adamyntium

Category: communication tools

  • Gmail’s not the problem: A look at misguided and dangerous privacy positioning

    HARK! A powerful new technology! Let’s [try it / ignore it / ban it]!

    History repeats itself. When new technology is developed, there are the early adopters who coo excitedly, those living under a rock who grunt “huh?” and varying degrees of those who issue warnings, which — at least as of late — seem to fit into one of several convenient categories:
    1) Fighting against terrorism
    2) Safeguarding values (e.g., “Protecting the children!”)
    3) Protecting privacy

    To simultaneously save me from getting writer’s cramp and enable you to finish reading this essay in under two hours, I’m just going to tackle the issue of privacy for now.

    * * *

    Examining privacy

    First, let’s take into consideration the two fundamental aspects of privacy:

    1) SECLUSION: Right to be left alone; protection from intrusion, interruption, etc.
    2) SECRECY: Right to keep one’s personal life from prying eyes

    Much ado has been made of Gmail’s alleged or potential violations of both types of privacy by other individuals (advertisers, hackers, employees) or entities (Google, other companies, government agencies). And admittedly, with seemingly so many potential loci for abuse, it’s understandable that many folks are concerned about a project of the scope of something like Gmail.

    However, in this essay, I’d like to offer my opinions as to why these risks are outweighed by benefits and — more importantly — why focusing on ‘reforming’ (or even suspending) Gmail harmfully takes our eye off the real problems in our society.

    * * *

    Assessing privacy issues in the context of Gmail

    It’s easiest to dispense immediately with the ‘right to be left alone’ aspect of Gmail. Unlike the flashy, gaudy, intelligence-insulting “You’re winner number 314159!” pop-ups that pollute leading Web mail services (and much of the rest of the Web), Gmail’s ads are deliciously unobtrusive. They don’t blink, they don’t flash, they just sit there quietly on the side — barely noticeable. And since Gmail does not insert so much as a tag line (much less ads) in any outgoing mails, it becomes even more difficult to forward an argument that Gmail creates an interruption or other intrusion into one’s daily life.

    One might counter that the very presence of contextual ads may create a feeling of queasy intrusion. However, Gmail has (in my testing) been pretty cautious about placing ads next to apparently-personal or otherwise sensitive e-mails, and of course, it does not place any ads next to e-mail marked (automatically or manually) as spam. Still, there’s admittedly the possibility of an unpleasant juxtaposition of a heartfelt e-mail with a angst-inducing related ad, but such an occurence is also possible via a song on a radio, an ad on TV, a seemingly random phone call, and so on. Our minds are rich in imagination, and capable — for better or worse — of astounding leaps of correlation. Once again, this is not something one should hold Gmail responsible for, IMHO, and it hardly seems to fit into the issue of privacy. And of particular note, the Gmail text ads are lightyears away from the ludicrous example of a billboard in one’s living room, as one clearly-clueless senator has suggested in tandem with her anti-Gmail legislation.

    So what we’re left with, then, is the more meaty and complex aspect of privacy-as-secrecy. With Gmail’s one gig of storage, it’s no doubt that many folks will practically be entrusting their life’s story — AND secrets — to Google. And in this area, I honestly have no easy answers. I will, however, attempt to address the various pieces:

    – Security breaches / the bored employee
    Google has an excellent history of data integrity, having (to my knowledge) avoided any data theft from its multi-billion dollar AdWords or AdSense programs. But other big players haven’t been quite so successful. Many of Amazon.com’s anonymous viewers found their screen names exposed a few months ago (frankly, much to my evil delight, since many if not most of the anons were shills and twits). On a less innocuous note, many Hotmail users found their accounts suddenly ‘open to the public’ due to a security exploit that Microsoft then understandably scrambled to fix.

    Could Google stumble here? Nothing’s impossible. Unfortunately (and in fairness to Google), however, this is a universal problem. Though I’d frankly trust Google with my data over most other companies, I think it’d be a mistake to assume that anyone’s data is 100% safe, anywhere.

    On a similarly sobering note, I’ll add that it’s trivially possible for an Information Systems worker at your company or your ISP to read your incoming and outgoing mail. Google has vehemently highlighted precautions it’s taken to prevent this happening at their company, and frankly, I believe them. Would you, as a highly-compensated employee, risk your job at such a coveted organization for the opportunity to snoop into likely banal exchanges? Seems unlikely to me. But that aside… once again, this is not a Gmail issue. This is a general e-mail issue.

    – Selling/giving data to other companies
    As a Google (AdWords) Advertiser and Publisher (AdSense), I can tell you point-blank that Google does an incredible job at protecting the data of both its users (visitors to Google.com and AdSense Web sites) and its advertisers. As both an advertiser and publisher, I am absolutely unable to glean any personal information about people who click on my ads. Google actually maintains a very strict separation between its departments, and were it (or another company) to risk this integrity in the future, the brand would be tarnished beyond recovery (and it’s not like there’s not competition!). In other words, unlike with almost every other transaction we partake in In Real Life, I firmly believe we can trust Google not to share our personal info with other companies.

    – Giving our secrets to federal governments… oh yeah, and lawyers
    If Ashcroft applied enough pressure to Google next month and insisted on wiretapping a few dozen “suspected terrorist” accounts, I’m betting that Google would buckle.

    Wow, that’s probably not what you expected me to say, is it?

    I’ll surprise you further: I have no doubt that lawyers are indeed salivating at the likelihood of millions of people getting Gmail accounts and storing voluminous amounts of discoverable data, perfect for future lawsuits.

