How Not To Blog ?

Integrating RSS functions with email functions is a logical path for email. There isn't a clear solution to the spam problem in sight, emails are pretty much 'final' when sent, email addresses are generally inflexible, inboxes are generally a big mess, and a lot of email from friends and coworkers is redundant and unnecessary.

The following idea for a personal messenger helps to alleviate some of those problems.

Goodbye Email Address
Your new "email address" is a web location that may look something like:

https://secure.rssemail.com/user/thom_flan/49t3k202ikw03k1.xml

Your new address is now as permanent or disposable as you want it to be.

Ideally, you should provide a unique message address to each of your friends, family, etc. So, you would have as many address locations as you have friends and family. Click a button and the messenger automatically creates a unique message address and announces it to the parties you choose.

You can also provide unique addresses for groups. Your family would get one address, your friends another, businesses another, etc. You can provide a regular email forward (eg., [email protected] - good for one send per friend) to people when you're out so you don't have to remember or repeat your entirely unique RSS location.

Now, no one can send you an email simply by spamming random email addresses, like when you have a Yahoo, Hotmail, or AOL account. You can also easily organize messages before you read them (see below). If a spammer somehow finds your address location, just block that location out automatically.

Move Over, Universal Inbox
Who thought of the universal inbox? Every piece of mail you receive coming in through the same door is like your mailbox at home. The benefit of being digital is that we can organize and manage email better, automatically.

You can automatically have all messages from Bob arrive into one or more particular folders, while putting Bob's wife in another. You can then put the two into categories. Additionally, you can have an Unknown folder where all messages from unknown senders end up.

The New Post
If someone sends you a new message they are actually 'pinging' your address location with their message. The message is live, meaning that the sender can change it as many times as they want before or after you read it. This is not only good for revisions and mistakes, among other things.

You can also automatically feed certain messages to your personal, private, or public website, or even other people. Messages shouldn't be 'sent'.. they should be posted in a manner that's accessible to both sender and receiver. This is the internet, after all.

Attachments could probably be sent to a FTP-type location for user-download, with the message ID tying the two together. RSS-based media enclosures may also work. Ideally, this would be sender-side, where the recipient would click on the remote URL to download to their desktop. Unless you really want all of Aunt Betty's uncompressed vacation photos sitting in your inbox.

Sending Messages is Just As Easy
To send a message, just click on a person's name or paste their feed URL into the address box. Write your message and send it as you normally would.

If you change your mind about something in the message, you can theoretically change it before the recipient has a chance to read it. Because the message is only received when a user refreshes their 'inbox' (as opposed to a server receiving it and not letting you do anything) there will be no regrets and less "disregard-that-last-email" messages.

Interface
Either a standalone client, web access, or both. A web location with a secure login would work best for mobility.

Obvious Benefits from Using RSS
-Much easier to receive messages on portable devices
-Possibly: ability to make some messages public (see below)
-Messages can be received more securely, using an SSL server instead of bouncing around unsecured mailservers.
-View posts on your terms (if, when how, etc.)
-No virii embedded in your messages
-Unwanted messages reduced tremendously
-Tag incoming and outgoing messages
-Easily opt-in and out of newsletters and other types of mass-mailings.
-A lot more that I haven't covered

Future Directions
I think the best reason to develop an 'rssmail'-type system is for the potential ability to change the access rights to messages that you send and receive. And that's because not all emails you currently receive or send are personal. These could be ported onto a more public platform, or made accessible by/to a selected list of users. So instead of sending an email to certain persons, those persons can choose to access your message feed at their convenience, then selecting which of those messages they want to read. ("Spam" from friends would be one example.)

My belief is that, one day, instead of opening up an email client and viewing email we will view our dynamic message feeds on our own blog-type pages. We won't send or receive messages in the traditional sense. We will announce what we want to send and select those that are worth reading. Some of these messages will be public. Other, private. We will also be able to view selected messages that our friends, family, co-workers, and companies that we do business with have themselves received and sent to others. The future of email... is open.

Online chat systems could benefit immensely from RSS integration and a different type of hierarchy based on the popularity of user conversations.

The difference between the following idea for a chat aggregator and a regular chat client is not only that you can export conversations via RSS feed and display the topic of a real-time conversation on your website (and a user can easily join a conversation by clicking on a topic), but that conversations take place in organized 'fluid segments', which means that a user can easily move back and forth between multiple conversations with ease. Perhaps most importantly, a user does not have to be in a chat room to participate in the conversation.

This idea is based on three main components:

:::Fluid Segments:::
In a regular online chat, a user joins a chat room and usually experiences multiple conversations if there is more than one other person in the room. A user can also join another room and move back and forth between rooms, participating in even more conversations. In this scenario, a room could have a countless number of topics within a chat period, displaying segments of each conversation one after another with no regard to order or categorization.

In chat aggregation, there is a much greater focus. A user participates in topics, not rooms. Topics are grouped forum-style. Sub-topics automatically graduate to Topic status depending upon popularity. Because this type of chat is more focused than other chat systems it will most likely encourage greater user participation and dialogue. Keep in mind that because of the way this chat system is designed, you don't have to be in a chat system to participate in the conversation. The conversation can be, at times, "undead". Meaning, there's no one actively chatting right now, but the conversation is still taking place.

