![[F]](/Images/i7/site.gif) TidBITS  TidBITS TidBITS Talk
Information: torrent vs trickle![[Porten, Jeff]](/webx/?30@@1) Jeff Porten (apparently) - 02:09pm Nov 16, 2004 PSTvia emailA line of thought that was inspired by the earlier Tyranny of Email
thread. It seems there's a natural tension between the fact that we're
"more productive" when we shut off the incoming data flows, and the
fact that we invite (and in some situations, require) those data flows.
Email is one of those flows; for me the obvious next one is web sites,
of which there are well over 500 I'd check regularly if given infinite
time to do so.
In my line of work as a consultant, it's vitally important to have a
great deal of data crammed into my wetware, and a lot of that data has
to be theoretical -- which means that I need to know about many things
that have nothing to do with my current work, so I can competently
field the questions that will arise next week. Most of us in the
knowledge industry have similar needs.
So my usual technique is to turn the incoming water flow higher than I
can expect myself to catch, and then rely on my tools to catch that
information for me. I subscribe to mailing lists purely for the local
archive it creates. I use Mail.appetizer to pop up my incoming, and I
keep trying (and failing) to incorporate an RSS system into my web
browsing.
But what it comes down to is how fundamentally annoyed I am at how
inadequate these tools are. I want a window in Mail.app with all of
the emails I sent or received from one person. Can't have it. I can
have it in Entourage, but only if I run that and keep those databases
synchronized. If I want only the messages relevant to what we're
working on tomorrow, forget it -- the software we're using has an
abbreviation which is a common letter combination, and I can't pull
just those messages.
Well -- perhaps if I grep the raw mbox files....
See my point? We're sitting with the grandest technology in human
history to slice and dice data, and it JUST DOESN'T WORK EFFECTIVELY.
I'm currently toying with three different applications to more
effectively manage my data (Zoe, Clarity, and DayLite), and I know
going in that it's going to cause MORE breakage. Zoe bypasses the
Mail.app spam filter, and I'd need to set up an entirely new one.
Clarity and DayLite will bypass iSync and make my calendars, to-dos,
and projects invisible to my SE P900.
Considering that I write software and databases for a living, it stuns
me how completely helpless I am to wrangle my own data into a system
that works. So I wait patiently for Spotlight and iFile and hope that
one of those is a magic bullet.
End of rant. Wondering if others feel the same frustration, and what
they've done about it. Other than Valium, that is.
Best,
Jeff
Robert McGonegal (apparently)
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Nov 17, 2004 12:13 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On 16-Nov-04, at 4:09 PM, Jeff Porten wrote:
> I want a window in Mail.app with all of
> the emails I sent or received from one person.
The various Mac rumours websites describe Mail 2 for Tiger as having
"Smart mailboxes." They appear to be the email equivalent of Smart
Playlists in iTunes.
robert mcgonegal
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Stickan (apparently)
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Nov 17, 2004 12:13 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 01:09:01PM -0800, Jeff Porten wrote:
> End of rant. Wondering if others feel the same frustration, and what
> they've done about it. Other than Valium, that is.
I am in the same situation. I have also a problem that I usually work at customer sites where i cant use my own computer.
Here is how i handle various information flows,it is not by any means a comprehensive solution.
E-mail:
Mailinglists:
If they are archived in google groups: Only subscribe when i need to ask a question
If not subscribe with unique address ( Se sender for this mail), copy to gmail account, label them with filter by to address
Mail account, calendering:
No good solution, i have my company mail system, using Lotus Notes, with custom views, a category system and full text indexing. That works pretty good.
The problem is that when i work at a customer site, usually for a couple of months, I get a mail account there also and then my mail and my meetings are in two places.
Websites:
Use RSS, i use bloglines because i need to be able to access it from different computers, some that I cant install software on.
Bookmarks:
If i find something that i want to read or just save for later, I use www.furl.net to store the content and the URL for later retrieval, i have a labeling system there also, but i usually use the full text indexing to find information that i know i have furled but cant really remember where and when :-)
Files locally: On work PC I use google desktop search, works pretty good.
