The simple solution I found is to use Firefox's private browsing to check another gmail account.
I can check a different account's email using "private", then easily switch back to regular and my voicemail, calendar and docs tabs haven't logged me out. (Or worse, put that other email's contacts into MY voicemail account.)
(The only liability I can imagine is not being able to directly add something to your calendar while having the email open, but you could use gCal or some other firefox plugin to get around that I'd presume.)
*Facepalm*, my apologies, I was presuming young ignorance, not older stubbornness.
Fully half of the article linked previously is 1990s and on. Do I really need to copy/paste the entire thing? Sorry, so not going to happen.
Ford electrics, Jeep electrics, Solectria CitiVans, then after 2000, Daimler-Chrysler electrics, Ford Ranger electrics, heck even multiple versions of electric scooters from Segways to three wheeled versions with trailers.
"Although electric vehicles represented only a small fraction of the Postal Service’s delivery fleet in 2008, together with other types of alternative-fuel vehicles they constituted nearly 20 percent of its 220,000 vehicles......representing the largest civilian fleet of alternative fuel-capable vehicles in the world"
In December 1899, a letter carrier tested a Winton electric automobile for mail collection in Cleveland, Ohio. He collected mail from 126 boxes along a 22-mile route in two hours and 26 minutes, during a snowstorm. With a horse and wagon, it usually took six hours.
In 1901 gas were more useful.
In 1911, they used electric in New York.
As parcel post began and packages were heavier, more electric vehicles were needed.
However by 1917 nearly all commercial vehicles made in the US were gasoline powered.
I'm guessing you don't remember the 1960s, when they had some electric "mailsters".
Then again in the early 1970s, the Cupertino post office switched their entire fleet to electric until 1983.
I'll leave it to you to read the rest, as there's been a bunch of testing since then too, your preposterous criticism notwithstanding.
However, getting back to the topic at large, eliminating Saturday delivery reduces their relevance, as a primary reason to choose them for delivery IS Saturday. If they get rid of that advantage, the only reason to use them is reliability, and they'll lose even more business to competitors.
I believe I saw that demonstration in elementary or middle school back in the 1970s or 1980s. In high school, our physics teacher showed a feather falling in a vacuum (much cooler). Get with the '80s already!;-)
Ironically you aren't even limited to 140, you can send infinite messages, or a link to longer writings if you prefer.
However in daily use, most messages I send and receive are shorter than that. A wonderful benefit is it's faster to read/digest when people condense their thought, instead of rambling emails that say little to nothing.
Why don't you worry about your own privacy, and let everyone else worry about there's.... Are they curtailing your ability to preserve your own privacy?
Actually yes. I appreciate the poster you responded to getting upset at people reading their SMS, because the people who sent TO him expected them to only be read by him. He was protecting their privacy as well as his own.
Similarly, if I send you an email, text, snail mail, direct message via Twitter, I am trusting you'll treat it appropriately. Most of my peers ask me before they consider forwarding/copying/quoting me--I might choose to be credited, or prefer to not be associated with it's new context.
Privacy is something we all have to protect together.
In your example, if you share your own minutiae, that's all well and good, but if you share details that include MY activities, whereabouts, identity, etcetera, that's you compromising my safety/finances/et al.
Your actions affect others, that's what society is about. I'm glad there are people, like the poster, who acknowledge the bigger picture, and the results when the masses make choices that impact the rest of us.
Actually I tried multiple times with digital broadcast. A bit before the transition and twice several months afterward with multiple types of antenna rotated in a myriad of directions (one radio station loves the antenna to be horizontal).
Sadly, I used to have analog cable for $35/month. That was worse than analog broadcast, which was free and the same amount of commercials. However I wanted SciFi among others (before it became the Syphilis channel). Digital cable brought with it required rental of a box, rental of a remote, their "info service" of weather and crap I'd get online faster which frequently was empty anyway. It regularly went out and I had to call for service credits, all this for $79.48 (I rounded too).
I tried AT&T U-verse as an alternative, but it particularly cheaper, offered less digital artifacts, but their box wouldn't stay on 24/7 nor talk to my DVR, like the cable box would. I kept them as an ISP though.
