Change is Inevitable

My first mention of MS Teams here was in August 2021. The software plays an important part of their business or enterprise projects. It was pushed a bit more to the forefront with the release of Windows 11 as a consumer product.

   

Remember COVID and the big push to do business without contact?  Teams did work.  I got our closest friends to sign up.  It was a great opportunity to get rid of email for communications between us.  Teams introduced the group to a constant conversation with media and the ability to scroll up to see what one missed.  That now seems indispensable!

However, today marks the end of our use of it.  Everyone has moved on and loaded up Whatsapp.  This makes it easier for those of us who already use the platform.  It is common in Europe and Asia and we often  need it to communicate with Airbnb hosts and general business contacts during our winters away.  Jay uses it to stay in contact and speak with his sisters in Sri Lanka.

Now, our ongoing group chat has moved to Whatsapp too.

Goodbye, Microsoft Teams.  Thanks for the memories.

Call Me, Bubbles!

There's a comma in the title, so obviously I'd like Bubbles to contact me.  May I suggest contacting me via MS Teams?  I use the email address already known to friends.  Add me.

I retired well before this crippling COVID situation and I have been away from office productivity workflow for a long time.  Frankly, I've had a very hard time trying to get excited about Zoom or any type of video chatting. Of course, I've seen images of monitors showing all the little faces of online participants. I guess it gained importance due to an educational and governmental survival situation.  People could clearly see that we needed better ways to get stuff done during lockdowns and work-from-home. 

I have been a bit skeptical about how Microsoft seems to be putting MS Teams as a central point in the big Windows 11 update that'll be coming later this year.

   

Today, I critically examined how little Jay and I used messaging and video chats, even with close friends. Arranging a little, 6-person dinner party forces us to resort to thirty-year-old tools. I often forget to reply to all in the email app though.  We definitely could use something better. 

However, Shinji doesn't use WhatsApp. Ed, as well as Jiwan, are allergic to Facebook. Tim uses Facetime and a little Facebook but Jay uses primarily Facebook and a little WhatsApp.  You can see why our chat avenues for planning and coordination have been practically non-existent. 

A meeting-type video chat seems evermore unlikely; that is, until today.  I downloaded MS Teams on my Android devices and our Windows PC.   How neat that participants don't need to download anything special to take part in a group video meeting!   It's multiplatform, open-source, and will prove to be transformative. 

I think I will be able to host a video conference even if none of these folks download the actual Teams software.  I can send a link and they can participate on whatever device or operating system they're near.  Of course, getting them completely onboard the Team bandwagon with the iOS, Android, or Windows app would make chat much easier and planning one thousand times more productive.

White Signifies Purity

It may seem rather odd to include a screenshot of a mostly empty PC screen. I am trying to showcase the amount of glorious white on the page.

For most of 2018, I have been hellbent on minimizing the amount of crap I have sitting around on the Internet. I don't mind so much when it is something I created, worked on, or participated in. However, lots of what we do every day is easily forgotten. Internet companies should make it easy to do the same with old data.



Just by existing, I generate enormous amounts of stored data on Google. That company is the equivalent to the inverse of a firehose sucking up just about every minute detail they can. At least they seem, or at least have always seemed in the past, to be forthright allowing one to delete it all. Of course getting to some of it is a real chore.

Earlier this spring I decided that I'd no longer keep more than fourteen years of old email on their servers. Think about it, old email conversations deserve the same fading memory as humans possess. For a while, I was determined to keep just one year of email data. However, my new email at ProtonMail has all that I really need and it only stretches back to April. So today I completely deleted all email in my account. Did I back up any of it? Why? It was just email.

My thoughts on Internet privacy have matured since this blog entry from May 24, 2004.

