I met Oji the other day. He works on Outlook Express. He was surprised that I used Thunderbird to read my personal mail.

As aside: I’m an earn-your-business kind of guy. I want people to use what I make because they choose it and it delights them. I don’t care if people use it as the default; eventually they’ll choose something or they’ll revert back to it when something changes the default and its worse. But I hate it when people use what I make, especially in its early stages, because they feel obligated for some reason. I think people should use the best product for their needs, period. Even if their company makes a competing, if in your opinion inferior, product. Case in point, people in the industry like to point out how many people at Microsoft use Google over MSN Search. Well, for now, until I and the rest of the team make a product that our fellow employees want to use because it’s better, they should. I’m all for dogfooding (e.g. using our own products to provide feedback), but we get thousands of e-mails a day giving us feedback. We don’t need another 40,000 people sending us more feedback… really, we know we’re not doing as well as we can on long queries and searching MSDN. They’re on the list. Really.

Back to Thunderbird and Outlook Express… I’ve been using Mozilla / Thunderbird for some years now, having finally given up GNUS on Emacs as I wanted something that handled the GUI aspects of mail writing a bit better — spell checking, easily attaching files, easily browsing attachments, etc. Now, I have a rather straightforward mail setup. My mail is stored on a server that uses IMAPS, which is just IMAP that requires SSL connections to keep the mail / password secure. The only non-standard (but non-rare) is that I don’t have a signed certificate for SSL — but this should just trigger a “Are you sure?” warning the first time.

I tried Outlook Express, or OE, a few times here and there. It’s really just never worked for me. In particular, earlier versions just didn’t handle IMAPS at all well… POP was fine, but it wasn’t like the IMAP protocol was all that old, nor was SSL. They just weren’t popular enough for the features to really be nailed in those versions of OE. Fine. The Mozilla suite and then Thunderbird provided a fine alternative.

After talking with Oji, he was emphatic that my gripes had been solved. I was skeptical, but hey, he’s very knowledgable about the product, so I should give him the benefit of the doubt. I won’t change unless it’s strictly better — just the same means I have to learn a slightly different interface and control keys. Change sucks unless you get something for it.

So I tried it. IMAP setup still sucks. Thunderbird’s isn’t great either, as with both you have to go into the settings after you do the initial wizard to set it to SSL. However, OE doesn’t appear to be able to differentiate between UNIX-style folders and mail folders (e.g. folders can contain other folders or mail, but not both. This is because folders are real folders and mail folders are files. Some other styles allow folders to contain both mail and other folders). And when I tried to import all my folders, they didn’t appear. Seems I have to go to each individual folder to have it show up. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but really, I don’t want to have to think about my mail application. It should just work.

Here are some screenshots of the two side-by-side… as you can see, they’re very similar:

Outlook Express	Thunderbird

Some comments:

• There’s too much white space and extraneous stuff in OE. OE has a lot of random columns for things I don’t know and probably won’t use. There’s also a window for Contacts. Why do I need this here? After the “new mail” dialog is where I’d want to get a contact, but auto-complete is really the killer feature here.
• The initial mail window in OE is itty-bitty… I suspect it retains the resizing you immediately do, but come on…
• One of the most useful features in Thunderbird is integrated RSS feeds. It isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close to what I want — treat blog posts as mail (or, more similar to USENET news). It’s a bit of a drag when there’s lots of posts, e.g. you don’t read Scoble for a while, but for most blogs that post every now and then, it’s great. It’s also integrated into the right tool… when I’m reading mail, I want to read updates from people — public mail, if you will. Having to click through zillions of sites in a browser is a pain, and having to use yet another client is also a pain.
• The OE guys still haven’t fixed the issue about non-trusted certificates. When Thunderbird encounters a cert that doesn’t have a trusted root, it asked if you want to allow it this time, permanently, or never. The permanent option is just that — you never see this again. With OE, you always have to accept it… just a start-up drag. I also noticed that I had to go to my nested folders again — they weren’t shown in the folder list by defailt for some reason. Lame.

