Would paying to send an e-mail reduce the noise?

I was just glancing through my feeds and see an interesting post by Robert Scoble having to do with noise reduction. By that he means the increasing "noise" by the new social services like Twitter, FriendFeed and the like. Good stuff in his post and worth the read... plus it got me thinking. And I mean thinking radically. The biggest "noise-box" in my environment isn't the hottest, new social networking-Web 2.0-AJAXy-AIR tool. It's my inbox. And I suspect it is for most of you too. So here's the radical thought (that will never see the light of day, which is probably a good thing):

What if you were charged for sending an e-mail to someone? As in: micropayments to the recipient, who sets a rate to receive your note? Just like a sliding-CPM model in the web advertising world, as a recipient, you would place a value on your time or on the "impression" of that note.

Got plenty of time to have e-mail conversations? Set your CPE or Cost-Per-Email at a lowly $0.01. Backed up with e-mails or need to spend time on a project that commands more of your attention? Raise your CPE to $2.00 a pop. Off for the weekend to spend time with the family? Hey, it's going to cost you $10 to get my attention on your note during my off-time.

Yup, it's a crazy idea and certainly wouldn't work as stated in a corporate environment. But something in Robert's post resonated in me because the new noise-makers are "unlimited and free". I think way, way back when folks had to pay for each phone call they made at their house. Let me tell you... there was a lot less noise back then. Then the trend became "unlimited calling", which I fully take advantage of. It also means "unlimited noise" when you think about it. OK... no more thinking for me today. ;)

You know you're a hopeless geek when:

1. You can't concentrate on anything while waiting for the gadget delivery person.
2. You get your box cutter out first thing on delivery day just so it's ready when the gadget arrives.
3. You stop in your tracks every few minutes every time you hear a truck drive down the street.
4. You feel your heart drop every single time a FedEx truck drives past without stopping.
5. You plug in all the peripherals for the new gadget before it even arrives.
6. You go over everything you need to build your new system multiple times while waiting for it.
7. You make a list for everything you need to install on the new system and the order you need to do so.
8. You rearrange every plug in the power strip just to make sure there is room for one more.
9. You greet the UPS man brusquely because he's not the FedEx guy.
10. You keep checking the delivery status online every 15 minutes just to make sure it hasn't changed.

No tech this holiday, but there was joy

I've been relatively quiet on the blogging front lately and mentioned that there were no gadgets for me this holiday. The reason why is shown above as we decided to give a good home to a dog this holiday. We hit up our local SPCA and rescued Kelso, the adolescent Labrador Retriever shown above. Needless to say for anyone that's raised a dog before, we've got our hands full. I've had to move my home office down to the kitchen table to keep Kelso company. As if it wasn't bad enough that he almost had no home this holiday, he's forced to do the "lampshade on the head" routine: he had minor surgery and was chewing at his stitches.

In any case, I'll be getting back online more as Kelso allows. Although there was no new tech here, doing something nice for someone less fortunate is more than good enough this holiday time for me. Actually, the kids had plenty of tech enough to keep me happy anyway; configuring devices is a heck of lot easier to me than putting toys together!

Win a Nokia N95 from your BFF, CrunchGear

Shout out to Tony who gave us the heads up on this one. With just a little effort you can enter a CrunchGear contest and win one of two unlocked Nokia N95s. You'll need to hit up the CrunchGear BFF site and let 'em know which open source application you'd like to see on a smartphone. All the contest details are right here, so run, don't walk; there's not much time left to enter! Winners will be announced this coming Monday based on whose ideas are voted the best. It's only appropriate to point out Tony's three ideas; not that we're playing favorites, but a little jkOTR love never hurt anyone... Besides, I like his Gphone Product Shopper idea.

Update on earlier Absolute / Laplink post

Just a quick note on a post we ran early this morning regarding Absolute's Computrace LoJack and Laplink's PCsync & PCmover software. The information for that post was provided to me via e-mail in the form of a press release. It looked interesting from a mobile technology perspective, so I shared the information as I would with any news I feel our readers would benefit from.

