There are a ton of email etiquette rules out there that are good to know and follow. One that’s rarely addressed is this See Below scenario:

You’ve been replying back and forth with a friend and decide you need to bring in another friend for their opinion. So on the 8th reply you CC this second friend and simply say “see below.”

Awesome, now I get to read through all your earlier emails and signatures and attached signature images to try to parse out what you’re asking of me.

Rather, do this

1. Quickly summarize what you and friend 1 have been discussing
2. Ask a direct question
3. Bask in email etiquette happiness

For more fun email don’ts, check out how to make The Oatmeal hate you.

Is there life after MobileMe?

About a month ago I received an email from Apple informing me that my MobileMe subscription was coming up for renewal. I’ve loved the services that MobileMe provides since signing up over a year ago, and had planned on keeping it going. But with the holidays coming up I decided to look into the possibility of dropping MobileMe while retaining the capabilities that it provides.

Turns out that it’s not only possible, but pretty darn easy to replicate most of the services MobileMe provides, for free. I’ll go through each service, in order of importance to me. Note: These steps were all taken with an iPhone and a mac, but similar options exist for PC/Other Phone users.

Cut the MobileMe tether

First things first. Giving up on MobileMe meant turning it off across all devices. It may feel a little strange at first, like you’re hanging free in the wind, but it’s a necessary step. After one final sync to make sure everything was updated, I created a backup of both my calendars and contacts. Then I turned off MobileMe on both computers by opening System Preferences > MobileMe and logging out. I also deleted my @me.com account from Mail.app and on the iPhone.

Note: Anytime you monkey around with your contacts and calendars, it’s a good, no – GREAT idea to create a backup first. Just in case.

Contact & Calendar Syncing: Google Sync

The ability to keep contacts and calendars synced across all devices (Mac Pro, Powerbook, iPhone) was the single biggest reason to sign up for MobileMe in the first place. Google provides excellent documentation on how to use their sync services, for all kinds of phones and OS’s. The article explained nearly everything I needed to get my contacts and calendars synced.

Contacts

To sync both contacts and calendars, you’ll need a Google account of some sort. I’ve got a Gmail account, which includes a contact list. If you don’t have Gmail, Google has an article on how to manage contacts outside of Gmail.

Once you get a Google Contacts account set up, open Contacts, and in the General section of the Preferences, select “Synchronize with Google,” and enter your account credentials. Do this across all of your machines. If your contact lists on each machine differ, there may be a period of time that you’re asked to review duplicates, or resolve conflicts. Eventually everything will be synced and you’ll no longer be bothered with these notices.

Update: Apparently contact syncing only works if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and have synced with Google before. Fortunately, Lifehacker has a workaround for non iPhone/iPod Touch users.

Calendars

Syncing calendars follows a similar path as syncing contacts, using Google Sync. You’ll need a Google Calendar account, and you’ll need to already have your local calendar synced with that account. Here’s an article from Google on how to sync iCal and Mozilla Sunbird with Google Calendar using CalDAV (and here’s how to do it using Outlook). I use BusyCal, a more robust calendar app for the mac that allowed me to sync calendars with G Cal before Google Sync existed. It’s also a great upgrade iCal and I highly recommend it.

Once you get all your calendars synced with Google, consider all your calendars synced. Add an event to any of your calendars, and in a short while you’ll see them across all calendars.

iPhone

To get contacts and calendars synced on the iPhone, this article from Google explains the steps I took to get the phone set up. Once you get the account set up, you’ll be asked to select the services you’d like to sync. I selected them all, and when prompted, chose to delete the existing information on the phone. If you don’t, you’ll end up with duplicate contacts and calendar events. If you didn’t back up your data in the beginning, this step may prove a bit nerve wracking. Back up your data first, then come back and turn on the syncing services.

That’s all it takes, really. Your contacts and calendars are now synced between all computers and your phone. For free. Sweet.

