Email flow with rules and labels

Email arrives.

A rule determines that it is low priority.  So I want it to be labelled Inbox/Low_Priority.

I.e. I do NOT want to see it in my normal Inbox.  Aka my priority Inbox.

But I *do* want to see it as a subfolder of my Inbox.   So, here is an example of a case where I do not want the browseable interface to the label graph to show all items with label - where the fact that it has a sublabel (of a particular type) implying that it should not be shown as the default query for Inbox.  But of course I might want to be able to see all items tagged Inbox, ewven though sublabels imply hiding.

Possibility: steal an idea from Bazaar DVCS:  Inbox/* => all items with label Inbox, but not with "masking" sublabels.   Whereas Inbox/** => all labels tagged Inbox, even with masking sublabels.

Inbox|Some_Other_Label - independent, not really path oriented
Inbox/NonMaskingSubLabel
Inbox//MaskingSubLabel

I probably won't get around to processing such Inbox/LowPriority emails very often.  But when I do, and I handle them, I probably want to change the label from Inbox/LowPriority to straight LowPriority.

I.e. LowPriority is not just a sublabel.  It is actually an independent label. But the instance on a particular item may indicate the masking sublabel relationship to Inbox.

If something gets tagged Inbox/SubLabel initially, and then just becomes SubLabel, and then is moved back to Inbox, should it go back to being Inbox/Subel?  Or should it be Inbox|SubLabel?

If Inbox/SubLabel -> SubLabel -> Inbox/SubLabe, should this be

a) because it was originally Inbox/SubLabel - i.e. based on history of the labelling?

or

b) because SubLabel is marked as being in a possibly subservient relationship to Inbox?


Inbox is a special case.

The next big form factor

Glasses, maybe contact lens - maybe.

Although I would bet on something related to ubiquitous flat panel displays happening first. Easier. Here now.

But more important - the above are output devices. I think what we really need is ubiquitous input. Talking to yourself at the refrigerator: I need milk and blueberries.

What would this look like?

Partially explicit sorting

A pattern I run into a lot: partially explicit sorting.

E.g. a regular linear sort - alphabetical, breadth or depth first, etc. - is okay for the "leftovers", but I have an explicit priority ordering of things I want to see at the head of the list.

More advanced, what I did for automatically deducing a print order in the Cp/PL wikified manual / specifications:

• Create a manual table of contents
• Attach unlinked items to where first linked to, alphabetically ordered.  

Have also played around with topological sorting, modified by the desored explicit ordering.

ISO: nice Perl / foobar language iioms to do this common pattern.

Easier to process less important stuff

Ever notice that it is easier to process less important stuff than more important stuff.

Email especially - but I have noticed the same thing with classification jobs, such as classifiying and rating patents.

Email especially - sort the email by sender, by subject, etc.   If I had the ability to cluster by keywords.

"Sorting, not searching".

On this trip I have been able to empty literally thousands of emails from my account.  But the last hundred are non-uniform, and are more of a hassle to handle.

For these last, I need an efficient manual scan - buttons for archiving, action required, deferred, etc.  The GTD stuff, maybe a few more.

Unfortunately, I don't have such a simple email scanner.

org-capture ... org-get-x-clipboard very slow

I enjoy org-mode, but have found "capture", aka org-capture, too slow for general use.

This has been on my to-investigate list for months, and I finally got around to it.

Problem

^c-c-t (my todo capture template) takes 10 seconds or so, no matter what the template

elp-instrument-package org

      (elp-instrument-package(quote org))


Profile

Function name                                                 Call count Elapsed Time   Average Time
org-capture                                                   1           7.4114240000  7.4114240000
org-capture-fill-template                                     1           6.6733817000  6.6733817000
org-get-x-clipboard                                           4           6.6563808     1.6640952
org-get-x-clipboard-compat                                    4           6.6563808     1.6640952
org-capture-select-template                                   1           0.7310417999  0.7310417999
org-mks                                                       1           0.7310417999  0.7310417999
org-mode                                                      1           0.0130008     0.0130008
org-install-agenda-files-menu                                 1           0.0060004000  0.0060004000
org-set-regexps-and-options                                   1           0.0060003000  0.0060003000

Basically, org-get-x-clipboard is almost all of the time.

