Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 17:55:36 -0700
Reply-To: "Mudd \"Not Jack\" Sparrow" <rummaging@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "Mudd \"Not Jack\" Sparrow" <rummaging@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Is anybody still on this list?
In-Reply-To: <E8AAAA37-0EA6-499D-8D1D-BD2B2C625212@shaw.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
It was younger. And more people didn't give up on it while faced with engine replacement options, and seam rust eating the body alive.
Plus. Something like Facebook has taken some of the burden off of understanding ones own operating system etc well enough to know things like: posting a picture or making a website.
So. Any list that wants to survive, needs to pick up the slack, by
A. Making it super easy to sign up right away while avoiding the basic problem of getting buried in email.
For me, it's having one account from each of the five major free email providers. And that's a little tedious to set up actually, when you include two factor verification. I have a nice little book from an art store, meant as a journal, for all my recovery codes. Is that secure? Well. Forgetting them isn't secure. I keep it hidden and safe, without listing the actually email addresses. They're just in the same order as the accounts on my phone. Page by page.
I also keep pass codes there, on the adjacent pages, and keep a history of any changed pass codes.
And really. I should have two books in two safe and secure places. But again. Somewhere super safe and secure.
The art book is that kind that is with an ornamental cover made of leather that covers what is usually the open end of the book, when closed. So it has one spine, and one additional flap.
But to make sense of it. Someone would have to steal both my phone and the book.
But once it's set up, I can look at the inbox for all, or just the inbox for one of the accounts. Where icloud becomes a backup email account for the other accounts, outlook is business queries, AOL is for promotional mail when someone wants my email at a store, gmail is curious anonymous mail, and yahoo is for list traffic.
The one problem with this, is with Yahoo, when Yahoo wants to put legitimate list mail in the junk mail. So one rule should be created where senders with an address ending in GERRY.VANAGON.COM is sent to the inbox. Yahoo is also the only provider where you have to manual set how long junk mail is retained. I set mine to 30 days. The others allow 30 days by default without an option to change, except for Outlook, where it's ten days.
The second problem, is I cannot drag and drop email into my outlook account, on my phone, unlike the other providers.
Instead of a myriad of rules, the account schema acts as a set of rules. And the only filtering I would do, if I even do it, is to optionally move things into an archive fiord or box, within a given account.
Once it's setup, it's very fluid on the phone. Nothing seems to get buried. I can find things. I can focus on things. It's more likable than the desktop.
At the least, this allows to pragmatically tap into the free storage of all five major free email provider, so I get the sum total of what they are currently offering.
B. Is to address the issue of showing photos. Having been away from a The List for so long, I didn't even realize, no one could see a photo I included. I forgot; and I assumed. And really. You have a lot of people used to something like Facebook, to the point where a tutorial is needed. Like when someone has driven an automatic all their life, and the sales guy, John List, needs to teach them, to use a stick if he wants to make the sale.
Otherwise John List will have dead starving children.
Starting with something as simple as Dropbox, you have to bring the toddler up to speed. A toddler is someone whose experience of the internet is limited to Facebook.
How can a toddler understand Dropbox when they're completely clueless about the slight and subtle differences between the Shared folder in the Users folder on OSX, and the Public folder in the home directory, with the need to enable sharing in system preferences, versus the Public folder that Dropbox provides, and the sharing allowed by Dropbox. Etc for other OSes.
To enable a toddler to make a smooth transition from the fun of Facebook to the more educational format of The List, you have to help them, in a succinct, and to the point manner.
That means including a short history on things. For OSX, Linux, and MS on the desktop.
For some the desktop might be the best way to upload photos using Dropbox. And personally. I would most usually prefer to place symlinks in a Dropbox folder than to move a file into Dropbox. So you have to include symlinks and the easy way to create them in the Finder.
It's really about weaning people off the ease of Facebook without expecting them to leave Facebook.
Otherwise, you might see people tire of the superficiality of Facebook, never learn to make best use of The List, much less join it, and then they might tire of their Vanagon, and end up selling it to someone, who will just turn the Vanagon into scrap metal.
So The List needs a face. Right now it doesn't have one, because vanagon.com looks like a dead, and nonfunctional website, when you open the splash page.
The face of The List doesn't need to become an encyclopedic splash page of "everything one should know about the Vanagon but were afraid to ask".
That wouldn't be realistic. It would never be finished nor done right.
The face needs to be what I'm saying here, a bridge for joining and making best use of The List.
Even then. People are going to get frustrated. And that's where Facebook has a persistent edge.
Like right now. Outlook.com won't let me send a message from the desktop. But I have two factor and app generated pass codes.
What am I ready to do?
Give up. Delete the email. Forget I ever cared. I know too much to have an irritation like this. Life is too short.
And that's exactly what I just did.
> On Mar 14, 2015, at 6:29 PM, Alistair Bell <albell@SHAW.CA> wrote:
>
> And I do remember the busy days of the list back in the nineties.
