Email Doesn't Have to Suck

Email Doesn't Have to Suck - There's a better way to manage your inbox -- let SaneBox do most of the work for you. Email is a pain. There are simply too many messages to handle — and I'm not even talking about spam from marketers (I use a separate address to collect those emails). The headache is the increasing number of legitimate business messages — it's a humongous time-suck that only seems to be getting worse.

Two years ago I answered nearly every message. A year ago I downgraded to at least trying to read them all. Last winter I started scanning the sender subject fields concentrating on the ones coming from people I knew or looked like they might contain information I needed. And lately, I've been considering closing my account and starting over with a private address reserved for only work colleagues and select sources.

Until, that is, I tried SaneBox.

It's like Gmail's Priority Inbox feature in that it looks at your messages and prior history engaging with those senders and decides which emails you're likely to deem most important.

When you turn on the Priority Inbox feature in Gmail, Google separates your email into three categories: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything Else; all the mail is still in your inbox, but the important messages are up top.

SaneBox is a bit different in that it removes less important messages from your inbox completely, moving them to an @SaneLater folder that you can peruse whenever you want. If SaneBox puts an important message into that folder you can move it to your inbox and it remembers the action so the next time you receive a message from that person, it will go to your inbox.

Priority Inbox is trainable in this way, as well; the more you move stuff around, the better it gets at categorization. But I prefer SaneBox.

SaneBox vs. Gmail's Priority Inbox

SaneBox gives you a custom dashboard including a timeline that graphs how many important and less important emails you get every day. My current average, according to SaneBox, is 81 a day. If I took a minute to read, digest, and respond to each one of them, that's nearly an hour and a half a day going through email. If you figure there's at least 250 work days in a year, I'm spending 375 hours annually on email. That's not acceptable.

In addition to the @SaneLater folder that stores non-essential messages, you can also enable folders such as @SaneNews for newsletters and @SaneBlackHole for those messages you want to send straight to your Trash. (Ha! Finally I'm getting revenge on a certain five-letter-titled fitness magazine that has not let me unsubscribe to its newsletters for two full years!)

Automated nagging!

And it also has a nifty feature that lets you CC or BCC a message to @SaneBox.com to remind you if someone doesn't respond.

So let's say you need an answer from your boss about a project and you need it no later than two days from now. In the CC field just include the address 2days@SaneBox.com and in two days SaneBox will put the message back in the top of your inbox if she never replied to it. This way you remember to bug her again.

SaneBox also creates an @SaneRemindMe folder that lets you keep track of all the messages to which you still need replies. Use oneweek@SaneBox.com, June5@SaneBox.com or 5minutes@SaneBox.com; it doesn't matter, SaneBox will figure out the time frame you need.

The service is $5 a month and works with email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhone, and Android and as well most email services like Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail. The only service it doesn't currently support is Hotmail. ( inc.com )


Blog : The Time To Enjoy
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SOPA: What if Google, Facebook and Twitter Went Offline in Protest?

SOPA: What if Google, Facebook and Twitter Went Offline in Protest? - Can you imagine a world without Google or Facebook? If plans to protest the potential passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) come to fruition, you won’t need to; those sites, along with many other well-known online destinations, will go temporarily offline as a taste of what we could expect from a post-SOPA Internet.

Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! and Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet, something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. The rumors surrounding the potential blackout were only strengthened by Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition, who told FoxNews that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week.

According to Erickson, the companies are well aware of how serious an act such a blackout would be:

This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position. The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.

The idea of an Internet blackout should seem familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to the debate so far. In addition to a blackout already carried out by Mozilla, hacking group Anonymous proposed the same thing a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that sites replace their front pages with a statement protesting SOPA. That suggestion itself came a week after Jimmy Wales had asked Wikipedia users about the possibility of blacking out that site in protest of the bill.

As a way of drawing attention to the topic, it’s something that will definitely work. Just Google alone going dark would cause havoc online, but the idea of it happening at the same time as Facebook, Twitter et al. follow suit seems almost unimaginable.