I was shocked at how poor digital broadcast was, I grew up in the broadcast radius of the same cities I live now, spoiled with all the VHF channels as well as half a dozen UHF.
I'm glad your experience was better. I'm also glad you realize the whole world doesn't revolve around you. The summary suggests you are in the lucky majority (of course only 200 were surveyed). Sucks to be here (in this regard), ironically one of the more population dense areas of the U.S.
Yeah, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea, analog cable was beautiful, reliable, worked even in bad conditions. Digital cable was more expensive, would regularly be unwatchable and had compression artifacts. Result? Expensive downgrade.
Analog TV was beautiful and worked even in bad condtions. Digital TV? Had to buy a converter box for more than the rebate coupon. Couldn't receive a single regular channel so had to buy an amplifier, still couldn't receive a single regular channel. Result? Expensive downgrade.
Finally, fed up, I trashed it all and switched to Hulu, which at least when it screws up doesn't negate my recording and can be watched later.
One analog s-video cable from my laptop to my TV was cheaper than all the digital hardware costs/rentals. (And I'm saving nearly $1000/year.)
Even better was when I used my tethered cellphone as my broadband access several years ago, it showed up as two states over instead of anywhere near me, clearly highlighting what I had no interest in.
You can work that to your advantage, I wondered why the commercials I saw on Hulu mostly featured hot women, closeup shots of their legs and other body parts, stretching, bending and doing exercise poses, fashionably adorned, until I double-checked my profile on Hulu and saw I'd clicked "female".
Score!
(If they start showing me sexy lingerie ads, I might even click the "is this ad relevant to you" yes box.)
Twitter's 'Promoted Tweets' platform already allows advertisers to insert ads directly into its users' Twitter feeds.
No it does not.
As detailed here, promoted tweets are NOT displayed in user's feeds at all, but only in search results currently.
They do go on to explain they will review feedback, and potentially expand them, keeping the option open to include them in users' feeds, specifically if there's value in doing so.
I search and use the service daily, and have yet to receive a single ad.
Unfortunately, the only "asset" Facebook has to monetize is the wealth of personal information that has been poured into the system by every one of those 400 million users. Facebook has understood this from day one, its user community has not.
Ditto for Twitter.
I disagree completely, Twitter is more akin to SMS and Google search services.
People don't generally share personal info info on twitter (some may), but they communicate THROUGH Twitter. Twitter is just group SMS, where interested parties can listen and share.
One of the biggest strengths of it is the ability to search these real time communications. (For example, you search it before you drive to find out the condition of traffic on your route, you automatically receive alerts of where speed traps might be, you find out what's going on by being told, rather than having to seek info you might have been ignorant of desiring.)
You could delete all the prior messages up to this point in time, and the value of the Twitter service remains unchanged.
I'll point over to the Amiga Slashdot article discussion, since I use an OS multiple times a week that can run software that dates back to the 1980's. (I have data I created in the 90's accessible.)
Why shouldn't an OS last?
I guess I understand your perspective, given your mention that you don't expect cars to last either, while most my peers have cars far older, the newest is 9 years old and the oldest is from 1971.
Oh wait, I was forgetting a friend's Audi TT, that might be less than 9 years old. (To the next message about old farts, she's actually on the older side of the late 20s to early 40s people I'm thinking of.)
Heck, my entire life and to this day my parents have had a car from 1952, it gets better gas mileage than some others they've owned since.
Sorry, when something works well, it's wise to continue, rather than investing in something trendy.
Even more practical than that, a tenant literally just handed me some cash, I'm popping into my Amiga software (I created with CanDo years ago) as we speak to record the transaction, with records going back almost two decades. All my banking/financial stuff I do w/Amiga software.
Okay technically my daily use "Amiga" is currently WinUAE running on my laptop, but I always wanted a laptop Amiga (and I have an A4000 and A500 still kicking, actually bought the A4000, my second, just a couple years ago for ridiculously little money from an Amiga dealer).
So the answer is you can still do some things easier on an Amiga, but web surfing via AWeb was annoying (and no Flash), that's what took me to a Linux box and ultimately to Windows. However I miss ARexx integration, standard through all software, to this day--AutoHotKey in Windows is a poor substitute.
