Can’t believe this functionality is not more promoted, but if you use gmail you will appreciate this…

When reading an email, if you want to archive and then read the next email message (instead of having to go back to the inbox and then open the next) you just have to hit [

After a full work day in front of the computer, the last thing I want
to do when I get home is use the laptop. Bet you often feel the same.

In our intense digital world we need to be able to disconnect, at
least a little bit, at least sometimes and computers can be
used for fun and entertainment… but you associate them with
work.

So this is what I wish I had on my lap when sitting on the sofa
surfing the web or using instant messaging …. I wish not my hot laptop burning my legs, I wish not by blackberry with the small screen… I wish that the
promise of the tablet pcs had become true and I could use a big screen
with the same ease with which I use a notepad or read a magazine.

If it does not look like my work computer then it will not feel like work.

So dear Steve Jobs, this is what I want for Xmas: I want a notepad
sized iphone. Please disregard the other pundits asking for iphone
nanos, you can get to them later in the product roadmap. What I need is a cool
solution to my urgent desire.

Don’t need the phone bit, just give me a beautiful touchscreen with
good wifi connectivity and great multimedia capabilities. And while
you are at it, please add an integrated webcam for skype.

I can’t trust getting the user interface to anyone else so I am sure
you will do a great job…. and that using a computer at home will
become something more fun and casual.

As Jeff Bezos did when he was designing the kindle… I am looking for that magic invisible device.

[image via Flickr]

What a great legacy he has left behind:

As many of you know, I have been a huge fan of the Rhapsody subscription service for quite so time now.

When I need my music “to go” I have so far relied on my sansa m250. Still, the software glitches have made the thing unusable lately with far too many “synchronize to continue” and disk reformatting to make it worthwhile.

So I decided to look for.a portable light player that I could use in my running training. Ipods were out of the question as I wanted to opt out of the itunes ecosystem, and the shuffle does not have a display.

I decided to get a sansa clip at my local Best Buy. So far so good… very light, easy to set up, has good sound and a nice display.

So far I have gotten no error messages… fingers crossed… maybe subscription based portable devices are ready for mass market.

Sometimes clumsy DRM just slows down success.

[Image via Flickr]

I had always been hesitant to try out online shoe retailer zappos.com and when I first did a few days ago, this is what happened:

Dear Juan Lopez-Valcarcel,

Good news! Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days) shipping and handling, we have given your order special priority processing in our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame for your order.

Your order will ship out today and be given a special priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised! Please note that this is being done at no additional cost to you. It is simply our way of saying thank you for being our customer.

[...] We are constantly striving to improve our service. If there is anything that we can do to help improve your experience, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We like to think of ourselves as a service company that happens to sell shoes, clothing, and a whole bunch of other stuff! If you’ve enjoyed your experience with us, please tell your friends and family about Zappos.com! Thank you!

In the online world, the same rule applies as in the offline:
Happiness = Reality - Expectations.

So there is nothing like it to build customer loyalty than to underpromise and overdeliver.

I am now a happy Zappos customer and (guess what) I am telling you all about it… how’s that for word of mouth driven by top notch service

[Beijing Olympic Stadium via Flickr]

From the NYTimes:
With the Beijing Olympics less than two months away, hotel operators, travel agencies, and foreign businessmen say new Chinese visa restrictions are proving bad for business, casting a pall over Beijing during what was supposed to be a busy and jubilant tourist season leading up to the Olympic Games.

I experienced this first hand a month ago while getting my own visa: longer queues than last time, multiple new requirements, hassle, hassle, hassle… I just hope this gets sorted out before the Olympics so that more people can visit China and admire first hand the amazing growth trajectory of the country.

As a fan of political debate, I was very saddened by the loss of journalist Tim Russert last Friday. If it’s Sunday… it’s Meet the Press…. and that was the show that I waited for all week.

Turns out that he was also a true believer in the importance of friends and family… and of treasuring life’s moments. He will be missed by many.

I have pasted above a video from the memorial service where Bruce Springsteen dedicates Thunder road to him. May he rest in peace.

[Vantage Point Poster via Flickr]

A few weeks ago I watched Vantage Point, an engrossing movie about the US President and the Secret Service that takes place in Salamanca (Spain).

There was something too perfect about the way Salamanca was being shown on screen… so I looked up the shooting location and foudn out that the film was actually shot in Mexico with a reproduction of the main Plaza Mayor (Square) of Salamanca:

To build this plaza, the production discovered an ideal place in the southern part of Mexico City. Executive Producer Callum Greene explains, “We found an abandoned four-story mall which became a perfect area for us. We built our construction, carpentry, metal work, and plastic shops in the abandoned mall. Next to it was a pit where we built our Plaza Mayor.”

There is something about the scale of efforts of money that goes into movie productions that got me thinking about the boundary that still separates the movie business from TV, videogames or online. To get a sense of scale of this production, imagine building Times Square on a set to show a realistic backdrop to a movie.

So how long must we wait until a film studio automatically goes for computer generated effects to create such an illusion and not old-school carpentry? I don’t follow the film industry that much but thought we were very close to being able to realistically reproduce any environment in detail… take for example Grand Theft Auto.

Who knows, maybe we still have a couple more years of “pit building” for movies. In the meantime, enjoy the show, and the carpentry.

I was recently in China for a trip and walked by an internet cafe.
There, I saw at least half of all people in the cafe using a chat program with a little penguin.
Then when I used a local mobile phone it had the same logo and I got intrigued.
Finally I talked with the locals about this penguin and it all became clear, this is a huge success story that is seldom heard of in the West…

QQ is the third most popular instant messaging platform in the world, with 160M accounts in China alone. Do you know of anyone outside of China (and apparently South Africa) using it?

[Image via Flickr of a Beck fan]

When I subscribed to Portfolio magazine I never thought I would enjoy it as much as I am loving the current issue. Here are a couple of great quotes on the future of the music business:

“For-profit culture will move toward the nonreproducible, more thrilling aspects of music,” says economist Tyler Cowen, author of Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding. Since perfect copies of music can be made and distributed for almost nothing, he says, the value moves to one-of-a-kind experiences, like a Jimmy Buffett concert. As even Ashley Dupré, Eliot Spitzer’s favorite escort and would-be pop diva, can use pitch-correction software to record a perfect track, consumers increasingly will treasure the ephemeral, even flawed, live experience.

“Everybody has gotten accustomed to a kind of flawlessness that doesn’t exist in reality,” says Mary Davis, a music-history professor at Case Western. “Reality is sometimes awful, but it’s more human.” And, yeah, we’ll pay for that.

As media consumers it is easy to get jaded by polished perfection that rings fake.

The same way I prefer quaint shops to malls, spicy food over bland and backpacking vs. business travel, theater to the movies, I truly enjoy the magic of live music and the imperfect yet real experience of seeing it happen right there in front of you.

In the online world, the equivalent might be the value of the quick blog post and twitter vs. the lengthy article. Both have a reason of being but maybe that immediacy factor is what really engages you.

The other factor that to me makes live music or art unique is how it can be ephemeral.
In art, when Christo did The Gates project in NYC he was very clear about how this would be only available for a moment in time — this added to the uniqueness of the collective experience to make it even more memorable. In music, there is always a certain point in the life cycle of a band when you get that feeling that the band is at its peak and things might soon change (e.g., band about to break up like Smashing Pumpkins in 1998). When you combine that moment with the rawness of the live experience it becomes unforgettable… and priceless. When you listen to the studio CD, it’s ok but it is a different experience.