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I’ve claimed for several years now that email is broken. At best, email is the lowest common denominator (LCD) for sending messages to a specific Internet user. Every ISP subscription comes with some kind of email account. Free webmail addresses are easy to get. Many mobile phone accounts come with an email address. Alex Iskold’s post from ReadWriteWeb called Is Email in Danger? discusses how microblogging services like Twitter can overcome the inherent problems of heavyweight email clients like Microsoft Outlook.

Broadcasting with a microblog

Microblogging services are best suited for broadcasting messages to lots of users. FriendFeed, Twitter and similar services are widely used by popular bloggers to publicize their latest posts and mention their daily activities. Most of these services accept text messages and offer mobile versions of their web sites, so they are easier to use than email from an ordinary mobile phone. iPhone and BlackBerry users have better email clients on their devices, but microblogging from these devices seems to work well. 

As I mentioned yesterday in my article called The battle against Twitter spam, microblogging services like Twitter have their own problems. Because email is a mission critical service, it’s almost always available and working. Collecting comments and posts from microblogs can be accomplished with RSS - I use this to repost my FriendFeed activity to billso.com, but it would take a bit more effort to do this as part of an archiving and compliance effort. 

I’ve never been a fan of Outlook. In its easly versions (Outlook 97 and 98), the application would crash at least once a day. Microsoft developed  ActiveSync software to support PDAs, but 10 years later it is still a maddening piece of cruft.  

Look out for Outlook and iTunes

My university uses Microsoft Exchange as its faculty/staff email server, so I occasionally get meeting invitations and Outlook forms in my Gmail my box. All of my university email is auto-forwarded into my Gmail account. Microsoft meeting invitations are useless in Gmail - I have to tap out a reply to accept or decline the meeting.  

To be honest, Apple’s iTunes is following a similar evolution. It start as a music player, but has become a media storefront, disc burner and iPhone application installer. I’d think that several specific lightweight apps would work better than a huge, monolithic instance of iTunes. On a Mac, iTunes performance is barely tolerable. iTunes on a Windows box is a lumbering behemoth. 

Gmail, on the other hand, was designed as a lightweight solution that would work in a standard web browser. I love Gmail because I can search for messages quickly, and I know I won’t run out of storage room for old messages. There’s no reason for me to delete an old message in Gmail. 

Attacking the inbox

One approach to managing a bulging email inbox is to sit down and clear the queue. The Inbox Victory web page tries to make this process fun by letting users post pictures of themselves with their empty inboxes. I clear out my Gmali inboxes a few times a year. 

Luis Suarez of IBM claims that he reduced his incoming email by 80%, thanks to his usage of social networking tools like RSS feeds, Twitter and IBM’s internal clone of Facebook, Beehive. Suarez discussed his  article in the New York Times called I Freed Myself from E-Mail’s Grip.

Suarez admits that his job as a social computing evangelist helped him cut his email volume. He’s supposed to encourage his fellow IBM employees and managers to use Beehive, which is as much a knowledge management (KM) tool as it is a social intranet application. IBMers are supposed to use Beehive to share events, lists, pictures, tips, and ideas across the enterprise, as part of formal and ad hoc workgroups and project teams. 

Image courtesy of gwENvision through a Creative Commons license. 

Related articles and pages on billso.com

• Email and spam
• iPhone
• 7 July 2008: The battle against Twitter spam
• 22 April 2008: Email is still broken
• 10 June 2007: Just say “no” to HTML in email
• 19 April 2007: The great Blackberry blackout
• 22 August 2006: 95 percent of email is UCE
• 4 August 2004: E-mail is broken

Bruce Schneier published an article in Wired called I’ve Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch. I agree with his basic premise - it’s a dangerous idea to include a kill switch in a networked device. It’s difficult to keep a determined cracker out of a well-defended network. It’s ludicrous to design a device that can disabled by remote control.

OnStar call representatives can bring a stolen vehicle to a slow and gentle halt by remotely disabling the car’s fuel system. Information Week article called Stop Thief!.

So how long will it take before someone tries to shut down an OnStar vehicle, just to show they can do it?