The question then becomes how to translate the inevitable confusion and outrage from those who don’t know what SOPA is into activism. The key, I assume, lies in the execution of the blackout: Will the sites that voluntarily go down be entirely unavailable or will they follow the Anonymous-proposed model of replacing the front page with a statement explaining what is going on, why and how users can best become involved in the discussion? If the sites do go entirely dark, is the hope that the resulting outrage will be enough to fuel news stories about the reason behind the decision? And that users will not transfer their frustration to the sites themselves, as opposed to the bill they’re protesting?

The fact that Facebook and Twitter are both said to be considering taking part in the blackout is simultaneously heartening and worrying. The former because, well, they’re standing up for what they collectively believe in — and that’s a good thing. But the latter because the lack of availability for social media on the proposed blackout day feels like it’s giving up the best chance to harness the frustration and energy people will feel about the temporary loss of the Internet as they know it, and a great possibility to focus and direct that energy into productive activism against SOPA. Then again, it may take losing Facebook and Twitter to really drive home how dramatically SOPA could affect the Internet.

All of this may come to nothing, of course. The companies may decide not to black out their sites and find other ways to protest SOPA. That could be for the best; collectively closing down the most trafficked sites on the Internet to prove a point will certainly garner a lot of attention, but the effects it’ll have beyond that (and the reactions it’ll cause as a result) are difficult to predict and could easily end up causing a backlash against the sites responsible at a time when they least want it. But still … just try to imagine an Internet without Google, Facebook or Yahoo. Even for a day. Almost makes you want it to happen, just to make people realize how reliant we are on the Internet as we know it now, doesn’t it? ( time.com )

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Montana blogger is not journalist

Montana blogger is not journalist - A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.

Crystal L. Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Mont., was sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick when she posted online that he was a thug and a thief during the handling of bankruptcy proceedings by him and Obsidian Finance Group LLC.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.

Although media experts said Wednesday that the ruling would have little effect on the definition of journalism, it casts a shadow on those who work in nontraditional media since it highlights the lack of case law that could protect them and the fact that current state shield laws for journalists are not covering recent developments in online media.

"My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information."

The judge ruled that Cox was not protected by Oregon's shield law from having to produce sources, saying even though Cox defines herself as media, she was not affiliated with any mainstream outlet. He added that the shield law does not apply to civil actions for defamation.

Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.

Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.

"What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?" she said.

Padrick, of Bend, Ore., was a trustee in a bankruptcy case involving Summit Accommodators, a company that helped property owners conduct real estate transactions in a way to limit taxes. Three executives face federal fraud and money laundering indictments.

The lawyer sued Cox for defamation, a legal fight that is typically difficult for plaintiffs to win. Public figures, for example, must prove the defendant knew the statement in question was false, and the statement must be matters of public interest.

The judge found that Padrick was not a public figure, and that the bankruptcy case was not in the public interest. The ruling opened the way for a jury to award $2.5 million to Padrick and Obsidian.

Cox said she didn't have the money to pay the judgment, and that she intended to keep posting about the Summit bankruptcy case.

"My intensions are the highest and best," she said. "I know I am sometimes over the top or a little bit vulgar. But I encourage people not to listen to me or him but to look at the documents and make their own decision based on that."

Padrick said the case showed how vulnerable anyone was to someone with a computer. He said he has lost business from potential clients who search his name and firm through Google and find Cox's postings at the top of the list, adding that he has no way to remove them.

"If anyone can self-proclaim themselves to be media, the concept of media is rendered worthless," Padrick said. "When everyone is media, the concept of media is gone."

The judge ruled that Padrick and his company did not have to seek a retraction, as required by Oregon law, before claiming damages, because a blogger is not on the list of recognized media, which include newspapers, magazines, television and radio news, and motion pictures.