I have MP3s that were brought over from my Amiga, as well as digital photos from way before digital cameras were mainstream, heck the background screenshot on my cellphone is carried over (was digitized with DCTV and composited/converted to JPEG with ADPro).
Just because it's not currently being promoted doesn't mean it doesn't work! Heck, it was easier/cheaper to connect my PDA to my Amiga than it was to connect it to my laptop.
Also they are opposites, movies are passive experiences where the audience is along for the ride, while games are interactive where the player drives the action and story.
I love playing chess, but would never go to a chess-based movie. A movie about chess, or about a chess player, sure. Similarly, movies I love I might go to well-received sequels of, but I don't want to replace the main character with myself, or believe I can finger-twitch better then the writers of good plot.
In games, the "character growth" is your skills improving and achieving more, surmounting the challenges. In movies, the character growth is story driven, and we've become jaded to just surmounting their fabricated obstacles, so deeper layers have been added that are meaningless to game play.
Just because both are vastly entertaining, bring in oodles of money, involved some similar design processes, does not mean they are equatable!
Next will we have Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", the game? Admittedly, I might watch if OK Go somehow "Rube Goldberg"'ed some games into a video.
Actually, I wish AltaVista still existed (it's back end became Yahoo--useless), because you could do a literal search that Google no longer can do.
Originally Google achieved success not with tons of results (like everyone else at the time), but specific results of just what you were seeking.
Nowadays, they throw in tons of results and the kitchen sink, including variations in spelling and alternatives that you don't want.
It used to be Google was better because the first results page had a useful link. Nowadays you can click through all the results on the first result page and find nothing that relates to what you tried to search.
You can try adding quotes or +'s, which used to work, but now seem to be largely ignored. (It sometimes helps to - the alternatives, but not if it won't search your term to begin with, only if it's listing alternatives ahead of your search.)
Worse, Google Images won't "AND" results at all, but always "OR"s them.
Sadly the competitors have seen Google as a leader and try to do more of this "give them what we believe they are asking for, rather than what they actually want".
If anyone knows an alternative, literal web search, à la the original Alta Vista, I'd love to hear about it. Searching Twitter gives me limited results!
Just FYI, Mike Massimino was the first to regularly send public messages via Twitter from the Space Shuttle (on the mission they upgraded Hubble). It was most interesting seeing him adapt to being back on Earth.
Other folks in space have since, including @Astro_Soichi, who regularly posted great pictures from the ISS to his Twitter account.
Here's a list of, wow, now twenty astronauts' Twitter accounts. The @NASA_Astronauts combines all their messages into one account, but most would be earthbound and it would be lots of messages, probably better in an RSS reader or email digest than getting dinged with messages all the time.
On my gmail account, I get e-mail sent to another gmail account that is similar to my account name but 3 letters longer. Whenever I send mail to that account, it goes directly to me.
This might not apply, just a shot in the dark, but the "3 letters longer" doesn't begin with + does it?
You can put "+whatever" after your gmail account name and the account will receive it. This feature permits tracking the source of spam and filtering out emails you don't wish to receive. (IE, "me+sd@gmail" arrives at "me@gmail")
Apparently you can also include periods anywhere in an email address and they are stripped out and delivered to the account. So "me@gmail" and "m.e@gmail" both go to the former.
If this is the case, the simplest solution is to filter those messages to trash.
Yet having knowledge provides context in the search for knowledge.
A great example of this is with the same organizations "Solar Stormwatch" program, frequently people will ask in the forums for confirmation of their interpretation of something they've seen. Someone with experience can say, that is "X", mark it, or ignore it, as appropriate.
The purpose is to improve the signal to noise ratio, which increases the productivity of researchers.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes and as soon as I was able to access his site later that night I downloaded...oh wait, nevermind, I have no idea what you are talking about.
I thought they would be paying us to watch the ads. No? Although $9.99 isn't enough honestly, pay me $5/week and I'll actually watch ads in shows.
Don't forget intersex, hermaphrodites and other non-boy/non-girl sexes!
The simple solution I found is to use Firefox's private browsing to check another gmail account.
I can check a different account's email using "private", then easily switch back to regular and my voicemail, calendar and docs tabs haven't logged me out. (Or worse, put that other email's contacts into MY voicemail account.)