    Of course, Ashcroft and — to a less chilling but likely more common extent — Dewey Cheatem and Howe have been subpoening mail records from Hotmail, Earthlink, Comcast, Big 10 universities, Fortune 500 companies, and so on. Gmail just expands the scope.

    But Gmail isn’t the problem

    And now we get to the meat of this essay, in which I argue — after acknowledging Gmail’s unwilling-but-likely facilitation of government and lawyerly snooping — that Gmail is absolutely, positively not the problem.

    Electronic Freedom Fighter and longtime smart-geek Brad Templeton gives us a good start here via his entry on Privacy and Gmail, which includes:

    …there are also some deep issues here, worth discussing with not just Google but all the other webmail providers

    …but Brad doesn’t go far enough. E-mail privacy concerns aren’t — or at least shouldn’t — be just limited to Webmail. As noted above, your mail is susceptible to snooping no matter where it resides… unless you’re one of the 0.0000002% of geeks who use encryption, and that’s likely to send up a red flag to Ashcroft anyway ;-). And though Brad’s suggestion that Gmail incorporate a more user-friendly form of encryption has merit, I think it’s a mere bandaid on larger problems. In fact, I’m generally uncomfortable with the feeling that Brad places the onus of responsibility (and solutions) upon technology, rather than those who abuse human rights via such technologies.

    As we move these things [record of peoples’ lives] online and outside, we build some of the apparatus for a surveillance society.

    I strongly disagree. This is like saying that when Japan set up high-speed rail transit, the country created the apparatus for criminals to flee farther and faster. Or as long distance calling costs have become insanely cheaper over the last 15 years, it’s made it much, much easier for people to plot nefarious acts over the phone more affordably.

    The introduction of new technologies — or the exponential improvement of existing technologies — facilitates opportunities for good and for not-good. But blaming the technologies (particularly communication technologies) is horribly wrong for two reasons:

    1) It stifles innovation, and keeps costs artificially high.

    Can you imagine how much more work — and perhaps more value — Google could be putting into Gmail if they were able to spend less time fighting PR fires?

    2) It takes our attention off of the real culprits: federal powers without sufficient accountability or checks or balances, not to mention a legal system which rewards, even necessitates antagonism over consensus.

    Let’s stop blaming tools, and start fixing the deeper problems

    We should channel our indignations towards privacy-enroaching intrusions such as the Patriot Act. We should vote our representatives — Democrat or Republican — out of office when they value false security over liberty. We should demand accountability, and insist that our journalists actually ask tough questions in Washington D.c. (and around the world). We should, as Brad rightly notes, fix The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA).

    Wringing our hands over Google isn’t just misguided, it’s dangerous in that it blinds us to the root of deeper problems in our society:

    1) As a society and individually, we’re generally unable to intelligently weigh risks.

    In our quest to “fight terrorism” we forget that far more people die from spousal abuse, drunk driving, malnutrition, etc. Will Ashcroft start scanning our e-mails for keywords relating to those causes of death? That’s (thankfully) doubtful, but only because he — and most of the FOX-watching public — is unable to thoughtfully weigh risks and benefits.

    In the vast storage that Gmail offers, non-profits can save and find key documents that help them better deliver social services. Grandparents can pull up pictures of their grandkids. Self-employed folks can be more productive, boosting their bottom line and doing their part to also buoy the economy. Sure, these are all butterfly-flaps, so to speak, in the ongoing history of society, but in the aggregate it adds up to a lot of good.

    2) We are tragically misinformed and poorly educated and we don’t seem to care.

    We fail to take our liberties seriously until we see sensationalist articles in the paper or hear about grandstanding bills proposed by a tech-ignorant senator.

    When I recently chatted with some friends here in the generally tech-savvy area of San Francisco about Gmail, nearly half suggested to me that they wouldn’t touch Gmail with a ten-foot pole. “They’re gonna read all the e-mail I get!” was the oft-expressed concern. Clearly, these people had no clue that their e-mails are already “read” many times enroute to their destination, nor did they think to actually visit Google’s Gmail pages to get the real info about what the service would and would not be doing. Funny, but I don’t recall my friends worrying about the privacy of their e-mail before.

    I don’t think the masses are misinformed because they’re dumb (though there’s certainly some of that). Rather, we absorb AND support the lowest common denominator in journalism. Not only does sex sell, but so does any bad news — whether it’s relevant or even true. “Duh, Sherlock” I hear you saying, teasing me for pointing out the obvious.

    But if it’s so obvious, why aren’t people like Brad and other prominent technologists decrying the lack of journalistic integrity and dearth of basic technological education and knowledge in our society? I have no doubt that if more people knew and truly understood the tenuousness of our personal privacy in society (with regards to credit card purchases, political affiliations, and yes, e-mail), they’d be concerned and mobilized to change the fabric of society and government… rather than throwing stones at a Webmail provider that’s providing a richer offering than its competitors.

    In summary…

    We need to focus on the fundmental roots of the erosion of our privacy, and realize that Gmail is a serendipitous wakeup call, not a culprit.

    True… Gmail, in itself, is not likely to lead to absolute world peace, and indeed, it’s admittedly easy and sometimes tempting to overstate what may be more of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary technological offering. But every moment people spend attacking this or any other communication tool amounts to time and efforts distracting us from the real (and real serious) issues facing our nation and our world.

