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Category: What I Think
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I’m sorry, but…
I really wish I had time to fix up and fine tune this blog. All the ideas are worked out and strategy is finalised. But like the painter with the un-painted house, builder with the un-finished house or the sex starved prostitute I am too damn busy writing stuff for clients, photographing stuff for clients, being social – for clients, to do any kind of self promotion. There hasn’t even been much swashbuckling going on.
Over the years I have had many email address from different ISPs, employers I’ve worked for, businesses I’ve started and for personal branding. Being online since 1996 I have collected and created a huge archive of emails; over 30,000 which was clogging up over 30GB of data on my HDD even though I had moved many years worth from to backup DVDs and external HDDs.
I recently started working with a new client (@wingdude) who outlined the way he preferred to work with consultants. Amongst other things he stated he ‘lived in GMail’ and had over 10 years of emails sitting in Google’s cloud. Google offer many fantastic free services of which GMail is but one. Google Apps is a brilliant and free solution for small to medium enterprise who need to offer email to staff without having to pay for email hosting. There is also a document creation and management function, calendar function and website construction interface. I use it for one of my businesses (@nextbigthing.com.au) , am about to deploy it for another business (@misterbig.com.au) and implemented it for one of my personal branding domains (@craigashleyrussell.com).
When Google first launched GMail it was through an invite only mechanism. Very wise considering in those days there was no such thing as cloud computing so the addition of users had to be managed carefully to avoid server failure at a massive scale. Originally, each invitee was given 10 invites for their friends. These found there way onto message boards and even eBay where they sold for a ten to twenty dollars. Now anyone can join without an invite and get about 7GB of storage, which grows all the time (you can actually watch your memory allocation grow, kilobyte by kilobyte), and Google’s amazing search interface for your own mailbox. That means you never have to delete emails ever again as the memory continues to grow. And it’s spam filter is the ultimate; I get no spam. Plus all this costs me nothing. $0!
I liked the idea of cleaning 30GB off my HDD and taking advantage of GMail’s advanced tools so I started to plan the best way to go about it. After all, moving 30GB to the cloud meant using 30GB of bandwidth at least. So these are the steps I took before sending a single email.
Migrate all my emails into one place – my Apple Mail app
Run de-duping software to ensure that I was not uploading any double-ups.
Delete any emails I was 101% sure would never need again; e-newsletters etc
Move all hese emails to the Inbox or Sent Mail box – all other mailboxes and Smart mailboxes had been condensed
Set-up my GMail account. This was interesting because I had several already; my very first crashrus@gmail and, for personal branding, craigashleyrussell@gmail. I decided to make crashrus@gmail the master account. It was my login to Google analytics, YouTube and several other of their platforms. In short, that login had a ‘history’ with Google that could be useful down the track remembering that one of Google’s search criteria is history.
Next I turned on the IMAP feature for my GMail account. IMAP essentially keeps a mail client and email web server in sync with each other. I have always found this very handy especially as when an email is marked as read on one device it is automatically marked as read on every other device or web server where that IMAP account resides (online, laptops, stand alones, iPhones etc). An email which is sent from one device appears in every other device too. Well not really, but a version of it does. The server houses the email in reality.
That’s it. All my emails from many different accounts are now living in Goggle’s cloud, available to me any time via my choice of device.
When I send an email it goes from the account that received it. I can create signatures for each address but the real bonus os Google search. I’ve had instances where looking back at 5 year old emails has made a big difference.
And migrating to GMail has made a big difference to me.
Recent bleep decision by the US Appeals Court that states bleep ‘fleeting expletive’ on live TV is NOT an bleep offence is a major slap in the bleep face for the very vocal, highly bleep visible, ultra bleep conservative, increasingly bleep minority, Christian bleep right wing movement of American politics. While this article focuses on the bleep impact upon bleep reality television the major impact is actually in the presentation of bleep live broadcast news. In debate speak, it’s not an bleep offence to broadcast a designated bleep expletive word.
The problem was dealt with extremely bleep well in the drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip when a fictitious TV broadcaster has a bleep massive fine levied against them by the bleep Federal bleep Communications bleep Commission because a bleep soldier swears while being interviewed under bleep fire in bleep Iraq.