Email

Since MobileMe had nothing to do with syncing email between my iPhone and my computers, there was nothing to do here. I have numerous accounts set up through Spigot Design, all set up as IMAP accounts. They sync just fine to the phone via wifi and Edge (it’s a first generation phone). I’ve never set them up for ‘Push Notification‘ but emails often come in on the iPhone before my regular mail app. In a year and a half, I received a total of 3 emails on the .me account, all test messages from myself. Nothing to see here, moving on.

iDisk: Dropbox

Having the iDisk show up in the Finder sidebar is an easy way to keep things backed up and share files that are too big to email. Dropbox does the same thing, for free. Well, sort of free – The free account only includes 2GB of storage, while the iDisk holds up to 20GB. I’d been using Dropbox before MobileMe came along, so there was no switch needed as I didn’t use the iDisk anyway.

Gallery

The MobileMe gallery was another reason why I initially wanted the service. There’s no denying the design skills of Apple, and the Gallery is a great example. Easy to use and nice to look at. But I found myself not really using it. It doesn’t have the social aspect of Flickr, and it’s hard to get to unless someone knows the address. I wrote an article about how I was rethinking Flickr and MobileMe gallery options that might explain my thinking further. I used the gallery mainly to store pictures of the kids, and found that most of the visitors to their site preferred to stay on the site rather than be taken externally. I opted for a simple jQuery lightbox script that displays a slideshow on each individual post, and it’s been working great.

Bookmarks: XMarks

One small thing that MobileMe introduced to my world was bookmark syncing. I never really knew how important that was to me until it was gone. Fortunately xmarks comes to the rescue. Sign up for an account, download it to each computer, and your bookmarks stay synced. Xmarks for Safari installs itself as a preference pane item, and with a little configuring, I was able to let it do its thing pretty much in the background by disabling Growl notifications and taking the icon out of the menu bar. Xmarks for Firefox installs as a plugin and is set up in a similar fashion. Free free free.

Xmarks actually turns out to be a nice little upgrade over MobileMe, now that I can keep both Safari and Firefox synced.

Bookmark syncing on the iPhone is no longer done through the air, but I’m still able to keep them fairly well updated through the iTunes/iPhone sync. This isn’t an issue however, as my bookmarks are rarely updated and therefore don’t need up to the minute syncing.

Find My Phone

This is the one service I wasn’t able to replicate. There is an app called Undercover for the iPhone that allows for tracking of lost or stolen phones, but it costs $4.99. I’ve heard that this MobileMe services is the one that truly makes the $99/year worthwhile, but not for me…

Conclusions

MobileMe is an easy to use service with all the design and usability bells and whistles that Apple is known for. With a few extra steps, however, it’s entirely possible to have nearly all the services it provides, for free. There may be a day when I go back to MobileMe, but for now I’m getting along just fine without it.

What do you think?

Have you given up on MobileMe too? How has it gone? If you have any thoughts on this article, please let me know by leaving a comment below!

Chax 3.0

Chax comes to Snow Leopard

A while back I came across Chax, a great little add on for iChat that, among other things, allowed me to consolidate my AIM and Google Talk accounts into a single contact window. It’s never made sense to have separate lists for each account, so this little gem made iChat more useable, and ultimately allowed me to stick with it rather than using an alternative application such as Adium (I prefer iChat over Adium for the screen sharing feature).

When Snow Leopard came out a few weeks ago, iChat surprisingly reverted to it’s multi-window ways. Chax had installed as a preference pane option in Leopard, and it was simply gone. The reason why gets into 32-bit vs 64-bit stuff so here’s Kent Sutherland, Chax developer:

As many people have already found out, Input Managers do not load into 64-bit applications. They still function in 32-bit mode, but forcing everyone into 32-bit is obviously a subpar solution. Instead of using a passive system such as Input Managers, I’ve switched to using an application loader. This change has its pros and cons, but I believe this is the best solution for now.

Since iChat in Snow Leopard is a 64-bit application, the preference pane option doesn’t work and Kent chose to build a stand alone application instead. Great, let’s get it up and running!

Installation

1. The first thing to do is to download Chax 3.0. Kent has been updating frequently, so grab the latest version, which as of this writing is Alpha 4.
2. Once the Disk Image mounts, drag Chax.app to the Applications folder.
3. If you have iChat running, quit it and drag the icon off the Dock (if it’s there).
4. Launch Chax.
5. As Chax launches, you’ll notice it’s icon will change to the iChat icon. If you’d like it in your dock, drag it to your preferred postion. You can also right click and under Options, choose ‘Keep in Dock.’
6. Open the preference panel, choose Chax, and you’ll find this beauty:
   
7. If iChat is a login item, open System Preferences › Accounts › Login Items, add Chax and delete iChat. (This step may or may not be necessary).