    * * *

    Related entries:
    – Brad Tempton’s essay on The GMail Saga
    – My review of Gmail
    – My writeup of Gmail tips and tricks
    – Blog posts (via Technorati) on Gmail and Privacy

  • Got a Gmail account? Here are a few interesting tricks ‘n’ tidbits

    [In case you didn’t already notice, I wrote a pretty detailed review of Gmail earlier, in which I also noted that I’m unfortunately unable to procure accounts for folks. Sorry! For those who already have accounts, I hope the tips below are useful and/or fun 🙂 – Adam]

    So, you’re one of the Gmail testers and you want more bang for the buck, eh? Try these tips on for size:

    SENDING & SHORTCUTS
    – Send mail to fellow Gmail’er by just entering their username in the TO, CC, or BCC spot. No need to include @gmail.com 🙂

    – Did you reserve .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and now wish you had left out the darn period? It’s not too late! For whatever reason, Gmail treats that e-mail address the same as one without a period (and visa versa), so .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) works just as well as .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). As you may have guessed, Gmail is flexible with regards to capitalizations, too!

    – Using the handy-dandy spell-checker and want to quickly Resume Checking without using the mouse? Just hit ‘R’, an undocumented shortcut key in this context.

    SEARCHING
    – “or” is not the same as “OR.” Only the capitalized version (sans quotes, by the way) will work with searches. So if you want to find mail from your friend Jen, you can use this in search: FROM: (jen OR jenny OR jennifer). Note, by the way, that the actual search terms are not case-sensitive. “jen” works just as good as “Jen.”

    – But, using the same Jen example, it’s important to realize that the search engine of Gmail (and Google, for the most part) does not search partial words. So “jen” will not find “Jennifer.”

    PERFORMING ACTIONS ON A GROUP OF E-MAILS
    – Let’s say you have 150 e-mails, listed over two pages (100 max per page), and you want to archive all of them. I initially made the mistake of clicking ALL, then hitting ARCHIVE and thinking that this would do the trick. Nope. Commands — whether TRASH or ARCHIVE or LABEL — only affect those items that are both selected and on the page you’re currently viewing.

    – And speaking of groupings… don’t forget that when you archive or label e-mail, you’re affecting the entire Conversation of e-mails by default. If you want to trash just one of the e-mails in a Conversation, you can do this by expanding that particular e-mail, clicking on MORE OPTIONS, and then clicking on TRASH THIS MESSAGE.

    ALL THIS *PLUS* A LITTLE BIT MORE
    Gmail supports “plus” addressing, which means that if your address is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), you can receive e-mail at maryhadda+littlelamb@gmail.com or maryhadda+longaddress@gmail.com, etc. Why is this useful? Well, Mary (or you!) could use one, er, I’ll call it a “plussing,” for mailing lists (“maryhadda+lists”), and another for shopping online (“maryhadda+shopping”) and so on, and then create filters to put useful labels on the different types of mail.

    Some have suggested that this could also be a useful spam deterrent (e.g., using maryhadda+2004q2 and then discarding e-mail sent to this address the following quarter), but I think this suffers from two key flaws:
    1) Spammers are probably smart enough to start stripping off the plussing :(.
    2) After a while, you’d have to create a LOT of filters, and — at least for the moment — we only get an allotment of 20 filters total. It’d be a shame to use those all up in a (likely futile) attempt to thwart spamjerks.

    *** Edited 4/30/04:
    Some folks had expressed concern that plussing was seemingly not working for them. However, I’ve worked with them to track down the cause: Due to the way Gmail handles discussion list mails — not showing one’s own contributions in the Inbox to avoid duplicate views — people who were testing the plussing feature by mailing themselves via Gmail wrongly assumed the mail was ‘lost’. As it turns out, the mail was indeed received, but — since it appeared to be part of a ‘discussion list’ — was not shown in the Inbox, which is what caused the confusion.

    THE BOTTOM LINE: Plussing works; just don’t try sending tests to yourself FROM your Gmail account TO your same Gmail account :D.

    * * *

    Well, that’s pretty much everything off the top of my head for now! How about you? Got some cool Gmail tips or tricks? Speak up below, or feel free to contact me 🙂

    * * *

    *** Added 4/21/04
    Uh oh! I have competition! 😀 It’s been pointed out to me that there’s already a blog dedicated to Gmail tips and tricks, called Gmail Gems. Definitely worth checking out.

    *** Added 10/11/05
    Want to read more stuff about Gmail and Google? Check out the BLADAM Google category! and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog! (see the options in the top menu!)

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  • A reminder of how meaningful Online socializing can be

    There are many times in which I’ve felt that people — myself included — would benefit from logging off and getting a life. This sort of cynicism (or optimism, depending on one’s take) is heightened when I read about people falling in love with someone else that they’ve “met” only online. Hey, I’ll admit… been there, done that. And never again.

    So, too, do I often ask myself why I continue to feel so passionate about online communities and online networking. With all the flaming and faking and fluffery and general bullshit, isn’t it all just a waste of time?

    Then every once in a while, I’m reminded why Online matters.

    Recently, in a health-‘n’-fitness related forum on orkut, a young, formerly active woman who is recovering (slowly) from a stroke posted a note expressing her general feeling of hopelessness.

    Over the last few days, many of us took time to give her thoughtful advice and warm encouragement. And then today, she just posted a followup note letting us know how much our responses have meant to her… and has promised to start being more proactive about getting her life back.

    This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve personally saved two women (each who ‘met’ me from a forum online) from commiting suicide by keeping them “talking” over IM, finding a local hotline number for them and convincing them to make that critical call (since I’m not a licensed counselor!). And on a less severe but also heartwarming note, a great many people have thanked me over the years for my contributions to online communities, often giving me specific examples of how my information or encouragement or even friendship has made a difference in their lives.

    In the end, I may still be a hardened cynic about falling in love online, but I now truly believe that online communities can mean the world for people, one posting and one person at a time. And I hope, despite the brutally sensationalistic Internet headlines we’re cursed with nowadays, we never forget about the real undercurrent of good humanity that flows throughout the ‘net.