Padrick said he did not expect to collect much of the $2.5 million jury award, or to see his business fully rebound. He said his only consolation was that all eight jurors who heard the case believed he had been significantly harmed.

Ellyn Angelotti, who teaches about digital trends and social media at The Poynter Institute, said the ruling was significant because so little case law has built up on online media. But she believed it would have little impact on bloggers in general until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case, or more federal courts rule.

Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment expert and journalism professor at the University of Oregon, called the judge's strict definition of a journalist "outdated" since so-called citizen journalists currently outnumber traditional journalists.

"When we talk about the shield law, we should pay more attention to the function people are doing than whether people are connected to traditional and established news media," he said. ( Associated Press )

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Facebook Declares 'Zero Tolerance' for Data Brokers

Facebook Declares 'Zero Tolerance' for Data Brokers - On Facebook's Developers blog, the world's largest social networking company declared "zero tolerance" for data brokers, after a recent Wall St. Journal investigation revealed that some Facebook application developers have been selling Facebook users' information to data brokering firms.


Facebook has responded to this news by banning the developers engaging in this practice from the site for a period of six months. To regain entry, the companies will have to submit their data practices for an audit to ensure compliance or the ban will remain in effect.


WSJ's investigation, part of a series called "What They Know," has been revealing (in a sometimes overly paranoid fashion) the ins and outs of how your personal information is being gathered by data brokers, bought and sold, and then used for targeting advertising purposes.


In the case of Facebook, WSJ cautioned that "many of the most popular applications... have been transmitting identifying information - in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names - to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies." The paper claimed that the issue affected tens of millions of Facebook app users.


Facebook: Fewer Than a Dozen Apps Sold User Info


Facebook, however, downplayed this news, saying that there were actually "fewer than a dozen" application developers found to be selling user information in the form of UIDs (UIDs are user IDs, an identifier which can be used to determine someone's name on Facebook). Facebook noted that most of the developers were small and none were in the top 10 list of Facebook Platform applications.


The company also claimed it has reached an agreement with data broker Rapleaf, which was called out by the Journal for receiving and reselling the Facebook UIDs it collected to a dozen other firms.


Rapleaf "has agreed to delete all UIDs in its possession," says Facebook. "And they have agreed not to conduct any activities on the Facebook Platform (either directly or indirectly) going forward."


Facebook also firmly noted that the company itself "has never sold and will never sell user information."


As far as which apps were banned, Facebook wouldn't say. However, the developers cited by WSJ, including big names like Zynga, LOLApps and Family Tree, appear to be unaffected at this time. (UPDATE: 11/1/2010, 1p.m. Eastern: Inside Facebook is reporting that the following application developers may have been affected: LOLapps, My Friend Web, Mappdev, My Top Fans and Manakki. The first four account for 50 million monthly active users, the site says. Manakki has 2 million monthly active users. ) ( ReadWriteWeb )

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News Corp throws down the Google gauntlet

News Corp throws down the Google gauntlet. The war of words between the news media industry and Google makes for a great spectacle, and this week did not disappoint.

According to a report in the Silicon Alley Insider blog, Associated Press CEO Tom Curley is meeting with Google on Friday to press for the creation of a “news registry.” Here’s SAI on the AP’s move:

It hopes such a registry would propel its content to a higher rank in general search than the blogs that the news agency accuses of lifting its content.

Curley said the AP — which intends to form landing pages and a social-media desk, among other survival strategies — is “getting paid for about 12% of our content on the web.”

It was not clear what information SAI was basing its report of the AP-Google meeting on - the blog post didn’t specify whether one of its bloggers had spoken to Curley directly, or whether it was picking-up Curley’s comments from another report; nor did it have links to any other articles on the subject.

A Google representative emailed a statement that said the company regularly meets with its publishing partners to discuss a variety of initiatives. “We’re not going to comment on the specifics of any particular conversation at this time.”

One would hope Google is also having conversations with News Corp, which is ratcheting up the rhetoric of late.