A big thanks to Kent and his solid work on Chax. If you like it, be sure to donate. Happy Chatting!

Big, green and explicit

The plan was to take the 1200 or so contacts from the Chamber list and send one last unsolicited message requiring each recipient to explicitly subscribe if they wished to continue receiving the newsletter.

Results: 65 out of 1200 recipients continued their subscriptions.

Overall I can’t say I’m surprised. There wasn’t a number I was shooting for, but I would have guessed something a bit higher. Perhaps even quite a bit higher. I’m attributing the results to one of the following conclusions:

1. Most people don’t like receiving email newsletters
2. Most people don’t like receiving my email newsletters

That’s not self-deprecation talking… Of all the emails I receive from Chamber members, there are only a handful that I actually read, or that actually pertain to my sphere of relevance. It must hold true then that most members don’t find my newsletter relevant either.

Big thanks to those who did subscribe

To the 65 of you who did subscribe, I thank you. I’m looking forward to sending out my first campaign through Campaign Monitor in the next month or so. I hope you continue to find it relevant and informative. Feel free to forward it on.

If you meant to subscribe but it just didn’t happen, no worries. Scroll down to the footer and you’ll find a hand sign up form. You’ll be on the list instantly. And if you decide later that it isn’t for you, unsubscribing is just as easy.

Nice list, what do I do with it?

The PC Chamber will send you a list as a file that can be opened using Microsoft Excel, but what should be done with it? Add each email to your Address Book? Import them somehow into your email system?

Desktop email clients (Outlook, Apple Mail) are not not ideally set up to send out a massively distributed newsletter (nor is web based email such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail).

The answer should be to use an email marketing solution such as Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor. These types of companies make it easy to create newsletters, manage subscribers, and offer excellent reporting on the success of your campaign. They also ensure that you are complying with the CAN-SPAM act.  But there’s one huge, glaring problem – They don’t allow third party subscriber lists, including those from a Chamber of Commerce. This is how Campaign Monitor describes their policy:

Although we know that Chambers of Commerce and Tradeshow lists, for example, often give access to lists with email addresses to each member, we don’t consider this enough permission to use with our service, since the permission was not given directly to you. (link to source)

Aren’t we already opted in?

When Spigot Design became a PC Chamber member, part of the agreement to signing up was that we allow the Chamber to distribute our email addresses to other members. This was obviously acceptable since we’re granted access to the same list. I spoke with Colleen Burke, Director of Member Services at the Chamber and she says that the Chamber has begun to require that new members ‘opt in’ to distributing their email. The plan is to also require all members to opt in retroactively, and Colleen is currently planning the best and smoothest way to accomplish this.

This is a good step in ensuring that the Chamber list is robust, and that as few members as possible mark these newsletters as spam. Unfortunately I’m not sure this will fully satisfy the email marketing companies into allowing members to upload the Chamber list. Their policies are fairly black and white. Speaking with a “Subscriber List Review” staff person at Constant Contact I was informed that, “To comply with our policy, each subscriber you upload should have met you, said my name is So-and-so, here’s my email address, and yes, send me your newsletter, “ which means even ‘opt-in’ isn’t good enough.

That’s not the only way to comply with their rules, but it’s clear they want you to have explicit permission.

So what’s the answer?

Here’s where we get to some hard choices. There is no easy answer. According to the person I spoke with at Constant Contact, the answer is simply that you cannot use this list, at least not with their products. But we have the Chamber list, and we have permission to use it… so here’s a few options that we do have:

1. Self hosted software

This is the option Spigot Design has chosen. I installed an open-source (free) program called poMMo, a self-hosted “mass mailing software” application. “Self Hosted” means that I installed it on my own server rather than being hosted elsewhere, (as Campaign Monitor is). With these types of applications there is no subscriber police so can upload any list you wish. poMMo works as advertised, and I’m able to send newsletters and manage subscriber lists.

