Okay, I admit it.  I missed the boat and jealously hollered that naming anything Web 2.0 is a bunch of crap.  So more recently I thought, hey, that’s no problem, I’ll just glom onto Web 3.0, the semantic Web.  I mean, look, I have lots of nice Jewish programmer friends, so who am I to be anti-semantic?!

But dammit, then I discovered that Nicholas Carr has already laid claim to Web 3.0!  The bastard!

Never fear, dear BLADAM readers… I have the solution!  I am hereby claiming as my own Web 4.0… with t-shirts and stickers, special edges, an expensive conference, and a network of blogs.

Yes, yes, I hear your skepticism already:  So, Adam-you-total-killjoy-smartass, pray tell us… what exactly is Web 4.0?  Well, I thought you’d never ask!  Allow me to explain this scintillating new Web with crystal clarity.

Lots of folks have noticed that five very cool new features debuted today in Gmail:
1) Enhanced UI, with Reply and other handy features placed at the top of conversations.
2) Notification when new messages have been made in the conversation since you started drafting your reply.
3) Forward an entire conversation (all messages).
4) Send chat messages to your friends using Gmail chat or GTalk even when they’re offline (the messages’ll be held for them).
5) Get Gmail on your mobile phone with a rich app (not just slow Web pages).

[Read more about these new gmail features]

But what I have to share with you is even more deliciously glorious… especially for those of you who are on lots of mailing lists or who have boring (albeit perhaps well-meaning) friends who just won’t shut up.

I’ll keep this (relatively) short and sweet:

I already use a fine to-do list software application (MyLifeOrganized), but since I’m aiming to move most of my life online, I thought I’d check out various online to-do apps.  I’ve been *shocked* at how every single app I’ve looked at falls into one of two categories:

1) Slower than a dog.
Sure, ajax is trendy and so [gag] Web2.0, but it sure beats the pants off having the damn screen redraw after every task add and edit!

2) No way to specify a start date.
Okay, this has to be the dumbest omission imaginable.  I mean, come on, I can’t work on [x] until my friend so-and-so arrives in three months.  I’m not going to start planning a birthday present for my sister until two weeks before her birthday.  I’m not going to start testing out music notation software packages until after the 2007 NAMM show.  Why on *earth* would I want all my to-do’s showing up as something to work on before I either want to or can work on them?!

This is particularly discouraging to me, because Remember the Milk is clearly a very slick service with passionate and smart developers and an active community and so on.  So why on earth haven’t they implemented start dates for tasks?  This certainly can’t rank up there as one of the tough technical problems of all times.  I don’t see it posing a significant UI challenge, either.  Nor, I’d imagine, is this something that users would be scratching their heads over ("Start date? Hmm… that’s so confusing and overwhelming.  Whatever could it mean?!")

Grrr.

Tomorrow night I’m heading off on a plane to once again attend a camp for swingers.  As you can imagine, posting on my blog and sorting through my t-shirt drawers will be far from my mind.

Take THAT, Lisa Barrone

Anyway… if you’re interested in all the details (including lots of photos!), visit Swing Out New Hampshire’s Web site.

See y’all in a week or two

[Added to reduce chances of some folks having a heart attack:  It’s a swing DANCE camp, people.  Lindy Hop.  Jazz music.  Sheesh… such dirty minds ]

Unless you’re a fan of the RIAA or a bitter, clueless artist… I urge you to run, er, click, not walk to go hear Weird Al’s new ditty: ”Don’t Download This Song.” [warning: music autoplays].

I’m looking forward to the music video promised for this evening, but in the meantime, you can hear the song in its entirety (and, of course, download it!).

So, what do you do when you’re home alone on a Saturday night, you don’t feel like going out, and you also aren’t in the mood to be very productive?

No, not THAT .

Why, you optimize your t-shirt drawers, of course.  Exactly!  And so far, I’ve determined that I have:

• 13 Google t-shirts (fewer than half gotten since I became a Googler, interestingly enough)
• 13 dance-related shirts
• 13 other somewhat-decent shirts that I may actually wear (okay, this is weird… I had no idea my t-shirt collection was so bad-luckedly symmetrical!)
• 5 [whew!] remaining t-shirts that I don’t want to be caught wearing, so I’ll donate these to Goodwill (:cough: unoriginal and oft-oversized swag)

A sampling of some of the stranger ones:

I have an envelope on my desk from the American Cancer Society.  A very, very worthy organization, and one that I do indeed plan to support financially.  But—being the strange bird that I am—I’d like to do so creatively, selfishly, and, well, with your help

No, I’m not going to ask you to send me money… at least not until I’m masochistically running some 42K fundraiser race or whatever where I have to raise [$x] and [x] is some relatively high number.  Instead, I’m going to ask you to do work for me.  Let me explain…

I wrote this quite a while ago, both to vent my frustrations and also to sincerely urge HR folks and interviewers to improve their practices.  I’ve had pleasurable experiences with most of the companies I’ve interviewed with in the past, but there has still often been quite a bit of room for improvement.  Also, I figured my rant below might make for a useful counterpoint to the plethora of interviewee-advice pages out there .

* * *

Dear HR folks and interviewers:

Write or call back when you say you will.  If you don’t, apologize.

Don’t ask us about our salary history.  That’s rude and completely irrelevant.  Perhaps we were working for the Peace Corp.  Maybe we were wildly underpaid at our last job.  Or crazily overpaid.  Instead, tell us (at least a range of) how much your position is paying and we’ll let you know if that’s aligned with our expectations.

Make job descriptions descriptive… complete with some day-to-day details.  Cut the jargon and market’y crap.  When your Craigslist ad contains verbiage about “best of breed solutions” and “every customer is #1” and “we offer GENAROUS [sic] benefits! [ahem, such as?]” we don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or run screaming.

I was suitably inspired by this commentary on ”keeping up.”

And so I’ll ask you what I asked myself over the last few weeks:
How many undealt-with messages do you have in your inbox?
How many paper magazines or newspapers do you get regularly?
How many RSS feeds do you subscribe to?
How many “must see” pages do you have bookmarked in your Web browser?

How many of these items make you happy, provide you with essential information, truly help you have a better life?

I’ll tell you where I stood a few weeks ago. 4,000+ e-mails in my inbox.  Over 100 e-mails coming in daily (and no, that doesn’t include mails at work).  Many thousands of unread blog items. Nearly a thousand to-do items.

Now I’m making progress. My inbox is down to fewer than 100 mails.  I’ve begun trimming my RSS feeds.  I decided not to renew two of my magazine subscriptions.  And I cleaned up my browser bookmarks.

Here are some of the cleaning techniques I’ve used; perhaps you’ll find some of them helpful.