Archive for Software Development

GMail’s Priority Inbox: It’s Really Not that Cool

I’ll preface this with saying that it might just be me thinking this, but Gmail’s Priority Inbox that was recently released is something that just isn’t that cool.

CRN’s article, currently one of the top hits on Google gives these three reasons that it’s a game-changer:

1. It sorts Gmail for you.
2. Users can also set filters.
3. Users have to wade through less junk.

First of all, #2 and #3 were already there.

I use filters all the time for emails I want to keep, but don’t necessarily want to read, to do things like mark them as read, give them a label and archive them. Newegg’s daily deal emails are a good example of this. I want to get them, but I don’t want to see them every day, I just want to peruse them from time to time. Filters have been there as long as I can remember, they’re nothing new for the priority inbox.

As for junk email – that was one of the greatest thing switching to Gmail got users from the start: an amazing spam filter. It’s so well done that when spam gets through, I usually end up opening the email because I never expect anything to get through. How did priority inbox change that?

Finally, and this is might be my biggest issue, is that it makes Gmail more cluttered. Gmail is great for it’s power while being so simple. It’s the same reason I don’t understand multiple inboxes. I would consider myself a heavy email user, but it’s really not that hard to quickly go through and just handle the emails as they come in so they never get to the point where I need something to sort it for me. I don’t need to add clutter in order for Gmail to try and figure out what’s important for me. I can tell within a second if an email is important.

I’m a huge Google fan and I do think it’s a rare occurrence when they get something wrong, but here I think that this is a pretty useless feature. In fact, I wanted to immediately disable it, but because I’m a Google fan, I had to give it a fair shake. But, when every Facebook notification was coming through as important, but a payment from Paypal wasn’t, I had had it.

Sure, I could spend time customizing priorities, but I know at a glance what’s important, and what is important is constantly changing to the point it would take me more time to go through and customize important emails than it would be just to handle them the way I have been. I’m not going to drink the kool-aid on this one, Gmail’s Priority Inbox is just not useful.

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Launchlist, and How You Don’t Need Much to Launch Your Site

There’s a new site that’s been being sent around for a few days now, Launchlist. There is one main issue with it: instead of focusing on why not to launch a new site, you should focus on why to launch a new site.

It’s far too easy to get bogged down in the details of what else do I need to launch a new site. Granted, when you have a major site already in production, that is a different scenario and you’re going to want to go through a full set of testing. However, when it’s something new, it’s easy to get distracted by things that ultimately will not matter.

The 28 items that Launchlist recommends are great items to accomplish with a site, and really should be part of every site. But, when it comes down to it, many things can be eventual goals. Like support for Opera and larger resolution testing. Sure, those things should be on the to-do list, and yes, I am a big fan of Opera, but the fact is it’s not a high percentage of users who will be affected, so is it really worth delaying a launch because of that?

In the day and age of modern web development, it’s very easy to put out new releases when you need to update. The stringent testing should always be there, but in an agile environment, it’s easy to update something on the fly and roll out a new version for all users, so why give someone a reason to not launch?

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The Magic of Swype, a Touchscreen Breakthrough

Another bus ride, another blog post from my phone.

With my Droid Incredible, though I love the native typing interface, I do find typing long passages with my thumbs to be problematic. Sure, the autocomplete features are great and help in a lot of ways, it’s still tough to type long messages.

I, like I’m sure everyone else, have seen the blackberry commercial with the guy setting a record for text messaging by dragging his finger around. I figured it was a gimmick. So, when I heard about the beta for droid users, I was skeptical.

Then a friend and coworker, Matt, tweeted about Swype, and how he recommended trying it, I decided to go for it. It’s been two days and I’m more than happy I made the switch.

The intelligence, for lack of a better word, is nothing short of impressive. Rarely does it get a word wrong and even then I feel like I screwed something up.

I was worried about a learning curve, and having it not be worth my time, but it took very little time to get used to it and I was quickly able to type far faster than with a traditional QWERTY touchscreen.

Every now and then, someone comes up with something so simple and so easy to use, it’s just mind-boggling. Swype is like that.

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