OK… so, I haven’t found anything that makes me drool over OE, and I’ve got enough issues here that I don’t see any reason to move to OE anyway. I’m not asking for a ton here… just a good mail client that handles IMAPS running on a personal server with a non-trusted root cert. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, Thunderbird has some issues, but IMHO OE still has more for what I need. Thus, until Oji fixes that, I’ll still be a Thunderbird user. Sorry Oji!

PS - Oji did promise to hand-deliver me a CD of the new version of OE as soon as it’s ready, and says that they’ll fix all my big issues. We’ll see.

This just in:

Just got off the phone with Bryan Lowney (its 2:45 am). They are packed up and waiting at the Helo pad to be taken to the original earthquake epicenter to add their labor to team there. They have completed 130 shelters in their area and have run out of materials. High winds are keeping the Helo’s from flying so material is short but there are enough shelters. They were awakened by the 6.5 quake but not personally impacted by it, except that all roads, trails, etc are simply gone, only way in or out now is by air. I prayed with him to bring the winds down - pray with!

The guys who were sick are getting better, appears to take about 3 days. Everyone is well and morale is high. Connections with the Pakistani military guys have been significant! Email addresses are being shared and there have been tears as guys come over to say goodbye to their American helpers. Praise God for the impact they have been able to have physically, relationally and spiritually! Almost forgot, they were able to get a nurse in late yesterday (she’s from Minnesota); she is the only care giver available at the moment for 4000 women. She has an interpreter with her who is pretending to be her uncle - that is the only way a woman can move around in this culture. Bryan told me that the men have literally thrown rocks at their women to chase them back inside when the team is building a shelter nearby - very difficult to watch and deal with - keep on praying!

My brother Scott is currently in Pakistan, with a group of 6 others from his church helping build shelters for one of the remote villages. I just got a quick update that I thought I’d share, as it really illustrates what is still needed in the area. Bryan is the lead there, I believe, and John is the local pastor.

Bryan has some prayer requests. The most important is the physical safety of the team. They are working in incredibly steep areas where the possibility of dangerous falls is always present. Trails and roads are falling away in after-shocks. Currently they are cut off from any ground transport, even by hiking. This is part of the reason they will do all their work in this one village. A prayer concern is that a helo comes in that can take them out on the 18th. It is their only way out. Apparently communications are iffy at best. Right now there is a lot of helo traffic but that is going to decrease because the team and construction gear has already been dropped. They are also concerned about resupply. They have three days of fuel for their stoves and three days of food, primarily power bars! They are assuming, hoping, they will be resupplied by helo’s coming in. (In fact one landed while we were talking) The helo’s in their area are Swiss and German, by the way.

They are linked up now with 7 members of a Swiss team making a total team of 14. They are building their own shelter right now and then will continue on building others. They are relieving another Swiss team who had a medical emergency.

The positives: They continue to be greeted with overwhelming grace, thankfulness and courtesy by the people there. They were introduced this morning to the villages’s second oldest citizen, 120 yrs old. They will meet the oldest sometime this week, 135 yrs old!!! The village has a population of about 7000 right now, 60% men, 40% women. Somewhere between 1400 and 1500 were killed
during the quake.

They desperately need at least two female doctors - please pray for that. Many women are injured and not being treated due to the rules about male/female contact.

Bryan reports that there are medics there from Cuba who are doing a great job with the men. Many Korean teams are in various areas doing great work. They have a great working relationship with the Pakistani military who are present in the village. They are working directly with a 22 yr old Lt. who is a great guy. Bryan said that all the military officers he has met are first class and would be leaders in any military. The military presence is necessary because of an unexpected problem. The outgoing Swiss team reported that the first shelters they built were taken apart and the pieces then sold by various persons in the village! The military is now choosing who will receive shelters and is watching over them. The officer is disgusted with the behavior of some of the village people who seem clueless about what is going to happen to those who don’t have shelter.

