Archive for Email
by Ewan Spence
May 30, 2008 at 4:21 pm · Filed under Twitter, Jaiku, Email, 2008
Last weekend saw The Eurovision Song Contest, where 43 countries choose a representative song, perform it live in a telecast that goes out to upwards of 100 million viewers around Europe (and upwards of 300 million worldwide). I sat down last Saturday to watch the contest, in a room full of Eurovision enthusiasts, lovers, and critics all throwing out their opinions, drinks in hand.
Of course we weren’t all really together – we were logged on to Twitter, throwing out bards about the camp costumes, the immensely tribal nature of pop music, and the incredibly… err… artistic graphics between the songs. Three hours of music and politics (don’t ask, please, simply put all war in Europe stops on the night of the contest and we fight using votes). As one participant said at the end of the gig, “Thank you Twitter, you all kept me sane.”
But the point here isn’t to celebrate the Song Contest (much as I do) As more international events pop up on the horizon, the luster of modern communication tools, especially those with a real time component such as Twitter, Jaiku, IM clients and of course the rather old but still functions even if everything else seems to go down IRC are going to be the place to chat and converse about both international events. The upcoming Summer Olympics are going to be a major stress test of the public’s use of these tools (as opposed to say an Apple keynote). On the evidence of Eurovision, Twitter’s not quite ready yet – the database went down as the event started and it switched to a ‘limited’ service to stay up, but resource management in instant communication can’t afford to be 99.99% up if the one time that everyone wants to talk is when it goes down (because that’s when it’s popular).
One reason why IRC stays up is it is effectively distributed around multiple computers. Twitter, for all the latest bells and whistles, relies on a central point. Modern messaging is going to have to cope with messages of greater bandwidth, with much lower latency, and that leaves very little room for failure. I think it’s a fair bet that any new globally adopted messaging system is going to have a distributed element to it, and dare I say it heavily biased around peer to peer.
Oh and if you want my opinion, Norway was robbed, Ireland should at least have made the finals, and the UK sent a Bin-Man, came last, and were surprised they didn’t do any better…
by Ewan Spence
April 7, 2008 at 6:14 am · Filed under Google, Communication, Convergence, Email, Gmail, Android
Remind me again what use Google Android is? I mean, I know what the party line is, to create an open platform, to have a standard approach, to let it run on lots of handsets, to give the Linux community another White Knight OS running on standard phone hardware (as opposed to OpenMoko, or Sava JE, or whatever Motorola’s Strategy department liked using last month), there may be another useful side effect.
While it will be good news if Google succeeds in getting a foothold into the Handheld OS market, it won’t be because they have a standard platform. With all the best will in the world, Apple’s market hare of mobile phones in the US could not be described as a standard; a foothold, yes. Even Symbian’s worldwide share of the total mobile market (and not just the ‘smart’ section) has a long term goal to reach 10% (2007 sa their share rise to 7%). So I just don’t see how Google can manage to make any ground selling handsets.
Maybe they have something else in mind? After all, Google’s strength is in advertsing. What they need is eyeballs over their sites and properties. It is leveraging the mobile search space with browser tie ins and plug in search widgets – all driving browser footfall back to Mountain View. If the fragmentation in the mobile space continues, then one of the key applications is going to be using the phone as a think client, via the web or small Java applets, back to destinations such as Google Maps and Google Mail.
If Google can keep the tech elite switching between devices like the iPhone, the Nokia NSeries, and now Android, then these cross platform properties become more and more useful to the users, they gain more presence and become even more sticky. So people can squabble all they like over the Operating System. Google will keep gathering knowledge via the Android project, but the real value comes from keeping everyone arguing over a lot of systems, while the tools used continue to stay with Google.
by Imran Ali
December 27, 2007 at 4:28 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, Studies + Research, On Blogs and Blogging, Ethnography, Communication, Convergence, Email
In the last couple of weeks, the various contributors to Mobile Messaging 2.0 have been holding an open debate on what the definition of a mobile message should be; with some insightful and thought provoking contributions from Debi, Darla, Ewan, Paul and Russell…almost the entire team!
From my own perspective as a user, cognitively, I don’t think I’ve ever made distinctions between mobile messaging or ‘fixed’ messaging. In fact the means of transmission is pretty much meaningless to me, with a focus on where I am, what I’m doing, what I’m talking about and with whom I’m communicating.
Every day I expect 100-150 incoming emails, around a 1000 blogposts at Bloglines, maybe 50-75 Twitters, an average of 5 voice calls, 5-10 Facebook messages and the odd notification from a blog comment, Facebook event, YouTube, Upcoming, Last.fm or eBay. Every now and again, I might even receive an MMS!
