Replies

Many people don't even understand this about famous people, who have it ten times worse than the rest of us.

As a famous person myself, in my own mind, I find this to be so.

I'd like to hear from some little people and see if they have similar problems.

t.i.c.

“Unfortunately with the advent of cell phones and blackberries, many people think that you are reachable 24/7.”

I resisted a cell phone, and now I resist getting a Blackberry, because I want no part of 24/7 reachability. I have many friends who got new slick cellphone technology because their companies paid for it - and then got back-doored into being on-call all the time, because the company paid for it.

Another thing that’s weird is people accepting your contact and then getting huffy like you are wasting their time. A friend was logged on to AOL Instant Messenger. I send him an IM, he sent back a ticked “I can’t talk right now.” If he can’t talk, why is he on AIM, or at least why is he replying to me in the first place?

If I don’t have time to talk, I don’t pick up the call. If it’s important they can leave a message and I’ll get it soon enough - as soon as I can deal with it.

Same with a guy last week who picked up my call, but said he had to go because he was in a meeting. I thought it strange he would pick up a personal call while in a meeting. If I had walked into his office unannounced and interrupted a meeting I would have felt badly, but in this case he elected to interrupt his own meeting to take my call, so I didn’t feel the onus was on me.

A random press release might be something you need to see, because it might be something you'd like to write about or email to your friends.

I don't need to see a random press release. I can GO to the press and see the press release there.

And I don't need to be forwarded random press releases from friends, thankyouverymuch.

>> Sure there are ways to filter emails, but they all come to you in some capacity. There isn’t yet a sophisticated way to filter out the emails that don’t require any action on your part, versus the ones that do. <<

Not requiring “ANY” action can hardly be expected to work, after all your email client (or server app/profile) needs to know or learn YOUR filter parameters. But very little action (and time) is usually required to set a combination of “priority white list” and “black list” filters. And training (or using built-in presets and available on Internet “spam lists” which are constantly updated) even a half-decent, and often free, Bayesian spam filter will cut down on spam and prioritize your email experience within days if not hours.

Also, here’s a plug for a tiny, lightweight, fast, portable, secure, virus-worm-script-trojan-safe free email client that’s been a joy to use. While not necessarily replacing heavy duty clients, it may be used as a pre-processor to get rid of bulk of irrelevant emails.
http://www.ultrafunk.com/products/popcorn/

Can search for “Bayesian spam filter” for many implementations of free and low-cost spam killers.