Taking Email Etiquette to the Next Level

When working with others in the office, most know it is better to approach a colleague who is relaxed and drinking a cup of coffee versus a frazzled co-worker buried under a pile of paperwork.

Unfortunately, email doesn’t offer users the same social cues – until now.

Georgia Tech Assistant Professor of Computing Eric Gilbert has developed software called courteous.ly, a service that shows current user email loads in real-time.

“I think we’re really good at the etiquette part when we have the cues that allow us to be polite,” said Gilbert, a faculty member in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. “Courteous.ly helps manage expectations and lets people choose to send mail when it’s best for you.”

Available for download, courteous.ly currently works with Google-based email, such as Gmail, which is used by 160 million people worldwide. Roughly 3 million businesses also use Google-hosted mail. Signing up for courteous.ly is as easy as entering your email address and verifying a few links.

Source: Georgia Tech via ACM Tech News

Hedon-ism

Source: DisOriention book

Federations and confederations

A federation is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central (federal) government. In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of the central government.

A confederation is an association of sovereign member states that, by treaty, have delegated certain of their competences (or powers) to common institutions, in order to coordinate their policies in a number of areas, without constituting a new state on top of the member states. Under international law a confederation respects the sovereignty of its members and its constituting treaty can only be changed by unanimous agreement.

By definition the difference between a confederation and a federation is that the many memberships of the member states in a confederation are voluntary, while the membership in a federation is not. A confederation is most likely to feature these differences over a federation:
(1) No real direct powers: many confederal decisions are externalised by member-state legislation.
(2) Decisions on day-to-day matters are not taken by simple majority but by special majorities or even by consensus or unanimity (veto for every member).
(3) Changes of the constitution, usually a treaty, require unanimity.

Reference: Federation, Confederation

Microsoft Research virtualizes idle desktops to save power

Microsoft Research virtualizes idle desktops to save power: "Finding that people do not use 'stand-by' and 'hibernate' when going away from their PCs, for fear of disrupting running network connections and background computations, Microsoft Research India has developed power-saving technology that virtualizes enterprise desktops to a backend server before putting the desktops to sleep."

Source: Network world via ACM Tech News

Exploding-platform

Several in the Internet of Things community are using Twitter for communicating information from sensors. This is an important development that perhaps is overlooked by many.

Edmund W. Schuster blog post about Exploding-platform Strategies - Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Facebook & Twitter

Energy-efficient programming

A University of Washington project sees a role for programmers to reduce the energy appetite of the ones and zeroes in the code itself. Researchers have created a system, called EnerJ, that reduces energy consumption in simulations by up to 50 percent, and has the potential to cut energy by as much as 90 percent.

Source: Code green: Energy-efficient programming to curb computers’ power use

Thinking Clearly about Performance

Improving the performance of complex software is difficult, but understanding some fundamental principles can make it easier.

Source: Thinking Clearly about Performance via ACM Queue

Relativ-ism

Source: DisOriention book

Change account ordering in Thunderbird

To change the order of Thunderbird email accounts in the left panel proceed as follows:

1 - Open Thunderbird. Make note of current ordering of accounts. Close Thunderbird.

2 - Explore C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\
(%USERNAME% will be automatically replaced by the current user's name by Windows Explorer)

3 - Edit prefs.js, find the following line:
user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2,account3");
The comma separated list dictactes the account order.
Change the order to your liking.

4 - Restart Thunderbird and check results.

Source: Lego's Land blog post

Tweets of the month

My talk was about the Internet of Things. I just did a brief introduction to the topic that was followed by a good demo of http://rfrb.net/
31 May

I had a talk today at ISA http://www.isa.utl.pt/. Now that is what I call a campus! :)
31 May

Quem ainda não ajudou o Banco Alimentar ainda vai a tempo de o fazer! Não é preciso sequer ir às compras http://www.alimentestaideia.net/
29 May

Now, I need to prepare the first draft of an Internet of Things presentation.
27 May

Finishing a snapshot report. Only 1 hour left, no time to lose!
26 May

Link RT Banco Alimentar inaugura canal online de doação de alimentos com o apoio da Link http://tinyurl.com/3vcfgct
26 May

Paper accepted!
25 May

Hoje à noite a não perder: ciência e fé http://tercas.weebly.com/terccedilacom-feacute-e-cultura.html
24 May

Hoje o Técnico faz 1100100 anos! Parabéns informáticos! http://www.ist.utl.pt/ #IST #Técnico
23 May

Pope and the astronauts Live! http://www.vatican.va/news_services/television/index.htm
21 May

Mission accomplished! With a little inspiration from Endeavour :)
20 May

Switching to paper writing on paper. Let's see how it goes.
20 May

Change of plans: doing a review of a report and preparing it for a conference submission. Sometimes you've got to go with the flow...
20 May

Working on an architecture overview document
20 May

Santini do Chiado: aprovado!
19 May

Paulo VI em Fátima (13 Maio 1967): "Homens, sede homens. Homens, sede bons, sede cordatos, abri-vos à consideração do bem total no mundo."
13 May

It's good to know my research is going to be useful... soon!
11 May

Listening to WHRO classical music
4 May

Helping a student sharpen its MSc dissertation
2 May

Working at my new office at IST
2 May

ASUS PL-X31 Powerline adapter is an amazing product! I'm accessing the Internet from my store room, 3 floors down from my office!
1 May Favorite