ProtonMail / Come to Our Guesthouse

Day 132 - I spent more time today thinking about something computer related than the fact I'm sitting in Cambodia. Changing over my email account to a new more secure service seems useful and interesting. Gmail has worked well for my situation for around fourteen years. In fact, I recall somehow being on a waiting list and being the first one I knew who could send from @gmail.com. I think suspending my own activity on Facebook and subsequently deciding to delete my account completely has helped bring privacy into a closer focus. I like the idea of more encryption for my messages even if they contain pretty boring stuff. The whole idea of throwing away old data seems liberating too. I recently deleted all Gmail contents from 2004 through 2016.

So, consider this the day to delete my old dennissylvesterhurd@gmail.com address. Of course, chances are enormous that you'll never find the need to email me, but should you desire, I'm now at dennissylvesterhurd@protonmail.com. Should you want to know why I chose this particular service, use it to ask!



We just saw these folks off on further adventures. Well, Jay and the guesthouse dog stayed but even our host, Dominique, set off on a night bus towards Sihanoukville. We will be running things around here for four days. No special deals are being offered at this time!

There's Nothing Too Special About 58

Gee thanks, Holland America. I'm happy you remembered. I guess you are aware that we just booked more than nine weeks aboard two of your vessels. Your automated email was heartwarming.

It was much more gratifying getting so many personal Facebook messages today. Thanks to all of you who took the time to do so. It was nice how a few of those greetings turned into little conversations. I wish more folks regularly checked and used FB Messenger.

They're Not Furnace Filters

Just as I was about to start typing here, I had a notification of receipt of an email. It was just a friend who'd found an interesting news link.

There are very few reasons to use my email account for traditional reasons. I've been saying this for at least a decade now. The particular friend, mentioned above, is one of the last vestiges of people who contact me in such a 1990's way. The whole email thing has finally been usurped by messaging and social media. I absolutely hate the inflexibility of trying to have a conversation via email, not to mention my dismay at not being able to fix my many typos after the message has been sent!

No, now the main purpose of email has evolved to be a sort of electronic signature.

For example, since I no longer wish paper billing options, I receive all notice of bills and statements via my email address. This realization led me today to consider ensuring that Jay gets a copy of electricity, telephone, and other utility bills. Most government and businesses allow for just a single email address per account; therefore, I had to set up a few gmail filters. This key feature of email apps generally goes unnoticed and underutilized.

I just set up to forward copies of all billing emails to his email address automatically before I even open my inbox.

For Eileen and Barbara

There was something quite comforting about sliding physical photographs into actual envelopes for mailing.



Last night, I uploaded a photo in order to have several 5x7's made at London Drugs. I can hardly remember when I last printed photos there or anywhere. The copies are of one picture used in this blog on June 7th. The third picture from the bottom on that page shows the two couples we met during the 8:00 PM standard dining on our recent cruise.

The photograph is a suitable memento of our fine dining experience. We were able to send email to Bob and Megan, a father and daughter from NY. Eileen and Barbara, also from NY, were friends who had much cruising experience together. As both of the lovely ladies had long ago sworn-off email and technology, we now find ourselves needing to become reacquainted with the post office.

Writing out cards and addressing envelopes reminded me a little of school work, but in a good way.

Google Spaces?

Just as I was considering that Facebook was getting too damn bloated, along comes something new. Of course, Google has had a very checkered past in trying to create a social networking platform.


I don't even know how I discovered the new Google Spaces implementation. It seems so easy to set up a little mini-zone for specific communications. Student study groups or small work groups have it so easy nowadays! Anyway, we have a small social group get-together this weekend. It will be the initial 2016 "fellowship of the duck," as Tim calls them. I am looking forward to seeing the guys as it was well before our winter in Egypt since we had one.

I'm not sure if I can convince these folks to use just Google Spaces for all future ducky correspondence. Except for Jay, Shinji, and me, these individuals do not even participate on Facebook. I know. I know. And I hate email and never use it anymore except for conducting business with companies and strangers. Let's hope I can move these trilobites into something a wee bit more modern and messenger-like. That remains to be seen, I guess. I suppose the success of Spaces, in general, remains to be seen as well.

Here's My Chance!

