How to tame the e-mail monster

E-MAIL, a blessing or curse? E-mail is one of the world's top communication tools. It is also our No. 1 annoyance.

Hoala Greevy, the creator of Hawaii-based PauSpam.com, reports that an average of 80 percent of all the e-mail we receive is either spam or viruses. What an incredible waste of time! Think how much more efficient we would be without the distraction of junk, spam, or advertising e-mails. Actually, e-mail that we do need to read is a distraction, too, and can become a virus in and of itself.

You can avoid these distractions by implementing a policy we've developed as to how to check e-mail. My coaching clients are gaining up to a full workday in free time by implementing this system which you can model to work best for you to maximize your time. But, be forewarned. This method challenges the e-mail addict.

First, check e-mail no more than three times a day, and do this at set times in your day.

When a new e-mail message comes through, don't stop what you're doing to attend to it. If you are guilty of checking your e-mail as soon as you hear the sound announcing that you have a new e-mail, you are not alone. It's almost like a trigger that reminds your brain, "Oh, a new e-mail just came in. I'd better check it. It could be important." Stop the temptation by turning off the e-mail announcement sound on your computer.

Install some type of spam-filtering software to combat that evil spam creature.

The next thing you want to do is to organize all your incoming e-mail.

» Folder No. 1: This is for clients. Your clients come first. They're the reason you're in business, and why they're in Folder No. 1.

» Folder No. 2 is for my partner's e-mail. Often, he asks questions that need to be acted on immediately. It could be about a client or a strategy that he wants support on. Other times, he's following up on e-mails that I have sent him. If you have a partner, or do business with someone in a strategic-partner manner, or with someone at that level whose e-mail needs to be responded to as soon as it comes in or within several hours, their e-mail would go in Folder No. 2.

» Folder No. 3: This is a low priority, read-later folder. Newsletters and e-zines that I subscribe to go into this folder. It's organized based on the particular title of the newsletter. This lets me get caught up with cutting-edge trends on my own time, without distracting me the minute it comes in.

Gates and Jobs old pals?

CARLSBAD - The words that come to mind when trying to describe tech titans Bill Gates and Steve Jobs don't usually include "nostalgic," "sentimental" or "soft."

Yet in a historic joint appearance at the D: All Things Digital Conference on Wednesday, the two were at times overcome about their history together. Indeed, by the end, both men seemed choked up by the emotion of the moment.

Gates in particular took special pride in his role as co-founder and chairman of Microsoft. Even after being praised for his recent philanthropic efforts, Gates talked more about what he did in the technology industry than what his charitable foundation is doing now.

"The most important work I got a chance to be involved in - no matter what I do - is the personal computer," Gates said. "That's my life's work."

It's been quite a life for the two of them, and they have been at the center of the action for most of their careers. Jobs, co-founder and chief executive of Apple, noted that when they started working together in the mid-1970s, he and Gates were often the youngest people in the room. Now, he said, he's often the oldest.

Paraphrasing a Beatles song, he added, "You and I have memories that are longer than the road that stretches out ahead."

To be sure, the appearance wasn't a love fest. Jobs at times, as he's wont to do, seemed to get under Gates' skin.

At one point he tried to convince Gates that Apple isn't trying to be mean by poking fun at the "PC guy," the lovable loser who stands in sharp contrast to Apple's cool "Mac guy" in a popular series of commercials.

"The art of those commercials ... is for those guys to like each other," Jobs said. "The PC guy is what makes it all work, actually. It's worth thinking about."

Needless to say, Gates didn't appear to be convinced. In an interview with Newsweek earlier this year, he'd even questioned the ads' veracity.

Still, the two did show their mutual respect for each other. Gates, for instance, praised Jobs' aesthetic sense, noting that it sharply differed from his own sensibility, which is to approach problems from an engineering perspective.

"I'd give a lot to have Steve's taste - in terms of intuitive taste for people and products," he said. "The way he does things, it's just different. It's magical."

Similarly, Jobs said that Apple could have learned a lot from Microsoft's penchant for partnering with other companies in the industry. Partnering simply wasn't in Apple's DNA, and the company didn't learn how to do it until decades after its founding, he said.

"The funny thing is Microsoft's one of the few companies we were able to partner with (where) that actually worked for both companies," he said.

The conversation was moderated by longtime technology journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, who organized the event, and took place in front of such luminaries as movie director George Lucas, domestic diva Martha Stewart and former AOL Chairman Steve Case.

The event marked the first time Jobs and Gates have made a joint public appearance since the 1997 Boston Macworld event, when Gates joined Jobs via teleconference to announce a landmark deal between their two companies. The previous time the two appeared together at a public event was in the early 1980s.

Jobs' participation in the event capped a long day for him and the company. Earlier in the day, the iconic CEO participated in a separate conversation with Mossberg. During that event, he announced that the company's Apple TV set-top box would soon allow users to watch YouTube videos from the Internet.

Meanwhile, Apple announced early Wednesday morning that it has added unprotected digital songs from music label EMI to its iTunes music store as part of an agreement the companies announced in April. The company also announced that it was adding course lectures and other education materials for download from the iTunes store.

The two tech titans have long been known for their rivalry. What isn't as well understood is that they and their companies also have a history of cooperation. Microsoft has been one of the most important software developers for the Macintosh, and the company arguably helped save Apple in 1997 with a $150 million investment and a commitment to continue developing its Office suite for the Mac.

On a personal level, Jobs and Gates were good enough friends in the 1980s to double date occasionally and for Gates to leave friendly prank calls on Jobs' answering machine.

