Author: Patrick Rhone

Amongst the many web changes I have been making lately, the one that has been the biggest change for me personally is the changes I have been making to my e-mail.

The first task was to get rid of the 7 different e-mail accounts I had and focus on only two. I have one for personal mail and one for business mail (and one at my job at Carleton but I am not counting that one). The first thing I did was to forward most of those other accounts to my personal one. This will make it much easier to make sure all of my stuff goes into one place.

Next, when setting up my new personal account I chose to set it up via IMAP instead or POP, another big change for me. The thought of having all of my mail stored on a server instead of locally once terrified me. There was some element of control I thought I would be losing. In fact, the opposite is true. Using IMAP allows me to set up folders the way I want and access my mail from any of the machines I own and have it all look the same. Not only that but I know it is being backed up by my hosting provider, secure and off site, so should my hard drive go south or my house burn down I can still get to my mail.

Speaking of folders, in an earlier post I mentioned Merlin Mann’s Macworld Article that outlined a very simple but powerful way to organize and process your email that ensures everything gets responded to in the proper manner and/or archived and keeping your inbox clear. I implemented this system at work and found it to be quite sucessful. Now, I have finally gotten around to implementing it in my personal life. The combination of this system and IMAP will prove to be invaluable by allowing me to constantly stay on top of my e-mail organization and respond to items quickly.

This system has also forced me to think long and hard about the items I choose to receive and manage. I have redirected all of the newsletters and list mail that I receive to my Gmail account. I have been using this account as a “junk” account for some time but now I have another good use. Now, the items coming to this account is not distracting from my “real” e-mail, I don’t have to delete or otherwise manage them and I can be assured that they are there fo reading at my leisure.

My friend Dawn sent me a link to a great interview with one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle). Stephenson provides his always witty, insightful and sometimes flip answers to a iety of topics surrounding and including the themes set forth in his books. A great read even for non-fans.

Yet another web application to replace one that lives on my computer. Blinksale is a new web app that is designed to help small businesses create, send and manage invoices. I have played around with it a little and it is killer so far. It is very much like a 37 Signals product so if you love Basecamp, Backpack and run a small business you will love this. I have been a long time user of Customer Tracker to manage invoices for my Consulting Business. It has not seen an update in ages and I get the sense that the developer has no plans to make improvements any time soon. Therefore, I am going to give Blinksale a trial run and see how it does.

The design philosophy behind this site is… Simple. Simple is the word that best describes it. I want to return to the idea that a proper web site should feature information – unobscured. It should have clean, non-serif text that is easy to read and fast to load. The elements within each page should only exist to enrich the content. Once a navigation metaphor is established, it should remain constant throughout the site and never deviated from. Efficiency and consistency so simplistic it is elegant.

You gotta love O’Reilly. Not only are they one of the major publishers of computer and technical publications around (if not the most major), they are also one of the most open and progressive. Therefore, the very forward thinking, detailed and encouraging So You Want to Write a Book? guide for new authors section at their site should come as no surprise. That still doesn’t diminish the fact that it is very cool and a good primer for all aspiring writers.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a great interest in the intersection of science and spirituality.
I was listening to a podcast of the CBC program Quirks and Quarks. There was an interesting story on about a genetic scientist, Dr. Edward Rubin, who is removing the “junk” DNA from mice in order to find out if it has any effect. As you may already be aware, the vast majority of our genome is made up of DNA that, from all apparent evidence, has no purpose that we know of. Well, the only way to really test this is to remove this “junk” DNA and see if we can tell any differences between those that have had the junk removed and those that have not. His findings: There is not decernable difference in the mice.
Now, he did clearly state that this is in no way a good test as mice are not nearly as complex as humans so therefore the tests we have to measure possible differences are limited. He just wanted to get his preliminary findings “out there”.
This got me to thinking, what if we go further into this and start testing on humans only to find out, when it is way to late, that this “junk” is actually our souls. That because we do not have any way to identify and measure the soul we therefore have no way to classify this portion of our DNA. Being that this “junk DNA” is a much larger quantity than the “usable DNA” we could find that all living creatures are defined mostly by our souls. By removing it, we are creating creatures that, by all physical accounts seem normal but, in fact, are now differentiated by the fact that they have no souls.
(Funny aside, maybe we will be able to tell the difference because all of these soulless folks will become politicians and lawyers)
Include in this idea the recent findings, as reported in a recent Time Magazine cover story, that our need as humans to seek out some form of spirituality may be inherent in our genes, and you have the makings of a some intriguing ideas and even more intriguing outcomes.

Wired has a good article on the Getting Things Done phenomenon, David Allen and a separate primer on GTD. Of course, it has the ubiquitous associated mentions of 43 Folders , the Hipster PDA and Moleskine. Worth a read, especially if you want to know what the big deal is all about.
Also, I think I just broke a personal record for the number of links in a post.

I know I am a bit late with this. Therefore, you may already be quite aware that Apple has released iTunes 4.9 that has built in support for Podcasts. Those who know me know that I am a fairly recent convert to the whole Podcast phenomenon but I have become a big fan. I think it is the only viable independent alternative to todays corporate dominated radio.
With iTunes 4.9, Apple has not only thrown it’s support behind this medium but also made it ridiculously simple to subscribe to, mange and sync those Podcasts to your iPod. The implementation is amazingly elegant and practical. Not only that but they also make it easy to search for new Podcasts that you may not be already aware of, thus opening up a whole new stream of audiences to those that produce these shows.
Now my only problem is finding the time to listen to all of the ones I have subscribed to. A 45 min. commute certainly helps but that is still not nearly enough time to listen to all that I would like. That is one of the problems with too much choice, if one is not careful it will become a curse rather than a blessing.

Low End Mac has a great article on the history of NeXT, the company that Steve Jobs founded after leaving Apple. In short, NeXT developed a revolutionary object oriented operating system that went on to become that basis for Mac OS X. This is a great read and refresher. Check it out:
Full Circle: A Brief History of NeXT

What is Writeboard? Is it a Wiki? Is it a web based whiteboard? One that can be used for anything from brainstorming to mind mapping to basic word processing? Could it be yet another über-application for collaborative and organizational from our friends and yours at 37 Signals?
Well, to answer that question we will just have to wait. A painful wait fueled by the sort of wanting, dare I say longing, that org-geeks like myself seem to do with cool new toys. Jason Fried does give us some clues on Signal vs. Noise. I guess we have no choice but to wait and see.
That being said, if it is a brain-stormy-mind-mappy sort of thing, that would come in real handy right about now. Bethany Snugglewombat and I are going to sit down this weekend and start to brainstorm on all of the lists, projects, plans and hurdles we must overcome in order to merge our lives, and those of my sons, into one household (hers). We have already set up a Basecamp site to manage the project that will spring forth from this but will have to do all of our brainstorming on good old pad of paper (which has it’s benefits for sure).
In any case, I am looking forward to whatever the heck it is no matter what.