The matter deals with the bleep right to free bleepbleep speech and thus the censorship of bleep news. It may seem minor on the bleep surface but has bleep massive implications for broadcast bleep media.
If we had the same bleep laws in bleep Australia, ABC2 wouldn’t have to bleep bleep out a lot of The Daily Show with John Stewart or The Colbert Report when replayed here. I’d bleep actually be bleep able to understand what the bleep they’re talking about instead of having all the gags punctuated by bleep bleep.
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Breaking the Code
The news cameraman and their stills photographer counterpart form a very small and exclusive club. Being at what is often the front line of a war without actually taking part is not an easy thing. It creates a bond between these newsmen who are comrades while waiting for something to happen and competitors when the action starts.
Recently a Channel 9 Melbourne cameraman insulted the father of a man charged with several crimes, including rioting, after being verbally abused by the father outside a court. It’s happened before. Many times. I’ve witnessed it. When you see footage showing angry mourners or defendants or their families attacking news crews typically you don’t see or hear anything from the cameramen or photographers. There’s two reasons for this:
- 99 times out of a hundred nothing is said by the newsmen,
- That one time something is said the ‘code’ is such that no other news putlet would report the incident.
But with this story the ABC in Victoria have removed themselves from the club by breaking the code. The SMH and all Fairfax papers are also out now. In fact, not only out, but ripe for retribution from the Nine Network.
But here’s the interesting thing about this story; if the son is found guilty, the cameraman will not have been insulting the father but stating fact.
Pay particular attention to points 6 and 9 in the attached article below; Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent tools but not substitutes for real-time, off-line, face-2-face, over-the-back-fence (as my latest client calls it) conversations.
Social media marketing works when like minded people (friends/colleagues you like) are introduced to a new idea/product/service by someone in the group. If you add a hundred or worse a thousand randoms to your online networking groups you will be flooded with irrelevant and therefore annoying messages. Networking FAIL!
Facebook is for friends and family. LinkedIn is for colleagues.
Networking for shy people – The Venture – MySmallBusiness – Sydney Morning Herald Blogs.
There’s an old saying; a man who can’t count his friends on one hand is a very lucky man.
A close friend of mine recently went through an enormous personal crisis; life changing, potentially soul destroying. Her 479 Facebook friends were no where to be seen. Her support group was her family, one or two other friends and me. Interestingly, we’re so close we’re not friends on Facebook.
http://mashable.com/2010/04/08/iphone-4-0-os-multitasking/
Excellent overview of today’s announcment by Apple Inc re iPhone OS 4.0.
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iPhone killers don’t need to outsell
According to Asher Moses of the Fairfax tech stable in his review of HTC’s new Desire handset, “the Desire is undoubtedly an iPhone killer, even if it doesn’t end up selling nearly as many units.”
Are you fucking kidding me you fool! Then what does make an iPhoen killer Asher; a phone that is prettier, has a bigger screen, uses anything but the iPhone OS. Ipso facto, any other phone.
Go back to school, would you please!
And by the way Fairfax, inserting an HTC ad, topping it with another ad and then putting your Technology opener and closer at each end is not quality content.
For fuck’s sake!
I have a reputation amongst my friends and family as an iGeek; an Apple fanboy. While it’s true that I use Apple hardware and software a true fanboy is a lobotomised zombie, incapable of listening to reason and believes Steve Jobs is Christ incarnate.
So because of this reputation I received, and I shit you not, hundreds of enquires wanting to know when I’m getting my iPad. Now pay attention to this very carefully; I NEVER EVER BUY FIRST GEN TECHNOLOGY, ESPECIALLY FROM APPLE!
I had the opportunity to buy an iPhone on the day they were launched in the US. My father was in New York staying at a hotel over looking the 5th Avenue Store. I even called him and asked him to line up and grab one for me. Then changed my mind. And very happy I was about that decision. My current iPhone 3GS is lightyears ahead of the prototype that was being sold then. The same will be true for the iPad too.
This flow chart explains my thinking perfectly.
I can’t imagine why anybody would want to be a beta tester for Apple. Especially when YOU’RE paying for the privilege. But I do appreciate all the fanboys who are going to part with their hard earned dollars (probably on their credit card) to help Apple out with their R&D. I might look buying iPad 2.0 which will be faster, lighter, cheaper, have double the GBs and look cooler.
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