CLICKHERDER » Web Marketing

All My Email On Gmail Deleted?!

Joel — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:18:26 +0000

As you may know from the sentiments in our “Roundup” video series, I have a healthy dose of skepticism for Google. And while I have had a Gmail account for a couple of years now, I have only recently begun to use it in earnest. Despite my discomfort with Google’s unhealthy fixation on my personal data, the quality of the Gmail app was too compelling in the end. The fact that Google began offering Gmail as part of a suite of apps targeted at business did allay my fears somewhat: ironically it would seem I don’t trust Google to look out for the interests of individual consumers, but now that they’ve added business users to the mix I figure they must shoot straight: I don’t see them as champions of privacy, but trade secrets are a different matter, one with which Google can no doubt identify. In any case, you might say I was driven into Gmail’s arms by a spam problem which had grown to epic proportions.

So imagine my shock and horror this morning when I sat down to read email this morning, and discovered my usually stuffed inbox had only four emails in it. I immediately started scanning for stories of the same. There were some stories out there, however, none were all that current. Could my account have been singled out as having violated some obscure policy? There was no notice from Google to indicate any such thing.

The cause of this deletion scare began to come clear as I was reading through some of the labels which still had emails. In fact I noticed that all my labels still contained their emails. And then I noticed that all the emails I was seeing had acquired a label which would not ordinarily apply. I checked that label, and found, sure enough, all my emails were there. It was starting to look like a filter problem.

After looking over the filter which labeled and archived my tech-related newsletters, I did some experimenting around and discovered a quirk: in certain situations, Gmail recognizes the minus sign as a special character which signifies negation, i.e. “NOT”. This makes perfect sense if you want to create a filter for all emails except those from bob@example.com.

Note the “Also apply” checkbox for this filter:

You have to be careful once you decide to negate more than one email in the “From” criteria, of course. Since an email can only be from one sender, any filter which negates two patterns joined by an “OR” will automatically catch all emails.

This, however, is not the gotcha which got my inbox cleared. What got me was a minus sign in conjunction with a wildcard. Let’s say that you get several email newsletter from the Bar Company. For whatever, reason, they send you emails from multiple domains: announcements@foo-bar.tld and deals@baz-bar.tld. My problematic pattern was something like this:

So apparently Gmail’s filters are interpreting *-bar.tld exactly the same way it would interpret -*bar.tld, which is to say, “match everything which is NOT like bar.tld right? Wrong. When I tried the pattern below,

I got another surprising result:

So in English, “match anything which does NOT match bar.tld“. In my inbox, that would be all emails. Yet this pattern matches none of them. Weird.

In any case I’m glad all my email wasn’t actually deleted.

Ebay to go Widget in action.

Michael — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:20:46 +0000

The Clickherder Roundup, Episode 12

Joel — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:32:38 +0000

What’s cooking at Rouxbe, the Gurus of Guruji, plus dead men tell no Clicktales. The Helblings are back after hiatus.

The ClickHerder Roundup, Episode 11

Joel — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:07:12 +0000

The Helblings talk about Facebook’s “The Platform”, Microsoft scratching the Surface, and Mahalo trying to find its butt with both hands.

The Clickherder Roundup, Episode 9

Joel — Wed, 23 May 2007 04:00:58 +0000

The Helbling brothers discuss the three M’s: Microsoft, Microsoft and Meebo. First, Redmond rattles some cages, attacking the foundation of free software. Next, Aquantive: Bill’s toy for big boys? Finally, Meebo’s making room on MySpace.

Google Knows

Joel — Wed, 23 May 2007 00:28:40 +0000

Google just wants to help you. And things would go a lot easier if you’d just allow Google to know more about you. Eric Schmidt says “the goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’” He forgot to mention questions like “D’ya think she digs me?” and “May I go outside?”

What Does Google Know?

Let’s take a look at the ways that Google knows all about you and your preference for custard over tapioca:

Google Search – This is where it all started. Google knows general information about unidentified individuals and their search patterns. (Pretty innocuous stuff, really.)

Adsense/Adwords (for content) – Google knows where specific, unidentified individuals surf across a huge network of millions of Adsense ad publishers.

Gmail - A really darned good email program, minimal ads, huge storage limits. Scout’s honor they will not mine your emails for personal information. Probably. Whatever they do or don’t do with that information, let’s face it: Google knows who’s sending you email, receiving email from you, and what’s in those emails.

Blogger – Google knows what you’re blogging about.

PicasaWeb – Google knows what your children look like. Google knows what you did last summer.

GoogleMaps – Google knows where you’re going.

Google Suggest – Google knows what you were about to type.

Google Spell Chek – Google knows what I mean.

Google Personalized Search – Google knows what you’re looking for; all your Google searches are conveniently (re)searchable, and are tied to the same identity you use to read your Gmail.

Google Browser Sync – Google knows which sites you were looking at when you closed your browser. Google knows your home IP address, your work IP address, your coffee shop IP address and any other IP address from which you use this service.

Google Desktop (Search Across Computers) – Google knows what’s on your computers.

Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools – Google knows which websites are yours. Obviously, Google thus knows who’s linking to you, and who you’re linking to. Google knows how much traffic you’re getting. Google knows how well you know SEO.