There are some drawbacks however:

1. No reporting. There is no data collected on who opened the email, if they clicked through to the site, or who un-subscribed.
2. Installation. You have to know how to set up a database and install a php based application.
3. No templates for newsletters. You’d better know a little html here, or no go.
4. No one ensuring you comply with the CAN-SPAM act.

There are similar applications that are more robust and provide reporting features, but they are commercial applications costing $500 and up. I wasn’t prepared at the time to commit to one, but I now wonder if the reporting features alone would be worth the investment.

2. Get subversive

This option ranges in to ethics and how comfortable you are with skirting stated policies… According to the Constant Contact representitive I spoke with there are “probably quite a few” of their clients who are using third party lists that fall outside of their policy. But unless there is a problem with their account or they receive an inordinate amount of spam or bounces, they don’t bother with them.

So theoretically speaking, you could create an account at Constant Contact, upload your Chamber list and claim it as legitimate. Personally I couldn’t choose this option, but it is enticing.

Judging from the number of Chamber member emails I get from Constant Contact, I suspect many of us have chosen this route.

3. The Chamber to the rescue?

According to Ms. Burke, the Park City Chamber/Bureau has been in contact with Constant Contact and there is some sort of deal that may be worked out to allow members to use the list. I was unable to verify this with the representative that I spoke with, but perhaps this issue will be resolved once the details are known. If a deal does get worked out, hopefully this will spur other companies to create a similar deal with the Chamber, as there are many others out there (I prefer Campaign Monitor myself). So thank you, Colleen, please keep up the good work!

Conclusion

Unfortunately there is currently no ‘easy’ answer to sending out email newsletters to Park City Chamber/Bureau members. But there are answers, even if slightly difficult. Ultimately, the best way to build your list is the old fashioned way, by meeting people face to face and asking permission, or directing them to your own contact collecting system.

UPDATE on 6/13/09

I’ve decided to move my newsletter/subscriber list over to Campaign Monitor, mainly for the reporting features.

I attempted to upload a list that I thought was clean, but after failing the review process, I realized it wasn’t clean enough. This means I can no longer use the Chamber list as it is given, as Campaign Monitor considers it a third party list.

My solution is to send out one final email to the Chamber list using the poMMo software, and requiring each recipient to go to my site, and specifically sign up to receive further emails that I’ll send from Campaign Monitor. While this may not seem like an ideal solution (in that I won’t be reaching as many people), the list – in the end – will be very clean, and contain only those who are truly interested in receiving future contact from us.

UPDATE on 8/26/09

The results are in from my little plan, and while not surprising, still somewhat disappointing.

Does it seem odd that I would agree to, let alone relish, the idea of sitting down with my ‘competition?’ Shouldn’t we be at each other’s throats, trying to pull in every last client? Business is ruthless, right? 

It seems there is a fundamental, almost universally accepted idea that competing for customers is the best way to do business. Somehow, I feel there must be a better way.

Different Strokes

If every snowflake is different, if every person is different, it stands to reason that each business is different. Different strengths and weaknesses, different goals and ways they do business. For example, I really don’t like working with Flash. At coffee that day, I found out that Greg loves it. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if someone comes to me with a Flash based project, instead of trying to wince my way through it, or send them off with a ‘sorry I can’t help you’ – that instead I help that client out by sending them Greg’s way?

Sure, most people would find that scenario reasonable, but would it ever come about if Greg and I hadn’t decided to collaborate in the first place?

Economies of Scale

The true sense of an economy of scale may not quite fit in this situation, after all I doubt Apple will be giving us a bulk rate on three new computers. But it does fit when it comes to sharing knowledge. A tip on how to code better, or how to manage your books more efficiently, or on a new application that speeds up the coding process. Three heads are better than one here, and even in that hour and a half I learned a couple of new things that I’m already applying. 

Protecting Trade Secrets is one thing, hoarding Secrets of the Trade is another 

I wouldn’t expect Coke to give up their formula to Pepsi, that’s a trade secret. New website coding techniques on the other hand are secrets of the trade, available for anyone to learn and apply. In a field like website design, there is no real competitive advantage to knowing or not knowing some of these techniques. The only advantage I may have lies in the creative process, and that’s a trade secret that simply cannot be taken away.

