Month: March 2013

[Matthew J.X. Malady fighting the good fight](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/03/email_signoffs_end_them_forever_best_yours_regards_they_re_all_terrible.single.html):

>Henceforth, I do not want—nay, I will not accept—any manner of regards. Nor will I offer any. And I urge you to do the same.

I can’t tell you how much I agree here. See also: “[Email Mistakes That Irritate Smart People](https://brooksreview.net/2010/07/email-mistakes-that-irratate-smart-people/)”

I largely skip all formalities that older generations applied to email. No intro, unless it is an email needing severe formality, and never any signoffs longer than `-Ben` — hell half the time I spell my own damned name `Bem` on accident so I even try to avoid writing that much. ((Clearly I could make a TextExpander snippet or something here, but for what point, I’m barely typing any characters to begin with.))

What’s clever about email is that there are always sender and receiver fields that tell people who sent the email, who received it, and even who was CC’d on the email. So what’s the point of all the other cruft?

Mostly ego, or so my ego assumes.

[Ryan Avent makes a salient point regarding the shut-down of Google Reader](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/03/utilities):

> Yanking away services beloved by early adopters almost guarantees that critical masses can’t be obtained: not, at any rate, without the provision of an incentive or commitment mechanism to protect the would-be users from the risk of losing a vital service.

This, of course, matters when you have a social network — or perhaps if your actual product is the users of your services.

[MG Siegler tackles another side of the debate](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/24/bees/):

> By killing the flower, Google could also kill the bees. That would be bad for all of us, even if we no longer use Reader or have any clue what RSS is.

Siegler’s point is that Reader drives a ton of traffic to sites everyday and without it, what happens if no other service fills the void? Decreased page views? Who does that hurt? Advertisers… aka Google.

It seems like a bit of a stretch, but it’s clear that the possibility is there.

One possible solution, [from Paul Krugman](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/the-economics-of-evil-google/):

> It seems hard at this point to envision search and related functions as public utilities, but that’s arguably where the logic will eventually lead us.

So, Google is the new AT&T?

[Marco Arment](http://www.marco.org/2013/03/21/thursday-sandwich):

>Want to really stick it to them? Stop using Google. All of it. Search, Gmail, Maps, the works. Delete your account and start using Bing. Ready?
>…
>Yeah. That’s the problem. You won’t. I won’t. Nobody will.

After I read that I quipped to Marco (on App.net) that this is factually incorrect — as I have actually quit Google. To my surprise, many of the anti-free-therefore-paid-and-very-nerdy-advocate types on App.net chimed in that they had, or are, fully leaving Google too.

It’s not an easy thing to do, mostly because old habits die hard, but it is actually very possible.

## Search

The easiest thing to do is to switch to Bing. While you can argue about how good the results are, I have been using Bing on iOS for over a year now and never once felt like I wasn’t able to find what I needed. Because there’s a difference between searching for something obscure and what most people use search for everyday. For the latter Bing is just as good (if not better, as the design is better looking on mobile), for the former you can make a case for Google, but it’s a close race.

Basic and intermediate-complexity searches are possible, with slightly less depth for the really deep searches when you need to find that one rant about that thing that no one else should remember.

That’s where my favorite search engine DuckDuckGo comes in. It’s fantastic.

You can easily use it on your Mac in Safari by [changing your hosts file](http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/255650) and in Chrome [like so](http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216440-chrome). I prefer DuckDuckGo for everything. It’s fast, accurate, and [privacy conscious](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy).

DuckDuckGo is the search engine with truly different results — meaning they’re different from the results at Bing and Google. Sometimes that’s fantastic, sometimes it just doesn’t work: The hardest thing is finding the address of a local business on DuckDuckGo.

There *are* options outside of Google. When was the last time you tried them?

## Mail

I like to run *my* email on *my* server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend *you* do that.

I use iCloud for most personal email, but I have been testing a couple of different solutions to migrate to.

[Hushmail](https://www.hushmail.com) is among the top contenders. They offer a free account that sucks, and then two paid accounts. Their pricing is a little obscure: for a basic 1GB account you pay $34.99, plus $14.99 for IMAP access, on a yearly basis. Not too bad, but I wish the storage was a bit more generous at this price point.