Google Checkout – Google knows what you bought. Google knows what you sold.

YouTube – Google knows what you sound like. Google knows what you think is funny. Google knows practically anything you’re willing to tell the camera. Google knows which websites have your videos videos embedded in them, even if those websites have nothing to do with Google.

Google Web History – Thanks to a handy FireFox extension, Google knows every site you visit through your browser.

DoubleClick – Google knows more: acquired for a cool $3.2 billion, DoubleClick’s cookies extend Google’s reach further than ever before, probably farther than any other single corporate entity.

The question is not whether Google can get information about private citizens. Google already knows more than Santa Clause: they are sitting on top of a huge stack of information about you. The question is “What will they do with it?”

The answer: they are using as much of it as they dare in order to put ever more relevant ads in front of you. Luckily they haven’t distinguished themselves as particularly daring. For example, when the authoritarian communist government of China demanded Google participate in the filtering of information made available to their citizens, they rolled right over and let that government tell them exactly how to run their business.

Are you concerned about Google knowing so much about you? If you are, you can be sure Google knows it. “Mr. Schmidt said this year that the company was working on technology to reduce concerns.” Whew, thank goodness for that.

Old Media: Please Don’t Link To Us

Joel — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 01:53:40 +0000

Right off the bat I don’t like Gavin O’Reilly. He’s the guy who thinks that Google became Google by leaching off of media sites in order to populate aggragators like Google News. Yeah, that’s right. Google got great by grabbing RSS feeds from the Pucksetawnee Tribune Gazette.

Gavin’s also the president of the World Association of Newspapers. The WAN is leading a bunch of newspaper, magazine and book publishers on a chumps’ crusade to gain a slice of the search engine souffle. This gaggle of would-be Google-busters claim the aggregators are aggressors. Never mind all the traffic these aggregators send to the news sites. The half a paragraph Google uses to send you to the content providers’ actual site is, to use Gavin’s own word, kleptomania. Unbelievable.

My dearest wish is that Google and other aggregators would setup a “please do not syndicate me” list, and then simply comply with their wishes. Don’t send traffic to any idiot dumb enough to accuse the referrer of theft. Yeah, that dog’ll hunt.

Somehow they think the reading public will sympathize; old media is trying to start a slow clap. But that doesn’t work in the middle of a montage.

Technorati: syndication, RSS, Google, old media, Gavin O’Reilly

This is more for us than for you

Michael — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 19:15:19 +0000

Guy Kawasaki wrote an article for people operating businesses from their bootstraps. This post is great as usual. Some critical take aways for a new business:

Focus on cash flow, not profitability – You are dead when you don’t have any money. Until then you are still alive.

Focus on function, not form – In other words don’t insist on Herman Miller chairs before you ship a product that is going to make you some money

Position against the leader. – Something like only slightly crappier than Microsoft

This is great advice. There is such a huge shift in thinking that must take place to transition between corporate thought and entreprenurial thought.

Blogs with great subtitles

Michael — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:41:44 +0000

I read lots and lots of blogs. I only do this because it is my hope that by doing so I fall in line with the overall demographics of blog readers.

Today I want to highlight the oft overlooked but oh so important blog subtitle. Also known as the tag line it was invented in 1972 by Ralph P. Siunsinn. Ok not really, but it is important, because in the 50 milliseconds that someone takes to evaluate your site you better say something snappy and cool.

Here are five that are worth noting.

“Where Nothing Beats a Good Rank.” – David Naylor

“Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do.” – Guy Kawasaki

“I’m feeling lucky today.” – Jim Boykin

Gettin hit by traffic. . .not cars. – Stuntdubl

THIS IS GETTING REALLY HARD – Me

I gotta go figure out how to write table-less CSS.

Domain of Origin

Joel — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 06:20:22 +0000

My first domain name was Cahootspcs.com. My friends and I were trying to build some kind of Project Collaboration System which I wanted to call “Cahoots.” Unfortunately, cahoots.com was taken.

My friends all ridicule me for choosing the domain name “Cahootspcs.com.” So do my siblings. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say, “Hey, cool domain name, dude. Wish I’d have thought of it.” And that really hurts.

But I like to think there’s hope for me yet. I’m building a big list of available single-english-word dot coms. Also, I’m the guy that thought of ClickHerder.com. Yeah, that was me. Get it? Click-Herder? It’s an SEO/web marketing/link building/traffic gluttony kind of thing, where people click—ok, you get it.

Plus we get type-in traffic all the time. I think it’s because a lot of people have mice with buttons that stick. And when somebody visits them and asks to borrow their computer so they can use an online project collaboration system, the mouse button doesn’t work, and they just sorta shake the mouse back and forth and look confused, and then the computer’s owner speaks up and says “Click harder.” And the guest thinks his gracious host is talking about a website and starts to type it in. And this all happens in Wisconsin, where people flatten oot therr vowls, almost like Canadians do, and so the guest, who’s from New Orleans Parish, and has been living there since hurricane Katrina, thinks the host is saying “Clickherder” and the rest is history.

I love it when I find stuff like that in my Google Analytics.