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nick (apparently)
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Nov 17, 2004 12:13 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On 17/11/2004, at 8:09 AM, Jeff Porten wrote:
> I want a window in Mail.app with all of
> the emails I sent or received from one person. Can't have it.
I know this is the answer that no-one wants to hear, but you will under
Mac OS 10.4. Check out some of the preview pages on apple's site.
Basically you've got "smart folders". The same as in iTunes or iPhoto.
So you can create a client folder and have everything going in or out
to anyone at a particular domain.
As far as RSS goes, I've started to use NewsFire which I've found to be
an awesome way of not only keeping track of what news is out there, but
also deleting the stuff I don't want to read. The only extra feature
you'd probably like is a search function, but it's only a 0.29 version
at the moment.
Nick
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Lewis Butler (apparently)
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Nov 17, 2004 12:13 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:09:01 -0800, Jeff Porten <civitan  jeffporten.com> wrote:
> End of rant. Wondering if others feel the same frustration, and what
> they've done about it. Other than Valium, that is.
I agree wholeheartedly. There are no good solutions, though I have
high hopes that Spotlight will at least provide a start.
I also subscribe to several (ok, many) mailing lists solely for the
local archive. When I had a question, or error message, I check
google and my mail first.
I use tab grouping in Firefox (or Safari) to open multiple sites at
once, and I use the rss feeds in Firefox to help out.
as for searching, I am constantly frustrated with the poor search
abilities of mail.app, so my frequent mailing lists are now on my
gmail account instead of my own IMAP server.
--
::::::=== < http://2blog.kreme.com> ===::::::
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nika (apparently)
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Nov 19, 2004 8:59 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
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Robert McGonegal (apparently)
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Nov 19, 2004 8:59 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On 17-Nov-04, at 2:13 PM, Google Kreme wrote:
> as for searching, I am constantly frustrated with the poor search
> abilities of mail.app, so my frequent mailing lists are now on my
> gmail account instead of my own IMAP server.
I've noticed Mail slows down significantly once my mailboxes get close
to 1 Gb or so. Gmail seems like the best answer for now but I keep
hoping someone will create an Mail.app archive/search utility for just
this purpose. At the very least, Apple needs to extend Mail's rules to
deal with email that has already been received and moving it to
"offline" mail boxes.
robert mcgonegal
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georgewade1 (apparently)
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Nov 19, 2004 8:59 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
I have my own solution, which is not the best; only or anything
religious. It is an amalgam of left brain searches with right brain
saving and inspiration for what left brain search terms to use.
On 17 Nov, 2004, at 11:13, Google Kreme wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:09:01 -0800, Jeff Porten
> <civitan jeffporten.com> wrote:
>> End of rant. Wondering if others feel the same frustration, and what
>> they've done about it. Other than Valium, that is.
>
> I agree wholeheartedly. There are no good solutions, though I have
> high hopes that Spotlight will at least provide a start.
Suspiciously like the situation where if doctors cured us they would be
able to retire into penniless obscurity. If educators dared educate
us: they too would soon be redundant as well as society being reformed
within a generation.
If software worked and provided useful, integrated solutions:
developers could retire to Tibetan plateaus and learn to milk yaks.
> I also subscribe to several (ok, many) mailing lists solely for the
> local archive. When I had a question, or error message, I check
> google and my mail first.
I do speed read books because they are made for that purpose. Video
screens and software have not been designed to aid speed reading of
anything that you want to absorb, not just yet.
This leads to an exercise which stretches the intellect a fraction:
summarising into outline or MindMap. More interesting intellects might
put the key points into comic strips. The exercise anchors the content,
the key words link to it.
Reviewing it keeps it within the range of recall and when necessity
calls a glance at the comic strip inspires useful search strings.
> I use tab grouping in Firefox (or Safari) to open multiple sites at
> once, and I use the rss feeds in Firefox to help out.
