the other day i had a really simple idea about how to potentially make reply all easier, which is a problem i’ve been mulling on the back burner for a while.
i was reminded of it today because gmail ate one of my messages when i switched between reply and reply all!!
aarrghh!!
so i wanted to make a little mockup.

the basic idea is to get rid of reply all as a separate button, and just incorporate an awareness of who you’re replying to into the send button.

this could also handle the problem of replying to a list AND replying to the last person who wrote to the list, which leads to annoying duplication.

i sang a little song to myself while i was finishing my lunch.
maybe later i will record a stunning rendition as an excuse to play with the voice recording features on my mp3 player, which i’ve been trying to get myself to use more recently.
in case i don’t get around to it, it went something like:
“num num nuuuummm, num num nuuuum, num num nuuuuum, num num nuuuuum.
num num nuuuummm, num num nuuuum, num num num num num num num.”

26 years, 8 months, and 20 days went into that one.
oh yeah.

david and i talked a while the other night about economic disparity (to summarize very poorly), and more specifically, about the completely different economies that emerge for people who have a lot of money. it started by talking about fancy restaurants, and i commented on how crazy it is that, once you pass a certain threshold, price really starts to be based on factors that have nothing to do with cost or quality – it simply costs an amount that only people with a certain amount of money will be able to afford, and part of what you are buying, by paying that much, is prestige.
i understand this in some ways and am totally baffled by it in others.
i understand the reasoning behind it, but as i said to david, i still just can’t get over the fact that the currency that forms the basis of these elite economies is still actually Real money. that, as much financial sense as it might make for a billionaire to spend $1,000 on dinner, that very same $1,000, in the hands of a poor family in Africa, would be a full year’s income for three or four adults.
this is bizarre to me, and as much as i know that the picture is much more complex, it strikes me as excessive. i don’t expect the gap to disappear, but i can’t help but think that it could be quite a bit smaller without even requiring the upper crust to tighten its belts.

anyway, we went back and forth about these things for a while, with david playing devil’s advocate for the complexity of the situation and for the rights of the wealthy to spend their money as they please.
it got a bit frustrating near the end because i felt like my argument was getting diverted into a “rich people should be more compassionate” speech, which wasn’t my point at all. i was really just saying that i was puzzled by the economics of extreme wealth. i think that it’s strange that the economy of wealth and the economy of subsistence are so incredibly far apart, and i don’t really get why the market doesn’t offer more choices for the “i want nice things but i’m not trying to prove anything so don’t jack around with the pricing” niche. why is it easy to get dinner on a scale between $10 and $100, and then easy again on a scale between $300 and $500, but much harder in between? i conjectured that maybe i should start a business with the goal of selling high quality goods for a small but sustainable profit and then marking them up to appeal to the “i pay this much because i can” crowd, but with the catch that i give the difference between my profit and the markup to charity.
that’s kind of an interesting idea, but it’s kind of an artificial workaround. what i was really grappling with was the question of why the gap exists in the first place.

david agreed that there’s something kind of funny about it, and then we had one of those “ok, um…. yeah, so what about [something else]?” kind of topic shifts.

so that’s fine. still more interesting stuff there, i guess, but what i am actually posting about is that i was thinking about it a little more after we hung up, and i started wondering, as i often do, about how the core of what lit me up in that discussion relates to what i want to do for a living. i asked myself what really bothered me about it, and what i thought should be done, and i hit on the idea that i might just be bothered by the nagging feeling that the market isn’t filling the gap because people don’t have enough information. i thought about things like the organic food/sweatshop-free/fair trade movements, and how i believe that more people really would consider those kinds of factors in their buying habits if it weren’t just too much to think about. this came up monday when i was shopping with tiffanie and we started talking about mcdonalds and walmart.

[still drafting…]

here’s article one, section nine, clause two:
“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

habeas corpus is the right to be charged for a crime before you are jailed.
roughly translated as: “you have the body” it boils down to a call for proof of that basic fact. you can’t arrest someone unless you actually have them, and, conversely, in matters of criminal justice, you can’t have them unless you’ve arrested them. this is all that habeas corpus says. it does not entitle the prisoner to a trial (much less a trial that is fair or juried). it does not even require that the allegations against the prisoner be substantiated. that all comes later. habeas corpus is the bedrock upon which the pyramid of criminal rights can be built. it simply says that, if you want to arrest someone, you have to say “hey! i’m arresting this person!” and stand still long enough for a judge to say “which person?” and look to see that the person is actually there, and alive. if you have recently bludgeoned or beaten the person, the judge will also have a chance to see that, though habeas corpus does not itself make a judgement one way or another on whether this matters. it simply says that the circumstances have to be such that the fact that you are arresting someone for something will be placed on the record.
it’s a way of guarding against the government scooping people up, shoving them in the basement, and then going “what, who, me? i’ve never heard of this kynthia of whom you speak. go back to shining my shoes, will you?”
that’s been generally accepted as bad form for a pretty long time.
which is not to say it doesn’t still happen.
it’s just to say that everyone, when pressed, agrees that it probably shouldn’t.
hurrah, civilization!
(more…)

the other day i was chatting with erik and we started talking about google’s recent acquisition habits.
that’s actually a bit of an exaggeration.
what really happened was that i Started to talk about said recent habits, but then realized i didn’t have that much to say:

12:54 AM
me: don’t some people think they’re being somewhat risky in the mergers and acquisitions department?
Erik: they haven’t merged with anyone. :)
me: :) i know , they just go together
Erik: who have they bought?
picasa?
keyhole?
blogger?
12:55 AM
me: they’re buying up little people pretty often
Erik: a handful of tiny companies.
they seem to be being pretty careful.
me: yeah, i don’t really know enough to say. i feel like i read something the other day about some going out on limbs, but i can’t remember what now, so maybe i made it up
12:56 AM
Erik: this is interesting: “As the market leader, we need to ensure search doesn’t become a commodity.”
that’s the kind of shit I think can hurt markets.
me: i don’t have enough delicious tags to be able to go google+acquisitions+shaky+recent+buzz
Erik: :)
can’t you search globally?
me: at delicious? yeah
12:57 AM
it hurts markets for search to become a commodity, or for people to talk like that
?

and thus the topic shifted.
we go through approximately 73,356 topics per hour, whether speaking or writing, but having google save some of them for us is a new twist. the task of managing threads inspired me to dream up this idea, and the potential of what remains unsaid inspired erik to dream up this one:

1:27 AM
Erik: you know what would be an interesting exercise?
me: what
1:28 AM
Erik: if we took this (or any other of our conversations) and made a pact to each write one weblog entry per day fleshing out some part of the discussion
and part of the pact would be that we couldn’t write about ANYTHING else on our weblog
except ideas that were originated in this discussion
and we have to post SOMETHING every day.
until we have exhausted the ideas.
1:29 AM
me: until we have exhausted the ideas>
?
woah
Erik: yeah.

so you may hear more about all that soon.

but for Now, what i’m sayin’ is this:
today i read that google just bought up writely, which is a web-based word-processor that i started playing with last fall. it works pretty well so far (with the “beta-meter” at 59%), and i am more than excited to see what google will do with it. i am one of those people who is convinced that google is setting out to move as much of the computing experience online as possible, and i’m all for that move.
do i think that they should control as much of the real estate as they seem set to capture? the verdict is still out on that one.
but

possibly because my attention was primed, i also noted the purchase of measure map (but not via that link, via mighty girl, and it just made me think that the point that i was really trying to make the other day was just that they are buying a lot more than we know about. it seems like whenever i plop in front of the blogosphere for a while i trip over another little note

for now, i’ve said enough.
ye gods.
if i didn’t have enough lenten pacts already, i’d take on “one short post a day, no edits.”

before i go, it seems appropriate to remind y’all that erik posted a simple mockup after an early rumor that google was releasing a web-based office suite last fall, and then, after the rumor caved, he talked about why it should happen anyway.

(it’s about f&l)

so gmail added a delete button to the main menubar.
people around the world are celebrating.
i think the whole affair is an interesting thoughtpoint for user-centered designers, because here’s the deal: the gmail team didn’t *forget* the delete button originally. they left it off completely intentionally. they were trying to change the way we look at our email. they were trying to keep us from deleting anything. ever. again.
right from the start, this didn’t sit that well with most people, so they added a delete feature in the drop-down menu. still, people balked, and pestered, and prayed.
and now, gmail concedes.

ps halfway through my trip between rawles and swain just now with a cup of coffee, i noticed that i was holding it top and bottom, and thought of your mention of this behavior in class. i realized, though, that i wasn’t doing it because it was too hot to hold the other way, it was because i always spill my coffee when i hold it the other way. i think the taper on these styrofoam cups is too intense, and the normal back and forth sway of walking always makes me splash some on the stairs. when i hold it with my thumb protruding over the top lip, however, it makes it not only so that the motion is less jostling, but also so that it will burn me if it splashes, which is enough of a danger that my brain is more willing to allocate the required energy to keeping my hand steady.
:)
i believe wholeheartedly in the idea that design doesn’t stop with the designer – in fact, it is one of my major motivators and i want to embrace it by designing tools that are as versatile as possible, as i’ve probably mentioned before. but what’s the difference between creacreative positions of holding a coffee cup are not really

if you ever wondered what would happen if the long tail and the chain letter decided to get a little frisky at recess, the blogosphere‘s got a treat for ya.

editor’s note: (it was the best blonde joke ever)

the other thing that kept me from finishing the narnia post was that, for a while, i was trying to include tie-ins to old trains of thought about portrayals of good and evil and war and swordfighting… trains of thought that i have while watching a lot of movies, and particularly those of the somewhat fantastical variety.
but that was just too much, as was the thought i had while sitting in a parking lot waiting for my mom to look at christmas presents that i wasn’t supposed to know about. i was thinking about the portraying good and evil stuff, which has to do with wanting a simpler picture of the world, and i wondered whether it might be productive to invent heroes and villains in our heads that we could use to

then i realized that there are a couple examples of me already doing this – i took a women’s folklore class when i was at boulder and one of my classmates gave a report on the pervasiveness of the guardian angel meme, and how much of a real impact it has on a lot of peoples’ lives. i wondered what would happen if i made up a guardian angel, knowing that i was making it up, but just giving myself some personified entity to imagine and relate to.
i also once decided that i should give a personality to all of my moods so that i could sort out their differences of opinion and stage little conversations between them, a la herman’s head. that didn’t really last very long, but i liked some of the personalities i came up with, and they could be templates for a hero or heroine were i to write the story i thought about above.
there’s also the fact that i have pretty completely adopted the practice of personifying my reluctance to get out of bed in the morning, so that i can talk about it and come up with strategies to trick it/make friends with it, thereby making it easier to wake up without feeling like i am swimming through quicksand.

and speaking of not being able to get up in the morning, i should call it a day.
this last bit took us quite a ways from narnia, and smacks a bit too much of the crazy juice.
time to cash in and head for the hills.