Praises: Team morale is high. No one is sick. They have been keeping their rules about drinking only bottled water and eating very carefully, mostly their own stuff. The Swiss teams have had major sickness due to not being so careful! As Bryan and I talked the weather was beautiful but about to change. They are expecting rain over the next three days. (not snow yet even though the altitude is 6000 feet where Bryan was talking to me.) I told him of my prayers about blocking with the snow - he reports that appears to be working! Keep on praying and commanding the weather.

Confidence level is high that they will be able to get enough shelters built to protect this entire village. One other good news thing - one of the guys brought a whole bunch of balloons with him (I think it was Scott) and that has proven to be important. They have been handing out balloons to kids and playing with them and the whole village has turned out to both watch and play themselves. I gather that play has been hard to come by with so many dead.

That’s about it. Bryan’s main concerns are that the guys keep safe as they fatigue over the next 10 days or so, that they receive resupply on food and fuel, and that they get timely helo transport out so they can make their return plane trip!

I think that is about it for the summary. They feel our prayers and we need to continue to pray in earnest. God keep them and help us all to hold them up.

John

It was indeed Scott who brought the balloons; I was down visiting him last week while he was priming them. i wasn’t sure if the kids there would appreciate it, but looks like they are, which is just great. He also brought 3 0-degree sleeping bags from Wal-Mart for $40. His plan was to give two to whomever needed them back there, and when they were done in two weeks to leave the other.

This has been a pretty bad year as far as natural disasters go. We started off with the tsunami that killed well over 200,000 people. We then had Hurricane Katrina, which while it only killed about 1,000 it pretty much destroyed New Orleans. And then we have the earthquake. The current tally is about 80,000n dead. What’s worse is that unlike the tsunami and hurricane, the survivors have winter coming which is likely to kill many more.

I’m pretty proud of my brother for doing this. It’s something to spend your two weeks of vacation building emergency shelters in December, especially in an area that’s been in the news due to the conflict over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. But it needs to get done, and I’m really thankful that Scott is able to help how he can — from building shelters to balloon animals.

Hey everyone,

Hope you’re having a good Thanksgiving! Me, I’m planning on doing absolutely nothing but goof off and watch football for four days. Yeah baby!

Although I suspect my wife may have something else to say about that….

Probably a pigeon. Damn pigeon.

So, today, I picked up a new addition to the Selberg household. Being that the Polar Bear, my ‘71 Plymouth, was more or less in the shop all of October and extended into November, my wife and I decided that it was time to get a new car. So we picked up a black 2006 Saab 9-3 9.0T. It’s a fun ride… and manual!

Did I mention MK doesn’t drive manual and I’ll be teaching her? That’s right ladies… I give us a month.

Anyway, the Saab has what appears to be all the trappings for a great Bluetooth enabled hands-free system. There’s a numeric keypad arranged in phone order, there’s a built-in microphone, and on the steering wheel are two buttons, one with a phone, another with a moving mouth. This just yells “plug a bluetooth phone in and you’re good to go.”

Except of course that this doesn’t work with any US cars. No bluetooth. And even if there was, it’d only work for a phone that Saab puts in… which is pretty stupid. I mean, you want to use YOUR phone, not some other random phone. That’s the point of bluetooth!

Bah. I’ll have to write up grumbly stuff in the survey they send me.

Oh well. I pick the Polar Bear up tomorrow from the mechanic, then I’ll drive the Saab for a bit and break it in. Give the Polar Bear a good rest for a bit… it’s lived outside in Woodinville for too long. Maybe that’s why it’s mad at me.

So the other day I was contacted by Geoff from Word of Blog (not providing a link as I’m not givin’ em my rank… but you can find them via MSN Search!). Because of my link to Habitat for Humanity on my Unlock AudioVox 5600 post, he asked me if I wanted to post an ad in my sidebar for Habitat’s “Give us your car as a donation” campaign. When I asked him why I wouldn’t just link directly to Habitat versus going through him, he replied:

Thanks, that’s a fair question.