Because we are all individuals we all have to work out our own system
of combining software; wetware; left and right brain; using the brain
before and not using the brain when searching.
George
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Nigel Stanger (apparently)
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Nov 19, 2004 9:04 am
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via email - Dunedin, New Zealand |
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On 18/11/2004 8:13 AM, "Nicholas Orr" <nick goya.com.au> spake thus:
> As far as RSS goes, I've started to use NewsFire which I've found to be
> an awesome way of not only keeping track of what news is out there, but
> also deleting the stuff I don't want to read.
The problem with this is that it's yet another tool that I have to run. I've
got to the point now where if it can't feed into my email client
(Entourage), I tend to ignore it. I ran an RSS aggregator for a while, but
the requirement to switch to another app just put me off. Maybe I'm just
weird :) but I really want some way to aggregate _everything_ into my
inbox.
Entourage (X, not 2004) is a step in the right direction, but still doesn't
really achieve this: currently my local inbox and the Exchange server inbox
are separate (although since I POP my email off the Exchange server, most
things end up in the local inbox anyway), and if I added a Hotmail account,
I'd have yet another inbox. USENET feeds are also separate.
Remember AOCE back in the System 7.1 days? It had a global inbox, and it was
set up to be extensible --- I remember thinking at the time that it wouldn't
be that difficult to add NNTP support and have USENET group messages appear
in the global inbox. Unfortunately AOCE sank without a trace and many of the
ideas it implemented have never been resurrected. A messaging tool that
allowed you to plug in whatever data feeds you wanted in an extensible
manner would be fantastic. There's no need for it to be a monolithic "do
everything" app. (In many ways, Apple has the right idea here, they just
haven't taken it far enough.)
At present, I know of no single tool that will let me do what I want. I do
know that I can cobble together a bunch of tools that will give me something
pretty close (e.g., I know of an RSS to email tool written in Python), but
who has the time to set that sort of thing up? I'm too busy trying to keep
up with my email :)
--
Nigel Stanger, < http://www.business.otago.ac.nz/infosci/>
Dept. of Information Science, < http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger>
University of Otago, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND. +64-3-479-8179
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Nik (apparently)
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Nov 22, 2004 1:00 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
I tend to read about 10 news sites (various sorts of news) each day.
I've managed to pare down the time it takes to do so using RSS feeds,
which I subscribe to in Bloglines. (I agree with others' comments that
running a separate program for news reading is a bother, esp. with over
1,000 separate headlines/day in my subscriptions!)
If you want to aggregate EVERYTHING, various email accounts offer an
RSS feed of their contents. (Gmail does an excellent job of this.)
Bloglines and other services will let you receive emails of RSS
headlines as well. Pick your poison and which app you'd rather
aggregate this information into.
Also, ask yourself if you NEED this much information. By subscribing to
a few selected blogs and combined RSS feeds (such as those offered by
moreover.com) which aggregate content from elsewhere, I can remain "in
the loop" without having to scan every single headline. (NY Times also
has the excellent "most emailed" articles feed which helps you stay up
on the meta-news that's popular.) If I need to know about something I
missed, all of these sites are archived and searchable.
But if you're getting overwhelmed and spend more time "keeping up" than
you do actually making use of this information, then your info torrent
has become entirely useless. Scale back and concentrate on what's
important for you to know.
--Nik
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Jeff Porten (apparently)
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Nov 22, 2004 1:00 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On Nov 19, 2004, at 11:04 AM, Nigel Stanger wrote:
> A messaging tool that
> allowed you to plug in whatever data feeds you wanted in an extensible
> manner would be fantastic.
You could do this with WebCrossing -- it can pull feeds for its
database in just about any Internet transport imaginable. Then it can
be served back out in the form of email, web pages, RSS, what have you.
This would be a server application gatewaying your information -- you'd
use whatever client you liked.
