We just spent three days whitewater rafting in Glacier National Park, Montana. It was great fun for many reasons, but one thing that really struck me is how rare it is to completely unplug these days. No cell phone, no email, no TiVo, no electricity. Not even an iPod. Just a raft, a tent, and an open fire for cooking. And I’d venture to guess that of the 15 other people on our trip besides the two of us, not a single one even knows what a blog is, let alone writes one. In many ways, those three days of being unplugged were as refreshing as two weeks on many other vacations.
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The Rumors of Email’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
I’d like to think that Mark Twain would wholeheartedly approve of me paraphrasing his famous quote for this purpose, but I’m getting a little tired of all these reports about how email is dead. The latest one comes in the form of an op-ed in Computerworld this week. This will be a longer post than usual — my apologies in advance. The writer talks about how email will die soon because there are too many issues with viruses, spam, IT management costs, and employment practices. The writer says email is close to having a bigger downside than upside, and that email will go the way of the typewriter or the floppy disk drive. I say that this is a writer…
Grandma Goes Broadband
I’ve always thought my grandmother was a remarkable person. At age 92 (sorry to publish it, Gma), she is pretty hip — drives a Lexus, plays a mean game of bridge, carries a cell phone, and until recently, used WebTV. She was getting tired of the slow connection via dial-up, so Mariquita and I gave her an old laptop we had and installed a cable modem (I have to commend Cablevision of Westchester/Optimum Online on a very smooth and easy installation process), so now she’s the world’s newest computer user. Those of us who work with computers every day take some of the basics for granted, but if you’ve never used Windows or a mouse before, this stuff is not…
Taylor Made for this Blog
I haven’t done a book review yet on this blog because I haven’t found a very relevant one. I will do more as I go here — I’ve actually read a few pretty useful business books lately — but there’s no better book to kick off a new category of postings here than the one I just finished: The MouseDriver Chronicles: The True-Life Adventures of Two First-Time Entrepreneurs. The book details how two freshly-minted Wharton MBAs skipped the dot com and investment banking job offers to start a two-person company that produced the MouseDriver (a computer mouse shaped like a the head of a golf club) back in 1999-2000. It’s a great, quick read and really captures the spirit of…
Not Perfect, But A Better Device
I am now a big fan of my new Treo 600. It’s not so new, I’ve had it for a couple of months, but I figured out a couple of things on it today that really throw it over the top in my book. In general, it’s a very good convergence device. The combination of phone, Palm apps, and email is very well done. It needs a longer battery life, but it lasts for a full day with pretty heavy usage, which is acceptable. I love not carrying around both a phone and a blackberry any more. The first thing that took it from being a good device to being a great one was our installation of the GoodLink Exchange…
You Heard it Here First
Today, we are announcing the big news that my company, Return Path, has acquired NetCreations, Inc. Since there ought to be some small perk for subscribing to a CEO’s ramblings on a blog or via RSS, I thought I’d give everyone here the heads up before the news hits the wire tomorrow. (I am fully aware that this is also an excuse for a rare bit of self-promotion, so my apologies in advance.) We are very excited about this move. It puts, under one roof, a great client base and an unparalleled collection of advanced, ROI-generating email services: customer acquisition, customer retention, delivery assurance, and quick turnaround market research. Most marketers and publishers we talk to say the two hardest…
It’s Official – There’s a Blog About Everything
Well, not everything yet, but that day is getting closer. Jack, my VP Finance and an avid blog reader (but not yet publisher) pointed me to Beyond Bullets, a relatively new blog about Powerpoint written by Cliff Atkinson, described in his bio as “a leading authority on Powerpoint and organizational communications.” Who knew such an expert existed? The blog is pretty good and worth reading for people who regularly design and give stand-up presentations and are tired of the same old, same old Powerpoint templates. I read through most of the postings so far, and while some are a little esoteric, many of the tips are great. Most are either about the actual software and things you can do with…
Good Question – How's the Blog Working Out So Far?
My dad, one of the smartest people I know, asked me a good question last week. “How’s the blog working out so far?” My answer was generally “I’m not sure,” but as I thought about it more, I saw “good” coming from four different categories, in order of importance to me: Thinking: One of the best things publishing a blog has done has been to force me to spend a few minutes here and there thinking about issues I encounter in a more structured way and crystallizing my point of view on them. Invaluable, but mostly for me. Employees: A number of my employees read it, although I’m not exactly sure who since RSS is anonymous. I know this is…
FTC on Email – Missing the Point
Today, the FTC very shrewdly punted on the issue of the proposed “Do Not Email” list implementation, saying that authentication systems need to be put in place before such a list can be considered. This buys the world more time to work on more effective, market-driven solutions to the spam and false positive problems. I read a few interesting posts on this today, including one from Jeff Nolan which nicely captured Chuck Schumer’s elegant combination of demagoguery and idiocy about this issue; and one from Anne Mitchell pointing out that they’re about six months late with their conclusion. Feels about right for the federal government. What’s interesting to me is that all of the comments by and about the FTC…
Gmail – I Don’t Get It
I honestly don’t get all the buzz about Gmail, Google’s new email service. I took a look at it today to see what the the big deal was. It’s got a few features which are marginally better than other webmail services, but not too many and not massively better. The free storage is not a big issue for most users, although it may cause a few power users to switch over. The most interesting feature in my mind is the ability to use Google Search on your own email file, which is very useful. All in all, it’s a good product, but all these people talking about how 30mm people are going to switch over to it must be seeing…
Prepping RSS for Prime Time
With all the hype in the world of blogs in the past few months about RSS taking over the world, I’ve been getting myself up to speed on the space by meeting with some of the companies in it and by publishing my own blog here. Two of the CEO’s I’ve met with in the RSS business are super smart and are doing everything they can to get the technology ready for prime time. What do I mean by that? I mean: Critical Mass: 10 million or more end users using RSS, not just the tech/finance/journalist axis that dominates usership today. Hundreds of mainstream publishers and marketers using RSS, not just a handful of businesses and loads of individuals or…