Email is not nearly as important as it once was. I find that it has become a means to sign up for promotional literature (and then later unsubscribe). I still have to use it with a few dinosaur friends who don't do social media. Even the gmail inbox incarnation is an attempt by Google to match the trends by making email more messenger-like.


Today, I actually missed correcting grammar on students' writings. (Before retirement, I never thought I'd type that!) After twenty years of email, I can't see that this recent message would've been worth anyone's while. It was automatically added to my spam folder, but this particular one isn't compelling enough to try reading through the all of the horrible language.

-----Original Message-----

From: "Umair Jalo"
Sent: May 19, 2015 4:12 PM
Subject: Hello

CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
TELEX / COMPUTER DEPARTMENT
TINUBU SQUARE
LAGOS - NIGERIA


CABLE: CENBANK NG
CONTACT NUMBER: (provide upon responds) (24 HOURS)
PRIVATE EMAIL: umairjalo@googlemail.com


URGENT


DEAR SIR,

MY NAME IS MR. UMAIR JALO OF THE TELEX / COMPUTER DEPARTMENT OF THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA. I AM SENDING THIS PRIVATE E-MAIL BASED ON THE CONFIDENTIAL NATURE OF THE TRANSACTION. PLEASE I WILL LIKE TO ADVISE THAT IF AFTER GOING THROUGH MY PROPOSAL AND YOU DO NOT ACCEPT IT, KINDLY KEEP IT TO YOUR SELF.

I AM STILL IN SERVICE WITH THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA (CBN) AND I WOULD NOT LIKE TO LOSE MY JOB. AS I FOUND OUT THAT YOU ALMOST MET ALL THE STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS OF THE CBN IN RESPECT OF YOUR CONTRACT PAYMENT.

YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT OF INTEREST GROUPS. A LOT OF PEOPLE IS INTERESTED IN YOUR PAYMENT AND THOSE PEOPLE ARE MERELY DOING PAPER WORK WITH YOU AND THAT EXPLAINS WHY YOU RECEIVE EMAIL AND PHONE MESSAGES FROM DIFFERENT PEOPLE IN NIGERIA EVERYDAY.

THEIR WHOLE GAME PLAN IS TO FRUSTRATE YOU INORDER FOR YOU TO ABANDON THE CONTRACT PAYMENT AND THEN THEY WILL BE COMFORTABLE AND FREE ENOUGH TO TRANSFER THE CONTRACT FUNDS INTO THEIR OVERSEAS ACCOUNT. HENCE, YOU HAVE LOST TRUST ON WHOM TO BELIEVE TO BE GENUINE.

TO SUM IT UP, I WISH TO ASSURE YOU THAT WITH MY POSITION HERE IN THE TELEX DEPARTMENT I CAN PUNCH THE COMPUTER AND CREDIT YOUR ACCOUNT STRAIGHT WITHIN FIVE (5) WORKING DAYS. FIRST OF ALL, YOU HAVE TO LET ME KNOW HOW MUCH YOU WILL GIVE ME AT THE CONSUMMATION OF THIS DEAL.

FINALLY, YOU WILL HAVE TO ACCEPT TO KEEP THIS TRANSACTION STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL, IF YOU ACCEPT MY PROPOSAL, KINDLY GET BACK TO ME IMMEDIATELY ON MY ABOVE PRIVATE MAIL,................. OR PRIVATE NUMBER:

EVEN IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT MY OFFER, I WILL SINCERELY ADVISE YOU TO FINDTIME YOURSELF TO COME AND REGULARIZE YOUR DEFECTIVE DOCUMENTS INSTEAD OF FRUITLESS EXCHANGE OF FAX MESSAGES WITH OFFICES HERE.

WHEN REPLYING THIS EMAIL, PLEASE RE-CONFIRM YOUR PRIVATE TELEPHONE NUMBERS, AND EMAIL ADDRESS.

REGARDS.

MR. UMAIR JALO.

Things You Should Know About Me

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for trying to repeatedly contact me.