Among some miscellaneous privacy-voodoo for general emailing, Hushmail also offers encrypted email between other Hushmail users. The most important part, for me, is that they seem to take privacy seriously. (Note that Hushmail *will* turn over records to law enforcement when legally compelled to do so. But, being based in Canada means U.S. law enforcement agencies have to request, and Canada has to grant, that legal compulsion.)

Another thing I like is the business email option, where you can use your own domain name. Again, the pricing is very “up-sell-y”, but the service is private and seems stable to me. (It would cost a 5-person company $40-50 a month to use this, which is pricey [I guess, I have few references for that], but not Google.)

My advice: if you don’t care too much about privacy get an iCloud account. Otherwise there are plenty of online options — just be sure to do your research before switching.

## Everything Else

The dust is still settling on the recent Google Reader/RSS debacle, but [Feedbin.me](https://feedbin.me), [Fever](http://feedafever.com), and [NewsBlur](http://newsblur.com) are the top alternatives in my book.

As for online storage: Dropbox, iCloud or SkyDrive are all better than Google Drive, in my opinion.

That leaves calendars and productivity apps. To be honest I have no good solutions to replace the Google offerings, but then again, I never used Google’s offerings on that front.

Office 365 is pretty nice if you’re a Windows user but utterly pointless if you’re on a Mac. I don’t trust web apps for office-like tasks and much prefer native apps like Excel, Pages, Numbers, etc.

## Money, Money, Money

Switching your search engine is easy, and free. But as you can see switching anything else is likely to cost you — usually a monthly fee.

And that seems to be the crux of people’s “ditching Google” hang up: Google makes a killing because people are willing to give up their privacy before handing over cash.

I’m fine with people using Google, and even loving Google, so long as they understand the trade-off. (Apparently I take that trade-off more seriously than most, so I choose to find privacy-conscious services, most of which happen to cost money.) I find that people either don’t believe there is a tradeoff or, more likely, don’t believe it’s as big of a deal as I think they should.

[Google](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1210386):

>The Blocked Sites feature is no longer available. To block particular sites from your search results, we recommend the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension from Google. You may also download your existing blocked sites list as a text file.

Totally not related to Google’s ability to sell ads. *Totally* different.

See also: [Massive botnet costs advertisers millions, but hackers may not be to blame.](http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4123720/massive-botnet-defrauds-advertisers-millions-shady-origins)

[Kevin Fanning, writing about failure and passion](http://kfan.tumblr.com/post/45910246222/ok-by-now-youve-seen-this-article-in-the-onion):

>Maybe the self-obsessed celebrity artist culture isn’t that helpful or useful. Maybe eventually we get to a place where we see that books and music and art are created by us, people who have school and day jobs and other shit we care about.

I encourage you to read this post, especially if you are feeling like you have failed to find your calling. Fanning is spot on.

I work a lot, more so now than ever in life. I’ve never thought, or felt particularly successful in a general sense — more often I feel like am failing or close to failing in some aspect of my life…

Being in an industry that is entrenched in Windows based software means that I am constantly looking for a solution that is both robust and not terrible looking. We chose Yardi’s Genesis software for our property management needs because it was the only offering that offered everything we needed and did so without cutting corners.

Unfortunately Yardi is stuck in the dark ages of local servers and Windows 95 — seriously — and makes Excel look like cutting edge UI design.

This means that I routinely search around the web to see if other software offerings have caught up, or surpassed what we use. Usually I end the day having tried a few other pieces of software and finding nothing remotely close.

Today I needed some work-order software that was web-based, and I ran into something I see often: “request a demo” links.

Could there be anything more hostile towards new users than refusing to give pricing, screenshots, videos, or access to a demo site?

I came up with a new rule today: If your site won’t give me pricing and a view of your product without me having to give you my contact info — in other words if you are saying “fuck you” to me — then, well, fuck you too.

*I’m wrong a lot.

Uncharacteristically, I didn’t order an iPad mini when it came out. Truthfully, as I’ve said many times, I really didn’t want a device without a retina display. For most of the last year I have primarily used my iPad for reading and writing — not much else.