That said, Jobs is well known for taking pot-shots at his company's bigger rival. And he didn't disappoint on Wednesday. The company's iTunes software is one of the most popular programs on computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system, Jobs noted in his conversation earlier in the day with Mossberg. Indeed, he said, some users have written to tell Apple that it's their favorite Windows application, he said.

"It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell," he said.

By Troy Wolverton
Mercury News
Article Launched: 05/30/2007 11:14:18 PM PDT

eBay parties on, but not Google

SAN FRANCISCO, June 13 — It had all the appearances of a marketing stunt gone awry, the Internet industry’s version of a wily playground taunt that quickly escalated into a tense standoff, until the taunter — Google, in this case — blinked.

Here’s what happened. As thousands of eBay’s largest sellers prepared to gather in Boston for their annual eBay-sponsored convention and party this week, Google, the Internet search and advertising giant, decided it would be a good idea to invite those sellers to its own party. Not just any party, either, but one to promote Google Checkout, a payment system that competes with the eBay-owned PayPal and which eBay has banned from its auctions.

“Let Freedom Ring,” read the invitation on an official Google blog. And in classic Google style, it promised “free food, free drinks, free live music — even free massages.”

That did not sit well with eBay, and early Wednesday the IDG News Service reported that eBay had decided to drop all the ads it places on Google’s search engine. EBay is the largest buyer of Google search ads, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

“I won’t comment whether that was directly tied to Google’s plans to have that party,” said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman. He said that eBay was simply running a test — something it does frequently — by shifting marketing dollars to determine the best way to attract users.

That’s not how some people interpreted eBay’s move. “I don’t think anyone believes that any more than we believe that eBay does not allow sellers to use Checkout because the service is unproven,” said Scot Wingo, the chief executive of ChannelAdvisor.com, a company that helps store owners sell on multiple online sites, including eBay.

Regardless, by late Wednesday, Google rescinded the invitation to eBay sellers and canceled the party. “EBay Live attendees have plenty of activities to keep them busy this week in Boston, and we did not want to detract from that activity,” the Google blog read. “After speaking with officials at eBay, we at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference.”

A Google spokesman declined to comment further.

“We are pleased that they apparently have seen that the party was inappropriate,” Mr. Durzy said. “It is not the way one partner should act with another.” Besides being rivals, the companies have a deal for Google to sell ads on eBay sites overseas.

Analysts said eBay’s decision to withdraw its ads is not likely to hurt the search giant. EBay spends less than $25 million on Google a quarter, said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, or only a tiny fraction of Google’s nearly $3.7 billion in revenue in the latest quarter.

Will eBay bring its ads back to Google? “We have no firm date for how long the experiment will go,” Mr. Durzy said.

[via Russ]

ethanol is not green

UNIVERSITY of California-Berkeley professor of civil engineering Tad W. Patzek has argued that the use of ethanol as a gas additive is a misguided public policy decision because it takes more fossil fuel to produce ethanol than the energy that comes from it.

David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, added that ethanol is not sustainable because its production from corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced. The government spends more than $3 billion a year to subsidize ethanol production, but the vast majority of the subsidies go to large ethanol-producing corporations, not to farmers.

Worse yet, their analyses do not address the additional problem of wasting food for humans and animals by converting it to fuel.

Consumer Reports in October 2006 presented "The Ethanol Myth." The magazine tested identical large SUVs in gasoline and E85 versions. The overall mileage was 14 mpg for gasoline and 10 mpg for E85. The ethanol-powered vehicle required 40 percent more fuel!

Ethanol is not green: Civil engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University modeled a scenario in which all U.S. vehicles ran on E85 by 2020, and found that because ethanol produces more hydrocarbon emissions than gasoline, it causes an accelerated ozone formation and a 4.2 percent increase in deaths due to ozone.

Dark Energy

Scientists have long recognized that the universe has been growing larger since its origin 13.7 billion years ago in an extremely rapid expansion called the “Big Bang.” But we assumed that this expansion should be slowing down due to the pull of gravity. In 1998, however, two teams of astrophysicists discovered that the expansion is actually speeding up. They observed a mysterious form of “energy” that opposes gravity and is causing the galaxies throughout the universe to move apart faster and faster.

It’s as if you dropped this magazine and, instead of falling to the floor, it suddenly soared toward the ceiling. That would certainly signal the presence of an unexpected force of some kind. In the same way, the galaxies’ accelerated expansion signaled the presence of a previously unknown entity in the universe.

The discovery of “Dark Energy” is arguably the most important scientific breakthrough of the last 50 years. A full understanding of it eventually could have an effect on our daily lives.

cellulosic ethanol

[6/8/07] At a Brazilian ethanol conference June 4-5, Brazilian government-funded researchers said they have perfected a method of producing cellulosic ethanol that drastically reduces the cost of processing. At this point, the assertion -- and many other similarly optimistic claims made at the conference -- is unconfirmed. But should it prove true, the world could well be peeking over the horizon at a massive geopolitical, not to mention economic, shift.

[6/22/06] Cellulosic ethanol has all the advantages of corn-based ethanol - there is no difference in the ethanol, only in the way it's produced.

But unlike corn-based ethanol, cellulosic ethanol can be made from a variety of things that might otherwise be considered waste – sewage sludge, switchgrass, plant stalks, trees, even coal – virtually anything that contains carbon.

Ashworth said there are an estimated one billion tons of such material available in the U.S. every year, enough for 100 billion gallons of ethanol.

While it's not feasible to actually go out and collect every ounce of that one billion tons, he said it's not unreasonable to expect ethanol to replace 40 billion gallons of gasoline in the near future.

"There's a lot of venture capitol out there that's willing to invest in cellulosic ethanol," he said. "You're likely to see some plants built in the next 12 to 18 months."

[via InvestorGuide Daily]