Farewell to my gmail address

I never liked the minimum character requirement for a gmail username. My first . lastname is long. A while back I set up google apps for my primary domain (mediajunkie.com), which also hosts this blog, etc.

I maintained two separate in boxes for far too long, and I have a future-proof address via the Pobox service that I give out, it really doesn’t matter what address I’m using on the back end. Occasionally the reply comes from the back-end return address, and in those cases I’d rather be giving out me at my domain instead of longfirstname . longlastname @ bigbrand . com.

Switching was easy when I realized I was happy not migrating the archive. It’s a searchable epoch. Let’s keep it that way. (If you want to do something similar but maintain a complete master archive, see this helpful Lifehacker article.)

I set up forwarding from gmail to my domain. Easy peasy. Then I told pobox to stop forwarding to gmail and start forwarding to my domain (with the backup copies still going to a yahoo and an aol account).

No effect on people sending to me. Clean slate in my google apps for my domain inbox.

I also didn’t reproduce all the filters. I’m going to watch what comes in for a while and do a bunch of unsubscribing. I’ll remake the filters as I go.

Since I have a work email inbox at CloudOn I’m glad to get the total down to two at least (not counting Facebook, ugh, and everything else, but still…).

 

Comparing hosting options

There is a very real prospect that the sweet sweet deal the Mediajunkie publishing empire has had these many years with Tiedrich and associates may need to replaces by something inevitably not half so sweet.

What this means is that I may need to find a new host for my multiple and various web experiments. I don’t need things to be up 24/7 as long a I have long-term persistence, but I do like to have free rein (within reason) and unlimited domains (or close to: 10 is not enough, 100 is more than enough).

I’m working on a little comparison spreadsheet. In the budget range I’m looking at there seems to be roughly two tiers. Oddly, the cheaper-tier providers offer more generous limits, so I’m probably missing some important factors.

Advice?

Slow blogging ahead, or behind?

Yeah, what she said: FringeHog: In Praise of Slow Blogging.
Or is it a he? There’s no byline and several authors for the site.
Whatever.
Also, should I get an OLPC (one laptop per child) XO laptop in the buy one / donate one program? They look like they might be a great conference tool. Seven hours of battery life.

Can I blog from my iPhone?

Since I started at Yahoo my workaday routine involves riding a shuttle from Oakland to Sunnyvale with a big laptop computer crammed on my lap so I can work, browse the net, or as I’ve been doing lately, blog.
For some time I’ve been thinking that an upgrade to my smartphone, something with a qwerty keyboard, such as a blackberry, treo, t-mobile whatsit, or pocketpc might make a much less bulky alternative.
This past weekend I got myself an iPhone (or jPhone as I like to call it), so now I’m on that bus, bypassing the overloaded wireless, and look my I’m blogging!
It’s not superconvenient. I’m still getting used to the fatfingers virtual keyboard, though the guess-ahead feature, whatever it’s we, definitely helps.
I’m also studying the phone’s interaction design, of course, looking for interesting interaction patterns, but I think I’ll wait till I have a real keyboard in front of me before I elaborate on what I’m discovering and noticing about this new handheld.
Inspirational typo: hamdheld
Now to try to insert a picture or even a link… the hard part.
(Picture was too hard to manage via the jP, so I added the one at the top afterward, on arriving at my desk. Ditto for the link above to the interactive gestures pattern library wiki.)

I'm retiring the links for today thingy

I’m trying to do more “real” blogging here these days and I feel like my Delicious links just drown everything else out. (Also a twitter follower mentioned being interested in people’s blog posts but not their bookmarks – I am now having my blog posts send notices to twitter – and that kinda made sense to me.)
I am putting a delicious link badge in my sidebar, though, so people interested in my daily (or nearly) bookmarking habits can still find those links there, complete with tags and notes, when I add them.

