will only continue.
Let’s add a twist to this, if Telus switches to GSM as has been rumoured, then they could scoop a lot of hacked iPhones with better data and voice plans.
Not that they are leading the way in the data plan department. I am so not giving up my unlimited data plan with by EVDO card.
What’s the deal Rogers? You just trying to eek out more money from gadget-crazed consumers before they bolt away when new providers hit?
Tags: iPhone, iPhone Canada, Mobile, Rogers WirelessGreat news for Twitter, they’ve secured more funding:
Project: Runway
Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model. However, our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight. We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our vision. Source: Twitter Blog: Welcoming Bijan and Jeff
From the people who have signed on there must be confidence in Twitter and the business model, however…
We’ve been at 20 requests/hour on API clients for about a week now. XMPP is still off. Guys, really, quit with the sunshine and address the real problem. Twitter is working its way towards being marginalized. Sure we’re not leaving in droves, but FriendFeed is getting a lot of attention…
Yes, I’m waiting for the next big thing, but I also see microblogging as a part of that picture. FriendFeed, well that could survive without Twitter. We enjoy short asides and links. We enjoy broad conversation. We don’t need Twitter for that.
Well, Twitter, you gonna step up or what?
Tags: funding, microblogging, startups, TwitterI think we’re in a rut. A semantic, AJAX-powered, XML-based, open source rut. I have had a hard time getting excited about tech news of late, hence the last little while I haven’t been posting as much nor with as much passion as I have in the past.
I’m looking at everything we’re doing and seeing that we’re re-working and refining what we’ve developed.
Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, RSS, blogging…we’ve been at this a while, but what’s truly new or revolutionary? Don’t get me wrong, I think this is all amazing … I’m just anxious to see the next big thing.
The question is what.
If there is one thing we’ve all seen recently it is that our collective, crowdsourced ideas can product amazing stuff, but right now we’re stuck.
Being stuck isn’t a bad thing, though. Being stuck brings frustration. The feeling of “we have to do it better” that just gets people to start having crazy ideas like lightbulbs, TCP/IP, the Slurpee (okay I was grasping for the last one).
The point is when we get stuck, we don’t like it and we want/need to change it. That’s when the best minds among us start to scribble things on napkins and whiteboards and asking what if…
What if the lines around information really became transparent. What if I could structure my information and data in a mindmap and zap it over to someone who was more linear and they just read it as they’d like to. No additional software, just they get the file (sorry stuck in that metaphor) and open it in their information tool and see it.
What if we could just keep dragging and dropping parts and information, but keeping the connections all together so that it will even update if the original changes.
What if… probably one of the most important questions we can utter.
Tags: , innovation, web 2.0I admit it, I’m a data junkie. I will pour over the stats for my blogs for, well, let’s say I can do it for a long time. Oh and not just one source of data either. Oh that would be just too easy, too simple. No, I have redundant webstats tools. It seems like I can’t get enough data. I always want to know more about visitors, page views, popularity, etc.
I tried Google Trends for website when it hit the scene this week and, like Corvida notes on RWW, it sucks for “normal” blogs. Which is a pity because it might have been a great, easy tool for people to get the “big picture” on their stats. Which makes me wonder, have we made stats so hard?
As I’m pouring over my daily dose of data I think about the bloggers I work with everyday. They want to know pretty simple things. What is popular and how much traffic, that pretty much covers it.
It seems that, however, we should be able to provide more information to “normal” folks more easily.
Years ago I used a log-based stats program that had a great “dashboard” concept, you just looked and knew where you were at with red and green arrow. Woopra has that in a ticker at the bottom of the window (easily overlooked IMHO), Google Analytics has a nice comparative view (given metric vs. the average). The problem I’ve found is that too often it’s too hard for average or busy bloggers to take advantage of these tools because they just aren’t clear and easy to find.
Yes, WordPress stats are good and simple, but maybe too simple. See the best kind of webstats would be ones that give you a heads up view of your data and point out “interesting” things for you to delve into more. The “yo, this is cool, check it out” part is only half the battle though, what people need is the virtual guide to help in the delving process.
Haven’t seen that yet.
I have lots for Woopra in this regard. GA? Not so much, unless someone figures out a way to connect to it somehow.
Sigh, I can only hope.
Tags: blog stats, google analytics, google trends, metrics, web stats, woopraTechnology and Web 2.0 News from a Canadian Perspective
Written by Tris Hussey [email] for b5media.
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