(Verified by nulling out org-gert-x-clipboard.)

Suboptimal:   I was not asking for any template substitutions.  But org-capture-fill-template calculates every variable, whether needed or not

(defun org-capture-fill-template (&optional template initial annotation)
  "Fill a template and return the filled template as a string.
The template may still contain \"%?\" for cursor positioning."
  (setq template (or template (org-capture-get :template)))
  (when (stringp initial)
    (setq initial (org-no-properties initial))
    (remove-text-properties 0 (length initial) '(read-only t) initial))
  (let* ((buffer (org-capture-get :buffer))
(file (buffer-file-name (or (buffer-base-buffer buffer) buffer)))
(ct (org-capture-get :default-time))
(dct (decode-time ct))
(ct1
 (if (< (nth 2 dct) org-extend-today-until)
     (encode-time 0 59 23 (1- (nth 3 dct)) (nth 4 dct) (nth 5 dct))
   ct))
(plist-p (if org-store-link-plist t nil))
(v-c (and (> (length kill-ring) 0) (current-kill 0)))
(v-x (or (org-get-x-clipboard 'PRIMARY)
 (org-get-x-clipboard 'CLIPBOARD)
 (org-get-x-clipboard 'SECONDARY)))
(v-t (format-time-string (car org-time-stamp-formats) ct))
(v-T (format-time-string (cdr org-time-stamp-formats) ct))
(v-u (concat "[" (substring v-t 1 -1) "]"))
(v-U (concat "[" (substring v-T 1 -1) "]"))

However, although I think that I am not using a template, I get

Clipboard pasted as level 1 subtree

Workaround

Making org-get-x-clipboard empty

makes capture very fast - 0.036 seconds as reportted by elp

Configuration

GNU Emacs 24.3.1

org-mode 7.8./03

CYGWIN_NT-6.1-WOW64 glew-tablet 1.7.17(0.262/5/3) 2012-10-19 14:39 i686 Cygwin

Out-of-date ... updating ...

Sorting, not Searching - for Gmail, using IMAP mailreader

I have bitched and moaned for quite a while about Gmail providing "searching, not sorting". True also of many Google (web)apps.

Sure, Google usually has good search.

But sorting is often the easiest way to go through a pile of stuff.  Sort, and then look for, e.g., many emails from the same company that you no longer have an account with.

Anyway, I have bitched and moaned about the lack of sorting in Gmail.

And today I realized ... I can just use Thunderbird via IMAP to access by Gmail account.  Thunderbird has sorting.  And, in a few hours, I have been able to get rid of several thousand emails.

Actually, this is not the first time I have realized this.  But when I tried it in the past Thunderbird regularly hung in annoying ways. Also, IMAP folders did not map wekll to Gmail labels.  It appears more reliable now.  Moreover, I am no longer trying to use Thunderbird for all of my Gmail - just for this sorting and clearing a lot of stuff out. Archiving. Deleting.

Why Wesabe Lost to Mint - Marc Hedlund's blog

Why Wesabe Lost to Mint - Marc Hedlund's blog:

'via Blog this'

Interesting article on how one startup company (Wesabe) lost to a later entrant in the same market (Mint.com).

There are so many good memes on this post - I want to grab it all, and highlight the stuff I like.

...
There's a lot to be said for not rushing to market, and learning from the mistakes the first entrants make. ...
...

...Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data...

...I was focused on trying to make the usability of editing data as easy and functional as it could be; Mint was focused on making it so you never had to do that at all. Their approach completely kicked our approach's ass. (To be defensive for just a moment, their data accuracy -- how well they automatically edited -- was really low, and anyone who looked deeply into their data at Mint, especially in the beginning, was shocked at how inaccurate it was. The point, though, is hardly anyone seems to have looked.)...

...it was far easier to have a good experience on Mint, and that good experience came far more quickly. ...

... most people simply won't care enough or get enough benefit from long-term features if a shorter-term alternative is available. ...


...  Focus on what really matters: making users happy with your product as quickly as you can, and helping them as much as you can after that.  If you do those better than anyone else out there you'll win.     I think in this case, Mint totally won at the first (making users happy quickly), and we both totally failed at the second (actually helping people). ...