(The only liability I can imagine is not being able to directly add something to your calendar while having the email open, but you could use gCal or some other firefox plugin to get around that I'd presume.)
Thanks! I appreciate your condolences, albeit not for my choice to limit the extent of our sidetrack... ;-)
*Facepalm*, my apologies, I was presuming young ignorance, not older stubbornness.
Fully half of the article linked previously is 1990s and on. Do I really need to copy/paste the entire thing? Sorry, so not going to happen.
Ford electrics, Jeep electrics, Solectria CitiVans, then after 2000, Daimler-Chrysler electrics, Ford Ranger electrics, heck even multiple versions of electric scooters from Segways to three wheeled versions with trailers.
"Although electric vehicles represented only a small fraction of the Postal Service’s delivery fleet in 2008, together with other types of alternative-fuel vehicles they constituted nearly 20 percent of its 220,000 vehicles... ...representing the largest civilian fleet of alternative fuel-capable vehicles in the world"
My condolences your assumption is inaccurate.
Actually they are one of the most innovative organizations, and the other delivery services adopt what the USPS does to a lesser degree.
See this PDF: Postal Electric Vehicles
In December 1899, a letter carrier tested a Winton electric automobile for mail collection in Cleveland, Ohio. He collected mail from 126 boxes along a 22-mile route in two hours and 26 minutes, during a snowstorm. With a horse and wagon, it usually took six hours.
In 1901 gas were more useful.
In 1911, they used electric in New York.
As parcel post began and packages were heavier, more electric vehicles were needed.
However by 1917 nearly all commercial vehicles made in the US were gasoline powered.
I'm guessing you don't remember the 1960s, when they had some electric "mailsters".
Then again in the early 1970s, the Cupertino post office switched their entire fleet to electric until 1983.
I'll leave it to you to read the rest, as there's been a bunch of testing since then too, your preposterous criticism notwithstanding.
However, getting back to the topic at large, eliminating Saturday delivery reduces their relevance, as a primary reason to choose them for delivery IS Saturday. If they get rid of that advantage, the only reason to use them is reliability, and they'll lose even more business to competitors.
Destroyed the books!? This was a show, I was telling my friends who hadn't seen it yet, that was a rare case of being better than the books!
It's obviously subjective, but wowzers...
Which clearly demonstrates why "great" shows don't stay on, because shows that aren't pablum, lose too much audience.
I believe I saw that demonstration in elementary or middle school back in the 1970s or 1980s. In high school, our physics teacher showed a feather falling in a vacuum (much cooler). Get with the '80s already! ;-)
Pfft, I fit all of LOTR in 125 characters for a short story collection.
Ironically you aren't even limited to 140, you can send infinite messages, or a link to longer writings if you prefer.
However in daily use, most messages I send and receive are shorter than that. A wonderful benefit is it's faster to read/digest when people condense their thought, instead of rambling emails that say little to nothing.
Why don't you worry about your own privacy, and let everyone else worry about there's. ... Are they curtailing your ability to preserve your own privacy?
Actually yes. I appreciate the poster you responded to getting upset at people reading their SMS, because the people who sent TO him expected them to only be read by him. He was protecting their privacy as well as his own.
Similarly, if I send you an email, text, snail mail, direct message via Twitter, I am trusting you'll treat it appropriately. Most of my peers ask me before they consider forwarding/copying/quoting me--I might choose to be credited, or prefer to not be associated with it's new context.
Privacy is something we all have to protect together.
In your example, if you share your own minutiae, that's all well and good, but if you share details that include MY activities, whereabouts, identity, etcetera, that's you compromising my safety/finances/et al.
Your actions affect others, that's what society is about. I'm glad there are people, like the poster, who acknowledge the bigger picture, and the results when the masses make choices that impact the rest of us.
...you can't go back to the 1980s either. The past is the past.
I remember when the 80s was the future man...and we were going to party like it's 1999!
Now there's less modding and more "will it blend"?
Actually I tried multiple times with digital broadcast. A bit before the transition and twice several months afterward with multiple types of antenna rotated in a myriad of directions (one radio station loves the antenna to be horizontal).
