donloeb.com

monday’s links:

- facebook email…should spur adoption…this is a big big deal,

- hp is building a pretty cool system to print docs anywhere in the world from your mobile phone,

- gmail adoption in schools,

- wsj piece on business blogging, and

- skrenta on mahalo and SEO. i need to get my hands on that ppt…

while on a *boring* conference call on friday, i finally took the time to upload my address book to facebook. out of my 5800 contacts (some of these must be inactive - i don’t know that many people!), 374 were already using facebook. i proceeded to invite 150 or so and within minutes, yes minutes, half of them had accepted my friend request. over the course of the next few days, most had replied…that’s fast…

not only that, but most of these folks are active users…as a result, my facebook experience is a bit like linkedin…except it’s alive…:)

the service is simple, clean, and snappy…and, of course, it’s open…it’s a very effective way to communicate - via rss aggregation and twitter-like broadcasts. email will always be around, but it’s clear that myspace and facebook are going to control a bunch of digital communication…look out for falling pageviews and a reduction in time spent across the webmail providers (yes, i know this has been happening for a couple of years, but i think it’s going to accelerate)…

ps - when building web apps, never underestimate the need for speed (loading time that is!). yahoo did and it has hurt them time and time again…

either that or the title should be “oh, the irony”

last week i switched from yahoo mail to gmail for my work email (i route my work email thru gmail to take advantage of the spam filtering and web access). being a long time yahoo person that was sort of a tough decision…

the main reason i switched? yahoo mail was putting too many good emails (three a week at least) in the spam folder. and, if that wasn’t bad enough, you can’t search spam…

however….that’s a whole lot better than being down for 12 plus hours like gmail was today for a subset of their user base. and, to top it off, i lost all my email for that period. maybe it will come back, maybe it won’t…

ughhh….gmail, i’ll give you one more chance…why? i understand what it’s like for companies to provide applications (free as well!) like this at scale…service interruptions do happen. also, it helps that i love the product - it’s fast, has great mobile access, and the threading is fantastic…so, please please, don’t disappoint…

ps - if you sent me an email today, please resend it…thanks!

update: seems like i’m starting to get email from earlier today…it’s trickling in..

yahoo demoed their email/IM integration at web2 this morning…very very cool as it promises to make real-time communication simple and easy…it brings web-based IM to everyone and has great “hot swapping” of conversations…

this is a big deal as it (along with RSS) turns yahoo mail into a true start experience - far more useful than your typical desktop email app…

congrats to ethan, brad, and everyone at yahoo mail/im…

feedburner has a number of great promotional tools for publishers - buzzboost, browser friendly style sheets, and animated gifs, etc…

today, the “headline animator” just got a fresh coat of paint…actually, we put it in on a diet and launched a slimmer, more email friendly version.

here’s what mine looks like (minus the contact info)…

i love this…it’s simple, unobtrusive and darn useful. every publisher with a feedburner feed should add this to their email sig. it’s a very easy way to generate traffic and subscribers…

great job matt and team!

i’m jonesing for my phone…when i got into a car accident two weeks ago, the screen on my nokia 6630 crapped out.

i wasn’t a huge mobile person before getting the 6630, but now i’m addicted. i read email, send IMs, manage my calendar, read books (yes, full-length books - i’m reading “the world is flat” right now), read key rss feeds, look up movies and locations, and take a ton of pictures. i’m pretty dependent on it actually - it just makes life easier (less time on the computer) and more fun…

i can definitely see how the world is going to change…as soon as all phones are at least as powerful as the 6630…