  • Google’s Gmail – An in-depth look

    I’ve had the pleasure of extensively beta testing Gmail for a few days, and I’m happy to offer my thoughts about the service here. First, though, I’d like to get a few disclaimers out of the way:

    1. I don’t work for Google. I’m not a Google employee and I do not speak for Google or the Gmail team, yadda yadda…
    2. I can’t get you a Gmail account. I can’t even get accounts for my bestest friends. If you’d like to try out Gmail, I encourage you to sign the notification list here.
    3. Gmail is in BETA (not yet a finalized product). Beta beta beta beta! Things will be fixed, improved, changed, etc. Therefore, I will try to resist the impule to nitpick about specific features that don’t work perfectly because — let’s face it — this is a BETA version, and what I’d write today would likely be fixed before long.

    With that said… let’s get on with the show 😀

    OVERALL / THE BOTTOM LINE

    For those too lazy or busy to read through my long note, here’s the quick summary for you:

    Gmail is generally a delight to use. While it is not yet fit to be a substitute for client-based e-mail systems (Eudora, Outlook, etc.), nor does it yet have all the features of competing Webmail services, Gmail is blindingly fast, its ads are unobtrusive (often even informative and useful), and its label paradigm is promising. And of course, as one would expect, the search features are unparalled. If you’re not keen on seeing text ads or you prefer a more drag-and-drop GUI environment AND you don’t mind paying $30/year for a fabulous competing Webmail service, I urge you to check out OddPost. Yes, the time has clearly come to ditch Hotmail and Yahoo!.

    YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Hold the presses! Google has finally unveiled some of the best Gmail screenshots on its own :-).

    NOTE: I’ve since added in a few screen shots (each <100K) which may be of interest to those of you reading along here... - Gmail search– Gmail filter, part 1 of 2– Gmail filter, part 2 of 2 Also, you may wish to check out the screenshots posted by Kevin Fox (one of the UI designers of Gmail) and the review and screenshots posted by Sean Parker.

    PRIVACY

    Here are the facts:

    • No new ‘privacy invasion’: Google parses, stores, and backs up any mail sent to its addresses. So does Hotmail, Earthlink, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, and every single other ISP / corporation in the world. The only two differences in this context are the amount of space Google offers (encouraging people to save their mails could lead to easier subpoenas, but you can’t blame Google for greedy divorce lawyers) and the fact that Google displays often-relevant ads next to the e-mails instead of the flashing and obnoxious “You’re winner number 481023!!!!!!!!” ad banners you see in other Webmail services.
    • Ads are limited, unobtrusive: There are no ads placed in outgoing e-mails… not even any tagline. There are no ads placed inside incoming e-mails, either, as you’ve likely noticed from various screenshots of Gmail around the Web. Just occasional ads and/or Related Sites listed on the righthand side of the Gmail screen. It should be noted, too, that — unlike with many other sites — these ads and site listings are shown after the mail content itself is drawn, so there’s no waiting for your actual mail text to load. Additionally, with Gmail there are no popups, no popunders, no graphical banners, no extra e-mails sent to you begging to have you upgrade to “Google Premium” and so on.
    • There’s no profiling maintained: We could go back and forth with arguments about “But Ashcroft could MAKE them profile!” or “Google is lying!” but I’m not even going to get into these hypotheticals. The bottom line is that Google has explicitly noted that all targeting info gleaned from the mail you receive is discarded immediately after an ad is selected and shown, end of story. If you’re still not comfortable with that, perhaps Gmail isn’t for you, and that’s okay! :-).

    OPENING AN ACCOUNT

    I was amazed at the simplicity of this process. No request for demographics, no long “opt-in mailing list opportunities” to wade through. The only required info: First and last name, and a preferred Gmail username. One thing of note: All usernames must be a minimum of 6 characters, which is a downer for the many of us who have short first names. Strangely, that’s actually irrelevant in a way, because Google apparently blocked off all common names (even of >6 characters) early on, so all the Jim Smiths and Jane Does and so on were out of luck from the get go. I’m guessing they did this to minimize the impact of dictionary and general spam attacks, but maybe they were just trying to be oddly egalitarian :D.

    READING E-MAIL

    At first, I was a bit wary about Gmail’s “Conversation” (semi-threaded) view of e-mails, but I’ve grown to really like this. Keep in mind that this isn’t true multi-level threading, and IMHO, that’s a good thing. Instead of helter-skelter indenting here and there, conversations (composed of e-mails with the same message ID and subject line) are stacked on top of each other in a single layer like cards.