Answering danah's twitter questions

In reply to apophenia: Twitter questions (curiosity is killing me…):
> **First, the practical question. Can i quote you?**
>[ ] Yes, and you *must* use my real name.
>[ ] Yes, but please use a pseudonym and don’t use any identifying information.
>[ ] No, please just use this for your own weird thoughts.
>
> Hmm, those options have an excluded middle. I’d say “Yes, feel free, and you may use my real name, my online handle(s), or whatever other descriptor you find useful.” If I have to pick one I guess I’d pick the first one.
> **1. Why do you use Twitter? What do you like/dislike about it?**
>
> I use it to jot down my thoughts and narrate my day and to keep up with what some of my (online) friends are doing and thinking about. I like the ambient intimacy, to quote Leisa Reichelt.
> **2. Who do you think is reading your Tweets? Is this the audience you want? Why/why not? Tell me anything you think of relating to the audience for your Tweets.**
>
> I think my followers are reading them. Is that a trick question? It’s a perfectly OK audience for me, since it’s opt in. There are people, like close friend and family whom I’d like to also read them (if they were willing of course), but there is no invite feature.
> **3. How do you read others’ Tweets? Do you read all of them? Who do you read/not read and why? Do you know them all?**
>
> I read them sometimes via twitterific, sometimes from the Twitter website, sometimes receiving them as text messages. I don’t always read all of them but I do tend to read down till I reach familiar territory, much like the way I catch up on a blog I haven’t read in a while. (Having said that, I *scan* – I don’t read everything carefully.)
>
> I read people whom I’ve met and a few whom I find interesting or appealing. So I don’t know them all but I think I know (meaning have met in person) 90% of them. I don’t expect any of them to reciprocate necessarily. That is, it doesn’t bother me if they are not interested in following my thoughts.
> **4. What content do you think is appropriate for a Tweet? What is inappropriate? Have you ever found yourself wanting to Tweet and then deciding against it? Why?**
>
> I haven’t thought about it too much. I go by instinct. I guess some descriptions of graphic bodily functions might not necessarily feel appropriate to me, at times. Beyond that I think it’s fair game and the character limit kind of helps.
>
> I have thought about tweeting something and then decided not to, usually because I think it’s too random or trivial, because I’ve ceased to find it amusing in the first few seconds since thinking of it, or because I’ve posted a bunch of tweets lately and don’t want to be spamming people.
> **5. Are your Tweets public? Why/why not? How do you feel about people you don’t know coming across them? What about people you do know?**
>
> My tweets are public. I like doing things in public and don’t mind people paying attention. Therefore (back to the appropriateness thing) I probably won’t be tweeting about things that are illegal or offensive or humiliating (unless I can’t resist because it’s so entertaining or revealing). I don’t mind people coming across what I write. I expect it’s all out there and people will see it and even form opinions about me based on it. It’s all good.
> **6. What do i need to know about why Twitter is/is not working for you or your friends?**
>
> I can’t get the IM interface working and I would find it useful during the workday. There are many people I’d enjoy sharing with on Twitter who are not on the system but I can’t be sure they’d like it (so many people don’t) so I don’t feel comfortable evangelizing.

MyBlogLog is looking for a community manager

If you’re an experienced blogger in the Bay Area and would like to work for a cool startup recently acquired by Yahoo!, in Berkeley, then you may want to apply for this new community manager role: The MyBlogLog Blog: Seeking: MyBlogLog uber-user for long-term relationship
They seem to grok the Craig Newmark idea that customer service is a key part of growing their business.

Pardon our dust

I got tired of the old design and wanted to take advantage of some of the new-er features of the blog software I’m using, so I’ve temporarily redone the design with one of their canned themes. Soon I’ll start tweaking the typography and colors and spacing and such and adding back in some of the features stranded in the old design.

See, I have actually been blogging this past year

While I’ve been neglecting this and many other of my Mediajunkie blogs in the past year and a half (excuse: full-time work, baybee), I have actually been blogging. While at Extractable I launched a spearheaded a user-experience focused blog called Extra! Extra! and wrote something for it nearly every workday for about a year.
Actually, my commitment was to make sure something was written in it every day, and about 10 to 15% of the time other Extractable folks wrote great content for the blog as well. I just backed it up and made sure there was always something fresh.
Anyway, I am making a job change now. I am currently taking a week off and next week I will start a new job, more about which in due time, so yesterday I used Eric Pierce’s WPexport plugin for WordPress tp expprt all the entries, remove the ones that weren’t mine and then export them into this here blog (wake up!).
I added that link just now because all of this is context-dependent. For example, this entry will be echoes at X-POLLEN (aka xian’s running monolog) and then when it says “this here blog” it will actually be lying (well, sort of, because recent imported entries will also show up there). I mention that because as I imported the entries I noticed that many of them are written from a “we’re here at Extractable” perspective that will probably sound funny in this blog. In fact I removed the posts bragging about site launches – most of which were written by others anyway – and a few other entries that were really company-specific.
I thought about whether the posts belong here or elsewhere (say, at RFB or The Power of Many) or even whether I should launch a new web/user-experience related blog, but that way lies madness. As I’ve written recently, I am now on the consolidation tip and I am going to start either retiring blogs and/or folding their content into this one, so people will know where to point to me and look for my latest stuff, etc.
So I just created a new master “user rexperience” category here and then replicated all the Extra! Extra! categories under it, though I think the exporter lost multiple categories and assigned only one to each entry, but oh well. So this blog is going to become less of a personal journal and more of an omnibus of whatever I’m currently thinking about. I may not need the monolog anymore, either. Have to think that through. My brain hurts. And this is supposed to be my day off.

Awkward silence

For some odd reason both of the outgoing mail servers that route mail for me from my various addresses are stalling out repeatedly at the moment. This means I have about seven or eight messages in my queue that aren’t being sent out.
This means that I may be trying to reply to email from you but I may be unable. I’m a little distracted today, printing out sample documents for a long meeting/interview, so diagnosing the problem isn’t high enough on my priority list at the moment.
Rest assured, I am receiving incoming mail just fine and I’ll figure this problem out probably by tomorrow, unless, like so many other Internet issues, it decided to just go away on its own.