Dvorak’s eMail is Dead

Earlier this week, John C. Dvorak wrote a column entitled “9 Reasons E-Mail Is Dead“. Once again, Mr. Dvorak is clean, concise, and to the point in his writing as he cites the nine reasons why he believes that this technology is dead on the road. His points are realistic, and are bound to hit some of us readers since I believe that we are guilty of more than a couple of the bad habits that Dvorak writes about.
Yes, eMail is loosing much ground on some areas, primarily: kids from the “Now, now, now” generation who much rather embrace IM because it is “instant” and to the portability of phone numbers from one device to another (something that can’t be said about the text messages themselves).
In general I believe that the people that came later to the internet (yes, I’m talking about you, AOL generation!) simply do not appreciate eMail for the beautiful solution that it is.
Yes, John, eMail as a cultural element is dead, dead, dead.
Yet, eMail as a technology it’s place on the organization is not.
eMail outside the “social web” is well and alive as organizations use it as a semi-permeable network to communicate in and out of the intranets and other closed-garden networks: a co-worker sends a message to another, or to a client.
eMail, like everything on the world, has a right place to be, and it appears to no longer be on the social web as a primary way of communication.

Your Palm Device As A Card Reader

Have you ever wanted to use your Palm OS smartphone/pda as a portable flash-drive? Why not, after-all, it has that juicy MicroSD card and it’s mostly empty. What a shame to not use it!

Enter Softick Card Export II for Palm OS. Card Export makes your Palm device (OS 4.0 or later, including OS 5) behave as if a card reader giving you access to the external memory of the device.

This feature is extremely useful: allowing you to back-up all data in the card in a rapid manner without it leaving your device. Ticked off by Palm’s limited Card Info app? Now you can use whatever tool you want – the filesystem is mounted on your desktop! Need a copy that project you’re working with at the lab? You might not always have your flash drive with you – but you always have your phone! Want to copy those new CD rips to your Centro but don’t want to fiddle with HotSync manager or with the phone’s wonky drive door? With Softick Card Export II, now you can.

Card Export II is now available from Softick’s site or from the Palm Store. At less than fifteen dollars, and a comfy trial, why not?