    Gmail handles this part of the interface beautifully!
    When there are a few e-mails, Gmail shows the TO and FROM names and a snippet from the e-mail. When there are many e-mails in a conversation, Gmail just visually shows the stacked cards; one click then shows the TO/FROM + snippet, and another click instantly expands the e-mail to show the full text, minus quoted text from the earlier replies. In any situation, one can expand all the e-mails with a single click or open/close any individual e-mail, though as of yet, there are puzzlingly no ways to collapse an entire conversation. This is one of those aspects of Gmail you just have to experience to appreciate. Even when you’ve archived a conversation, when someone later replies to the same thread, you get the full ‘stack of cards’ again… allowing you to mentally get back into the earlier context in a heartbeat. The elegance of Gmail is evident even before one begins reading mail. The Inbox, which — as you’d expect — includes a list of the mails waiting for you, intelligently expands or contracts the length of the mail snippet it shows you, depending upon your screen resolution, browser size, and font size. In other words, everything fits perfectly, no matter how your computer is setup. Okay, taking a step back, that’s not completely true; I’ll take a (very) brief detour to acknowledge that Gmail’s not compatible with all browsers, since not all support javascript and DHTML to the level required at this point in the beta test. The Gmail team has noted that they are actively working to improve compatibility, and I trust ’em. For the 94%+ of the Internet-enabled public that uses IE, there’ll be no problems. Gmail also offers some other subtle features, like using a more muted font color (gray’ish) for signatures, along with a javascript-based hide/show option for quoted text. This latter part is especially appreciated, given how many clueless noobs have not yet grasped the concept of trimming replies. Perhaps (he says, optimistically), the eventual widespread use of Gmail and its default conversation view will encourage people to start removing the > > > > >’d text of the earliest 47 replies in a thread. One can only hope! 🙂 Lastly, Google has followed the lead of Microsoft/Outlook (!) and has disabled by default the showing of referenced graphics in all incoming HTML e-mails. This is to stymie the practice of spammers who often place “web bugs” (invisible graphics) in their mails to track who opens them, likely sending those poor saps an even greater amount of mail or selling their data on an “active e-mailer — send them more spam!” premium mailing list :|. So, on the obvious upside, Gmail is taking a successful and laudable swipe against spammers. Unfortunately, there is no white-listing of this default blocking; users must click on the “show graphics” link every time they get an HTML e-mail from even an opt-in source (e.g., a daily tech newsletter you’ve asked for).

    COMPOSING AND SENDING E-MAIL

    It’s ridiculously easy to start an e-mail. You can hit ‘R’ to reply, for instance, or even just click in the little box below an e-mail you’re reading, and it’ll instantly expand… complete with quoted text all ready for you. Additionally, Gmail’s conversation-view is maintained, letting you scroll up and see the full history of the mail or mails you’re replying to. There’s also a built-in spellchecker that’s pretty straightforward to use, though I don’t believe it yet offers a way to add words to a ‘personal dictionary.’ Addressing mail is quite a pleasure. Gmail remembers the names and addresses of people you’ve previously written to, and then pops up — in real time, as you type each letter! — names of matching recipients, ordered by the frequency with which you’ve written them in the past. So if you often write Belinda Jones, as soon as you hit ‘B’ then ‘E’, it’ll show (and have already highlighted in anticipation) “Belinda Jones ” Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to send HTML e-mail, and any received HTML mails that are replied to or forwarded will be converted into plain text. I am fairly certain that this will change before Gmail’s public release. Also, there is not yet a way to save a draft of an e-mail being written, though — once again — I expect that this will be added, since it seems to me to be a rather basic feature.

    ATTACHMENTS

    KaZaA fans, wipe that excited smile off your face. Gmail limits both incoming and outgoing mails to 10 megs in size (including attachments), so don’t plan on using your gig allotment to store ‘n’ forward bootlegged movies. Sorry 😉 For the rest of us, Google’s attachment offerings are serviceable if not particularly inspired. jpegs, unlike with other services, aren’t viewed inline, and perhaps that’s good (especially for dialup folks). EXE files are not allowed (due to virus concerns), and that’s also smart, IMHO. You can attach and remove files before sending, but you can’t remove attachments from files you’ve received. That’s a bit of a bummer when your overeager friends send you an e-mails you’d like to keep, if it weren’t for the dumb (and uncompressed) 8 meg photos or music files attached. By the way, currently Gmail is a bit coy about letting you know of attachment sizes, or even the general size of your individual or grouped mails. There’s no column or — as far as I can tell — any indication at all of how big your mail is. Gmail is clearly serious (IMHO, too serious) about dumbing down this aspect of the service to encourage people to archive rather than delete their mail.

    MANAGING E-MAIL

    Conversations It takes a bit getting used to the fact that — while it’s usually possible to perform actions on individual e-mails — Google generally acts upon all your e-mail in sets of conversations, as noted earlier. Ads targeting, archiving, and labeling… it’s all done to conversations. At first, this bothered me; what if I want to label just one e-mail in a long conversation? However, in practice, I’ve noticed that I’ve grown to like the less granular approach to handling my incoming mail, and I haven’t seemed to miss the ability to star or label or archive one specific piece of a conversation.

    Labeling Moving away from the folder paradigm is actually both a bold and smart move for Google. Given the longevity of the folder model in pretty much every other existing Webmail service and software application, I’m guessing that this may be initially a bit of a jarring change in the way people approach and think about their mail. However, I am confident that close to 100% of the people who try Gmail will learn to appreciate using labels over folders. Why? The key difference is that it’s now possible to file your mail conversations under more than one heading. When you get a detailed diary-type note from your Aunt about her travels in Costa Rica, you can now file this under “Family” and “Travel,” which in the grand scheme of e-mail filing is a lot more valuable than you might think at first glance. However, while labels do offer greater filing options, I can imagine that the current Gmail labeling system may become rather unwieldly over time. Labels are now listed alphabetically and cannot be re-ordered or stacked hierarchically, and as the number of labels one uses increases, I fear that it’ll become harder both to mark and to browse mails. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re a music reviewer, and initially you create labels for each artist or group you review. After a while, though, your label list starts to get a bit unwieldly, and it’d be nice to group labels into, well, hierarchical groups (by geography, genre, etc.) In other words, labels currently allow for nice grouping, but — as of yet — not good grouping of groups, if that makes any sense 🙂

    Filtering At this time, Gmail filtering seems rather rough around the edges… it supports filtering only of incoming mail… no editing of filters, no filtering of mail you’ve already received, and no filtering on outgoing e-mail. I expect this to be rapidly improved as the beta progresses, however. And in general, Gmail filtering is already extremely fast and also reasonably powerful. One can use OR, along with parenthetical groupings, and also many keywords (subject:, from:, etc.). Currently, Gmail users are limited to a maximum of 20 filters, but I hope and expect this limit to be lifted in the future.

