Comments on: Email and social networking schizophrenia

By: Bill Wallace

Bill Wallace — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:03:03 +0000

Justin
So true, so true. I’ve gone with gmail and all (about email addresses are re-directed there. I’m slowly migrating everything to come from gmail, except my corporate email address.
I’m hoping Google will become MS but more friendly. (You know how I love my Mac.) I used to use Plaxo and would try it again but my strategy wit gmail is going okay … so far.
I remember back in the Dot Com days of aggregation and how it really was the pinnacle of online usability. Maybe we think we want it but the issues of privacy still bother us.

@Justin’s brother: I get Gmail on my nokia N95 for free. well, I think I do, I’ll check my next bill.

By: Justin's brother

Justin's brother — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 12:02:27 +0000

I’ve tried using Plaxo 3.0 and it’s a very good app when you want to run a calendar at work and also at a place of work. Unfortunately the plaxo pulse bit seems to leave a bit to be desired. I was hoping for some sort of RSS type thing which brought all my friends blogs, photos and other content to a single page. This was the promise but I can’t see an easy way to set it up. Anyone ahead of me here?

By: Justin Davies

Justin Davies — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:29:24 +0000

Thank for the comments. Glenn, I’ve given Highrise a look, and Todd I’ve grabbed the obligatory Gmail, plus having the resources of Mediatemple at my fingertips.

Also worth taking a look at Zoho – there are some seriously good web based apps there including Google equivilent plus crm plus project plus plus plus…

Thanks again…

Justin

By: Justin's brother

Justin's brother — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:24:32 +0000

Nice post. The new and improved Plaxo was supposed to do all of this, but when I went to look at the Youtube presentation on this, it fell far short of what I was hoping for: http://www.plaxo.com/. Great on concept, quite a ways to go on delivery. Maybe Microsoft or Newscorp will sort all this out when they buy Yahoo.

Things I’m really liking at the moment:
1. Using gmail as my primary mail client for everything and allowing web based access from anywhere (also has great search for your history of items if your backups go awry)

2. The nice thin little app which allows me to access my Gmail from my Nokia phone while taking up nearly no bandwidth – result – email on the go for $5 a month and I pull it when I want it rather than it interupting me or paying a fortune for blackberry client. (Steven Covey would be proud)

3. The RSS feed on the Google Desktop sidebar which gives me real(ish) time updates on everyone’s blog posts (I’ve got this displaying on my laptop monitor while I use the main screen for work).

Hmm, all of these things are Google products. Coincidence?

The thing that worries me about all these apps is privacy, particularly when giving out passwords. Identity theft is so easy these days… in fact I am no longer me, I am you and enjoying the use of your credit card. Thanks!!

By: Ravi Balachandran

Ravi Balachandran — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:20:23 +0000

Nice job. Keep posting.

By: Bewls

Bewls — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:14:46 +0000

I’m not schizoid am I?
Yes you are.
No I’m not
Yes, but I am.
Who are you?
I’m your friend.
Which friend?
I’m the one that lives with all your other friends, deep inside the earth!

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:41:28 +0000

Exactly what I was thinking.

Maybe it’s time to reread Stephen Covey and figure out which are the big rocks.

In the meantime here are two more sites to stop your schizoid friends from getting lonely.

http://www.spock.com

This one is attempting to do what you want with managing your online brand, but it’s kind of spooky. It asks for all your other social network login details so it can collate all your info.

http://www.gooruze.com (stared by some pretty young things here in Perth.) One wag called it “crack for online marketers.”

I don’t think he was too far off the mark.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:03:21 +0000

Justin, regarding your email question, I’ve taken to using a single Gmail account as my backend mailbox, and forward all of my front end email accounts to it (and yes, I have too many of these). So there is only 1 mailbox (and Gmail has good junk mail filtering).
I suspect the problem of syncing address books, appointments and tasks is a moder day travelling salesman problem – looks like it should be easy, but isn’t.
Have you tried Highrise (from 37Signals) yet? Worth a look – a syncing solution with via the API would go a long way to nailing most of this.