I appreciate your earnest desire to let me know about my missing cash and those fantastic offers for your cheap drugs. I fear you have confused me with someone else though. I am presently not in the position to offer you a job and feel as though your help to ensure I please women is probably a little misdirected. Lastly, I have to admit I do not possess a thorough enough understanding of either Chinese or Arabic to really grasp the contents of your messages.

I wanted you to know that none of your email actually makes it into my inbox, so you may wish to remove me from your mailing list.

Sincerely,

Dennis

Opt In

Part of this blog entry may seem familiar. I'm adding a screen shot of a newly-received gmail message I got this morning. In it, you will see a bit of yesterday's entry.



Many readers keep up on my daily posts via Facebook or Twitter links. Others may even find a post via my Flipbook magazine called, Gorge. To many, that may seem like more than enough ways to keep up with new postings in my eJournal and images.

Yet for the very determined, I've added a more seamless way to avoid missing a single entry. From the blog itself, it is easy to sign up for a daily email delivery. In this way, the previous day's post will be waiting in one's email inbox before breakfast.

Under my mugshot, there's a new option. If you look beneath the listing of the 7 favourite entries from the previous 30 days, and under the complete blog search, you will find the following:

RECEIVE A DAILY UPDATE VIA EMAIL.
You'll find a place for you to type in your email address. Once the process is completed, you too can be assured of receiving at least one new email each morning! Go ahead. Try it today.

Bacn for Bacon in Bellingham

I mentioned last Monday about how I had decided to use outlook.com as a universal inbox and way to respond to all my email from various sources. I am finding this procedure much easier than logging in separately to see if I have work email. The transition was painless and I didn't have to switch from the gmail address that I've been using for about eight years.

I was in a bit of a spring-cleaning mood too, although that term seems a bit off-season. In anticipation of travel this winter, I reckoned it was about time to unsubscribe from many newsletters and other bacn. Just like many things in life, the sheer number of my email subscriptions had crept up over the years.

Most let me opt out by simply clicking a link in the footer of the message. A number of them required setting email preferences after logging on to its associated website. For the remaining that tried to make leaving difficult, I simply told outlook that they were junk and it can trash them for me automatically.

Very quickly, the flow of messages has subsided. I am not bothered by the fact there is now no new mail when I check. Having an empty inbox seems rather comforting. I should have done this years ago.


We used this bacn to actually eat some bacon just over the border at The Old Country Buffet yesterday morning.

That's A Lot o' White!

Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 09:17:33 -0700
From: "Dennis S Hurd (GMail)"
To: Don Richardson
Subject: It's not my primary address .. but ..
Mime-Version: 1.0

Hi,

Gads, MORE email from Dennis? I'm just testing my Google GMail
account. You know, it's the one with a gigabyte of storage. Better
than that, it allows single message attachments of 10 megabytes.

So, go ahead, send me that huge photo, video clip, laptop backup ...

== Dennis

Today in Dennis's World: http://www.DennisSylvesterHurd.com/blog/

I had realized the importance of 'the cloud' early on. I must have given up stand-alone clients back in the 1990's. I got, uhem, a hotmail account primarily so my address list would be with me on any computer at which I happened to be. Trying to keep a database of saved messages on a local hard drive also seemed rather ridiculous, even back then. I could also foresee that having to change email, every time one went with a new Internet provider, seemed equally as silly.

I thought I'd spend most of my life after gmail with that as my primary address. Now, however, I've been wooed away. Who could improve my email experience? Well, it looks like Microsoft again. I think I'm going to love dennissylvesterhurd@outlook.com. It seems like I will probably use it as my front-end to any present or future email addresses.


Talk about minimalist!

Old Dogs and Replacing Email

Standard email seems more and more like a ridiculous dinosaur. What really hit this home to me was the realization that once sent, one's message is gone; there's absolutely no way to edit or, alas, delete it. For that reason alone, we should put email out to pasture.

For years I've complained that email was too analogous to old-fashioned postal mail. People flocked to it because it was faster and cheaper than buying stamps. Unfortunately, folks still carried the same old mindset when using it. It seemed a chore for many to sit down as they assumed the message needed to be long and drawn out. Email was free so really all that was necessary was to jot out a sentence, or even just a word. Still behaviours seldom changed and lots of mail sat unanswered as folks couldn't find the time nor inclination to compose a long, "letter-like" response.