    Anti-spam issues It’s unclear to me how Gmail’s spam filter works. Or rather, unfortunately in my case, doesn’t work. I’m currently having to deal with an enormous number of false positives and and false negatives. This would bother me less if I had an inkling of what mechanism Gmail uses to filter spam (Bayesian? Fingerprinting of mails marked as spam by others? Content analysis?), which would allow me to understand how this filtering might improve dramatically over time. Luckily, though, it’s a pretty simple and quick matter to mark mail as spam and not-spam, with the former even being available via a shortcut key (the exclamation point, which does seem quite fitting :D). One additional irritation, though, is that when you mark mail as spam, Google puts it into your spam bin, when it should instead place it in the trash bin. After all, unlike mail that’s been marked as spam by Gmail, this mail we’ve affirmatively noted is spam; there’s no need for us to look at it a second time. Personally, I’m hoping that Gmail ends up using Bayesian filtering. Using Outlook plus the free Bayesian spam filter called POPfile, I find that my mail is handled with greater than 99% accuracy… pretty hard to beat!

    THE ADS

    While I’m almost afraid to admit this, I rarely even notice the ads on the righthand side of the page. They’re that unobtrusive. But when I do notice them, I find the targeting to be, ahem, still in need of quite a bit of fine tuning. And here’s what confuses me: Given that the Gmail engineers are (understandably) disallowed from viewing folks’ private e-mail, how will they go about improving ad targeting? I wish there was an option (during the beta period, and with full disclosure!) to allow Gmail engineers to personally read and analyze mail we mark as having “poor targeting” to enable them to quickly improve their ad targeting. I realize they may already be sharing personal e-mail internally for this purpose already, but with their numbers, this just isn’t sufficient. With that said, I do have to note that in many cases, the ad targeting has been both appropriate AND useful. Not only am I often shown ads that make perfect (related) sense, but I also appreciate the frequency with which Google intelligently shows spot-on “related pages.” For instance, someone was talking about a particular software program in an mailing list note I received, and voila, Gmail had a link to the company that makes that product under “Related Pages.” The unobtrusiveness of the ads, while at initial consideration may seem to be a downside for advertisers, is likely not a problem in this context. This is because AdWords advertisers are not penalized for low click-thrus on content sites and in Gmail, and they only pay when people click on their ads. If the click-thru rate via Gmail is low — perhaps with people only noticing very highly relevant ads — then Google will lose out on some revenue in the short term, but advertisers won’t be harmed and may even be helped. In the long term, I think Gmail ads will be well-liked by most consumers and advertisers alike. As for inappropriate or insensitive targeting… I haven’t noticed this to a be a problem yet. I sent a couple of test mails to my Gmail account, focusing linguistically on the theme of death and dying, and Gmail “outsmarted” me each time. That is to say, when I sent e-mails about “dying to see funny jokes… man, that last one had me out of breath, on the floor, and about ready to die!…” Gmail smartly showed ads for Joke stuff. When I wrote a note (thankfully untrue!) of equal length about a relative dying (“Isn’t it funny how the doctors didn’t notice anything strange about Aunt Martha before she died?… You have to laugh at the incompetence of medical staff nowadays…”), Gmail showed no ads whatsoever. I’m sure there will be instances in which Gmail’s targeting results in ironic or even unpleasant juxtapositions, but it seems to me that this should be rare, and in the end probably no more likely than the scenario of a recently-widowed woman seeing an untargeted but equally jarring ad for “Single? Looking to date?” ad in her Yahoo mail.


    OVERALL USER INTERFACE, operations plus look and feeel
    Though, as I’ve hammered home, this is indeed still a beta version, I must admit to strongly mixed feelings about the way in which Gmail has been structured and the ways in which its designers expect users to interact with the system.

    Thumbs up:

    • Lots of useful keyboard shortcuts… “g i” lets you Go to your Inbox, “y” enables you to instantly archive a conversation and so on.
    • The interface is subtlely colorful without being garish.
    • Frames are used in a such a way as to dramatically minimize screen-redraw time. Unlike with most other Webmail systems, actions (mail deletions, labeling, etc.) are performed with amazing speed, letting the user continue working without waiting a while for the actions to take effect.
    • Navigation is simple, straightforward, and fast! Unlike with any other Webmail service I’ve seen, I can open up an e-mail (or e-mail conversation) and, hitting the back button, be back at the listing of my emails in less than half a second. Though Gmail lets one open up emails in a separate window, there’s now really no need to do so.
    • As part of all the stuff noted above, javascript is used brilliantly and effectively. Though there are legitimate concerns about accessibility, I am confident that Google will indeed work hard to make Gmail usable by the handicapped.

