Making Inbox Your Root Email Folder

This is one of those posts that most of you can ignore, but if you’re affected by this problem you’ll likely appreciate the solution (which was given to me by my friend Janak Parekh).

Here’s the scenario: some email servers, when configured to serve up IMAP email, will show you the list of folders where everything is listed in the same tree. Meaning you’ll have Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, etc. all on the same level. Other mail servers will have the Inbox be the top level folder and any other folders (including ones you create yourself) are sub-folders under Inbox. They look like this:

Why does that matter? For most people it wouldn’t. But for a “Type A” person like myself, it’s an irritating situation because it forces me to make my Outlook or Windows Mail window wider to compensate for the email folders that are shoved over to the right. And if that window pane is made wider, it means the other, more important ones, have to be made narrower. And that’s no good is it?

Here’s the solution for making having all of your IMAP email folders appear at the same root level as Inbox. It will vary depending on what email program you’re using, but you want to look for the words “Root Folder Path” in the advanced settings under your account configuration. Under Outlook 2007, it’s found under Tools > Account Settings > [Your Email Account] > More Settings > Advanced > Root Folder Path. If you’re using Windows Mail, it’s a bit easier, being found under Tools > Accounts > [Your Email Account] > Properties > IMAP. Look for similar settings under other applications such as Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. Here’s what the setting looks like on Windows Mail:

When you’re done it will look something like this:

I hope this tip helps you get more out of your email client by making it work the way you do, not the other way around.

Feed Lot Reality: It’s Not Pretty

My friend Mitch works on a feed lot in southern Alberta, and he borrowed my Canon GL2 video camera for a while. I thought he was just using it to make videos of his cute daughter Mia, but he also used it for this “feedlot reality TV video” that, frankly, is one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in my life: a cow has an 80 pound abscess (from an injury) and to help the cow they need to drain the abscess…and this is a video of them doing just that. It’s not for the squeamish, but it’s also interesting in a gross kind of way. 😉

<video has been pulled>

Respect to Keith Olbermann: The Guy Can Rant

Regardless of their politics. I respect people that know the art of oratory. People that can deliver a punchy, cutting, effective verbal slice ‘n dice impress me. Dennis Miller is one of the best in the world at this – I should upload some of the rants of his I’ve captured over the years. In this example, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivers a deadly barrage of words against Condi Rice. Regardless of how much of this you agree with, you have to respect Olbermann’s ability to express himself and make his points.

Thanks to Mitch – who’s pretty good at the art of the rant himself – for the heads up on this.

CTV: You’re a Bunch of Douchebags

I broke new ground last week: for the first time I was served with an official takedown notice that evoked the DMCA. Aren’t I special? Being a Canadian, I’m of course not subject to the draconian DMCA law, but YouTube, being in the United States, certainly is. I posted about the CTV spot before, so I won’t repeat my thoughts on it here, but I can’t fathom why CTV wouldn’t want someone to share branding material like that TV spot. It only helps make their TV station more well known, even if it’s with people who aren’t within broadcast range. Here’s the YouTube “you got busted” email:

I wonder how many of those YouTube sends out a day? 100? 1000? 10,000? YouTube is still chock-full of copyright materials, but I suspect some companies are smart enough to understand how beneficial it is for them to turn a blind eye (the Daily Show and Colbert Report come to mind).

I just had a thought though: what if Holland & Hart LLP isn’t CTV’s legal firm, but instead represents Natasha Bedingfield, the artist who’s song was used in the CTV spot? I somehow think that’s unlikely though, because the ad spot was taken down within 48 hours of me posting it, and the only way a law firm could have found it that quickly would be if they were doing daily searches for “CTV”.

Anyway, Holland & Hard LLP, along with CTV: I hope you are one day made irrelevant by the changes in online digital media distribution that you can’t hope to stop or control.

Microsoft’s Take on Branding

Microsoft released some documentation for software developers recently, and their document on branding was an interesting read. Here’s a short quote:

“Branding is the emotional positioning of a product as perceived by its customers. Product branding is achieved through a combination of factors, including the product name and logo, use of color, text, graphics, and sound, the style of various other design elements, marketing, and most importantly, the attributes of the product experience itself. Successful branding requires skillful crafting of a product image, and is not achieved simply by plastering a product logo on every surface and using the product’s color scheme at every opportunity. Rather, meaningful and high quality branding that enhances users’ experience will be much more successful.”

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Much of it is specific to Windows Vista and applications that will install into Windows Vista, but I’d say anyone creating a product should give this a read to help them think about what branding is, does, and why it’s so important. I wish more companies in the world understood the need to create great customer experiences from end to end. Companies often bemoan Apple’s success in many markets, and wonder why they can’t achieve the same thing – they could, if they paid attention to the customer experience and stopped letting engineers and software developers make all the decisions.

The Windows Vista Wallpapers That Didn’t Make It…

Hamad Darwish is an amazingly talented photographer who had some of his work selected for the wallpaper backgrounds in Windows Vista. His work is extremely impressive, and I find the high-contrast, super-saturated effect stunning (it’s what I tend to try for myself with my own photos, though they’re nowhere near as great as these of course ;-)).

He’s been generous enough to release 22 high resolution (1920 x 1200) images to the public, ones that didn’t make the cut into Vista. Microsoft’s loss is our gain! And because the bandwidth requirements were causing problems for his one and only download location, I’ve offered Thoughts Media resources to host the download for him, and we’re now an official mirror.

So if you want it, click here to download (31 MB ZIP file).

