Email: HTML or plain text?

A conversation this week raised the question, HTML email - that's the one with fancy graphics, colors and formatting, or plain text email - which gets your message across better?

The conclusion I've come to is, if its important, if the email contains any value it is (or should be) in plain text. Conversations with friends, online reset passwords, and other sensitive information. I makes no sense for HTML email with this kind of message, I mean, how many ebay phishing scams have you had in your inbox? How about paypal? If they were sent using plain text you'd know the link actually takes you to some phishing site. In fact any ebay or paypal email I get now I treat suspiciously and never click a link that they contain.

What does that leave HTML email for? Well I think, for anything else, i.e. email you don't want! Marketing campaigns, newsletters, they're email I wasn't expecting, and don't particularly want.

So why send HTML email?

Well, if I get some unsolicited email - and I include marketing 'eshots' from online stores trying to sell me that extra item - I am 100% more likely to give it my attention than a plain text email. If something looks appealing, I'll give it a few seconds before hitting delete, whereas it would have been deleted with a glance.

So they both have their place, however with the ever rise of phishing and spam filters, limiting images only to be downloaded if explicitly selected, is the benefit of sending HTML email fading?

National Express make me sad

Travelling recently 5+ hours to London (and then back) brought me only disbelief and frustration. Granted perhaps an oversimplification but running a train service is not difficult.

I don't mean the logistics - signalling, pathing, crew and stock placement - all of these things I can only imagine to be very difficult to get right indeed.

What I do mean is the front-of-house, the service the regular punter sees and gets...

When a foreign sounding voice attempting to do some kind of Lloyd Grossman impression repeatedly accuses everyone on-board of being a criminal and how we will be punished and humiliated... somehow it doesn't set the right persona for relaxing travel.

I'm not a smoker, however I have to be repeatedly told that in no uncertain terms that if I were to light up I'd be responsible for delaying the whole train with an unscheduled stop where I'd be removed and taken away by the British Transport Plods.

I also am already in the knowledge that this is the 12:30 from Edinburgh, the 13:53 from Newcastle, the 27:73 from Abergavenny, and that if I don't have a ticket, or if my ticket is for a train operated by the same company going to exactly the same place exactly 2 minutes behind the very train that I am on - I will have to pay six gazillion pounds in penalty fares or be carted off by these wonderful sounding chaps at the BTP.

Lovely, but hold on a minute, for the seven-teen-th time, I've got a valid ticket, I'm sitting in the right seat on the right train - for god's sake shut-up.

Now if I haven't succumbed and convinced that in the greatest probability that I am actually in fact a criminal, I decide I'm a little peckish. So I navigate my way towards the buffet car, jumping over the trolley dolly that has decided to serve every passenger in the entire coach before 'spotting' me and letting me - and the half dozen others - past.

We're met by Cruella - but I had to get a day job - Devil, who promptly barks in our direction, 'There's no hot food, there's a bag of crisps or this muffin, what do you want?'. Well love I was looking for some food, but... Mind you she can't have been the happiest bunny in the world when the company she works for cannot provide her with, a till - 'cups will do', paper to record sales - 'napkins will do', or anything worthwhile to sell!

No, don't get me wrong, I'm against anyone who tries to beat the system. You're on a train going from A to B, then buy a ticket from A to B. You're in public, then don't smoke. But I strongly believe that it is demeaning and unnecessary to repeatedly bark everything I shouldn't or mustn't do over a public tannoy in a confined space such as a train, to a huge majority of law abiding people.

If there are people breaking the law they should be punished, yes, but for goodness sake let everyone else get on with their lives in peace.

PS: While your at it, buy some equipment for your employees to use, and take that bleeding PA system off that guard.

Social Networks, XFN and the Future

After a rather odd post from me last time about the ring-fence, non-privacy that is Facebook (perhaps a d.construct fuelled blip) here's something as an alternative.

Since reading this article on the Digital Web Magazine, and more recently Tantek Celik's presentation at d.construct the possiblilty of an open social network has been once again running through my mind.

Potentially XFN has the power to give meaning to what we have and do on the web. If I were to sumble on to my blog, I'd be able to know that I've a presence on Last FM, and Facebook, and I built Pigeonbasics, and F1-Fans, etc, and vice versa if I were to start from my Last FM profile.

Where before you only had the details given on that specific site, now it's about the bigger picture, my presence on the entire web.

Mind there are some questions; do you want everything you do on the web to be accessible so easily? How would you block some parts from others - with confidence? How would you handle privacy? Or actually is anything we do on the net private?

With confusing conceptions about privacy, and security amongst the average net user, while I think XFN is useful, and good, I am sure there are a thousand that would find it scary and intrusive.

Having data on the web (having lots of it) and then having a meaning attached to that data is a big shift, and I think it'll take a very long time for it to be accepted (or even understood) amongst your average user.