    Thumbs down:

    • Some of the most common tasks are not supported by keyboard shortcuts or even streamlined mousing. Labeling and unlabeling conversations, for instance, is often quite tedious. There’s no way (I can tell, at least) to select multiple e-mails without mousing it; it’d be nice to be able to quickly use the arrow keys to either select or at least navigate through an e-mail list, for instance.
    • Form elements are often used in ways that are not standard, nor necessarily intuitive. For instance, on every screen that includes a list of your mail, there is a submit-style button with a pulldown menu right next to it. Convention would suggest that the expected behavior would involve selecting an option via the pulldown menu, then clicking on the submit-style button. But this is not the case. Instead, each performs a separate function. The submit-style button performs one-click actions that are context-dependent (e.g., “archive” in the incoming mail screen), and the pulldown menu lets one perform different actions, also depending on the context. Additionally, there are no ways to access most of the pulldown menu options via a shortcut key, and — worse yet — the options aren’t in an ordered or numbered list which’d allow for quick one-button access after selecting the pulldown menu.
    • Though keyboard shortcuts are great, I wish Gmail followed the OddPost model of right-click (mouse) functionality as well… being able to quickly select a large group of emails and then right-click on “mark as read” for instance. After all, since Gmail is more of an app than a Web page (or set of Web pages), it’d make perfect sense for it to disable the traditional Web-page-related right-click options (“save shortcut” for instance).
    • Sometimes, it seems like the Gmail engineer geeks are, well, thinking like geeks and not like Joe and Jane consumer. While the Gmail folks have added in lots of wonderful little touches that make the service more convenient and easy to use, they’ve also crufted up the service in a few maddening ways… like having keyboard shortcuts be unnecessarily geek-style cryptic, or requiring “OR” to be capitalized in filter strings.

    OTHER THOUGHTS

    One gig is pretty impressive, both marketing-speak-wise and otherwise. But I am unconvinced that this is really enough to enable people to store ‘all their mail’ for many years. Google’s own writing/marketing/PR people seem to be admittedly schizophrenic on this issue, sometimes claiming that 1 gig will be all people ever need, other times saying it’ll last people for “years,” and in one of their help files, bragging that it’ll be enough for five years of storage for the average user. I know I’m likely on the un-average side of the curve, but — even without heavy mailing list traffic and with hardly any attachments — I’m slated to fill up my 1 gig allotment in 400-500 days — well under two years. What then? Perhaps Google will be offering two gigs of storage by that time, but I must admit a little bit of concern in this area. Overall, though, my biggest concern about Gmail has been Google’s surprising bungling of Gmail PR and general communications. There’s no reason why 90+% of articles about Gmail should be so negative, so speculative, so uninformed! Did Google reach out proactively to journalists on April 2nd to walk them through the coolness that is Gmail? Did Google proactively contact privacy advocates and privacy-oriented organizations to candidly address their concerns before they started screaming publicly? Apparently not. I actually could go on about the these issues (privacy concerns and Google’s handling of them), but I think that’s enough fodder for a separate blog entry, which I’ll link to here if I choose to write it in the future. Anyway, I hope this has been informative, and please be assured that I’ll read (and, in batches) respond to all comments posted below. Thanks for stopping by BLADAM, and please feel free to check out other entries here, perhaps even browsing by categories listed on the righthand side :-).

     * * *

    And in the next episode(s) of BLADAM reviews Gmail…

    Others who have provided worthwhile bloggy reads about Gmail:

  • Handspring Treo 180: updated review

    I recently purchased a Handspring Treo 180 (black and white version), which — as many of you probably already know — is a PDA/phone combo. The PDA OS is Palm, and the phone runs on the GSM network (I connect via Voicestream / T-mobile in San Francisco). The new color Treo 300 runs on Sprint’s CDMA network.

    I’ve been extremely happy with my Treo. While it’s definitely more bulky than the wonderfully-pocketsized Ericsson phone I used to have, I’m now actually carrying around a Palm Pilot and phone religiously. And with the Outlook sync, it’s amazingly handy having ALL of my contact numbers in my phone without having to laboriously type them in.

    Plus, it’s got 16 megs of memory. Not expandable, but… dang, that’s still good sized, IMHO 🙂

    The PDA/Phone integration is mildly quirky, but I’d still give it an A- overall.

    Other grades:
    – Ergonomics: A-
    – Fit (hand): A
    – Fit (pocket): B- (pretty thin, but wide)
    – Screen: B (small but clear)
    – Construction: B (feels just a touch flimsy… but solid metal would have weighed too much)
    – Reception: B- (noticeably less consistent than my old phone)
    – Sound quality: A (great clarity natively, with earbud, and with speakerphone)

    My service with Voicestream has been mixed.
    RIGHT when I first signed up they had a 4 day outage!
    My coverage and connection-quality has been very good since, though, and you absolutely cannot beat their plans. 1000 weekday minutes and unlimited weekends, plus free long distance, free roaming, and 50 text messages for $39? Very cool! And they have 24hour customer service over the phone.

    I originally purchased the phone for $149 (after rebate) with Amazon.com, but strangely, it’s gone back up to $249 after rebate now. I still think it’d be a worthwhile buy.

  • More great ways to access your e-mail

    In an older post, I raved about the online mail service called  OddPost.

    I’d like to recommend another really cool service, called Mail2Web, which lets you pick up your POP mail without cost and without even registering.  It’s got nowhere near the nifty interface of OddPost, but it’s free and it’s useful for when you must check more than one POP account.  They’ve even got a companion site called
    Mail2PDA.  Very cool!

    When a cranky computer I was using overseas would not connect to OddPost, I found it worked quite well with Mail2Web.  Give both services a try!

  • Comments I e-mailed to T-Mobile / Voicestream

    Here are some comments I sent to T-Mobile / Voicestream after using their service for a week with my Handspring Treo 180:

    Hi there,

    Unfortunately, you had no option for SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS, so… of course, my first suggestion is: please add this to your site. 🙂

    I’ve had your service for less than a week, and I’ve already set aside a lot of time to test it out. Here are my thoughts so far:

    GOOD STUFF:

    – 24-hour customer service and little waiting on hold.
    This is very useful, and much better than my service with Cingular 🙂

    – Friendly customer service.
    Your reps have gone out of their way to be helpful and nice.

