Aug 21, 2009 | blog
Some say that plain text is best. Who am I to complain? When something as simple as 140 characters is enough on Twitter to convey a message, or 160 characters for a mobile text message? We can communicate a lot with very little – and a very simple medium: plain text.
So why are there so many contrasting opinions about using rich text in communications? Especially email?
Email has become one of those communications tools that seem to raise the ire of the “plain text is best†crowd. Some folks just don’t appreciate the HTML emails or fancy formatting others put into their signatures. I’ve seen some folks get downright angry towards these emails, and you can always tell who these folks are as their replies always come back in plain text.
While I won’t pretend to understand the controversy, I do think the plain text crowd is more “no nonsense†and just likes to get about their business. Whereas the rich text crowd probably tends to be heavier on the creative side, and likes to communicate with a bit of aesthetic value.
As we move further into the future, of course, rich text becomes easier to integrate into more communications mediums. The utility of plain text will remain though, as the lowest common denominator for any publishing platform as their job is to simply distribute information – and all that really needs is text.
Aug 21, 2009 | happiness
Learning something about myself: I’m not an IT guy anymore.
Aug 5, 2009 | happiness
Building community is but one piece of a fulfilling day.
Aug 3, 2009 | blog
It struck me today while using my netbook that economy computers have reached that baseline of being good enough at more than the minimum set of tasks. With their very portable size and impressively growing battery life these minimally powered laptops can meet the needs of many folks.
The interesting thing to me is how we continuously discover how we really only need the basics. In the age when we’ve pushed computing hardware to levels that we never imagined, the utility of a basic computing platform is quite impressive. Because we’ve pushed the upper end so aggressively, the side affect is the low end has benefited in reductions in power requirements and size.
Making these low end systems so useful is the way they’ve been packaged into great “mini†laptops. Whether they’re a 9â€, 10†or even the larger 12†models that stretch the definition of “netbookâ€, the ultra portability of a 2 to 3 lbs. laptop is a game changer. It’s just another case of less being more.
Of course, they can’t do everything. In fact, they really are only good for the basics as I mentioned. Anything more than web browsing, email, reading, and some light office apps like spreadsheets, word processing, and presentations. If you need much more than that, you’ll quickly find the limits of these systems.
However, therein lies the catch, the majority of the work done is in this basic range of computing tasks. Writing ideas out, answering email, reading news and information, keeping in touch… the bulk of what we do can be done with a netbook. Especially if you’re a web worker since most everything one does is web-based anyway.
While I’m not suggesting that netbooks will be the main computer for the majority of folks, I know some will be tempted to try.
Good enough. This is where good design and reasonable feature sets reign. The benefit of a simple, cohesive design with a feature set that meets the expectations of the user can be quite successful.
Aug 3, 2009 | happiness
Change. Make it your motto.
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