A few months ago I was sitting in a cafe in San Francisco showing off my new phone and decided to check my e-mail, an extremely uncharacteristic move on my part actually but a spur of the moment decision I ran with. Amid the mass of temporarily ignorable subject lines was a heading telling me that a good friend of mine had sent me a new message via Facebook. I quickly opened the email hoping to read whatever she'd just written me, but was instead given a link to follow in which to read the message on Facebook. I spent the better part of the next hour trying to either figure out how to get to that part of Facebook with only the phone I had, actually log in with a mobile device, and finally giving up and then being anxious until I was able to read it hours later from a proper laptop.

I've got a similar story about getting an e-mail telling me I had an e-mail from a friend but had to login to a site to read it only to find the site was down and remained that way for the next several hours. This drove me insane especially since they'd already sent me a message, who not just send me THE message rather than making me come to the site to read it. The answer of course boils down to pageviews. Sites get extra traffic when you need to log in to read inter-site mail and are afraid of losing that by sending you the actual message. Sometimes just logging in to see the message is painless, but sometimes it's an absolute nightmare. The worst offender in this, of course, is MySpace and that is in part why I deleted my account in utter frustration last year and haven't ever looked back.

This seems to be the default when a website begins to offer some kind of private messaging. Some sites call it mail, others call it direct or private messages, but it's all the same - a note from one person to one specific other person. I made this spreadsheet off the top of my head using a handful of sites that offer this option to their users. Of the 12 sites I used as examples, only five of them actually sent me the full message when someone sent me something using their system. The other seven required me to log in to see the note, unfortunately SG is in the "make me log in to read it" category. I publicly asked last month if I really needed another inbox because that's the role many of these sites are trying to fill.

The fact is I already have an inbox, and when I get messages there I like to read them. I don't want to be told that I have to go to some other inbox to see a note someone sent me. That's not a good thing for the user, it's creating extra steps and makes me feel like I'm being punished for using that sites particular system. On the other hand when I get a notification from a site like Twitter or Plazes that includes the actual message that someone was trying to send me I always think what a nice feature that is and am glad the folks at those sites understand this simple concept - Don't send me mail to tell me I've got mail, just send me the mail and skip the extra steps.

This week I'm writing in from the SG Tokyo field office on an all expense paid trip to research the future of communication and global interconnectivity. OK, that's not entirely the truth, I am in Japan but that's about where the line to fiction starts blurring. A guy can dream can't he? Actually I am kind of researching communication but with a much more "how the crap do I stay in touch with my friends" approach rather than the "what does the future hold" perspective. Turns out it's both easier and harder than I expected.

If you've been following my columns here you know I'm kind of obsessed with communication to begin with and during ordinary daily life in Los Angeles I prefer IM and SMS to the phone, but would rather get a call then an e-mail. In planning this trip I knew a good bit of that was going to be thrown into an uproar, but was also excited to see what tools people I'd be hanging out with in Japan were using and how they were using them. Everyone I talked to prior to the trip said renting a mobile phone from a kiosk at the airport upon arrival was essential, so I assumed the bulk of contact would be SMS based and arranged for a phone to use during my trip.



Additionally I was curious how I'd stay in touch with my friends in the states. I've also got a friend from LA who is in Thailand right now and thanks T-Mobile she has free SMS coverage there which made contacting her from LA no problem, but a bit trickier from Japan where it's no longer a local number to send or receive from. How would all this play out?

Not surprisingly some contact forms didn't change at all, minor time zone differences aside. I could IM and e-mail with people the same as always. Site messaging (like mail here on SG) also worked the same as always and was really helpful. Voice to the states wasn't that tricky so long as I had a laptop thanks to several VOIP options. For a very small per minute fee I can use things like Gizmo Project or Skype to call any phone number on the planet. I can also sent SMS messages with Skype to US numbers for about $0.12 each, but people can't reply back to those. Both of those services also let you make calls to other people using them for free. You can also flex your inner nerd with gaming options like Teamspeak if you already use that, but I wouldn't recommend trying to set it up just for a trip.



