Email

The invitation arrived from a local community group: would I like to attend their next important event?

It looked gorgeous — it had a frame, the logo, beautiful colours, a ‘handwritten’ script.

But it was really annoying, and not very useful. You see, this was just a picture of text, and you can’t do much with pictures.

When similar text invitations arrive in my e-mail, the software notices the date and time and gives me a link to add the event to my calendar. Not this one: because it was a picture and not real text, my software didn’t pick up the date or the time.

So I had to add the event to my calendar by hand. That’s not such a big deal: just copy and paste. Except, oops! I can’t copy the relevant information and paste it because it’s a picture, not real text! I have to remember the details, switch to my calendar program and retype it all.

Hey guys! I’m busy — unless I’m very dedicated to attending the event you may lose me at this step. And if I mistype the date or time or venue, well, I won’t be there…

I’m a blogger too and would love to pass on the information about the event to my readers. Usually I’d select the text and click a button in my toolbar to send it to my blog. Except, that’s right, I can’t! because it’s a picture, not text. What a way to lose valuable word-of-mouth publicity.

OK, I added the event to my calendar by hand, I decided not to tell the rest of the world about it in my blog, and I tried to click the RSVP reply address. Except — you guessed it — I couldn’t, because it was a picture, not a text link! And I couldn’t copy and paste it — you know why. So again, I had to remember the correct address and compose a whole new email to say I wanted to attend. That’s because the reply-to address was different from the address the email came from.

So here’s an easy rule: if you want to annoy your supporters and keep them away from your events; if you want to throw away publicity from bloggers, then use images instead of real text in your emails and on your web pages.

Or, on the other hand, if you want to maximise potential then do whatever you can to help your supporters. Use text for text things, give people permission and tools to spread the word about your group and its events, supply quality photos bloggers can use. Make it easy and you’ll have more success.

Written by Miraz Jordan for, and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, June 2008.

Popularity: 93% [?]

Since I switched my email to Google Apps I actually use the web interface almost exclusively. And I often find myself searching for emails. Fortunately Gmail has powerful search criteria, so finding the message I’m looking for is generally quite quick.

The Official Gmail Blog provides a few tips in a recent post:

But the real power of Gmail search lies in search operators — words that help modify your queries. Search operators work pretty much the same way within Gmail as they do for Google. So, if I want the email Lisa sent me with her flight information so I know when to pick her up at the airport, I type from:lisa SFO. Likewise:

• A link from my co-worker Michael: from:michael http
• A photo from my mom: from:mom has:attachment
• That last chat I had with one of the Gmail product managers: keith is:chat
• All messages from ebay that aren’t outbid notices: ebay -outbid (the hyphen tells Gmail to return all of the messages that don’t contain the word that follows it)
• The messages in my inbox sent directly to me that I haven’t read yet: to:me is:unread in:inbox

You can limit the scope of your search to a particular subject (subject:) or label (label:) as well.

[Via Official Gmail Blog: How to find any email with Gmail search.]

I have some searches, for unread mailing list messages that I’ve tied to a TextExpander shortcut, for example, typing ztnew gets me label:unread -label:pending tidbits and zwnew gets me label:unread -label:pending wisewomen.

Gmail’s a stunning success for me — storage space, IMAP, spam filters, threaded conversations are all winners.

Popularity: 25% [?]

I opened my email this morning to find dozens of spams trapped by Google’s spam filter and dozens more by the Postini spam filtering service.

Over the last 12 hours or so I’ve received about 400 or 500 emails ‘bounced’ from emails purporting to have been sent out by me.

Apparently my sender names (all using my miraz@firstbite.co.nz email address) include such gems as “jarrod jayson”, “damien pentti”, “calv margaret” and many many more.

The spams I’m purported to have sent seem to cover a range of pharmaceuticals, software, watches, pens and so on, and the links in the emails seem to go to various, diverse websites.

A few years ago I suffered something similar that seemed to originate in China. These bounces seem to be coming mainly from Europe. According to Wikipedia this is a thing known as backscatter.

If you’ve received a spam that has my email address as the sender, please be assured I have not sent it. I do not send spam. I oppose spamming and do not tolerate spammers.

Popularity: 15% [?]