Late this afternoon, I was contacted by a Laplink representative and asked to pull the post. Apparently, the press release went out early and it's possible there could be changes to the information provided. While the press release wasn't under any NDA or embargo, I have pulled the post as I believe it's the right thing to do in the case of an inadvertent accident such as this. I know I've hit the "Send" button too early more than once, so I hope you can understand and respect the decision to pull the post. It's a very rare circumstance to do so and one we don't take lightly here at jkOTR. As always, we thank you for reading and hope you find continued value here.

Random mobile tech thoughts while running

I just got back from a seven mile run to break up the day and had some random thoughts come to mind. Don't worry, I've already showered, so the post is sanitary.

• The Asus Eee PC looks like a nice little lappy and many folks seem excited about it. Is it really that different from the Palm "please don't remember my name" Foleo? Are they miles apart or actually relatively similar in terms of use cases?
• Some versions of Vista include all of the Tablet PC bits, so there was much talk last year of Vista helping the Tablet PC market. Is it me or have we seen no more or no less new Tablet PCs introduced than in the last few years prior to Vista?
• Speaking of Tablet PCs, why does inking get such a bad rap? All of the folks in the keyboard camp: have you truly given inking a several week trial or did you give up in under a week? (Note: if you tried and it doesn't work for you, I respect your choice.)
• Related: as nice as it is to have an indicator of textual input speed percentages across multiple input types, i.e.: keyboards of various sizes, speech, ink, etc... when did it become vogue to benchmark humans?
• Did UMPCs fail the concept of a "companion device" or did we fail to grasp the concept when we (myself included) attempted to use them as full time mobile devices?
• Will the fact that Apple is releasing an SDK for third party iPhone apps add further momentum for consumers to buy the device or did Steve have you at "Hello"?
• Related: what are the odds that Apple finds a way to sell the iPhone apps solely through iTunes so they can make a cut off every title?
• Why is it in my Commonwealth that we buy our liquor in a State Store and still try to state our case for Liquor Stores? OK, that's not mobile tech related, but those archaic laws have been in place since Prohibition and I want to know why. ;)

While I sit back, drink a protein shake and read RSS feeds, talk amongst yourselves in the comments.

Are you "Lost in Technology"? Here's a way to check

I came across this list over at Tech Digest and it was too funny not to share. The list is comprised of 30 ways to tell you're lost in technology. The full list is here, but a few relevant bits follow.

• Your computer runs Linux, Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Oh, and said computer is actually a vintage Commodore 64.
• On an absent-minded day, you actually answer your phone with your World Of Warcraft name.
• Your toilet roll holder doubles as an iPod dock.

And my personal favorite because it's nearly true: the only way you can remember how to write with a pen is to pretend it's a stylus. :)

A1Pro USB keyboard with Handwriting Identity Feature

At first, I thought this was the best of both worlds: a USB keyboard for the typers and a handwriting panel for the inkers. At under $26, I wonder if the A1Pro K88 is the best of either world. It looks like a usable USB keyboard complete with multimedia keys on the top. But what about the Handwritten Identity Feature and pen? Perhaps there's software included that's used to log you in to your system once it verifies your sig. I don't expect any Tablet PC users to drop their slate form-factor for this feature, but maybe it's a hidden gem. For such a small investment it might be worth taking the plunge to find out.

(via Crave)

Three reasons I haven't been sleeping well

I don't know what their names are but these three baby birds are quite the trio. It took me nearly a half-hour to find the source of the incessant singing, which of course was in the bushes right under the bedroom window. This might explain why I've needed to visit the coffee-houses so much lately; of course, it also gives you a desktop wallpaper for the heck of it. Enjoy...I know I will when they finally fly away. ;)

Are we too tied to Google; are we supplying the rope?

Woke up this morning to the news about iGoogle, the latest official product offering from the search company. Actually, as I read through the various Techmeme story links, I see that Google really calls it a service. Let's get the name out of the way first: unfortunately, anything preceded by an "i" will cause most consumers to think "Apple". I'm willing to bet that some immediate reactions will be "Oh, Google joined with Apple for some service". Not a big deal and from what I understand, the name concept is at least two years old. Still, something I might have considered changing unless I wanted people to perceive this as a Google venture with Apple.