As for in country communication, it's not SMS at all. In fact no one I know here is using SMS for anything. This doesn't mean they aren't using their mobile phones, they are - all the time actually - but instead all messaging is e-mails (or mobile mail) directly to the phones. This seems to skirt some kind of high SMS charge in some way. This is amusing actually because originally SMS gained popularity in many countries because it was much cheaper than voice calls. Interestingly enough nanoblogging service Twitter is benefiting here as well because of the mobile and direct messaging options. You can't use SMS for it, but you can use your mobile phone's browser and send direct messages through twitter to friends here in Japan (or anywhere in the world) for free. Several people I've talked to are doing this, as well as just keeping an eye on the mobile page to see where their friends are. Twitter actually solved the issue for my friend in Thailand. While it's not as direct as an SMS that she can reply to her from Los Angeles, we can still keep in touch easily and basically for free.

This is the trick, almost every single person I've seen has a phone, and it's usually out in being held in one hand and stared at. People on the trains, people on the streets, everyone. Conversely, I can probably count on one hand the number of people I've seen talking on their phones, and I'm including myself in that number. To add to that, there are signs everywhere prohibiting you from talking on your phone, so much of the text based mobile usage might stem from that as well. There are also pay phone booths everywhere but I haven't seen a single one being used yet which is certainly tied into the mobile aspect. If people aren't using their mobile phones to talk on, who might someone call from a pay phone? I've heard these are slowly disappearing as well, much the way they are in the US.



What does all this mean? It just means the way we communicate with each other, those next to us and on the other side of the world, is constantly evolving. I can't wait to see where we go next from here.

Back in April I mentioned a new-ish idea for breaking free from the chains of e-mail slavery that I'd just seen talked about at the Web 2.0 Expo. For people who deal with e-mail all day long this is a pretty interesting and exciting idea, for people who don't, well, it probably isn't. The general idea consisted of two steps: 1) Set up autoresponders on all of your e-mail accounts saying you are checking e-mail infrequently and 2) Actually check your e-mail infrequently. There's more to it than that of course but that initial spark set me and several other people on a holy grail like quest to put a working model of this into practice.

A little preface here, prior to April it was not uncommon for me to receive over 1000 e-mails a day, a solid 800 or so of which were expecting some kind of a reply. I'd start checking my e-mail first thing in the morning and I'd get new e-mails before I could respond to the unanswered ones. Hours would go by and my inbox would get bigger, not smaller. Upon further investigation I realized that the bulk of this was conversations I was having with people over e-mail. It would start off simple enough with a general question or some bit of info I needed, I'd reply, they'd respond to my reply, then I'd do the same and that would continue on for hours. For the record e-mail is hands down the most inefficient way to have a conversation with someone -- 50 back and forths later we'd finish up a discussion that could have happened in a matter of minutes via some other communication method.

Figuring that out was a big step for me, as simply not checking e-mail wasn't really an option due to the fact that so much of my work and daily activity requires interaction with other people -- the trick then became how to push those e-mail conversations into another platform. Right about this same time Tantek started working on a master set of communication protocols to try and determine what works and what doesn't. I used this as a springboard and created a public "preferred means of contact" that I started asking everyone to reference before contacting me. I looked at this much like a river overflow system -- I wanted to be sure the flood was directed through these channels before I built a dam in the river. Once all of that made sense I added the autoresponders and stopped responding to e-mail that didn't specifically require me to do so.

This might sound crazy, but it's actually working. At last count I was getting under 100 e-mails day now, but that's decreasing and I'd venture to say I'm closer to 50 at this point. But the key here is that I'm not any less productive and I'm not missing any conversations -- I'm just having them in a few minutes via IM or phone rather than multi-hour e-mail threads. This of course is the main goal, freeing up more time which I've definitely done. An interesting side effect I'm seeing is that this is spreading. I've heard from more than a few people that after seeing how this was working with me they attempted their own version of this with fantastic results. I'm very close to getting a friend to introduce a "no interoffice e-mail discussions" policy requiring his employees to instead use IM for the bulk of questions and answers that takes place at his company on a daly basis.

This isn't to say e-mail doesn't have it's place. It's great for reference or as a dump for sending large files, but as far as actually connecting with someone it's about as bad as it gets. (And don't get my started on services that e-mail you to tell you that you have new mail... actually maybe I'll talk about that next week) I'm definitely encouraging everyone to take a look at their own set up and see what forms of communication work and which don't, as well as soliciting feedback on my constantly evolving system. I'm fully convinced that e-mail is the problem, it's just the default people are resting on, as soon as a better option comes along there won't be much resistance to using it.