The anti-rail forces on Oahu are focusing their efforts on a deceptive petition campaign that doesn’t address some major reasons why Honolulu needs a rail rapid transit system. The train would help keep cars off the island, and get cars off the H1 and downtown roads during peak commuting times. The train may not help traffic on fort Weaver Road, but their traffic problems need different solutions.

No new roads

StopRailNow has an alternatives page that lists several solutions like underpasses, elevated toll lanes, The proposed elevated lanes won’t fit on some sections of the H-1. The Outdoor Circle isn’t happy with the rail proposal, but even they realize that miles of flyovers and elevated roads would look worse.

StopRailNow hasn’t discussed where people would drive when they got off these elevated roads, because the answer is obvious: on the same overcrowded surface roads we have now.

There won’t be any extra lanes on the Nimitz Highway, King Street or Ala Moana Boulevard because there’s no room for extra lanes. the best that can be done is reducing the width of lanes, which is being tried on Ala Moana Boulevard west of Ward Avenue.

There won’t be a bridge or tunnel around Pearl Harbor, because the US Navy will never allow that kind of security risk. I’ve read many suggestions like this, mostly from people who live around Fort Weaver Road and commute through downtown. Fort Weaver Road and the Kapolei area have expanded faster than the city can build roads.

No room for more parking

The anti-rail advocates haven’t discussed where or how all of the extra cars on these toll roads will park. There’s no room for new parking lots or garages in downtown Honolulu, the Ala Moana area, or Waikiki. Repainting lots with narrower spaces won’t work well, either.

We live on an island. There’s no room to builds more parking garages, unless we erect them on park land and tear down homes and businesses.

Uninsured drivers?

Another one of StopRailNow’s alternatives is a crackdown on uninsured drivers. The web site estimates this would take 15 to 30 percent of current vehicles off Oahu’s roads. Too bad they didn’t cite their source - there’s one lonely link on that page to Cliff Slater’s honolulutraffic.com web site.

Will these uninsured drivers join carpools or take The Bus? Who will pay for the dozens of new buses that are already needed? Bus ridership has increased a great deal in the last few months.

The site doesn’t discuss what will happen to these thousands of abandoned cars, either. Will they be shipped off-island, or will the cars rust by the sides of abandoned roads? Assuming that the majority of uninsured motorists cannot afford auto insurance, this solution sounds more like economic discrimination than a viable alternative.

On 4 June 2008, Republican congressional candidate and city council member Charles Djou proposed a city ordinance that would let the Honolulu Police Department boot cars for unpaid citations or lack of insurance. Sounds like the state needs to revise its vehicle registration process so that applicants are checked for outstanding citations when they attempt to transfer a title. In fact, Charles Djou and the Honolulu city council should probably just let the Hawaii state legislature address this issue.

See this Star-Bulletin article for more details, including a quote that sounds like Djou was reading from a StopRailNow brochure:

Djou said he believes removing noncompliant vehicles off the highways would “probably do more to alleviate traffic congestion than anything else the city government could possibly come up with.”

If gas prices continue to rise, more motorists will stop driving because they cannot afford the fuel. Fuel prices will keep rising after the November 2008 election, too

How many signatures?

The anti-rail groups must get 45,000 certified signatures by 31 July 2008 to get their ill-advised referendum on the November general election ballot. Dennis Callan, the co-chair of StopRailNow.com, believes that only 30,000 certified signature are needed, according to this Advertiser article:

The different counts result from varying interpretations of city rules governing voter-based ballot initiatives. The city clerk’s office said Stop Rail Now needs signatures equal to at least 10 percent of total voters registered in the last mayoral election. That equates to 44,525 signatures.

Stop Rail Now argues it needs signatures equal to 10 percent of the votes cast for mayor in the last election. That equates to 30,026 signatures, which is 14,499 fewer signatures than the city’s figure.

According to the Advertiser’s 28 May 2008 article, Callan hasn’t even asked the City Clerk for a ruling on this issue. Is this another example of the short-range planning expertise of the anti-rail forces? Is StopRailNow.com afraid of the answer? Does the group plan to sue its way onto the ballot if they don’t collect enough signatures?