Event Planners: Never Cause Conflict in Your Customers

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That’s a photo (nasty Treo 750 cameraphone!)  from the Switchfoot concert that Ashley and I went to on February the 21st. Switchfoot is a “crossover” band in that they’re started out in the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) scene and later made a splash in the mainstream music scene. So while they undoubtedly have a large fan base in the secular market now, a good chunk of their long-term fans are of the Christian variety. I first heard of Switchfoot a few years ago when someone I knew was doing a video project and used the song “Dare You To Move“. It’s a fantastic song with great lyrics and a killer hook. When I heard Switchfoot was coming to Calgary, I definitely wanted to go see them, so I bought some tickets (remember the Ticketmaster rant?).

A couple of weeks after I bought the Switchfoot tickets, I heard that one of my favourite bands of all time, Jars of Clay, was also coming to town – and that they were playing at MacEwan Hall at the University of Calgary, the same location as Switchfoot. My first thought was that they were playing the same show, because it made sense: two CCM bands, albet one more mainstream than the other. The curious part was that the show time was 30 minutes apart, and each band was selling separate tickets. I called Ticketmaster to try and get some details, and they couldn’t figure it out either how two bands could be listed at the same location at nearly the same time, but have two separately ticketed events.

I went to the show that night honestly not sure if I was going to see one band or two. When we got there it became clear: Switchfoot was playing in the bigger ballroom at MacEwan Hall, and Jars of Clay was playing a smaller venue within the same building.  So here I was, a fan of both bands, unable to see both concerts because they were happening at the same time. I quite honestly would have paid another $71.90 (two tickets) to see Jars of Clay later that night. Instead I felt conflicted that I had two non-refundable tickets to see Switchfoot, and couldn’t go see Jars of Clay without tossing out the $71.90 I’d alreay paid for the tickets and paying that much again to see Jars of Clay. In retrospect I wish I would have seen Jars of Clay – it would have been worth eating the $71 cost to me.

Why would the event planners make a decision like that, pitting two similar bands, with similar fan bases, against each other? They sacrificed what could have been a golden opportunity to earn more money by creating a mini-festival and charging more for the tickets. Someone wasn’t thinking like a marketing person should.

Get Updates To This Blog via Email

RSS is great and all that, but sometimes email is more direct and simply more convinient. I added some code to my blog a couple of weeks ago that allows you to subscribe to RSS updates via email. That means that once a day (if there’s new content on the blog) you’ll get an email message from Feedburner (the nice folks who are kicking ass in the RSS space) with the update from my site. Here’s what the email looks like:

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It will contain pictures and the full content of my posts – exactly what you’ll get via RSS. The one exception is that if I use the “Read More” option on WordPress, you’ll only get everything before that. But all in all, not bad. It’s easy to manage, easy to unsubscribe to, and I’d encourage you to use it if you’re like me and check email every day but not always your RSS reader. And if you have a blog yourself, I’d really encourage you to check out this Feedburner service – it’s a great way to reach readers on a regular basis regardless of whether or not they use RSS.

Amusing Cultural Differences: Japanese DVD Covers

When Ashley and I went to Thailand in 2006, we had an eight hour layover in Osaka, Japan on the way back. We were exhausted, not having slept much on the flight from Bangkok to Osaka, but the opportunity to go out and explore Japan a bit was just too tempting. We saw a lot of interesting things – and Japan was just as clean and organized as I thought it was – but one thing I saw struck me as humorous. We went into a book/DVD/CD store and while most of it was incomprehensible to the two Gaijin (us) walking around, some things don’t require words to understand. I saw the DVD cover for the movie “Fantastic 4” and I burst out laughing. Why? Here’s what the North American DVD cover looks like:

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Continue reading Amusing Cultural Differences: Japanese DVD Covers

Crazy Customs Charges: Someone Stop The Insanity

You know, if there’s one thing that consistently irritates me about living in Canada, it’s the cross-border scam that is brokerage and customs. The other day I received a package from the USA, a couple of products that I had ordered and paid for (rather than the review product I usually get for instance). The real value of the products was $46.97 USD. Shipping to Canada was $16.55 USD, and they only offered FedEx shipping as an option – no postal service. Courier shipping means brokerage fees, but I really wanted this stuff so I went ahead. The package arrived on Tuesday, and it had a declared value of $20 USD – the company was nice enough to reduce the value for customs. Problem is, $20 CAD is where the brokerage fees kick in with FedEx and most other courier companies. $20 USD = $23.68 CAD. Guess how much brokerage and GST tax there is on a $23.68 shipment? $19.95. I kid you not – 84% of the stated value of the product.

So I ended up paying $38.65 CAD on getting the product here (shipping + brokerage fees), and the total value of the product was only worth $53 CAD to begin with. That’s just wrong. It amounts to a tax on Canadians that want to order products from the United States. If I could find a Canadian reseller for the product I want, of course I’d order from the Canadian side of the border! I did that with the Gorillapod, buying it from Eureca and it worked out great. Brokerage fees should be a percentage of the item value, not a value that starts off at $20. I don’t know if it’s a courier company scam where they know they can charge whatever they want for incoming products, or if the Canadian government really does make the paperwork and process to difficult that the courier companies need to charge this much to break even. Either way, the USA is Canada’s biggest trading partner, and if it wasn’t so expensive to order products from the USA I think more Canadians would do so.

I guess I shouldn’t complain too loud though – I could live in Europe or Australia and have it be even more expensive/impossible to get the products that I want. What was the product you might ask? It shall be revealed soon…