Office workers in Britain can breath a little easier today after the European Court of Human Rights deemed spying on your employees' e-mail a breech of their right to privacy.

Employers are still allowed to see what you're doing, but only if they tell you they're doing it, and have a good reason for doing so. Sadly, what classifies a "good reason" is open to a world of interpretation. However, it is good to see employers warned that, just because employees are doing it on your time, doesn't mean it's any of their business. In an age where what you write in your blog can get you fired, you have to applaud any effort to give people the right to be people at work, not just workers.

Anyone that knows me more than casually knows e-mail is one of my biggest demons. I fight it every day and it's back again tomorrow for more. I hate it, yet can't seem to get away from it. In the past few weeks I've spent a good deal of time talking to folks about my serious plan to declare e-mail bankruptcy and try to move as much daily communication as I can to phone and IM. At Sunday night's Ignite session at the Web 2.0 Expo I saw a talk by Tim Ferriss that I think is going to change my life. Tim is a bit of a life hacker and has figured out a lot of things we all dream of, most notably how to outsource your life - meaning if you are being paid $25 an hour to do a job, finding someone else who will do the same thing for $5 an hour and making $20 an hour doing nothing. It's a great idea and just takes some figuring out to pull off, but it's not as crazy as it might sound. He talked a little about that but the thing that really grabbed my attention was when he talked about how to get by checking e-mail only once a week. Or maybe once or twice a day, but far less than every few minutes like most people do.

So my problem with e-mail is that I get a new message, and before I'm done responding to it, I've got another new message needing a reply. I get to that one just in time for another to show up demanding my attention. This cycle repeats itself all day long, and often all night, which seriously impacts what I can get done far too often. Tim's proposal, which is painfully simple, is the best idea I've heard on this subject yet. He suggests setting up an autoresponder to your e-mail that sends back a message something like this:

And then, and this is the real trick, actually stick to that schedule. Of course it can be whatever works best for you. You can say you are only checking e-mail once a day, mostly in the evenings. You can say you check and respond to all e-mail on Fridays only. Or you can be even more vague and say something like "on average I only check my e-mail once a week." You can also change the request from phone to IM to SMS or whatever you prefer. The talk lasted 5 minutes and I swear 4 of those I was in shock trying to process the brilliance that had just been shown to me. Implementing this kind of system just skyrocketed to the top of my todo list (just under writing this post, of course - I'll keep you posted). Luckily a fellow named Colin filmed the whole thing and just posted it online. Trust me, take the 5 minutes and go watch the video of Tim's talk now.

If you want more, here are other clips from the Ignite session as well as this podcast of Tim's much longer talk from earlier this year at SXSW. If you are in the San Francisco area and are not attending the conference (which costs around $1500 a ticket) you might want to check out the web2open schedule, as several of the sessions (like Ignite) are free and open to the public. More soon.

Spambox.us is a new service that lets users create temporary "throwaway" e-mail addresses, for things like forum sign-ups, membership confirmations, or other instances where you'd rather not use your primary e-mail address.

Unlike a throwaway account you'd create at yahoo or hotmail or some other online service, your Spambox address only exists as long as you want it to. For the time you specify, Spambox will transparently forward e-mails to an address of your choice, and when the time window closes, it vanishes entirely without any additional input from you.

(via DownloadSquad, which has several additional throwaway e-mail suggestions in their comments.)

The JavaScript exploit which hit Yahoo Mail users yesterday has been patched, as the web giant moved quickly to secure its servers.

Symantec rated the worm a 2 on a scale of 5, which prompted several comments from tinfoil-hatters that Symantec was intentionally underestimating the severity of the exploit, because the company provides security to Yahoo Mail. Considering how quickly Yahoo patched the service, Symantec's assessment appears to have been accurate.

Had this been a serious problem, however, it would have had far-reaching effects, as Yahoo Mail currently has over 200 million accounts, and is the largest web-based e-mail provider in the world.

Yahoo Mail users should not open any e-mails sent from av3@yahoo.com, according to Symantec, because simply viewing the e-mail will unleash a JavaScript worm that exploits an unpatched security hole in Yahoo's current mail software.

It is important to note that, unlike previous worms which required the user to open an attachment, this worm exploits an unpatched security hole as soon as the e-mail is viewed.

Yahoo should move quickly to patch this hole, but until it is closed, Yahoo Mail users should block the address av3@yahoo.com.