My iPod has 1761 tracks on it. 33 of those tracks are Talking Heads songs. That means that about 1 out of every 50 songs it “randomly” chooses should be from the Talking Heads. I invariably hear several Talking Heads songs every day, which is fine, I like them. I just find it odd that my iPod is such a big fan.

So the other day I read a weblog entry that explained how GUIs can be less efficient than old green screen applications for data entry because the interfaces for green screen interfaces are extremely structured and enable people to accomplish things with very specific sets of keystrokes. I was getting way behind on my Gmail account and I realized that a big reason for that is that I just wasn’t using the interface efficiently — Gmail uses some JavaScript trickery to allow you to use a keyboard interface very similar to the ones provided by console email clients like mutt, elm, or pine. This morning I looked at the help page for the keyboard shortcuts and set about using them instead of the mouse with Gmail, and man is it fast. I’ve been blowing through my archive of 250 conversations just like I would with mutt, except faster because in mutt, I’d be going through 1000 individual messages instead of 250 or so threads. It’s made me think about an application I’m working on that is more or less a data entry application, and how I can make sure that regular users can rely on the keyboard for efficiency. I’m also going to take a good look at the keyboard shortcuts for Thunderbird when I get home so I can go through my massive pile of 1500+ emails in my inbox there more rapidly as well.

It’s worth pointing out that the one gig limit in Gmail is a nice marketing device, but it’s the user interface that sets Gmail apart from other webmail packages. As I may have said before, I can get to my personal mailbox at pair.com using SquirrelMail. I’ve also used Yahoo Mail for a long time. Neither can compare in any way, shape, or form to Gmail, which is probably the most advanced Web life form I’ve ever encountered. I’ve gotten to where I barely read my personal mail at all now unless I can use a desktop client because SquirrelMail is so painful to use after having enjoyed Gmail. People always talk about the gig of mail and the ads when discussing Gmail, but it’s the interface that’s the story. For what it’s worth, my brain has completely blocked out the Gmail ads at this point, it’s as though there were no ads at all.

One of the big design choices that Google made when they created Gmail was to drop the idea of folders (or at least user definable folders) and to supply a flexible labeling system instead. My mail filters apply labels to mail from various lists and Gmail makes it easy to view mail with a particular label. If you look at del.icio.us, you’ll see that they came to a similar conclusion as Google. When you add links, you can apply any number of labels to them and easily retrieve links by label later. After using both of these systems, I’m completely sold on the idea that labels should take the place of hierarchical systems for organizing information a lot of the time. I don’t want a file system that is based on labels, but for many other things, labels make sense. One thing that’s worth mentioning is that labels work best alongside a robust search capability.

The Slacktivist has this to say about some Christian entertainment:

The evangelical subculture is awash with bad art and dismal entertainments. From the Left Behind books to the vast majority of “contemporary Christian music” (which is none of the above) evangelicals are eagerly buying up awful dreck, the consumption of which makes them worse people, worse neighbors, worse citizens and fundamentally worse Christians. This is theologically awful, politically vapid, aesthetically blasphemous stuff.

I think this is the main reason why I flinch a little whenever I pass a “Christian store,” of which there are many where I live.

I’ve created an account at del.icio.us. We’ll see how it works out.

I’m seeing Bloomsday mentioned everywhere. Google is commemorating it, many of my favorite webloggers have brought it up, and I’ve seen mention in other places as well. I know it’s all about the James Joyce novel Ulysses, which I have not read. I also know that the novel was published 82 years ago, and this is the first year I’ve ever seen Bloomsday discussed at all. Why? Did something happen to make it a bigger deal this year, or has this been going on annually for some time? What’s the big deal all of a sudden?

Update: Readers have pointed out that while the book may have been published 82 years ago, the events in the book all take place on June 16, 1904, so today is the centennial. Makes perfect sense.

Joel Spolsky: How Microsoft Lost the API War. Read it before it gets Slashdotted.

How can we stand before the world and tell countries that aspire to become nuclear powers to abandon their weapons programs when we’re expanding ours? The idea of the nuclear haves telling the nuclear have nots to remain have nots has always chafed, but when we’re moving away from drawing down our arsenal and actively pursuing the development of new kinds of nuclear weapons, we ought to just shut up or simply resort to threatening countries that are trying to go nuclear, because that’s the only authority we have. As far as I’m concerned, the need for “bunker busting bombs” is completely a figment of the imagination of people who just love to pursue bigger and better weapons. And even if they were desperately needed, I would still think that the cost of expanding our nuclear arsenal wouldn’t be worth it.

The sound of floodgates opening: the first mobile phone virus has arrived. Symbian is the winning platform.

I don’t think that I’ve ever used the term “phishing” here before. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a scam technique where a thief sends out email purporting to be from a third party requesting account information. You click on a link in the email that supposedly points to the impersonated party’s site, but really points to the con artist’s Web site, and then you’re asked to enter your Ebay login, or your online banking info, or even the username and password for the account to your favorite MMORPG. The criminal then uses that information to rob you, or steal your in game stuff, or whatever. I get phishing emails from “Ebay” all the time. Anyway, over two million people have had their bank accounts raided in the past year thanks to this kind of fraud. (Via Rebecca Blood.) The bottom line is that you’re never going to get a legitimate email from anybody asking you to go somewhere and enter your private account information.

Interestingly, one of the big contributors to this problem is HTML email. The scam emails I get have a URL in them like http://www.ebay.com/account, but the link points to something like http://67.15.235.183/lajkdaja, which is most likely a Linux box in the Ukraine running a CGI script copied out of one of my books. Plain text email requires the scammers to be a bit more creative and obvious, at least.