Tech
Too Many Email Services
I’m in email hell. I’ve got my own Domain account, a .Mac account, a Yahoo account, a Gmail account, and I’ve even got a Hotmail account. They all do some things really well, and they all lack in other areas really badly. The only one that is a complete and total waste of time is Hotmail, it honestly offers nothing. I don’t want to keep several email accounts open and operational, I don’t want to just forward everything to one account (which is my current solution) and I don’t want to keep track of all of this crap anymore.
The Pros and Cons
Gmail (Pro)
Gmail has the best spam detection by far. And Gmail finally offers IMAP which makes me a happy camper.
Gmail (Con)
Google is starting to scare the shit out of me. I’m not fanatic about privacy, but Google goes too far the wrong way and I would very much like to drop off of their grid. I also think their web interface looks awful.
Yahoo (Pro)
The Daddy of ‘em all. I freaking love the AddressGuard (email aliases) and use them for everything, from buying to services to blog registrations. It’s a great way to keep my actual email out of the hands of no-good jerks.
Yahoo (Con)
They only offer POP which is completely useless. When I access my email on my iPhone, I can’t use all of those great email aliases to send the email.
.Mac (Pro)
.Mac’s email is pretty seamless with my Mac. It offers IMAP. And .Mac offers 5 email aliases.
.Mac (Con)
The .Mac service for me has been way too sketchy to be relied on for my main email.
My Domain (Pro)
What else can I say? It’s my domain. There’s also the professional feel to having chris [at] myowndomain [dot] com.
My Domain (Con) My domain uses a web interface that looks and behaves like the last time it was updated was 1999. For someone that must access their email through a web browser while at work, this is just a gigantic deal breaker. This is the account I want to use the most, but it’s the least useful.
What I Want
I want Gmail’s spam filter. I want IMAP. I want email aliases. I want a ton of space so I never have to worry about clearing out old emails. And I want to send to and from my own domain. Unfortunately, there’s not a service out there that can give me all of that. And what I have to choose from are too close to choose from. I bounce from service to service hoping to find the one that will work for all of my needs but I know I’ll never find it. Yahoo is probably the closest but their use of POP is maddening. POP is a terrible way to access your email.
Firefox is Un-Mac
I know that Mozilla put out the call to Mac users asking them why they felt Firefox wasn’t a good Mac citizen. I’m sure they got their fill of complaints. But as is the case with many developers when it comes to design, as hard as they try they just can’t see the difference between their version and a professionally designed version. For instance, check out the photo of the Proto Theme for Firefox Beta 2. To me, it’s like a polished turd. It looks close to the Safari design but details (which aren’t the Proto developers fault but rather the Firefox implementation) are decidedly un-Mac. For example, why on Earth are Firefox tabs so damn wide? They’re that wide across the board, not just on Mac. And what’s with the site icon on the tab? Not only do most of these icons suck but if they happen to have a white background or other poorly-chosen design elements, you’re stuck having to look at it on your tab. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose but Firefox is just too clunky looking for me to use day-to-day.
Steve Ballmer Knows
Read this: iPhone Leads All Windows Mobile Combined
Then watch this:
I can’t help but grin.
Kick Facebook
Beacon is evil. Plain and simple. There’s no way to sugar-coat this. If you haven’t deactivated your account or, better yet, demanded your account be permanently deleted from Facebook, you’re only feeding the fire.
But Facebook is Fun!
I know you like you some Facebook time. I know you like seeing all of your friends and what stupid things they’re getting into but you have to understand that the only way Facebook and their network of advertisers are going to learn that there’s advertising and then there’s just creepy is if you say it with your vote (or membership in this case, in other cases it’s dollars). You must abandon them for them to see that they’ve gone too far. Even if you’re of a younger generation that accepts advertising as a part of your life, you have to see that this is a major turning point. Have you ever seen Minority Report? Where the ads scan your retina, immediately finding out who you are and what products you’ve purchased so that they can change ads midstream and advertise to just you? That’s what this is. This is the seed that grows into that. If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, you’ve got problems.
Don’t Take My Word For It
Greg Reinacker , Gigaom, Download Squad, Idea Shower, Silicon Alley Insider, and C|Net feel the same way.
You must leave Facebook.
DAP Religions
I swear that Digital Audio Player (DAP) choice is becoming a more difficult subject to discuss with people than religion. People are positively insane when it comes to defending their DAP of choice. In some ways it reminds me of the Mac vs. Windows discussions but they are much more volatile. If you don’t believe me, just go to Engadget and look at any article discussing an iPod, a Zune, or a player by iRiver or Creative. What you’ll see in the comments is abhorrent.
I have a theory but it’s groundless. I’ll share it anyway.
For years when Microsoft Windows pummeled all other operating systems out of existence and almost killed the Macintosh, the anger in any given discussion was on the Mac side of the fence. People who liked Macs fiercely defended its superiority over Windows. And some Windows users would even concede that, yes, the marriage of software to hardware did make for a better experience but the mind-blowing market share of Windows meant that it simply didn’t matter. They could smugly point out that the OS they chose was winning and that the Mac was going to be put out of existence sooner than later.
In the DAP market, this is very much a flipped scenario. Although the iPod doesn’t have the market-share percentage in DAPs that Microsoft has achieved in operating systems it still has the ire of the people. Note: Last I checked the iPod accounted for around 70% of all DAPs sold in the US, compare that to roughly 90% of Windows installations. So now these same Windows people that have been arguing with these same Mac people find themselves on the other side of the fence. They kick and scream and vehemently deny that iPod is a superior product. They believe to their core that there are better solutions, especially when connecting to a Windows machine, that if people would only try them they would see how superior it was and it would swing the control back to their side of the camp. Both sides of this argument are guilty in some way. Mac people are guilty of being smug about Apple’s dominance and Windows people are acting like their universe is crashing in because people won’t listen to them.
I’ve tried to get into these discussions with people and point out that maybe if you like your Creative Zen Vision M then you should be happy with that. Why do you need to make fun of someone or put them down because they don’t share your point of view? Why do you feel the need to point out how many songs iTunes has sold when you’re trying to prove that an iPod is better than a Zune? None of this makes any sense. You like Creative? Great! The use it. You like an iPod? Great! Then use it. But that’s not how people feel about this issue and it’s getting to the point where we’re all going to have to keep our DAP preference to ourselves the way we do with our religions and our politics. It’s just too personal for most people.
The only thing more disturbing than the DAP debate is the next-generation video-disc debate.