In recent years, Facebook and Twitter have taught people to think in shorter exchanges.  Most don't associate them with private messaging though. Actually Google+ would an optimum replacement for email. It is easy to group people into circles and then write to a specific stream. It's much more intuiative than Facebook's privacy settings. Yet then, a more pronounced problem rears its ugly head; practically nobody I know uses Google+.



I was able to send a private message to the G+ stream of a friend last night. I had added some directions to a screen capture of Google Earth and uploaded it with comments. I put it into just his stream as we're expecting to meet up with him and his friends on the evening of Valentine's Day when we arrive in Puerto Vallarta. Doing this has added a permanence to the message as if posting on a Facebook's wall. It is saved so that we may both view it and even add to or edit it. This way of communicating seems much more logical than an email exchange.

Smarter Ways to Share Stuff

Let's just say the entry today will probably be a little short.

I spent most of a perfectly good day trying to cajole any living creature whom I'd ever met to sign on to Google+. Quite a task, indeed. I am not going to now go into all the reasons for my new-found infatuation with it. It suffices to say that G+ takes the best from email, Twitter, and Facebook and puts it all behind a very smart, clean interface.



I suppose I am not extremely sorry that a lot of people on my lists of those three Net-places I mentioned will never get on board the Google+ train. In some ways, I am happy it will attract only the most intelligent, Net-savvy communicators among them. Actually, those are the folks I'd most like to hang with online.

I've got over a hundred invitations left. If, and only if, you meet the qualifications stated herein, please respond with a private message including your preferred email address. I can get an invitation off to you pronto. (I hope I don't have to continue spending time there all by myself.)

Belize or Bust!

It was rather a slow morning. About the only accomplishment was sending off two emails requesting information about hotel reservations. Actually, we did get weekly vegetables up at the Langley Farm Market near the border with Burnaby too.

It's exciting to think we'll be in San Jose, Costa Rica in just two weeks. We're flying from there one-way into Belize. We devised this plan so we can take a little more time travelling back to San Jose overland for our return flight to Vancouver. The whole trip can only last three weeks


Photo by roger4336 on flickr.com.

Knowing the flight doesn't get into Belize City until after 4:00 pm, we think it is a good idea to have a hotel already booked. We don't want to stay more than two nights there anyways. I hope to hear back by email soon so we can confirm.

My Priority Inbox

Long ago I declared that email would soon die. Perhaps, however, I spoke too soon. I do have to admit it's no longer as important to me as it once was. For example, I find trying to efficiently communicate with friends by email quite difficult. Compared to a Facebook wall posting, email seems almost as intrusive as a phone call. I'd prefer to both send and receive text messages nowadays, I guess. So email is no longer my preferred way of communicating. In a different vein, I once used to sign up for information by email but that role has been taken over with information provided by Twitter, RSS, or via Facebook pages.



So how come it's not dead? Well, email and in particular Gmail keeps evolving. I love the implementation of a 'priority inbox' and really haven't explored all the 'actions' that can be easily set up. For example, a real-estate agent in Palm Springs has entered some parimeters into the local MLS system so that it generates automatic email when a new listing meets my targeted criteria. I can easily set up to have my account automatically forward mail to another email address, in this case Jay's. I could choose to delete or automatically file the messages, as well. Add when considering the 'starring' options and improved 'labels', email may just prove to have a little life left in it.

Oh, and of course with smartphones, email can be used as a free replacement for those with limited SMS options. I surely do not pine for the days of, say, MS Outlook Express or other stand alone clients. Even more amusing by today's standards, is remembering when email and address data was accessible only from the drive on a single device.