For most of 2013 I’ve been toting my iPad everywhere with me and using it for a ton of things, including handwriting notes, looking up building plans, and so on. This small shift has become immensely annoying because I find the iPad only useful if I carry it in my hand, so that it’s available immediately when I need to use it. But hand-carrying the iPad is very frustrating at times, because:

1. The iPad is too heavy to carry around for a few hours in your hand everyday.
2. It requires an entire hand and arm to carry, making other tasks difficult. (Fumble for keys, shake hands while holding a coffee, take a piss, etc.)
3. It’s very difficult to use an iPad while standing unless you have something to rest the iPad on. Writing in Mail, or writing by hand in Notability is doable without support, but not fun, or realistic for more than a minute or two.

About the twentieth time I precariously balanced my iPad on a ledge while I fumbled for some keys I realized that I should consider an iPad mini. Luckily, Stephen Hackett was selling his (and it was setup how I would buy one), only less expensive than a new one. So I picked up Stephen’s iPad mini and have now been using it long enough to draw some conclusions.

## The Mini

The iPad mini, like the first iPad and the first iPhone before it, is one of those devices that feels almost impossible. It’s *too* snappy, its battery life lasts *too* long, and does *too much* to be *this small*. It seems to defy logic.

In my week-plus with the iPad mini, here’s what I’ve found (in no particular order):

– I like the size a lot, but not for typing — the full-size iPad on-screen keyboard is still a much better keyboard for writing.
– But you can actually use the device without having to rest it. It’s easy for me to palm the iPad and draw with a Cosmonaut, or use my thumbs to tap out a quick email reply.
– I really, really, miss the retina display. I’m not bothered under most tasks, but Notability looks much worse when you are writing, as does any activity where you might want to read for long periods. This is a shame, because the iPad mini truly is ideal for reading.
– The one thing that really drives me nuts though: the passcode unlock on the iPad mini. It’s scaled down, like everything else, to accommodate the smaller footprint, but it really shouldn’t be. There is no reason for that display to be smaller, when the full-size passcode screen from the iPad would fit. I’m not sure the true reasoning behind this, but it’s not a user friendly thing on the mini.
– I’ve yet to get used to the smaller bezel along the sides. Which has led to many accidental page turns in iBooks.

## Overall

The iPad mini, as many have been saying for months, is truly a fantastic iPad. I can see, that for the majority of people, it *is* the ideal iPad size. The only things I wanted a larger display for were games and writing. Everything else is better done on the iPad mini. If you toss in a retina display, then I can’t think of a reason to buy a full-size iPad at all.

Using an iPad mini was like switching from a 17″ MacBook Pro to an 11″ MacBook Air — all of a sudden you can use the device in far more places than you ever thought possible and still do almost everything you wanted to do on it. I can fumble for keys and easily find a safe place to tuck the mini — often in my jacket pocket or jeans back pocket — or do countless other things that would have me stumbling over the size of the iPad.

The utility of this size iPad is damned hard to dispute. I think the computer setup I have right now is very close to ideal:

– 15″ retina MacBook Pro at work, only travels between my home and office.
– iPad 3 for traveling.
– iPad mini for roaming about during the day (which I do a lot of).
– iPhone 5 as my go-everywhere device.

The iPad mini isn’t like the iPod mini, it’s more like the 11″ MacBook Air to the 13″ MacBook Air. Both are equally useable, but the size of the smaller version is often all you need, and more often a better fit.

### Quick Note About the Smart Cover

Since the iPad mini is smaller, the smart cover can’t quite roll completely into a triangle for use. It still does make a little triangle stand, but it’s not as good of a stand as on the full-sized iPad. A minor point, but one I hadn’t considered before using it.

[Jean-Louis Gassée](http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/03/17/apple-is-losing-the-war-of-words/):

> Why were Samsung’s mean-spirited ads seen as fun and creative, while Schiller’s slight misstep is called “defensive”?

And:

> Because of its position at the top, Apple should have the grace to not trash its competitors, especially when the digs are humorless and further weakened by error.

