Outlook on syncing with Google: Excellent

It seems that Google itself has released a useful little utility that will sync your Microsoft Outlook Calendar with your Google Calendar. No, I don’t think hell has frozen over, but it’s gotta be colder there anyway.

You can read more on the utility over at Google’s “Calendar Help Center“. Or you can skip the reading and download the tool here.

Google Calendar Syc

See, now this complicates my choice to wean myself from Microsoft Outlook!

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Poll: What is the first thing you think of when someone says “Email”?

So I’ve been intrigued by Robert Scoble’s choice to stop responding to emails and suggested anyone who wanted to contact him use Twitter.  It got me wondering what people think of email in it’s current form.  So here’s my poll.

{democracy:10}

You can add your own response to the poll if you like, or leave a comment with your thoughts on the topic.

Have a great day everyone!

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UPDATE: It seems the Democracy Polling Plug-In that I’m using here does not allow Internet Explorer users to add an answer to the poll while it does allow Firefox users to do this. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause for you, I’ll be changing to different polling plug-in for WordPress really soon. If you have IE and would like to add an answer to the poll, I’m happy to do this for you – simply Twitter the answer to me via a @rickmahn reply, or in email (rick gmail com).

Email as a classic communications medium

I really enjoy reading Robert Scoble.  His blog, The Scoble Show over at PodTech, and of course, his Tweets (on Twitter).  He usually has some good thoughts, and is usually on the money.  Sometimes I really disagree with him and think he’s too close to Silicon Valley for his own good, but he is on top of everything.

So it was one of this tweets today that got me thinking on email more.  I don’t disagree with him on this one, and I thought I’d expound a bit on some of the thoughts he was throwing out on.

It turned out to be an interesting thread on Twitter.  Scoble started off with this tweet:

It’s amazing that in this age of Twitter that people still send email. I hate email. I hate direct Tweets. I hate Facebook messages.

Followed quickly (Twitter is great at fast follow-ups) with this Tweet:

PR people are the worst in the email regard. Speaker planners are close. I don’t answer a lot of my email anymore. If I did, I’d never do.

It’s interesting how the technorati are continually moving to an open communications model – where only their private communications are conducted through email.  Private life requires a little bit of privacy after all.

But for communications where privacy doesn’t matter, and after all most communications fall into this category, why not use a fast, scaleable, mobile communications system?  Who cares if everyone reads the message – most people ignore anything that is not of interest or of importance to them.

Robert answered one of his followers in this Tweet:

@dweezel: that’s the whole point. Most of my email does NOT need to be private. It’s far better to do most communication out in public.

This seems to sum up the growing perception in many people’s minds.

Chris Brogan asked this question in a Tweet:

@Scobleizer – agreed in the “get in contact” mode. What about the “more details” mode? What do you prefer for “payload?”

While Robert didn’t answer the question, I think that this question is being answered by many Twitter users themselves.  Initially shortened URLs (using TinyURL or URLtea) helped link to blogs, news sites, YouTube, etc…  In addition, creative users like Dave Winer come up with solutions like TwitterGram where you can upload an audio file, or call one in from your phone.  This is where the payload of services like Twitter will be augmented.

Robert rounded out his perspectives in this Tweet:

Basically this is my gesture to the world: I am not answering my email and I’m not going to start. I’m overloaded. Tweet me.

The whole idea of not using email is possibly a bit extreme, but the reality is that we rely on email too much.  We use it in place of face-to-face conversations, some use it in place of IM, some use it to spread viral marketing, some unwittingly help spammers and virus hacks by resending pictures and messages they find profound.

The fact of the matter is that email is abused and few messages are worth reading at all.  Between the spam, poorly written lengthy messages, it’s a time-sink for many individuals and their employers.

I’d be curious how many hours any of you spend dealing with email – an old but still valid question.

I guess that I really don’t use email much myself, and through the use of instant communications services like Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku, I have gotten used to saying something in 140 characters, or being able to split it into two such posts.  Being succinct is an art and an asset that many should practice.

Oh, and thanks to Robert for the post idea! 🙂

UPDATE: I guess that one of the things I wanted to point out though is that while email is abused and is a problem, it is going to be one of our “classic” communication methods.  Like radio when television came out, there is still much value in it.  There are many times you can absorb auditory information without a video stream and gain value from it.  Also, newspapers – the morning ritual of reading the news with a cup of coffee, or on the commute to work is something that will never go away.  The same for books – the more digital we get and how quickly we can send information, the more important the relaxing affect of getting lost in your favorite book is.

Email, like a good Whiskey, needs to be used in moderation.

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This is not your father’s Hotmail…

Windows Live Hotmail Well Microsoft finally released the new “Live” version of Hotmail.  Since I’ve been using it for several months, I haven’t been able to talk much about it.  Not that its features have been much of a secret, but I’ll hit the highlights here and let others offer up true reviews of the service.

It pretty much matches up the features that GMail has had for several years, and give users a full 2GB.  Yeah, GMail still offers more but who really is using that much more space for emails?  Archive & purge – that’s my motto.

The interface is quite familiar to most Microsoft customers – it mimics Outlook in a remote way, using AJAX techniques to it’s benefit.  The interface usability is a winner over GMail for the average user.  GMail is much, much faster however, because of the simpler mostly text-based interface.

Since my Hotmail account is the one account I’ve had for well over a decade (can’t remember exactly), it had been relegated to junk-mail duty for years.  Meaning when I didn’t trust an online form – I used my Hotmail account.  Since the service has been revamped, spam protection built in, search capabilities (quite good), and much needed space upgrade – I may find a new use for this account yet – or possibly move my hosted GMail accounts over to Hotmail… don’t know on that one yet.

Of email, feeds, research and planning

That is the makeup of my tasks this week.  While I’m pretty much caught up on my email, I do have a large backlog of feeds that I need to parse through and read.  Luckily Google Reader makes that easy.

As for the rest of the week, I’ve got a lot of work in the research and planning phases that will help me find and meet with new clients.  I’ve got a number of ideas and will pursue them along with some good old-fashioned in-person networking.

A few things that are tripping me up this week are my phone and those little config details on my new laptop.  My phone has been kind of goofy every since I got back from Florida last month, but it really is acting strange in the past week.  I can’t seem to get everything to sync in Vista yet (though I have had it work in the past) and the alarms do not go off when they are supposed to.  A little later today I’ll try re-flashing the firmware to see if I can weed out the bad apples on the darn thing.

Also, even though a person gets all the major applications, utilities, plugins, bookmarks and other such items set up on a new computer, there always seems to be some last little things.  I seem to find that I’m missing little bits of productivity every 30 minutes or so, just because of a forgotten config, tool, bookmark and so on.

Other than that, it’s been a productive 1st half of the week, can’t wait to meet with a few other people that I want to connect with and see what happens from there.

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