All Circuits Are Busy

I think I've had gmail since it was by invitation only. That's a long time. Isn't it nice to know, for the most part, you'll never have to send out those "I-changed-my-email-address" notices anymore. It's also nice to know everything received or sent is all online and searchable. For example, here's one of my first:

---

date Tue, May 25, 2004 at 7:44 AM
subject I'm changing my email address.
mailed-by gmail.com

You have been especially selected to receive this important notification. (Gads, I hope that doesn't set off any spam alarms!) You are among the first people to know that I'm officially switching my email address to Google's new service.

You many have either of these two accounts in your address book: DennisSylvesterHurd@hotmail.com or dhurd@dennissylvesterhurd.com. Although I will continue to monitor them for a while, I'd like friends to switch over first.

Please update to DennisSylvesterHurd@gmail.com.

Oh, and in order to catch up on the latest from the World of Dennis, you may stop by for the daily entries on the dennissylvesterhurd.blogspot.com (updated).

Thanks for your time.

---

All these years later, I'm using 2% of my storage allotment. I don't generally save big attachments so I could live to be 612 and not run out of space! Yet, when I logged on today, I found something perhaps even more groundbreaking. Google has hooked in Voice for Gmail. That means if you're in the US or Canada you can make calls to ordinary phones in the respective countries for free. You might not be able to recognize the title if you're under 40. This was the taped message from the 1960's we would often hear on holidays when lots of people were trying to call out-of-state relatives.



In Canada, we're still not allowed to use the complete implentation of Google Voice yet. This must push things one step closer. I really would love a Google number that I could set up to ring either mobile or home phone. The free voice mail would be a nice added feature, especially since it transcribes them. Most importantly, I could go to just data servce on my mobile and save money. There are a whole lot of companies whose livelihoods are at stake, I fear. Some must be very, very afraid.

Informing 'em of a Change

Do you remember when friends frequently sent you 'update messages' telling you that they had a new email address? It used to be a common occurrence because most of us ran a stand-alone mail program on our computer and gathered our mail by contacting our Internet provider de jeur. That is not nearly as common as we have moved to online applications, such as gmail. Email was the first common application getting us used to the idea of having data existing in the cloud rather than on our local hard disk. I'm sure as we continue along this path, most all personal data will be out there somewhere and we'll just have access to it be it on a home computer, off-site PC, or device such as a mobile phone. I think Microsoft Office 2010 offers the ability to run both the applications themselves and the data from the web.

The reason I was thinking of these ideas today is that I decided to give up my old cell phone number. I had a rather weird number and decided not to port it to my new phone provider. I had to send out a "I've-changed-my-number" email to friends. It reminded me of the old days.

Here's my old Samsung.

If You Adapt, You Will Grow!

In anticipation of using Gmail on the Android phone that's coming via DHL, I figured I could do a little online housekeeping. Firstly, I wanted to clean up my email address contacts. My new phone will automatically sync up. I have had GMail set to automatically save an address when I write a message. Therefore, there were dozens and dozens of single requests to businesses and organizations. They were easy to spot and delete. Then, I had to make hard choices about people I will probably never be emailing. Each address was like cleaning a closet, I figured if I've not used it for a year, then it could safely be thrown out.

What I discovered is how little I count on email now. Electronic mail is increasingly irrelevant. The whole idea even seems so 1990's. The onus is on a sender to ensure that the address is up-to-date. The actual sending is a one-off try, like a single gun shot into the darkness. It's just a really bad way to communicate.

Were it not for a few surprisingly pig-headed friends, I'd hardly ever need to open my email. The majority of things things there are from opt-in lists like the Canadian Superstore or Walmart fliers. Information from cruise ship companies and air-miles programs are frequently found in my in-box too. Very little in the way of personal contact now arrives that way.



Nearly all of my messaging needs are now completed inside Facebook. There, it's the recipients who manage their own addresses. I can private message or simply drop something on someone's wall. It's a much more natural way to manage communication. I still have one friend, in particular, who can sit down and write pages of dense text, which he sends off as an email. Of course he didn't adopt email until after everybody and their monkey already had. Ye gads, I'd much rather be in semi-continuous interaction sharing snippets of information and ideas.