Sadly, I used to have analog cable for $35/month. That was worse than analog broadcast, which was free and the same amount of commercials. However I wanted SciFi among others (before it became the Syphilis channel). Digital cable brought with it required rental of a box, rental of a remote, their "info service" of weather and crap I'd get online faster which frequently was empty anyway. It regularly went out and I had to call for service credits, all this for $79.48 (I rounded too).
I tried AT&T U-verse as an alternative, but it particularly cheaper, offered less digital artifacts, but their box wouldn't stay on 24/7 nor talk to my DVR, like the cable box would. I kept them as an ISP though.
I was shocked at how poor digital broadcast was, I grew up in the broadcast radius of the same cities I live now, spoiled with all the VHF channels as well as half a dozen UHF.
I'm glad your experience was better. I'm also glad you realize the whole world doesn't revolve around you. The summary suggests you are in the lucky majority (of course only 200 were surveyed). Sucks to be here (in this regard), ironically one of the more population dense areas of the U.S.
Yeah, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea, analog cable was beautiful, reliable, worked even in bad conditions. Digital cable was more expensive, would regularly be unwatchable and had compression artifacts. Result? Expensive downgrade.
Analog TV was beautiful and worked even in bad condtions. Digital TV? Had to buy a converter box for more than the rebate coupon. Couldn't receive a single regular channel so had to buy an amplifier, still couldn't receive a single regular channel. Result? Expensive downgrade.
Finally, fed up, I trashed it all and switched to Hulu, which at least when it screws up doesn't negate my recording and can be watched later.
One analog s-video cable from my laptop to my TV was cheaper than all the digital hardware costs/rentals. (And I'm saving nearly $1000/year.)
Yay for analog!
Even better was when I used my tethered cellphone as my broadband access several years ago, it showed up as two states over instead of anywhere near me, clearly highlighting what I had no interest in.
You can work that to your advantage, I wondered why the commercials I saw on Hulu mostly featured hot women, closeup shots of their legs and other body parts, stretching, bending and doing exercise poses, fashionably adorned, until I double-checked my profile on Hulu and saw I'd clicked "female".
Score!
(If they start showing me sexy lingerie ads, I might even click the "is this ad relevant to you" yes box.)
Twitter's 'Promoted Tweets' platform already allows advertisers to insert ads directly into its users' Twitter feeds.
No it does not.
As detailed here, promoted tweets are NOT displayed in user's feeds at all, but only in search results currently.
They do go on to explain they will review feedback, and potentially expand them, keeping the option open to include them in users' feeds, specifically if there's value in doing so.
I search and use the service daily, and have yet to receive a single ad.
Unfortunately, the only "asset" Facebook has to monetize is the wealth of personal information that has been poured into the system by every one of those 400 million users. Facebook has understood this from day one, its user community has not.
Ditto for Twitter.
I disagree completely, Twitter is more akin to SMS and Google search services.
People don't generally share personal info info on twitter (some may), but they communicate THROUGH Twitter. Twitter is just group SMS, where interested parties can listen and share.
One of the biggest strengths of it is the ability to search these real time communications. (For example, you search it before you drive to find out the condition of traffic on your route, you automatically receive alerts of where speed traps might be, you find out what's going on by being told, rather than having to seek info you might have been ignorant of desiring.)
You could delete all the prior messages up to this point in time, and the value of the Twitter service remains unchanged.
I'll point over to the Amiga Slashdot article discussion, since I use an OS multiple times a week that can run software that dates back to the 1980's. (I have data I created in the 90's accessible.)
Why shouldn't an OS last?
I guess I understand your perspective, given your mention that you don't expect cars to last either, while most my peers have cars far older, the newest is 9 years old and the oldest is from 1971.
Oh wait, I was forgetting a friend's Audi TT, that might be less than 9 years old. (To the next message about old farts, she's actually on the older side of the late 20s to early 40s people I'm thinking of.)
Heck, my entire life and to this day my parents have had a car from 1952, it gets better gas mileage than some others they've owned since.
Sorry, when something works well, it's wise to continue, rather than investing in something trendy.
Even more practical than that, a tenant literally just handed me some cash, I'm popping into my Amiga software (I created with CanDo years ago) as we speak to record the transaction, with records going back almost two decades. All my banking/financial stuff I do w/Amiga software.