By the time the rail line goes into operation, gas may be higher than $5 a gallon. Where will the anti-rail groups be then? Their leaders might not be very happy, because their taxicab and auto-related businesses will face increased costs, even as automobile usage drops. Perhaps some of the anti-rail proponents have already joined the thousands of Oahu commuters who are taking their cars off the roads and using vans, bikes and buses.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• Honolulu mass transit
• 20 April 2008: Honolulu newspapers to City Council: Enough already!
• 17 April 2008: Back on track
• 15 April 2008: Council members discuss mass transit research
• 2 April 2008: Still on track?
• 20 March 2008: Like a fifth wheel
• 6 February 2008: Hawaii has highest car ownership costs in the USA
• 19 June 2007: City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes

Several blind people live near our home, and sometimes they cross in front of our driveway. I’m always patient, as it’s obvious to me that they are listening for engine noise.

Before I saw this article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, I hadn’t realized that blind people cannot hear gasoline-electric hybrid cars at crosswalks. I’m ashamed to say I had never thought of it, even though I owned a Honda Insight for two years.

Most hybrid automobiles shut down their gasoline engine at a full stop, and some models, like the Toyota Prius, can use their silent electric engine at low speeds. There’s no gas engine noise to warn blind pedestrians of an approaching vehicle.

The American Council of the Blind has proposed a research study, to be conducted by the US Department of Transportation. The research would determine if an indicator noise could be added to hybrid cars to help the blind hear the vehicle. Crosswalk signals now include an audible signal, to help local governments comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A Federal solution is vastly preferable to local and state regulation. In the past, the Federal government has mandated other safety features for automobiles, including air bags, brake lights and seat belts. Audible signals for the blind could be combined with for backover avoidance technology that is designed to warn drivers of children and objects behind their reversing vehicle.

Perhaps Neil Young can write the warning song, and test it on his electric 1959 Lincoln Continental convertible.

Image courtesy of Aaron Gustafson through a Creative Commons license.

Updated 6 June 2008, 10:26 HST: New Scientist posted an article about this issue yesterday, along with this YouTube video.

Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado, is arguing that ISP content filtering is a violation of the Federal Wiretap Statute. That’s a five-year felony sentence for the ISP, and perhaps for any ISP network administrators who actually set up and performed the monitoring, because the statute personal and corporate responsibility.

This seems like a steep price to pay for monitoring traffic, throttling P2P apps and serving up highly targeted advertisements on web pages, but AT&T, Charter and Comcast seem willing to take the risk. Perhaps they are betting on amnesty from President McCain.

Verizon hasn’t implemented content filtering because of the legal issues. Read this article on Wired for more information.

Will video kill broadband?

According to another Wired article, ISPs and telecoms are growing more concerned about IPTV - television over the internet - as a potential showstopper. Content filtering a la Charter and Comcast is a good example of bad blocking by ISPs. Demand for Internet video keeps rising while bandwidth growth hasn’t kept pace.

If ISPs do get to use deep packet inspection (DPI) to insert their own ads in web pages, Google and other web advertisers may retaliate by using SSL to encrypt their web pages. That prevents content filtering, but the cost in the server farm may be worth the effort for Google.

The rank-and-file residential user may not like a slower, encrypted search engine, however. Jakob Nielsen pointed out in this BBC article that Internet users are becoming more aware of latency and search accuracy. Users want faster, more relevant search results so they can go straight to a web page without visiting the target site’s home page first. Users have alredy learned to ignore banner ads, according to Nielsen’s discussion in this 20 June 2007 Wall Street Journal article. Content filtering won’t help matters.

Image courtesy of bryankennedy through a Creative Commons license.

Related posts on billso.com

• 14 April 2008: Virgin Media CEO claims net neutrality is “bollocks”
• 9 April 2008: The all-seeing advertising cookie
• 3 September 2007: When users block the ads, should web sites block the users?
• 19 March 2007: About e-commerce part 2: US ISPs sell web analytics data
• 28 July 2004: Stalking the P2P users