When opening the chat aggregator, you can select the channel that you want and see a list of topics, listed in descending order by those topics with the most replies. Additionally, clicking on any topic will list any of its sub-topics, again displayed in the same kind of order.

Order is maintained because a user has two choices, start a new topic or reply to the current one. In this scheme, the popularity of the topic is of greater importance than its chronological placement. However, a user can still easily scan new topics and new posts (color coded, alerts, etc). Replies to a topic are, of course, still displayed in chronological order.

It doesn't matter if no one else is currently on the feed, as no topics will disappear before a set time (say, 30 days). You can participate in both live conversations and 'undead' conversations at the same time.

Someone could theoretically, using a chat aggregator, participate in a handful of conversations at once much the same way someone could read 100 blogs in one session using an RSS aggregator - scanning each for interesting posts. There is no need to actively participate in every chat topic one is watching, of course, but I think there is a need to have captured the many spontaneous thoughts or conversations that are lost simply because there isn't a readily available facility.

Tags could also be applied to topics, allowing for easy search through Technorati or using other methods. (When was the last time you searched an online conversation?)

:::Conversational Hierarchy:::
Conversational hierarchy is much like regular forum hierarchy. For example: A user creates the "Games" chat feed in the chat aggregator. She then creates a new topic and posts it to the chat feed. Another user can then select either the NEW TOPIC or REPLY button next to the her topic. If he selects REPLY then his reply shows up under hers, indented.

Should a user select NEW TOPIC then the new topic will show up on the same level as other topics.

The trick is to list topics and sub-topics in order of number of replies underneath it. Any sub-topics can graduate to topic level should it have more replies under it than its parent does (minus the # of replies in that topic). Only topics are listed when selecting a chat feed to participate in.

:::RSS Integration:::
Any conversation can be exported in real-time via RSS to any web page or RSS reader. Chat topics become RSS feed titles. If you see an interesting conversation you want to join instantly, you just click on the topic.

You could also display live conversations on your sidebar from, for example, the "Blog" chat feed in descending order of most popular topics. You would only need one RSS feed, and users could click on a topic in your feed sidebar to join that conversation instantly.

The ability to easily export, archive, and search online chat sessions is something that's long overdue. Though it's easy to see why it has been ignored, considering the reluctance of people to participate in current chat systems in the first place because they're such a waste of time.

The Idea
The many kinks in this chat aggregator idea haven't been worked out. (I only throught of it a few minutes ago.) But I believe that the power of one standard, open-source chat platform with feed-ability will at last revive our long lost friend, the chat room.

Look for Google to work out 'a deal' with del.icio.us soon, on the heels of Yahoo's announcement regarding Flickr.

If Google does, indeed, acquire or partner with delicious, they'll be making strong headway into the social media & content field. All that would be then left to do to get back on track is to tie all of their services together in an easily digestible format and then spend some marketing dollars.

C'mon Google. You can afford it. No matter how badly I talk about Google as a company, you're still my default search engine. Don't be so pathetic!

Ack! The dinosaurs have taken over HNTB!

Here's the bullshit:

Russell Crowe's new album has failed to gain a position in the midweek charts, after selling just 156 copies in the UK.

His record company says Crowe had not wanted to make a big marketing push for the release of the album, Clarity, by his band Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts.

A spokesman for his label Resolution/Gruntland Records said Russell is not interested in over-hyping or marketing his music.

Didn't want to market it? A talented actor that's also entirely full of himself? Maybe it didn't sell because the album sucks. Albums from the 1920's outrank his newest at Amazon.

See for yourself.

Story from Ananova

There really are more important things to focus so much media attention on than one brain-damaged person.

However, I don't expect any mainstream news channel or newspaper to steer off course from a story that middle America is eating up.

Here's a story from earlier this month about a man whose family couldn't afford to keep him on life support. This is a story that barely gets mention outside of the Texas press. He'll probably be dead in a couple of weeks because of the inability to pay or receive Medicaid/Medicare.

But who the fuck cares about an old man? People aren't "made" to care about the plight of a specific elderly person unless that old person is famous.

During my short trip to Malaysia, I realized just how vast China's distribution network is throughout all of South Asia.

I've also learned how much I love bootleg copies! You probably do, too. You just don't know where to find the good ones.

Malaysia gets their DVD and software bootlegs mostly from China. Good quality multi-region DVDs can be purchased for about $2 each. You can find not only Hollywood films, but independent features, musicals, opera DVDs, complete boxed sets of American televion episodes, and a whole lot more. Software can be bought for approximately $1-2.50 per disc, including titles that just came out. Any software you can imagine, you can find for that price range. Looking for an illustrated CD on laparoscopy? How about 30-50 different music-maker titles or 10 titles on CAD-designing your own house?

Where are the Malaysian bootleg shops? In the malls, of course. They had a peeper network stationed throughout the popular mall that I visited. 3 closed down their gates within seconds of one-another, only to open again within an hour after the overcover authorities disappeared.

Malaysia then sends their bootlegs on to Thailand (don't ask me how this works, considering that Thailand is closer to China than is Malaysia). Thailand's DVDs can be bought for about $2.50-$4.00. However, some of their material is sourced from the internet.

You even get a receipt for your purchase. How wonderful is the disruptive marketplace!