Okay technically my daily use "Amiga" is currently WinUAE running on my laptop, but I always wanted a laptop Amiga (and I have an A4000 and A500 still kicking, actually bought the A4000, my second, just a couple years ago for ridiculously little money from an Amiga dealer).
So the answer is you can still do some things easier on an Amiga, but web surfing via AWeb was annoying (and no Flash), that's what took me to a Linux box and ultimately to Windows. However I miss ARexx integration, standard through all software, to this day--AutoHotKey in Windows is a poor substitute.
I have MP3s that were brought over from my Amiga, as well as digital photos from way before digital cameras were mainstream, heck the background screenshot on my cellphone is carried over (was digitized with DCTV and composited/converted to JPEG with ADPro).
Just because it's not currently being promoted doesn't mean it doesn't work! Heck, it was easier/cheaper to connect my PDA to my Amiga than it was to connect it to my laptop.
Also they are opposites, movies are passive experiences where the audience is along for the ride, while games are interactive where the player drives the action and story.
I love playing chess, but would never go to a chess-based movie. A movie about chess, or about a chess player, sure. Similarly, movies I love I might go to well-received sequels of, but I don't want to replace the main character with myself, or believe I can finger-twitch better then the writers of good plot.
In games, the "character growth" is your skills improving and achieving more, surmounting the challenges. In movies, the character growth is story driven, and we've become jaded to just surmounting their fabricated obstacles, so deeper layers have been added that are meaningless to game play.
Just because both are vastly entertaining, bring in oodles of money, involved some similar design processes, does not mean they are equatable!
Next will we have Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", the game? Admittedly, I might watch if OK Go somehow "Rube Goldberg"'ed some games into a video.
Actually, I wish AltaVista still existed (it's back end became Yahoo--useless), because you could do a literal search that Google no longer can do.
Originally Google achieved success not with tons of results (like everyone else at the time), but specific results of just what you were seeking.
Nowadays, they throw in tons of results and the kitchen sink, including variations in spelling and alternatives that you don't want.
It used to be Google was better because the first results page had a useful link. Nowadays you can click through all the results on the first result page and find nothing that relates to what you tried to search.
You can try adding quotes or +'s, which used to work, but now seem to be largely ignored. (It sometimes helps to - the alternatives, but not if it won't search your term to begin with, only if it's listing alternatives ahead of your search.)
Worse, Google Images won't "AND" results at all, but always "OR"s them.
Sadly the competitors have seen Google as a leader and try to do more of this "give them what we believe they are asking for, rather than what they actually want".
If anyone knows an alternative, literal web search, à la the original Alta Vista, I'd love to hear about it. Searching Twitter gives me limited results!
Just FYI, Mike Massimino was the first to regularly send public messages via Twitter from the Space Shuttle (on the mission they upgraded Hubble). It was most interesting seeing him adapt to being back on Earth.
Other folks in space have since, including @Astro_Soichi, who regularly posted great pictures from the ISS to his Twitter account.
Here's a list of, wow, now twenty astronauts' Twitter accounts. The @NASA_Astronauts combines all their messages into one account, but most would be earthbound and it would be lots of messages, probably better in an RSS reader or email digest than getting dinged with messages all the time.
On my gmail account, I get e-mail sent to another gmail account that is similar to my account name but 3 letters longer. Whenever I send mail to that account, it goes directly to me.
This might not apply, just a shot in the dark, but the "3 letters longer" doesn't begin with + does it?
You can put "+whatever" after your gmail account name and the account will receive it. This feature permits tracking the source of spam and filtering out emails you don't wish to receive. (IE, "me+sd@gmail" arrives at "me@gmail")
Apparently you can also include periods anywhere in an email address and they are stripped out and delivered to the account. So "me@gmail" and "m.e@gmail" both go to the former.
If this is the case, the simplest solution is to filter those messages to trash.
Yet having knowledge provides context in the search for knowledge.
A great example of this is with the same organizations "Solar Stormwatch" program, frequently people will ask in the forums for confirmation of their interpretation of something they've seen. Someone with experience can say, that is "X", mark it, or ignore it, as appropriate.
The purpose is to improve the signal to noise ratio, which increases the productivity of researchers.