RANTS: Email Excess

I work with plenty of fairly high-level people. I see these people's email boxes. There really is no easy way to really manage one's email. Let's think about that for a second because you may say "How hard is it to hit delete on messages you don't want?"

First, the sheer volume of email that some people receive is mind-boggling in itself. My email address is subscribed to multiple pertinent mailing lists. Some of the content from those subscriptions is interesting and I may want to read it. Then there are messages of varying importance sent, specifically, to me. These messages may or may not require action on my part beyond reading the message. But, just reading a message will take time. Then there's the spam. I'm pretty good at filtering spam without even opening the message. But, again, that takes more time. Finally, there are messages that come in the form of confirmations and acknowledgments. These messages include, but are not limited to, things like purchase and shipping confirmations.

Now take that and multiply the volume by 10 or more and remember that there are actual things that need to be done in your day besides reading and responding to email. As I said before, mind-boggling. It's no wonder that as I happen to glance at other people's subject lines, I realize that there's probably at least half of all email received by one person is not read because assumptions are made on the content (i.e. shipping confirmations). If she needed to go back to find something, she'll vaguely remember that it's in her email box.

Now will there ever be email filters or other automated processes that help us filter our messages? I'm not talking about spam filters because we know that those already work. I'm talking about filters or other tools that will help us take our electronic receipts and file them away so that we will be confident that we will be able to find them in the future? Something that will take our electronic newsletters and file them away so that when we have time to go back and read them, we will know exactly where to find them; or the message will automatically delete because I might have read about the latest mobile technology elsewhere.

At the end of the day, the closest thing these fairytale filters is an real life assistant. But, even in my dealings with people's assistants, they have too much of their own mail to handle.

What's the next management tool for email? As much as I hear that other tools will replace email, I don't think email will disappear any time soon. It's too universal, too prevalent, and we rely too much on it. I predict that he who invents this holy grail of email will make a killing. Let me get back to the drawing board...

Happy computing.

TIPS & TRICKS: No video for Skype, Photo Booth, and iChat

In the office, I've been imaging new Macs with an image I have been keeping updated off an external hard drive. I captured the image from a newer Intel machine, though I don't recall which Apple model. It was most likely one of the notebooks.

I used this image to reload a brand new 24" silver iMac. The image process with Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) worked flawlessly. The only thing, I had to beyond the image was update the software, install some Adobe software, and install the iLife suite. Everything else seemed to work fine, until I received a request to install Skype.

The Skype install went fine. However, the testing did not. Photo Booth, which I used because Skype was not working either, with this message:

Photo Booth cannot open.
The graphics card installed in this computer does not support Photo Booth.

I checked to make sure that the camera was showing up in System Profiler, which it did. I also tested iChat to see if it would find the built-in camera and that was unsuccessful.

After a few restarts, I decided to call Apple. Unfortunately, they were not much help either. They recommended an Archive & Install mainly because I told them my image came from a different machine. Not wanting to take the time to do that unless absolutely necessary, I decided to reset the PRAM. The key combination is Command-Option-P-R. While starting up the machine before the Apple logo showing up, hit this key combination and hold it all down until, at least, 2 bongs are heard.

This step fixed my problem. Skype, Photo Booth, and iChat were all able to detect the built-in web cam after the PRAM was reset. I also happened to search for the error message and found this link on Apple's Discussion Forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1753144&tstart=0

Hope this helps. Happy computing.