I realize that there are many industries that survive on competition. But there are many more that can benefit from collaboration. I want Greg and Nate to be as wildly successful as they wish to be. The better they do, the better I do. Good luck gentlemen, I look forward to meeting again soon to talk shop and planning how we’ll make Park City a web design epicenter.

No related posts.

Maybe I should start out by mentioning what’s right about RSS. After all, for those who have adopted the technology, there really isn’t much wrong with it. It keeps us updated on the latest content coming from the weblogs and sites we care about the most. It’s beautifully simple and flexible, so why haven’t the masses adopted it?

Missing the masses

Even though the technology has been around for years now, the average user is still confused about what RSS is, and how to use it. Even if a user knows what it is and how it could benefit their web browsing life, confusion still exists over how best to get it to work with their particular system.

Perhaps there are too many options to choose from… There are RSS readers that are built into most web browsers (Safari & Firefox); Readers that are stand-alone applications (NetNewsWire or Newz Crawler); Then there are web based readers to choose from (Google Reader). And each one has a different procedure for adding feeds. For the average user, the benefits simply don’t outweigh the effort to climb the RSS learning curve.

Shortening the curve

The great ideal of RSS is that it is a standardized format for delivering fresh content. A similar standard for subscribing to feeds should become a standard as well. Browser and Reader makers should get together and agree on a subscribing standard that is dead easy to use. Right click on a feed icon and choose ‘Add Feed,’ perhaps. Done and done. 

In your face

RSS needs better marketing. Those that have a vested interest in the success of the standard, as well as those of us who use it, need to do a better job of spreading the word, and explaining it in a way that is more palatable to the average user. Until we can overcome this, RSS will probably remain a mystery to the average user.

Do you use RSS? What reader do you use? How does it affect your browsing experience?

Checking the stats for spigotdesign.com today revealed that less than 10% of the visitors here are using Internet Explorer 6. This is great news!

This means we can now officially drop support for this outdated browser, at least on this site. Now that I’ve reached the vaunted 10%, and with newer browsers continuing to improve rendering consistency and support for standards based techniques, continuing to support an aged browser simply doesn’t make sense.

I’ve come to this decision with hesitation, and also relief. I hesitate because I pride myself on designing websites with accessibility and usability in mind. Dropping support for any percentage of users doesn’t jibe with those ideals. I’ve continued on in this decision because I’m confident that while I’m ostensibly ‘dropping support’ for IE6, users of that browser will not notice a difference in how this site looks and functions than it did yesterday. Freedom and relief are what I feel when I realize that I will not have to spend countless future hours, at least when working on this site, on supporting a browser that doesn’t support me.

What does this mean to you?

For most of you it means absolutely nothing. For the 90% of you that are viewing this site on a modern browser (including Internet Explorer 7) – spigotdesign.com supports you. For the rest of you – you don’t have much to worry about either. ‘Dropping support’ sounds so harsh and violent, but I’m really just trying to make a point. I won’t be pulling out my .png fix support, nor will I take out my IE6 specific stylesheet. In fact, you won’t notice any difference from my previous ‘IE6 support’ days. In the future, however, I will not be going out of my way to make sure this site looks as good on IE6 as it does on any other modern browser.

Of course, I will continue to support IE6 for all of my existing and future clients sites. 10% is still a large enough portion of visitors on any site. Completely leaving them in the dark would be counter to our philosophy of building sites that are as usable as possible for as many users as possible.

Some helpful links

Get yourself a ‘modern’ browser

• Firefox
• Safari
• Opera
• Google Chrome (Windows only)

Join in on the IE6 bash

• Facebook Uninstall IE6 Day
• 37signals phases out IE6 support
• Apple’s MobileMe drops support for IE6
• LessEverything drops support (Good explanation on why they’re doing it)

Counterpoints of view

• Stop the Hate – IE6 Isn’t So Bad!
• Actually had a hard time finding any more… sorry.

No related posts.

Tame the multi-pointed beast

Note: Part 2 in a series on better email communication. Write better, get better results. Here’s Part I.