They’re all just messages - some land in my mailbox, others in various web application inboxes, some on my mobile phone. I might see a Facebook notification email arrive in my N95’s inbox and reply using the mobile web UI for Facebook. I may receive a direct Twitter on my phone as an SMS and reply using Twitterific on my Mac. Sometimes I wander around the house firing off replies from an iPod touch.
Conversations and communications start in one application, end in another and meander through various fixed and mobile networks…it’s all communication, driven by context and situation.
Perhaps there’s a meta-question we need to address collectively. Rather than exploring definition of mobile messaging, we perhaps need to understand why this definition is important. Are we more interested in the mobile portions of a conversation’s journey or in the multi-modal nature of that conversation?
I would argue that the latter question is perhaps more significant, simply because this is an area in which the industry lacks knowledge. Classifying messages by network or device is relatively easy to comprehend, but doesn’t reflect the reality of usage most of us now experience.
We can perhaps learn much more about the design and usage of communication by delving deep into the motivations we have when switching contexts between services, devices, location, time and relationship…
by Imran Ali
December 26, 2007 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Voicemail, Facebook, Communication, Email, Gmail
Recently, here at Mobile Messaging 2.0, there’s been much discussion as to the definition of a ‘mobile message’.
There’s been some great commentary and debate with a focus on context, usage, the means of transmission, however there’s a parallel question which I believe to be of some importance - our messages exist in various places, how can we ensure that those messages have mobility?
More specifically, as messaging usage fragments across many services and devices, how do we make sure that those messages - the emotional and professional fragments of our lives - can move with us when we switch services or devices.
Voice messages, text messages, email, photomessages, Twitters, RSS posts and Facebook messages aren’t simply dry digital constructs, but the ‘emotional bits‘ that comprise a large part of our individual and collective memories, yet our tools for archiving and mobilising them are crudely shortsighted.
- The last voice message from a recently deceased relative is a precious memory, yet voicemail is treated ephemerally often disappearing after just a few days, with no way to archive.
- People often keep precious text messages from loved for long periods of time on their handsets, yet when they switch phones, there are no consistent mechanisms to port messages from one phone to another.
- I’ve been a Hotmail user since 1999 - after 8 years I’d love to switch to Gmail, but Microsoft offer me no mechanism to export eight years of deeply personal content to another service. Damn, I’d even pay them for such a feature.
Google’s recent adoption of IMAP for Gmail is one of the first clear moves by a major messaging provider to support such needs. In a recent interview, Gmail Product Manager, Keith Coleman, stated that:
Millions of people start using Gmail each month, and many of them tell us how hard it can be to switch email accounts, particularly when switching from a service that doesn’t offer POP, IMAP or forwarding. We didn’t want Gmail users to have to go through that if they ever wanted to move away.
Thought Google’s intentions are noble, IMAP doesn’t go far enough in providing the level of openness that is neccessary; Google’s own support documents illustrate that Gmail’s innovative message labelling doesn’t map directly onto the antiquated IMAP folder structure…also, it’s only good for email!
What’s needed is an open data format supported by all messaging applications such that mailboxes can be imported, exported or synced - preserving the message metadata and content, whether text, video or audio.
For service providers concerned about user retention, adding such capabilities may even add further value. I don’t mind keeping my voicemail with O2, as long as I can archive it to Gmail, or leaving photomessages on my mobile handset as long as my Flickr account can pull them into a longer term archive.
Perhaps a combination of embedded microformats, IMAP and mbox could provide the technological framework of a new Open Message Box standard for mobilising our messages.
by Imran Ali
November 25, 2007 at 9:49 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, FOMM, Email, Messaging
Interestingly, prior to Debi’s trip to Orange Mixr a few days ago and her extensive analysis of the decline of email, there’d been some weak signals that serious people were beginning to address this topic quite publicly, speculating on the future of what was the internet’s principle messaging format.
Most notably, Union Square Ventures partner, Fred Wilson, gathered a group of individuals - including former Microsoft Exchange head-guru Tom Evslin - to brainstorm the future of email in a session procatively titled ‘SMTP is dead, long live SMTP!’. Fred’s group also included luminaries such as Matt Blumberg, Brad Feld, Phil Hollows and Jeff Pulver.
The trigger for this activity seemed to be various public discussions regarding the evolution of large webmail services into a consumer’s principle social graph and an interesting article from Slate. Here’s a round up of the most interesting commentary…
That last post, really sums up the debate - the discussion is really about the evolution of messaging as it shifts from one form and medium to another, driven by ethnographic, social and technological shifts.