Earlier this week, News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch told his own Sky News Australia in an interview that he was considering blocking Google from indexing its Web sites once the company begins charging people to read its articles on the Web.

On Friday, News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller expanded on Rupert’s anti-Google gambit and stuck a timeline on the move, according to a report in Telegraph:

When asked how long it would be before Mr Murdoch took the step to block Google, which every media company relies upon to send them high levels of web traffic, Mr Miller said it would be soon - “months and quarters - not weeks”.

The story later quotes Miller dismissing the benefits that come from have its content accessible through Google:

“The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

There’s been plenty of sabre-rattling from the news media when it comes to Google in the past. If News Corp doesn’t follow-through with its threat in the next couple of months, will it have proven itself to have no real clout in this fight? ( reuters.com )

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Google Chrome OS coming next week…maybe

Google Chrome OS coming next week…maybe. It’s been four months since Google dropped a bombshell with its announcement that it is getting into the PC operating system game, in a direct challenge to Microsoft and Apple.

Now the world may get the first glimpse of Chrome OS, the PC operating system as envisioned by the folks in Mountain View, California.

According to a report in TechCrunch citing “a reliable source,” a version of the Chrome operating system will be available for public download within a week.

TechCrunch said Google has a legion of engineers working on hardware driver support, and notes that the software may only run on a limited set of PCs at first:

We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one.

Google said in July that it was working with PC manufacturers including Acer, Asus and Hewlett-Packard and promised that the first devices running the Chrome OS would be available in the second half of 2010.

Google also said at the time that the Chrome OS code would be “open sourced” later this year, so next week’s rumored release would be in keeping with the original timeline.

As PC world puts it, however, open source code is not the same as a ready-for-prime-time product.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean the average person will be able to download these files and get the OS up and running. Source code is just a collection of text files meant for software developers to tinker with.

As I understand it, to get the source code to work as a computer program, you need a compiler that brings all the source code together and turns it into something your computer can actually boot up.

So, if you’re a developer, you may soon get a taste of Chrome. The rest of the world may have to wait a bit longer. ( reuters.com )

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Top Rupert Murdoch adviser learns meaning of ‘deadline’

Top Rupert Murdoch adviser learns meaning of ‘deadline’. Top Rupert Murdoch adviser Gary Ginsberg is leaving News Corp after 11 years, the company said on Monday. It must have hit New York Times reporter Tim Arango’s e-mail inbox first (his writeup appeared about five minutes before I got the press release).

Here is what he wrote about Ginsberg, 47, the second senior executive to leave News Corp in recent months, following Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin:

Mr. Ginsberg, a former lawyer in the Clinton White House, was hired in 1999 to be News Corporation’s director of communications. He was hired partly to refurbish the company’s image after a controversy in which Mr. Murdoch was said to have stopped publication of a book by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, to curry favor with the Chinese government. Mr. Ginsberg’s portfolio within News Corporation expanded well beyond public relations. He gradually gained control over investor relations, marketing and corporate social responsibility. He also became an important bridge between Mr. Murdoch and Democratic politicians, particularly Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Ginsberg, Arango said, arranged a lunch between Bill Clinton and Murdoch in Harlem, and a year later with a New York Post newsroom tour. Eventually, the Post endorsed Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and Murdoch threw her a fundraiser at News Corp’s headquarters. (Yes, that is quite a feat to arrange for a newspaper that under Murdoch has leaned Republican more often than not.)

It’s also a feat to get a well-known Democrat to say what he said in the press release:

I will always be grateful to Rupert for the many opportunities he’s given me over the years… It was a difficult decision to leave a company that has been such a vital part of my life and I’ll miss the many talented colleagues who have helped make this such a thrilling and fascinating ride. But I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while now to pursue something new, and this seemed like the right time to do it.

Teri Everett, who spends plenty of time dealing with the horde of reporters who cover News Corp’s every move, will take over as the new communications chief. Reed Nolte will run investor relations. ( reuters.com )

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