That beast above is called Hydra, a multi headed creature from Greek mythology. It was said to possess the ability to grow back any of its heads that happened to be cut off, and could spew poisonous fumes at its enemies. Hercules figured out that if you cut off all the heads and then burn the remaining stumps you could kill it. Sounds a bit far fetched to me, but the story doesn’t go into how fast the heads grow back, or how he actually burned the stumps. Thats Greek Mythology for you, I guess.

In my last article I discussed keeping your emails to one point, but what happens when you get a Hydra like email, with so many points you can’t tame them all?

What most people do in these situations is to simply hit ‘reply’ or ‘reply-all’ and start typing away. For people who are concerned about effective email communication, the answer is almost as simple, but much more effective.

Taking the One point to rule them all rule, the idea is to have a point to make, and answer only that point. And to reply only to that one point. In most desktop email clients this is easily accomplished by highlighting the part of the email you are answering, and then hitting reply. A reply message window will open with only the highlighted text in the body, with a nice header above it stating the name of the person who originally sent the email, and when they sent it. Your reply is then typed in, keeping the entire email short, sweet, and concise. The only thing the recipient will have to read through is your reply and the pertinent part of their original email. All the extraneous stuff like signatures and unnecessary text and 10 other points are left out. Nice job, Hercules.

For extra credit, I’d also suggest you start using the technique known as ‘bottom posting.’ I’ll save that for next week.

Imagine if Moses had come down from that mountain not with two huge stone tablets with 10 commandments for the people to follow, but with one small tablet, with a single commandment. Wouldn’t have that been a lot easier to remember? I wonder if God thought 10 was a pretty concise number for a while, then realized his error and sent Jesus along to wrap all those commandments up into one – Love one another. That, I think, I can remember.

The point here is to be concise in your email. Keep the entire communication to one point. It won’t get read otherwise. If you have to make two points, send a second email. This way any replies to your single pointed email will be also be similarly single pointed.

In part 2 I will discuss what to do if this isn’t the case and an email or a reply comes in with multiple points.

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Step 1: Pick your audience

Often you’ll hear that the first thing you need to do is figure out what you want to write about, but I think the first thing you should do is decide who your readers are, and who you’d like to have visiting your site. In my case, I’d really like to have local people who are interested in buying my services visiting my site. Since I don’t have a specific niche picked out, I’ll say its small to medium sized business owners. Very vague, yes, and I worry about how much surfing of the web these types of people do. But this is my main target, so I’ll keep them included.

I’d also like to increase traffic overall so as to help my search engine rankings. Its very popular in many fields to write articles that would attract your peers. It will help to establish some credibility in my field, and the articles will be easier to write as its something I’m already interested in.

So, my target audience is:

• Local business owners
• Web/Graphic Designers

Step 2: Decide what you want to write about

Now that you have your audience picked out, what the heck are you going to say to them. There’s lots of advice out there about how you should pick one theme, and stick to it. Research, research, research and become an expert. I couldn’t agree more. I will more than likely be breaking that rule however. Since I have two distinct audiences, I’ll think I’ll be splitting up what I write about between business related articles, and design related ones. I imagine I’ll be sometimes writing about the business of design too, just to have some overlap.

So, my theme(s) are:

• How the web relates to business
• Web Design

Step 3: Pick your voice

I haven’t come across any advice on how to write. Writing is a creative talent that needs honing and practice. Write naturally is my advice, and thats what I’ll be doing here.

So, my voice:

• Casual and natural, light humor

Step 4: Set up your blog

There are lots of ways to set up a blog, but the best way is to hire a quality designer. Custom beats templates always. Why? Because I’m a custom web designer and that’s my biased opinion. There are free set ups out there, however, and I encourage you to check them out. Then come on back and I’ll set you up right.

So, Set up:

• Do it custom, do it right.

Step 5: Write regularly

Even if no one is reading your great prose, keep writing. By the time you catch on with your audience you’ll be a better writer. This is the advice I’m going to follow.

So, write regularily:

• Yes, do.

Step 6: Have fun

If you’re not enjoying it, you wont write, and your blog will languish, and for sure no one will ever read it except your family and only because you make them. So have fun.

No related posts.