Book Review: Send

Send is a refreshing book. In email research and email software startups, we spend our time coming up with better ways of displaying and organizing email. In this book, David Shipley, Op-Ed page editor of the New York Times and Will Schwalbe, a journalist and editor, discuss the other part of the equation: The humans behind those messages.

Send shines the light on emotions and motives: The emails that are sent to create the impression of progress. The passive-aggressive messages you send when you feel like you’ve been wronged and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

At parts, the book reads like "Email for Dummies", but there are some highlights: I shiver when people send me subject lines like "Quick question" and "Great News", when they should have written "Release date for next version?" and "Expenses approved". This is the book you want to hand out to the guilty.

I'm already wondering about how to put this into a product: Could we make software that orders people to rewrite the email in a more effective manner? It could pop up "Your subject line sucks" and make you rewrite it before you send. Could we find out the mood someone was in when sending a message and display it alongside the email? Food for thought.

Disclosure: I didn't buy this book - I found it in my snail mail one day, and I can only guess that the authors sent it to me. Keep'em coming - this is a good way to get your ideas read by the email community.

Pictures of Silicon Valley

I got a present! It's Gabriele Basilico's Silicon Valley 07, which accompanies an exhibition that is currently on display at the SF MOMA.

These photographs were all taken during Basilico's short visit to Silicon Valley last year. They show this region without pretense: In San Francisco, he took pictures of pretty hills with the Golden Gate in the background, but also of sketchier parts, used car dealerships, and deteriorating warehouses. In Silicon Valley, he photographs the sleek headquarters of Oracle and Sun, the villas of Palo Alto, and the cookie-cutter clone houses and McMansions.

For someone who lives here, everything seems very familiar: The images from highway 101, the annoying Verizon billboards, the skyline of San Francisco.

The book starts with a panorama on which you can see my bedroom window, and page 118 pictures the apartment complex where I used to live in Mountain View. That's almost a bit close to home.