There are several important benefits to go through our service:

a) It enables Habitat to track clicks (if you take a look at http://www.wordofblog.net/info.php?id=364 you’ll see on the left side the list of the first few blogs which posted the badge today and how many clicks they generated so far), so that they know who their supporters and well wishers are.

b) As a related matter, it enables Habitat to exercise some control over who posts the badge — the beauty of making a badge available to the public is any blogger can pick and choose it if they want to suppor the organization, which creates a tremendous potential in terms of word of mouth campaign; however, the obvious danger is that the badges get displayed on blogs that the organization wouldn’t want to appear on. So by hosting and serving the Habitat badge, we enable Habitat to potentially take out the badge from any blog or site they don’t want to appear on.

c) Finally, because we host the badges ourselves, we can offer to the bloggers attractive user features such as badge rotation — if you want to support several organizations on your blog but don’t want to sidebar to look like a “christmas tree”, you can have several badges rotate on your page ( i.e., change each time the page is refreshed).

(emphasis mine).

So Habitat can already see who clicks on their site via referrers, and I’m sure they do. But they probably care much more about people donating them their cars. Also, say I was a less than upstanding blog… Habitat couldn’t control whether or not I put up an ad for them or not (well, they could potentially sue me, but their policy of distributing out their message may cause some problems. Regardless, it’d be a messy issue.). Which means we really come down to a rotating ad powered by Word of Blog.

At least the search engines give you a couple of bucks if you show their ads on your site.

Bah.

Yes, I know, I nuked the server and took down the site for a day. Sorry bout that.

Hey all,

Just got back from China (and I’m still up, which makes this about hour 23… ), and found out that the Frank Talk about MSN Search Video Andy Edmonds and I made for Robert Scoble on Channel 9 is now up! You can download the video or watch it (I recommend the download myself).

Good stuff, check it out!

Today, we did the Forbidden City / Great Wall trip. The Forbidden City is amazing, and the Chinese are rennovating it in preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing . They’ve done the west half it looks like, and are working on the east half and will then do the north. I’ll see if I can’t upload some pictures to tell the difference, but when it’s done, it’s going to be fantastic.

I’ll talk more about this later, but first, let me tell you about the Ju Yong Pass.

Back in May, my pal Nick and I went up to the top of the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. I thought it was steep. It was. However, en route to the Ju Yong Pass, our guide laughed at me, at which point everyone else did too.

Then we saw the climb. And it is a climb.

The wall near the Ju Yong Pass is actually a large oval around the pass (which contains a decent sized river). We climbed up one section of the oval to the top, and then down again. You could also climb down the other size and make a loop. The high point we went to was the high point for the region, and somewhere between 1500 and 2000 feet up we estimate. It’s a hike. The nice thing is that there are very few merchants hawking things, as it’s not a high tourist area (and I thought Mutianyu wasn’t bad). But the climb is physically challenging. I’m not in great shape, and while I did heave my butt up there, I was puffing. But once at the top — woot! It’s always a great feeling to make the climb.

Until you see the guy in a sport jacket chain-smoking and holding his girlfriend wearing a miniskirt and 3-inch heels hop on up.

Yeah, OK, some people are in better shape than others. Maybe I do need to join that 20/20 program

We headed down, and met our hosts at a local market for some shopping, then went to the Duck King restaurant (I’ll need to track down the Chinese later) for Peking Duck. I’m normally not a fan of duck, as I find it too fatty, but the stuff there was amazing. Quite good. Although they also had this lobster-meat that was more like spaghetti or ramen that was amazing!

Afterwards, we went to Bodhi at 17 Gong Ti Bei Lu, where we had nice foot massages. This was a treat… you get a room (we had a 5-person room) where they do the massages, and everyone is chatty. It’s a nice social event. I had a lovely massage by #30… they go by number vs name as apparently it’s easier to keep track of, especially for foreigners (Bodhi is near the embassies, so they get a lot of foreigners). Apparently, you need to make a reservation as they’re very busy — +86 (10) 6417-9595. Ask for #30, she’s great, and she’ll get an extra 10 RMB. Apparently, for a random person to give a massage, the commission is only 20 RMB, but if you’re asked for, it’s 30.

We headed home, and everyone except me headed out back to Seattle. I’m here until Tuesday, and today, time to go exploring a bit on my own. Woot!