amanuel's blog

Email dies of heart failure...too much spam

Email has been a reliable form of communication for many years but, in the last 10 years, thanks spam and phishing email is dying.

Email worked because it was a quick and sure way to communicate with individuals over the net. Spam and phishing concerns attack the two key things in any communication medium:

  1. Know who you are talking to. Thanks to spam, you can't tell if the email you receive is from a real human that knows you or has real reasons to contact you.

    With phishing you have emails that look genuine to trick you into performing some act.

  2. Know that you are being heard/read. If you send out an email, there is no longer any real guarantees that the recipient has received it.

If you can't receive real genuine emails, can't be certain if the recipient will get your message, and are afraid to share your email address with others, why bother with email at all?

This rant was caused by years of watching the email platform crumble and this article at Techdirt -
When You Can't Tell The Phishing Emails From The Legit Ones, Just Ignore Them All

I think it is time to look for new options...any ideas?


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My chi pet is dead!

chia snapshot Well after 3 weeks of growth, thanks to labour day weekend and construction at my house, I didn't get to water my pet.

It died. *sob.

After my last post the pet never grew more fur etc. It would be nice if someone made a vine dashboard that grew all over the other widgets or something...that might be more exciting.

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My Chi Pet is healthy!!!

I installed Chi Pet on my dashboard. Several pets have died...but I have refused to uninstall it. The deaths were cause by the fact my laptop sleeps over the weekend, and on Monday morning....I find my little guy upside down, dead.

But this past weekend, I took time to wake my machine, water the little guy and put it back to sleep. *sigh*

So yesterday, it was still alive and I was rewarded with a lush Pet....see for yourselves.

We'll see what happens over the next weekend.

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World's largest hole in the ground

Big hole in the ground
This diamond mine in eastern Siberia (Mirny, to be exact) is so deep that the surrounding "air zone... is closed for helicopters" after "a few accidents when they were 'sucked in' by downward air flow..."
You can find more pictures and details about the mine here

I found the little city next to the big hole...uhmm interesting.

We can now all marvel at the result of all their hard hard work.


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Otavo enters public beta

Thanks everyone that has helped get us to this point. Without your feedback Otavo would not be what it is today.

Techcrunch's Take on Otavo
Mashable's Take on Otavo

those are the first two I found this morning.

So go on, read about Otavo, sign up and give it a spin, and have fun.


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Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search, Part 2

Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search, Part 2

Written by Ebrahim Ezzy and edited by Richard MacManus. Ebrahim is lead developer and co-founder of Qelix Technologies, the company behind a search 2.0 contender called Qube. This is the second in a 2-part series of posts.

Ebrahim does a wonderful job of covering many different innovations being explored.

Ebrahim thanks for the mention. More news and announcements coming soon.


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Technorati's new look

The new technorati look is nice but, I am going to miss a nice functionality that used to exist in the old interface.

When you did a search, you could click on any of the buttons in the green bar and it would switch your search to the selected type....But now, you have to change the dropdown and hit search.

So we now have several steps when we used to just have one.

I'll miss that interface feature but am happy to see the technocrats turning 3. I'll need a few more days to decide if I like the new look. Regardless happy anniversary Technorati.

Some noticed the search issue too.
Dave's rundown on the changes

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amazing new way to tie your shoes

Yes, a faster way to tie your shoes. I'll have to slow the video and watch it a few times. Saw it on rocketboom this morning. Now I have to practice.

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