Auto Uncheck

I was mighty pleased to stumble across a long-awaited solution to long-bemoaned Gmail feature: a contact auto-add checkbox. As I've whined about in previous posts, Gmail automatically adds an email address to your contacts if you email someone once or twice. This gets annoying, especially when mixed with the auto-add feature of Gchat.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but the long and short of it is that Gmail finally gives us the option of choosing not to auto-add. It still keeps a list of the contacts it wants to add in the "Suggested Contacts" groups, seen below on the left.

 

A Modern Take on Mass-Emails

After being on the receiving end of a recent mass-emailing, I got into a discussion with a good friend of mine about mass-email etiquette. YouAreYou's comment to this was: "How quaint!" It does seem a bit quaint to have an email etiquette conversation; after all, everyone is claiming email is old-school. But I soon realized that my reluctance over being included on a mass-email was actually fairly modern:

With Gmail, the other people on the email will end up in your contact list. That causes trouble when you use sites that scan your contacts for friends (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) or when Gchat updates your buddy list. You end up having all these people in your contact and buddy list that you don't actually know.

Of course I also feel a little hesitant when people I don't know have my email. Who knows how careful strangers are with their data?

However, my biggest beef with mass-emailing is actually pretty old-school: Snarky comments, inside jokes, people trying to be funny...who wants to get tangled in a reply-all thread like that?

Gchat Status Messages, Part II

This is the second of two-part post on Gchat status messages. In the first, I discussed the major categories of status messages. In this post, I'll address some of the dos-and-don'ts of a proper status message.

1. Recycling. I know this is asking a lot, but I really find it tiresome when someone recycles an old status message. In the case of "class" or "work," yes, that's appropriate. But your friends will thank you for giving them something new. I took the time to read that long quote a week ago; I won't do it again.

2. Fishing. This is a sensitive one. When someone makes a cry for help on his/her status message - "This sucks!" - s/he is asking you to message them. I know we all cave to this impulse from time to time, but if you want to talk about something - chat someone. That's what IM is all about, right?

3. Never changing your status. Feed me! Your status message has read "dingleberry" the entire time we've been chat friends (over two years). I'm ready to move on.

4. Ever changing your status. Some people scroll through messages constantly, sometimes several times in one chat conversation. When you're chatting with someone, they receive the changed status as a line of IM. I find this distracting and confusing. Is our conversation not enough for you? It's like watching someone else channel surf.

Conclusions: Give your friends a good reason to mouse-over your name and read your status. Value their time and net-attention span by giving them something fresh and creative.

If you can't think of something that fits the bill, leave it at Available. As far as status goes, there are worse things to be!

Gchat Status Messages, Part I

In Gmail's chat feature (or independent chat client Google Talk or "Gtalk"), users have the option of creating a status message that appears below your name. In traditional IM programs like AIM or YIM, this would be the Away Message. In Gmail, however, the status is constantly there and has taken on some of the qualities of Twitter ("What are you doing right now?") and of social network "headlines" (as in MySpace).

I present the categories of Gmail status messages:

1. Strictly Utilitarian
The person's status reads "class" or "at work." Technically, there's nothing offensive about these status messages, except that they're pretty boring. They did get interesting around the holidays, however; I saw quite a few indicating the person's location (Austin, TX or Detroit, MI), which led to new insights on where people come from.

2. Quotes
These can be either stuffy (philosophers writing before Christ) or irreverent (TV shows). Entertaining, but the quote better be good. Otherwise you're forced to roll over their name to expand the quote to read it, and feel dissatisfied, having wasted precious internet surfing seconds. You also have to be careful using these because friends may read deeper into them than you anticipate. Avoid any quotes about love!

3. Inside Jokes
Totally incomprehensible except to another person. These are wholly annoying, unless you're in on the joke, in which case they're delightful and flattering. My friend's status the other day: "Let me put my poems in you." Thought-provoking, anyway.

4. Shout Outs
These reference another person and are cousins to Inside Jokes. Often, however, at least some fellow friends will understand the reference. For example, my friend's status read "Katz cheats," and I knew he was referring to an ongoing Scrabulous game on Facebook with our friend Katz.

5. Blanks
No status message at all, so it reads "Available." Boring! Occasionally indicating laziness, but there are worse things. I'd rather leave mine blank than bring an offensive status message into the world.

6. Busy
Coupled with the red dot with the white line, like a Do Not Enter/Wrong Way sign, this status conveys real foreboding. Sometimes combined with #1, which may help alleviate the curiosity of others.

This is Part I of a two-part post on Gchat status message protocols. Part II.