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1.6.01
messages I've saved
This is personal, but relevant, so I'll reveal that I have a special book for the SMS messages that Liisa (my girlfriend) and I send to each other. okay, might be a little mushy, but it started when we were living in the Netherlands with a blue book which we wrote and pasted things. While living in Finland, she was studying and had to be away during the week so we sent a lot of SMS messages, and now record them in a golden book. Some messages are worth saving, like letters with some personal meaning to them. What interests me is if there's another tool which can be created to make it easier to record the messages worth saving? 30.5.01
re: chapters
Just wanted to clarify: I didn't mean that the log should be organised into chapters online, I only meant in the printed version.
re: chapters
yes, I agree that the topics should be chapterized and I'd be happy to organize it, but perhaps its better to focus on only the most recent topics. I was thinking that for the first main chapter (summer01) the information could be assembled and put into smaller chapters, depending on how the discussion goes. The way its going now is interesting since some points or questions get buried - and force you to focus on the most recent posts. If we had multiple chapters to comment on it could be a big time investment. Doesn't mean that old one's can't come back again... rebirth or swing around. Current topics that could turn into smaller projects: - issue of what we value enough to save (tech related - SMS/email) - paper vs. digital publishing tools (new ways of saving info...?) - there are more as well (we could have weekly summaries to see where we are) just a thought, let me know what you guys think...
_project_book_ summer_2001
I don't mean to make it too difficult, but could the log be reorganized? So that it does not include everything in chronological order as it is here, but that it would be put into chapters, so you can follow discussions on a certain topic. Of course the topics do tend to become others and overlap etc... But that might be something to consider in September. If [j] is going to be doing the compiling I can give him a hand with the chapterisation. Using SMS I don't have mobile e-mail. I don't trust voice mail anymore. SMS is quicker, easier to access. Why SMS not big in North America? Wired News: Teen Market a Tough Cell "The future of teen communication is on hold in the United States. Teens are too picky and the hardware is too expensive." Save E-mail I don't have access to a cd-burner... Most of the emails I want to save aren't worth printing. Many of the messages I want to save include information, which is easier to find - at least in Yahoo! - by conducting a Word search. Does Microsoft Outlook have that function? Strange if not. But I'd like to save my correspondence with a few friends as prints, because they're more like letters. Since most of those messages are in Yahoo! I'll first need to copy them into Word, because otherwise the prints will include all kinds of useless stuff like Yahoo! header's etc. Anyhow, for most mails, CD sounds like the best option. But how do I copy Yahoo! mails onto a CD... Yahoo! forces me to delete messages regularily since I'm constantly hitting the 6MB limit. In my Outlook Inbox there are currently 373 messages, most of which are waiting to be deleted when I have time.
something to read
I like the way the _project is going. I've come across some information about purpose and online facilitation which might be interesting to read :: but let's say to keep this open and fun without getting bogged down with rules bla, bla, bla... hey, where can we get that pink/fake leaf backgroud? ;)
How I use SMS
SMS messages for me are delayed communication. Meaning that you can reply whenever you have the time, so its more casual information. I reserve phone calls for when I need an immediate (emergency) response or when I think that the person isn't busy and need to discuss more than an SMS is capable of. The other thing is that because SMS is mobile, I'm sure that the person will receive and probably reply today or tomorrow at the latest. I might actually get offended or wonder if something is wrong if an SMS isn't replied to especially if its someone I'm close to. (more than with email because everyone can reply since they're mobile) ps. Most Finns I know can write an SMS with their eyes closed.. :)
To add to my posting below:
You can print out most significant information exchange and set a limit on the page size of the book; somewhere around 150-200 pages. At the end of the year you can bind it and insert the CD with the full archive in the back of the book. Then you can use the printed material as mental bookmarks to aid in your search on the CD if needed.
My previous answer was mostly concerned with the technical possibility of archiving. Paper seems to be a good alternative. However, if you consider 300 messages x 12 = 3600 year/year - it may be difficult to find any needed information in a binder with 3600 pages. And that is - assuming all messages are shorter than one typed page. I approximate that one CD (700 MB) can hold your information for 1 year. And you may also have the possibility to archive the attachments as well.