[Yeah, Web Crossing is kind of amazing that way. After you've gotten into its mindset, it starts seeming like the solution to almost everything. Of course, then you have to write the code, but hey, that's always true. :-) -Adam]
Best,
Jeff
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Jeff Porten (apparently)
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Nov 22, 2004 1:00 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On Nov 19, 2004, at 10:59 AM, robertm-list rmdesign.com wrote:
> I've noticed Mail slows down significantly once my mailboxes get close
> to 1 Gb or so.
I don't think it's an issue of absolute size. Earlier this week I got
sick of how slow Mail had gotten, and I cleaned it up. Broke up a lot
of multi-kilomessage folders in smaller ones. Deleted a bunch of small
folders. Flattened the hierarchy. And rebuilt all of the remaining
mailboxes.
Result: same amount of mail, and now it's all back to pretty zippy.
Best,
Jeff
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atlauren (apparently)
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Nov 23, 2004 7:39 pm
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via email - Practicing random acts of punditry. |
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
At 12:00 PM -0800 11/22/04, Jeff Porten wrote:
>Broke up a lot of multi-kilomessage folders in smaller ones.
Do you find that Mail has a message-count break point?
I ask because Eudora has a hard limit of 32,000 messages per mailbox.
I always curse a blue streak when this rears its head, as it happens
once or twice a year for folder(s) of active mailing list(s). For no
apparent reason I get "mailbox full" messages after retrieving mail;
go through each mailbox being filtered, find the full one, trim out
some older stuff, forget about it for another 8 months.
I'm sure the limit is there for a good reason, but I've always found
it to be inanely bothersome.
--
Andrew Laurence
atlauren uci.edu
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Robert McGonegal (apparently)
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Nov 23, 2004 7:39 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On 22-Nov-04, at 3:00 PM, Jeff Porten wrote:
> I don't think it's an issue of absolute size. Earlier this week I got
> sick of how slow Mail had gotten, and I cleaned it up. Broke up a lot
> of multi-kilomessage folders in smaller ones. Deleted a bunch of small
> folders. Flattened the hierarchy. And rebuilt all of the remaining
> mailboxes.
>
> Result: same amount of mail, and now it's all back to pretty zippy.
I read today that Mail.app gradually slows down the longer it is
running. So I restarted it and the difference was like night and day. I
wonder what other OS 7-era habits I should not have forgotten!
robert mcgonegal
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James Tummins (apparently)
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Nov 23, 2004 7:39 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On aggregator that I'm finding useful is DEVONthink.
I came across DEVONthink while looking for a good notebook application. As I
examined various ones, I discovered that a notebook was not an adequate
metaphor, but maybe a scrapbook or shoebox described it better. I wanted to
put all kinds of documents in my 'notebook', including PDF, text, RTF, Word,
email, URLs, and images.
DEVONthink is not a web based tool and it is Mac specific, which may be a
negative for some. And, I haven't tried to automatically feed documents from
other applications into DEVONthink yet, so I can't speak about it's
abilities there. On the other hand, it has pretty comprehensive
organizational and search capabilities, including a tool for auto
classification, search content and display by relevance, and the ability to
identify documents that may be related to one you've found, and it seems to
be very fast.
DEVONthink has a little bit of a learning curve, and I feel like I'm only
beginning to scratch its surface. It remains to be seen whether it will be
overshadowed by Spotlight, but for now it's working for me.
--
James
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angus (apparently)
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Nov 23, 2004 7:56 pm
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On Nov 23, 2004, at 9:39 PM, Andrew Laurence wrote:
> Do you find that Mail has a message-count break point?
Mail doesn't have a hard limit (currently my OSXS mailing list folder
has 41k unread messages, so probably a lot more), but I wouldn't say
its performance is stellar.
I'm getting to the point where I'm actually going to make a new account
and start over. Do it ever couple years. Rename this one, make a new
one with this name and then start again. Should probably do it every
year, but I'm too lazy.
Steve Cochran
Note: Very handy to have the local copies; Apple killed the search
feature of their mailing list archives, Bleh.
