Michael Gracie

Hell = golf course

From betting on the game when the other team doesn’t show…
• Bridgewater Associates say financial losses from the credit meltdown will hit $1.6 trillion. That means we’re just a few pitches into the second inning in this mess. (h/t Paul Kedrosky)
• In 2008, autumn seems to be coming early (and looking a lot like 1987). I’ve mentioned this already.
• Retailers won’t be able to hide rising prices in the revenue line forever - consumer spending is invariably linked to the housing market. (h/t Calculated Risk)

From pointing fingers is old hat, and old hats fit nicer than new ones…

• European politicians are conflicted over how to deal with bloggers. Might I suggest they send a patsy to quiet them down?
• Some social networks are having trouble monetizing their traffic. Forget the problem of short attention spans amongst teenagers - blame Google.
• Global warming hysteria has a new friend, the plasma TVs everyone bought with their second mortgage loan.

And from technology is my oyster, now give it a sniff before you eat it…

• How does a thriving technology company morph itself into General Motors? Become extremely bureaucratic about minutia. ADDED: Make sure that minutia is completely irrelevant too.
• Voicemail is dead. I agree, not because of fabulous web services, but something much simpler - caller id and internal phone contact lists.
• Email is in trouble too? I’ll agree with that as well, but not because of the newfangled services that exist today. Too few people are ever going to want their communication publicized, and too many are shifting platforms for Outlook to be a long term handicap. Someone is going to rise to the occasion for the mainstream user.

Google bought another: first FeedBurner, and now Postini. I say another because these are both Mobius/Foundry Group/Brad Feld/Ryan McIntyre related companies - and congratulations are surely well deserved. I won’t comment on what Google should do with Postini - Fred Wilson has already done that, and I’m not particularly “spam inclined” ;-). But I will say some of Fred’s comments are spot on, while others could use a little work:

• False positives on validation emails are a big problem. But that’s really an issue for those sending the email.
• Valid items in the spam folder are only a problem if you receive such enormous volumes of email from such a wide array of senders at a single email address that you are 1) certain something really important is falling through the cracks, and 2) rarely bother to clean it out your spam folder the first place.
• Reputation will remain a problem until 1) the powers that be agree on a open, royalty free, inter-operable standard, or 2) Google listens to Fred while everyone on the planet simultaneously switches to Gmail.

The perception seems to be there is only one box. The real winner is going to be the one that thinks outside of it, and convinces the casual email user to follow suit.

UPDATE: More background on Postini, from Ryan.

This is supposed to be pretty simple, and I’ve even set up a category for such items - a nice little way to post notes/thoughts when away from the big screen. The account is set, as is the cron.

But when posting, the body of the mail always gets stripped out - only the subject line (converted to title) remains.

Thoughts on this are appreciated.

Saying that email is soon to face it’s worldly demise is like saying “everything that will be invented has been invented.”

If spam, which now represents the vast majority of email, is going to die soon, then we might as well shut down the instant messaging networks, the “blogosphere” (whatever that is), all VoIP lines, etc. now. While we’re at it, lets just shut down phone service too (cell included), since at least one anti-spammer (feigning seriousness wherever possible) still gets direct marketing calls. I certainly would hate to see all these services die a painful death.

The death of email…right. Someone is going to solve the problem, and make a bundle in the process.

Someone hacked into Linkin Park rocker Chester Bennington’s email and phone records. The guy was caught.

And…nobody really cares (which is half the reason I held off). He isn’t Paris Hilton after all (although I am curious to hear whether this was again T-Mobile).

TechWeb looks at ways to lock down your email client, and even I caught a few good pointers. Generic stuff like using plain text and anti-virus plugins are a given, but I never thought about turning off the preview pane.

Anyway, good directions for how to turn features on/off for the popular clients. Have fun.

According to a study just released by email deliverability services provider ReturnPath, 97% of all IP addresses are worthy of being blocked. Under ReturnPath’s scoring methodology, less than one percent of emailers are worthy of a “most likely to get delivered” badge.

That whole “email losing clout” thing is starting to make sense. I doubt the fact that we are running out of IP addresses is helping matters either.

I dream of warm, clear, shallow water; bonefish tailing 50 feet from me in all directions. And a “no-tunnel” IPv6 connection in my bungalow.

If email is losing its clout as a communications medium, does that mean Bill Gates was just a little early with his prediction?

Yes. Sophos says the virus counts in emails is waning. While this data point is not necessarily indicative of a trend, let’s call it good news and move on.