Among other things, Baydin takes as its mission to help make e-mail fun again. I’m having difficulty recalling when exactly it was fun looking at an inbox with dozens of incoming interruptions, only a small fraction of which will serve to actually enrich my existence, but look at the audacious approach Baydin has toward better e-mail management through gamification: it integrates with your Gmail to actually make a game out of getting through your inbox faster! Â This is a terrific idea and if it engages people to do something that lessens clutter and simplifies their existence it is a great thing. (Don’t miss the funny ‘About’ page for the motley crew at Baydin)
Getting Around The New York Times Paywall-You’re Invited
You might be aware that the New York Times will start charging for content soon. Today they said the auspicious date would be March 28th in the US. It looks like they’re going to allow you to read 20 articles per month for free and then offer a tiered payment system, maxing out at $35 per month for bundled access to the New York Times website, the mobile app and the iPad app.
What you may not know is that you’ll still have the ability to read articles the New York Times simply by pasting the URL of an article into a search engine, or through links in Facebook and Twitter. As NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. explains:
â€Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.â€
Leaving workarounds intact reduces the chance that this move serves to marginalize the Times. Still, anyone else amazed at this level of pragmatism?