Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Hosted Email

Meanwhile, on advice from Harry, exonome.com's email is now managed by Google's GMail for Businesses. This means that I told the hoster that hosts exonome's pages that they need to change their records so that computers wanting to deliver email to exonome.com send it to Google's computers instead (also known as 'changing the MX record to point to Google's mailservers). Google sorts it all out and allows me to create mailboxes for exonome.com on their GMail servers.

Like for Nelson, email had become useless to me, as I expect it has for almost everyone who has a vanity domain. Individual spam filters are just unable to keep up, especially if your domain is used as a fake return address. Google's spam filters are doing an excellent job filtering out the spam, as I can see by checking the spam folder. I suspect it is because they can compare a lot of mail going to a lot users to see what is nearly identical.

I create a new email address for almost everything I do on the net, and that lets me track spam. Turns out the old addresses I posted on Usenet with still get spam, even though they have been closed for years. So does the email address I made for a Dice.com account, I guess Dice was careless and sold their list to the wrong person. But one of the biggest recepticles these days? fj at livejournal.com . No wonder LJ has set up all these new messaging systems that do not use email to let you know if you got comments. Pretty soon these accounst will be unusable.

And Then I'd Rule The World!

The success of Flickr and YouTube make me think that the next time I think "Wouldn't it be nice to have..." something for my electronic life, I should just go out and build it, especially now so many building blocks like storage and processing are available on-demand. I've been thinking for years now anyway that I want to stop working for large companies and chart my own course for something. I was all set to take a break and start considering what my venture would be at the end of April when my time with Nokia would end, and then this gig came along.

I have no experience being an enterepeneur, though, and no idea how. I'd just build something with as a little customization as my UI persona can get away with and stick AdWords on it.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Paint Memory

Over the phone:
"Hi, you don't sell Frazee paints, do you?"
-- "No, but we can match the colors."
"Can I bring in the color name and number."
--"Yeah, which one?"
"748 Swiss Coffee"
--"Yeah we can match that."

In the store:
"I need a match to Frazee 748 Swiss Coffee"
--"Did you bring in a sample?"
"No, I was told over the phone you could match it by number."
--"Oh ok, let me look for it ... maybe the chart is here ... hold on a sec..."

Three people are consulted

--"We can't seem to find the chart for thet color anywhere, let me check with him..."

Goes to other guy, other guy says four words.

--"So how do you want it."
"Uh, flat finish, one gallon?"
--"Ok, let me write that down..."
"So you found the formula?"
--"No, he knew it"
scribble scribble scribble
"Wait, that man knows Frazee color formulas by heart?"
--"Not all, but Swiss Coffee is very common."

Five minutes, hands me the can

--"So you guys still working on that loft?"
(Wait, he recognizes me?) "Well, we can only do work on weekends."
--"Ah yeah, I get that, tomorrow is my day off and I have to do everything in one day."
"Uh, good luck with that."
Standard goobye formula.

Back home:
Apply. It doesn't match. Maybe I didn't stirr enough wwhich I skimped on since it was blended yesterday. Or the builder wrote down another color than was actually used on these walls. Or someone got the formula wrong.