July 25th, 2008, 5 Comments »
Julie and I work together on most Capulet projects. As a result, we both get CC’d on a lot of email. In 80% of cases, only one of us actually replies and participates in a given email thread. In many of those cases, the discussion is mostly or entirely irrelevant to whoever doesn’t respond. If they need to know about it, the responder can generally be convey the thread’s gist in a very brief conversation.
It isn’t news to anyone that CC gets abused all the time. In truth, though, when Julie and I both receive email, it’s usually not CC abuse. The sender is just unsure which of us will respond. And I think we like it that way, because we don’t necessarily want to surgically divide our duties and responsibilities.
Wouldn’t it be great, though, if my email app included a button that read “Julie can ignore this message”? Having replied to a message (and maybe its followups), it takes much less attention for me to assess whether she needs to read the thread than it does for her to make that appraisal by having to read the whole thing.
Wouldn’t it be great if we assigned a few trusted colleagues this power? They’d just right-click on our names and choose “Ignore this thread” from a drop-down menu. The message would bypass our inbox and get archived wherever we specified.
Maybe this functionality already exists in some email applications? If so, when can we get it in Gmail?
5 Comments »
April 3rd, 2008, 23 Comments »
I was in London Drugs today, buying a new router. Man, the price of monitors has gone through the floor. You can get a 24″ Samsung monitor for $449.
To put that in some perspective, I’m currently typing on a four-year-old 23″ Apple Cinema Display monitor. I bought it off the set of Catwoman for a ridiculous discount, but I think the retail price was CAN $2799.
The old Apple display has been great, but it’s looking a bit dim (plus the frame has turned that gross yellow, computer-in-the-sun colour). Some time in the next year, we’re likely to buy some new monitors. I could buy a 27″ monitor for, say, CAN $999. Or I could buy two 22″ monitors for, say, CAN $329 each.
I’ve only worked with two monitors briefly. Do you think two smaller ones are better than one big one? On the one hand, one monitor avoids any configuration hassles. Plus, it takes up less desk space. On the other hand, two monitors give you more actual screen space. And they apparently make your more productive, which is enticing.
For two monitors, do you have, like, a primary and secondary? If I lined them up directly side-by-side, I couldn’t tolerate having the space between the two monitors staring me in face.
Chris would definitely take two smaller ones:
I would go with two separate monitors any day, over one large one. Having two monitors can cause issues, as I said. Some of your software may run differently. Your computer may need to have minor configurations made to it. It can be a headache to get correct… but it’s well worth it. On one monitor, I have my email and work open. On the other monitor, I have all my “widgets”… for IRC, IMs, RSS feeds, etc. It makes it a lot easier for me to keep things organized, and be more efficient with my work.
You’ll actually have more “screen real estate” within two 17″ monitors side-by-side than what you would have with one huge screen. As I said, this can help you stay much more organized. Having one monitor made things too cramped, and too jumbled. I had to search for things, or keep them hidden when running.
Which would you choose?
23 Comments »
