Some of us net-junkies have really come to appreciate the concept of the RSS feed/reader, and what isn’t to like about it? It can keep us updated on just about everything we want, is generally super easy to use, and it can all be done for free. However, not everybody needs, or even wants, anything to do with RSS feeds. No, they only want to check things in the cozy corner of their email inbox. Now that you’ve set up your blog and equipped it with RSS subscription buttons galore, what is a guy to do to add email subscriptions? Sit back, relax, and I’ll tell you… Continued

One of my pet peeves is receiving emails with complete irrelevant subjects. For example, today I received an email from a customer with the subject line:

URGENT!!!!!!!

That was it.

First of all, I understand your problem is most likely urgent, otherwise you wouldn’t be sending an email about a problem you are having. Instead of sending an email with an utterly useless subject line, something to the effect of “Email Not Responding” or “Cannot Save Data” would have been much more appropriate. By reading one of the subject lines above, I can tell the problem is urgent and get an idea of what the problem is before I read the detail. Additionally, in the event I need to reply to the email, the email doesn’t go out as (unless I remember to change it):

RE: URGENT!!!!!!!

Which is a completely useless email subject on both counts.

Finally, what is the deal with people using 32 exclamation marks in a row?

We’ve got email. We’ve got RSS feeds. Endless amounts of websites. Voice mails. Phone calls. Honey-do lists. Bills. Pieces of paper all over the frickin’ place.

Sound familiar?

In this day and age, information overload is not only common, it is practically the rule of existence. The problem is that it can get in the way. It can lead to mental confusion. It can lead to wheel spinning. It can lead to that feeling that you’ve been BUSY all day, but nothing really got done.

It is important that people develop skills in dealing with information. Develop a system whereby you can handle all the incoming data being thrown at you. Better yet, you may decide that some of that data is completely useless to you and simply turn it off. Continued

Continuing the subject of useful command line tools, I ran across one today which I am really thankful I found: Blat.

Blat is a command line SMTP mailer. It is simple to use, just “install” Blat by specifying the default SMTP server and from address to use and then you can email text files with a single command line instruction. This is ideal for backup or diagnostic warnings.

Again, this is a great tool to have and it sure beats my old method of piping text output from a file to the PHP command line…

The Thunderbird development community aims to releases the first alpha release of Thunderbird 3.0 next month.

According to a story on Ars Technica, Thunderbird is slated to use Gecko 1.9, the new rendering engine found in Firefox 3.0. The email client will also receive a visual overhaul to improve usability. David Ascher from Mozilla says in his blog:

We’ve started defining what Thunderbird 3 will be, because we think that there is enough consensus to make some of the first decisions on the most important changes to tackle first. Specifically, Thunderbird 3 will build on the great base that is Thunderbird 2 (and the work already performed in trunk by the current and past contributors), and add some key features, such as:

• integrated calendaring (building on the great work done by the Mozilla Calendar team and their Lightning add-on to Thunderbird),
• better search facilities,
• easier configuration,
• and a set of other user interface improvements.

What each of those means in practice will be worked out in public, on blogs, mailing lists, and newsgroups, as transparently as possible.

Ascher also says it is time for Thunderbird development to catch up to Firefox. Good to hear.