    – Generous allotment of text messaging.

    – Free access to voicemail via landline.
    Cingular made me pay extra for this!

    – AOL IM access
    This is really neat via SMS! Now if you could just get Yahoo to offer the same thing, that’d be especially cool… 🙂

    – (Comparatively) reasonable intl. roaming rates
    Cingular charged $2.99 and up per minute. Your charges start at 99 cents. Much better!

    – 1 year contracts and cheap Treo 180
    If I wanted a discounted Treo 180 from Cingular, I had to agree to a 2 year extension of my contract and still pay $299. You offered the same unit at $149 (after rebate) and only made me agree to a 1 year contract. That’s cool 🙂

    BAD STUFF:

    – Not always informed cs reps.
    One of them told me there was “no way” for people to send me e-mail on my phone unless they wrote via your Web site!

    – Very confusing and uninformative Web sites.
    I know you’re in transition, but your knowledgebase is not very useful. Try searching for “e-mail” for instance 🙁 Also, you have a zillion FAQ’s seemingly answering exactly the same questions. Additionally, the whole concept of t-zones vs. GPRS access is still confusing to me, even though I’m a certifiable geek!

    – Spotty SMS!
    Last night, when I was depending upon SMS for my evening plans with friends, many messages were delayed for HOURS 🙁

    – No network status on Web site
    It is a pain for me AND your reps to require me to call in anytime I want to check on a problem / network status. Like with most ISP’s, you should list system problems on your Web site, or even via an automated voice prompt on 611.

    – Voicemail indicator
    Why do I get an SMS and not a voicemail indicator icon when I have voicemail? This isn’t good 🙁

    *** – Voice downtime
    This afternoon, two of my friends tried to call me but got only busy signals, not even an informative error message or my voicemail! This is really awful when I expect to get “Unlimited Weekends” and I can’t even be reached! 🙁

    – No way to check SMS allotment online
    I’d like to learn how many messages I’ve sent and received in a month without calling a rep.

    – No free evening minutes
    Every other carrier offers free weekend AND night minutes… and it’d be nice if you did the same… even if I had to wait until after 9pm at night.

    * * *

    Thanks for taking these comments into consideration 🙂

    Regards,
    Adam
    [my cell number here]

  • New Handspring Treo 180 and T-Mobile / Voicestream service

    EDIT on 3/12/2003: Just discovered that the Treo 180 has been discontinued, so the links below do not work.

    Though I had sadly a bunch of valuable stuff stolen in Estonia, two of the replaceable  things that I have been, well, eager to replace are my cell phone and PDA (Palm Pilot).

    My new cell phone and plan: Handspring Treo 180 and T-Mobile /
    Voicestream service

    After stumbling upon the amazon.com wireless section and noting an amazing after-rebate price of $149 for the Handspring Treo 180 (phone + PDA), I had to grab it 🙂  I even shelled out an extra $11 or so to get expedited 2 day shipping… so I should get the phone on Wednesday.

    My experiences so far with T-Mobile / Voicestream

    This, of course, hasn’t stopped the relevant wireless carrier — T-Mobile / Voicestream — from overeagerly activating my account and starting the clock on my monthly bill even before Amazon shipped the darn thing!  Sheesh. And adding insult to injury, when I received a “we’ve shipped your phone” e-mail from Amazon today, I noticed that my new phone number listed was in the 514 area code.  San Francisco, where I live, has a *415* area code.  What the heck?  Do they have folks manually entering in area codes or something?  Sheesh!

    • I placed a call to the number listed on the e-mail.  That, however, was the ACTIVATION number; I had to call the customer service number.  Okay.
    • I called the cs number, waited for thankfully not-too-long, and spoke with a polite but unsurprisingly not-all-that-informed rep.  She changed my calling plan with no probs, and also assigned me a new number without much hassle. But when it came time to adjust my billing period… whoops!
    • Apparently, their computers can’t assign a billing period that goes from the first of a month to the end of the month.  So I had to accept a billing period from the 2ND of the month to the 1st of the next month.  Oh well, I guess that’s not too painful.
    • And to their credit, I was issued an one-time extra 100 anytime minutes to make up for the early billing (before my phone arrives).

    What I get from T-Mobile / Voicestream (my calling plan)

    So now I’m on their T-Zone Talk and Text $29.95 plan, which includes 300 anytime minutes, unlimited weekend minutes, 1 meg of T-zone (limited “internet”) access, 300 text messages (additional at 5 cents per), and no extra charge for long distance or nationwide roaming.  So on the weekends, I can yack it up with
    friends across the country for free.  Of course, with BigZoo offering 2.9 cent-per-minute long distance on my landline and with my Treo having only an expected battery life of 2.5 hours talking-at-a-time, that’s not SO exciting, but oh well 🙂

    To be continued…

    I’ll keep you posted on how stuff goes when I get my Treo and try out the wireless service; hopefully the reception is decent in SF, and hopefully my friends get far-fewer “all circuits busy” messages when they try to reach me.

  • A smart alternative to Hotmail

    Okay, so I’m a bit behind the blogtimes here, but I just wanted to chime in and say that OddPost is da bomb. It’s a mail service that — gasp — isn’t free, but it’s worth every penny a day that the $30/year amounts to.

    30 megs of space. Drag and drop e-mail. Fast fast interface. No ads.

    There are, I admit, a few downsides to it: currently no filtering at all, doesn’t work with EVERY system (and in fact requires IE 5.0 to work), and it gets a little depressing seeing all the free Hotmail terminals at airports.

    But overall, I give it a big thumbs up, and have already personally registered. Give it a try: there’s a free 30-day demo.