I do not know the answer to your question [j]. But I can try. I have never considered an e-mail so well written that I felt a need to archive it. In my experience with e-mail, I tend to value more the instant communication value of the medium. One message deleted is not big deal. However if my correspondence for one month would be deleted (about 300 messages) I do consider it a loss. Few times I went back and looked at old e-mail. In that way - is like that big box of old letters I never read (or dare to), but if they would get destroyed I would feel them missing. Below is a piece of history I found on the net while looking to answer your question. Address: http://www.language-culture.org/archives/mailing-lists/l-c/199401/msg00022.html Date: Tue, 04 Jan 94 13:42 HST (Yes! 1994) "The only problem with e-mail as a publishing medium is that it is very 'volatile' and 'oral' in form. It can also tend to be rather 'private' in many ways, and here I'm thinking about the kind of 'in'-discourse one sometimes gets on the more specialist e-mail lists. "This means that it can be great for generating and developing ideas between peers 'on-line,' but probably rather poor as a 'presentation medium' in a wider, more cross-disciplinary setting. Here, something like World Wide Web seems a better use of resources in some ways. Encouraging researchers and others to work (and publish) in this kind of hypermedia environment, rather than purely in an e-mail environment, might help to increase the flow of ideas between disciplines, since when one is going to publish on the Web, one has to think of a wider audience than when one is a member of a specialist e-mail list. . . . "I would like to see many resarch 'journals' published as WWW nodes, and with the possibility of on-line discussion (using something like UseNet Newsgroups centered round the themes and articles published in the journal) as an integral part of the whole user/ reader/ writer-environ- ment. This is also possible today on the Web. . . ." --Pat Coppock, University of Trondheim (patcoppock@avh.unit.no)
I like the idea of the _project being printed and binded. It will be a good archival method. Also I think it will bring more interest from all involved in knowing this will actually be part of a book with chapters. May this be the first chapter - named _summer_2001.
Now… to go back and answer [j] question about archiving e-mails. One solution is to use Netscape Mail. The Advantages: - it has a fairly good interface - you can sync you address book with your Palm Pilot - your INBOX is represented by one file that can be backed up (monthly) on CD or ZIP or whatever you choose. - the archive is easy to retrieve The Disadvantages: - it takes more time to load - you will have to go through a set up procedure (but so you have to do with most e-mail clients) Back to SMS On our way to the weekly tennis match, we were discussing your problem of having to archive SMS. As we don't have much experience with SMS - our conversation ended in pointing out advantages of such communication and reasons for one using it. Situation: Here, in Canada few people use SMS. All of us have cell phones - and we use them mostly for voice communication. I use my cell for sending e-mail and very rare SMS. [m] can't get my messages - as they get stuck on the server. We all use different service providers and their systems are not set up to exchange SMS properly. The Experience: Personally - I don't use SMS much. But I do use e-mail on my phone. If I need a to archive a message - I forward that message to my main account at www.idgrid.org. Sometime I use my cell phone to take down notes and send those notes to my e-mail. The system works most of the time and allows for very good communication between me and [v] who also has mobile e-mail. It also notifies me if a message can not be send because of network problems. Question: Why did SMS not catch in North America? Is it because providers don't want us to ? Is it because their market focus is on heavy voice service users ? Just a though... since their networks don't seem to be compatible in exchanging SMS. To give you an idea about pricing - the SMS & E-MAIL package for AT&T Canada is $6.00 / month for UNLIMITED use. 29.5.01
About lost data or about to loose data: Over the years I have gathered about 100 CDR's. Most of the archives are software and about 10% - that is 10 CD's have written data on them that is valuable and irreplaceable for me. At some point I used to make monthly backups of my e-mail. Archiving around 250 messages one by one seems quite a time wasting activity. So far I have used programs such as: Pegasus Mail, Netscape, Eudora, Pine, Outlook and I also have e-mail accounts with YAHOO and HOTMAIL. I was surprised to find how weak the archival capabilities of these systems are. And I always end up with my INBOX full - because I consider these bits and pieces so dear to me - that I don't want to delete them. Last month - in a desperate move to clean my INBOX - so I can receive e-mail selected and deleted about 300 messages of my e-mail server. Only later on I found out that my hard drive inbox was in sync with the one on the server. All the mesages have been lost. At the same time I had to reformat my hard drive and gone was the Address Book as well. Right now I am using Outlook Express and I am facing again 348 downloaded messages in my INBOX. Chances are that after I do the back up - I will look again into using a different e-mail client. I came to take this decision after I had encountered 4 VBS scripted viruses - made to spread through Microsoft's Outlook Express. This was only in a period of two months. I have also tried to archive my messages. Microsoft first invented a new term for archives - called Compacting Folders. Second - the files would only be back-ed up as *.dbx. Third - it doesn't work. The Trick : Export Messages option doesn't work either in Version 5.5 - a small window pops up and lets you know that: * The export could not be performed. * An error occurred while initializing MAPI. There is no option to export as a text file. Frustrated! So far I consider only this much data loss over 6 years period not to be significant. Although I rarely go back and read my old e-mails it makes me feel a lot better that I have them saved. Eudora has a save feature - but saves all e-mails into one text file. That makes it difficult to locate a particular message. Although a key word Search (F3 in Windows Notepad) seemed to work most of the time. I would consider printing them - but I don't have a printer around here. Seems like a really good solution to print well written or selected e-mails - although I don't consider it very not very safe. What / how do you keep track of e-mails regarding business or a project? Do you print them out and bind them? How do you keep the print outs safe from 'curious' eyes? [m] laughed at my thought about burying copies of my CD's with personal data in my back yard. I am still fantasizing with this idea. At the present I am using Gigastorage CDR's, and Caselogic 48 Sleeve CD Storage Books. Gigastorage - although a unknown brand, makes good quality CD's. They seem to work better than any other brand I used over the years. Right now I also have 700 MB TDK Sleeve Pack CDR's, and they are not burning very well on my 2x SONY burner. The Caselogic CD Sleeve Books - first one came as a gift from [v] - make it very easy to pack a lot of CD's together and to keep in order. Right now I have one CD book with Software and Data. Another with Data and Music. Most likely they will grow in three books Software, Data and Music.