Gassee’s article is getting a lot of mentions today. When I read it, I stopped after I saw those two stupid statements one after another. ((I finished reading it before posting about it here though.)) Gassee’s off the mark.

The Samsung ads aren’t “fun and creative” and to state that they are shows how far out of his mind he is, but the second remark is just plain stupid. Why exactly should Apple have more grace? How exactly is Apple to compete with any other company if they must play by a different, more limiting, set of rules?

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, only the challenging politicians are allowed to use attack ads. You’ll have to exercise more grace.”

Of all the things I love about Dropbox—incredibly seamless integration with OS X and Windows; automated back up and revision history; access to my files on multiple devices, wherever I am; sharing photos with my parents through the free account I set up for them—there is one I value the most: that every year Dropbox charges me $99 to use their service.

When Gmail launched in 2004, it [invited 1,000 people][1] they felt were influencers. They allowed these influencers to invite a limited number of their friends and family to the service, and continued to increase the invitation limit until eventually a market that had had enough time to build to the point where invitations were being sold for $100 each [collapsed][2].

While Google was slowly scaling its product, it continued to improve one of its key offerings: [an unheard of storage limit][5]. Initially 25× their competitors’ storage capacities, the number continued to increase until it had decupled.

Today, few people worry about sending the photos they shot on their DSLR to their grandparents. One email can contain multiple Photoshop documents, rather than multiple emails containing single Photoshop documents. Documents can be retrieved years after they were received.

Google changed the way email works in the world. I no longer approach email the same way I did seven years ago. But, I’m uncomfortable. I don’t pay for Gmail. And while—unlike [some products][6] as of late—I do not fear it will be shut down any time soon, I do not like who holds the power in this relationship. I agreed to Gmail’s Terms of Service, and like everyone else I am sure, I did not like what I read.¹

My point is, Google has all of the control. Should they decide their product would benefit its customers by providing, say, more personal information gleaned from my daily correspondences, that is what they will do. I, too, receive benefit from this relationship. But I do not have control over what the cost of that benefit will be.

[Mailbox][3] is interesting. No, [I’m not using it][4], but I sure get why people are. The approach it takes is so human. I can imagine my brother and sister, two prototypical computer users, getting a lot of benefit from using Mailbox.

Today, Mailbox holds little appeal to me. This is because I don’t need a new front-end for my email. I need a new back-end.

To me, the most interesting element of Mailbox’s current offering is its server. Sure, right now it is simply facilitating the sorting of email, but imagine if it became smart. If it could read my email and perform actions based on its understanding of my behaviours, turning the way I naturally approach my email into my very own digital secretary. If it interfaced with other services I use, preventing me from missing that email regarding a task I have in my task management tool, or forwarding the address to a party I was invited to on Facebook to my Google Maps iPhone app.

And that’s before Dropbox enters the equation; with the ability to store all of my photo attachments in my Photos folder, backed up on Dropbox’s servers and available in gallery form to anyone I share them with. Or referencing a document saved in Dropbox rather than adding a file attachment, tracking its changes and backing up each revision. Or sharing a file larger than any other email service could pass through its servers.

Dropbox gives its users 2 GB of free storage. That is certainly more than most email users today need to archive all of their email attachments. Combining that 2 GB of file storage capacity with a full-fledged cloud-based email service would attract a lot of casual users. Dropbox has established its own referral/invitation strategy, which benefits all three parties involved in the transaction. Implementing the same strategy to a product as compelling as *ad-free email* could surely drive their growth over the next few years, if not longer.

And then, of course, we come to the most exciting part. Dropbox would charge for it. In my mind, it would make sense to simply add the email service to their existing pricing tiers in an effort to improve their overall product. Adding lower tiers, more consumer-friendly tiers, could convert many free-mail users into paying email customers.

I could see my parents paying for it.

And I would be comfortable, knowing that Dropbox—a company I pay money to host, sync, and back up my files *and* emails—would not want to fuck up and lose me as a customer.

1. Of course I didn’t actually read it. Come on, now. ↩

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_beta_phase
[2]: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2004/06/63786
[3]: http://www.mailboxapp.com
[4]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/02/emails-broke-yo/
[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#Storage
[6]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/03/billlllllllions/