Kinda Lame

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JAMIE LEE CURTIS: Gridlocked (Out) At Christmas I am spending my holiday in the mountains of Idaho in our log cabin, and after a lovely Christmas Eve pizza party, the lights went out — everywhere.

She laments about not having power on the holidays. Oh and eating Activia without flushing water. Wow, but touching.

(Sent from my phone)

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It seems that over time I’ve collected over 20,000 Gmail “conversations” and until today had 1,800 unread e-mails in my inbox. Who knows how many “read” e-mails I might have had. When I first opened the account in 2004 I was very diligent when it came to cleaning the inbox up, archiving, staring, and so forth. I rarely deleted e-mails as there seems to be no reason to with Gmail (The footer reads: You are currently using 976 MB (13%) of your 7367 MB). Alas what started as a dedicated mail trap has moved on to become the catch-all mailbox. And why not? It is so easy to search and manage that there is no reason to continually archive and delete. Something had to be done though when I linked Gmail to my iPhone.

I was rarely checking e-mail, up until a year ago, as it wasn’t a source of communication for me. I was e-mailing assignments to teachers (before I graduated from the diploma mill) and getting newsletters and so forth when I started this account. Now everyone is using e-mail and I get quite a few important updates such as Facebook notifications, etc. But that was just coming in too fast, and I wasn’t good about “deleting” stuff. If you click a link an in e-mail on the iPhone you are taken right to Safari and will likely not go back an archive the message when you get the next chance to do so.

The problem I had was that I like to use the “unread” status, rather keeping things unread, to know that I need to follow up on an item (notorious one at this point is the reminder to file my tax returns!). This works for Outlook at work as you can create a search folder that displays just those unread e-mails – I don’t see a way to do that with Gmail on the iPhone (though I have an idea for how to do so with labels!).

So I needed to clean everything up. Turns out it was an easy process. I started by searching for things that seem to flood my “inbox” but that would have taken hours to find each Crate and Barrel, The Onion, Border Rewards and Facebook e-mail that was ever sent to me.

Instead I did the following:

Searched using the following: label:inbox label:read

Selected all (using the Select: All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, Unstarred shortcuts). Then continuted to select more using the “Select all conversations that match this search” option.

Hit the archive button, confirming I wanted to archive each and every one of those suckers.

Profit!
(Though you’ll notice there is an extra step in there – it can be done differently, but it wasn’t allowing me to archive every one using Select: Unread.)

Then to clean up my unread e-mails:

Starred those 10 e-mails that are sitting there as reminders.

Searched: label:inbox -is:starred
(Notice the minus sign in front of the “is:starred”, this will perform an inverse selection)
“Select all conversations that match this search”

Hit the archive button, confirming I wanted to archive each and every one of those suckers.

Profit!

Now I have 10 e-mails sitting in my inbox that I can easily scan over and the unread reminders are no longer spread out with 25 read pieces of junk in between. Very much for the win. Now I just have to keep up on it. But using the above steps I can just go back maybe once a month and perform some clean up when needed, in just a few minutes (if even a whole minute).

UPDATE: Check out this nifty list of Gmail search terms that could make your (e-mail) life easier.

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But what is it doing for the existing 3G owners who couldn’t pay their bills for a week leading up to the launch? (Did you try to pay your bill online this month). And what about those few days of spotty service because of something mysterious happening on their network in the lead up to the 3G S announcement at the WWDC?

iPhone 3G S users are still experiencing delays activating their new smartphones, but Apple apparently wants to make it up to users.

Apple began notifying affected customers via e-mail on Sunday that they may experience additional delays for another two days due to “system issues” and “high activation volumes,” according to readers in various blogs who claim to have received the e-mail. The problems began immediately after the new iPhone’s launch Friday.

Via C | Net

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If you look closely you’ll see the name of this beer is “Horse Piss Beer” – Brilliant!

It could only be topped by Horse Semen Beer

(Sent from my phone)

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Fail;

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fractured her
right elbow during a fall Wednesday, her chief of staff said

Via NYTimes

(Sent from my phone)

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Before you checkout read the fine print. If you can see it.

You’ll be paying almost $500 to upgrade to that new iPhone.

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Not Lame: beer and (beef) corn dogs

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I’m not going to lie, at first I wasn’t too excited to be coming here. I thought it was somewhat silly to have Thanksgiving dinner so far from home, but Mom had her reasons and I understand why it was hard for her to have it there. Once I spent the day here I realized that I was being selfish. I wanted the comforts of home and I was upset to leave them. Now, I’m happy I’m here.

The cabin is big and beautiful, and currently sleeping four. We are tucked away from everyone and there is a stillness in the air you don’t get at home. Grandpa has found some fishing, us “kids” have found the night sky and everyone is finding that having the company of each other is all the entertainment we need.

Don’t get me wrong. It was fun to play, and almost win, Scrabble. It was fun taking a car trip to Cheerokee and looking around at the shops. But that stuff is really only fun because we have each other to do these things with. Looking up the night sky, and seeing shooting stars, is only fun when you have someone to look with you, someone to point things out to you and someone to point things out to.

Not that I wouldn’t come here alone. It would be the perfect place to come and spend some alone time and try to work it all out, but that isn’t what this trip is about. It’s about family. One day I’ll bring my son here, to Fontana Lake, and we can look at the stars together. Maybe we can also do some fishing.

It is the perfect spot to get away from it all because even now I can’t get cell service without traveling up the side of the mountain or driving a mile away. That isn’t to say the place is barren with no amenities. Again, the cabin is big and nice, with enough stuff to put on one hell of a meal. And we spent at least an hour in the hot tub, that is on our porch, today.

I think I’ll be coming back on my own if we don’t turn this into a regular thing.

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The iTunes Music Store (or iTMS) is already the gold standard of music sales. Why shouldn’t they try to become the worlds clearinghouse of music? They have the user and active buyer base to just swallow the competition in utter control of the market. (And why aren’t they buying the rights to music yet? Or are they?)

They should partner up with Myspace to sell their music downloads. iTunes or Myspace would never let this happen, but they (Apple) could push it in a real slick way. They could just ask Myspace to forward their downloads through iTMS. By forward, I mean that Apple would be a clearinghouse of sorts for Myspace music downloads. They would hold a digital copy of the catalog and only allow downloads through some sort of encrypted API that allows users to purchase the music on Myspace’s mobile application, and have it downloaded and integrated into iTunes.

The question is who stands to lose money? iTMS could suffer because they have made it easier for a competitor to enter the market (on their device no doubt!). Myspace could be suckered into paying too much. I propose just one cent of the purchase should go to Apple. They would be able to make a profit on a few million songs I’d think. The electronic music download market is primed (current economic times excluded, of course) and it could produce more opportunities like this. It could allow any competitor to plug into Apple’s user-base. Apple must do something to compete too. Google Android is just around the corner – it could do this for free (as in speech).

The songs would integrate into the iPod/iPhone and iTunes and create a harmonious experience for the end users and Apple can tax every download that goes through their device. Why not try it? Then get the competitors to do it too and then you have money coming in from every angle. And most companies, I would think, would love to tap into the iPhone user’s wallets.

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Hospital bed controls
Posted via Pixelpipe.