For myself, I used to organize emails / SMS
messages in similar folders. And it was useful. But I rarely go back on them in their digital format. Don't know the reason at this point. The result is that there's a large amount of messages sitting/or waiting to be organized... until one day they don't mean too much anymore because there's too much work involved and they are deleted. hmmm, interesting about teenage girls recording SMS in journals. Maybe they feel that the journal is even more personal - writing and pasting notes/ pictures etc... so then the SMS messages are another tool to be used for communication.
Finland's largest mobile operator Sonera has a service where you can
download your SMS messages onto a website. My current Nokia can save an idiotically (or should I say amazingly) large number of SMS messages, which can be organised in separate folders, so they don't all float around in the SMS inbox. I heard writing SMS messages in books is popular among the SMS heavy users - teenage girls. If my next phone has less of a memory than this one I'll definitely save a few messages somehow somewhere.
Jurgen Bey (designer from the netherlands) did a project for a
New York Times Competition to design a time capsule. His idea was to transmit information to the future in and organic way - similar to the way in which we now get data from the past. (*have to dig this one out of projects in the main menu - - then New York Times Competition) Another thing is SMS messages which have to be erased quickly or your phone gets too heavy :) I've recently been recording valuable (personal) messages in a book. This way I also write notes beside the messages and it becomes some kind of a story. The difficulty is to keep the habit up and to decide which one's not to enter in... 28.5.01
But to answer the specific question about old emails - still avoiding the major question - I tend to save some of my emails, although that sometimes seems like I'm fooling myself. One computer crashed down, one hotmail-account was wiped out, but still I'm still keeping my correspondence with a few people intact in my Yahoo-account. But I've never had my own computer really, so it is quite difficult to keep a hold of things. It is easier to lose email than letters.
I worry about losing texts, which often are only on one harddrive or (un)floppy discs - I've had a bad experience with a disc full of writing-in-progress (a kind of poetry-type project), stuff that I'd gathered from various notebooks and fine-tuned and it had started to resemble a project, but then the disc was destroyed and the writings never retrieved. Didn't even write similar things for two years... Another A to [j]'s broader Q: Nicholson Baker wrote an article in New Yorker about how libraries are scrapping old newspapers, which could be considered loaded with historical value. He has now published a book on the same subject. He set on a crusade to save newspapers headed for the dumpster or sold to people who sell the single issues one-by-one (many people buy a paper as a gift if it's been published on someone's birthday or something). Many of the papers are of course microfilmed, but Baker argues that paper stands the weight of time better than microfilm. But more in this article on the book.
Print idea sounds excellent.
About web history - well, althugh this pretty much repeats the idea, here's a little something I posted somewhere else on March 12, 2001. World's oldest webcam turned off Where is webhistory archived? Will there be a site where this webcam is restored in some way - pics from the past? A thorough recollection? And I don't mean just this first webcam. We're currently working on a project www.kalmis.to (kalmisto is an oldfashioned word for cemetery) where we are collecting deceased web publications. Currently just Finnish ones. This includes some magazines started in 1995/1996 and a few newer pieces of web publishing history. Mainly independent stuff. Another example - I thought this was quite interesting: Yahoo! in 1994
[j] : very cool... i like the idea a lot! i'll post something new later in the day, regarding _project and [j]'s question about what interests us...
een idee:
We could print out _project. It could have chapters, like a book, where the information can be archived and printed in a layout and sent to the team. Each chapter could act as a season, and the project could continue for however long we can keep it going. This would mean that we have two ways of recording/showing _project : physical and digital. Our current work could be chapter one – summer lasting from June till September. Then I could create a layout - print - and send it out to out team. What do you guys think?
Something I've been interested in for a while:
Q: what do we value enough these days to hang on to? This from Faster - pg 250 There’s never been a time of such drastic and irretrievable information loss. We’ve turned into a total amnesiac. We do short-term memory, period. (Stewart Brand - whole earth catalogue) future anthropologists will find out pottery but not our email. (Although email never actually leaves the system, lingering on disk drives and backup tapes.) Tech: `Refresh´ aging records by continually copying them onto new storage media using new software. Most institutions haven’t realized that it may even be necessary. Whatever media they used to save their digital information, they will not be able to read it without a machine – an antique most likely. * with paper all you need is your eyes. question again: Q: what do we value enough these days to hang on to? (is it more in the physical things?) (do we save well written emails/personal emails?) 27.5.01
[d] and [v] are working on a project for LG Competition due on June 15, 2001. The project is named - The Pill... 
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