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Lewis Butler (apparently)
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Nov 28, 2004 6:56 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 18:56:50 -0800, Stephen A. Cochran
<stephen.a.cochran.lists cahir.net> wrote:
> On Nov 23, 2004, at 9:39 PM, Andrew Laurence wrote:
> Mail doesn't have a hard limit (currently my OSXS mailing list folder
> has 41k unread messages, so probably a lot more), but I wouldn't say
> its performance is stellar.
I've automated my mail to get sorted into a folder hierarchy like this:
Tidbits-talk
|--- 2004-10.tidbits-talk
|--- 2004-11.tidbits-talk
for example.
And even the mail that goes to gmail (my most frequnet mailing lists)
all get forwarded on to my "list" email account for sorting and
storage. Even very busy mailing lists don't get 40,000 messages in a
month (10,000 maybe).
This might be part of the reason I never notice a speed issue with
mail.app other than the IMAP synching even though my mail spool
contains hundreds of folders over 5-10 accounts and hundreds of
thousands of messages.
As for Eudora, everytime a new version comes out I give it a look. I
am planning on doing so for 6.2. Each time I am disappointed with how
it handles IMAP and last time I had at least one account that
absolutely would not work without a nasty kludge (the login for SMTP
one a couple of email addresses I have is different from the login for
IMAP, which in Eudora 6.1 required creating TWO separate accounts for
each of those emails. I deleted Eudora 6.1 immediately on dscovering
that).
--
::::::=== < http://2blog.kreme.com> ===::::::
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Matt Neuburg (apparently)
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Nov 28, 2004 6:56 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On or about 11/23/04 6:39 PM, thus spake "James Tummins" <jtummins mac.com>:
> One aggregator that I'm finding useful is DEVONthink.
> I came across DEVONthink while looking for a good notebook application. As I
> examined various ones, I discovered that a notebook was not an adequate
> metaphor, but maybe a scrapbook or shoebox described it better. I wanted to
> put all kinds of documents in my 'notebook', including PDF, text, RTF, Word,
> email, URLs, and images.
> DEVONthink is not a web based tool...
It's a browser, so in that sense it *is* Web-based, and even more so when
paired with its sibling application, DEVONagent. I've written extensively
about various "digital shoebox" products, including DEVONthink, in TidBITS:
< http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07575>
For others, do a search at http://db.tidbits.com on terms like "digital
shoebox" or "snippet keeper". m.
--
matt neuburg, phd = matt tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/
pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
AppleScript: the Definitive Guide! NOW SHIPPING...! (Finally.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571/somethingsbymatt
Subscribe to TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com/
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Gordon Meyer (apparently)
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Nov 28, 2004 6:56 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
> Note: Very handy to have the local copies; Apple killed the search
> feature of their mailing list archives, Bleh.
Nope, just moved (and greatly improved) it.
< http://search.lists.apple.com/>
--Gordon
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James Tummins (apparently)
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Nov 28, 2004 6:56 am
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Re: Information: torrent vs trickle
On 11/24/04 8:15 AM, "Matt Neuburg" <matt tidbits.com> wrote:
> It's a browser, so in that sense it *is* Web-based, and even more so when
> paired with its sibling application, DEVONagent.
Matt's correct in pointing out DEVONthink's integrated web browser. In that
sense, DEVONthink is integrated with the web.
What I meant by 'web-based' is one's DEVONthink database is not available
remotely through a web browser. So it will not fulfill the needs that some
have mentioned regarding working at a client's site using the client's
equipment. This limitation can be overcome if you're allowed to bring your
own PowerBook to the client site.
> I've written extensively
> about various "digital shoebox" products, including DEVONthink, in TidBITS:
>
> < http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07575>
Matt's articles reviewing various digital shoeboxes was quite helpful to me
when I was searching for something to fit my needs. They're well worth a
read.
--
James
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TidBITS TidBITS TidBITS Talk Information: torrent vs trickle
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