After a quick scour around the internet and checking every option in the Gmail preferences it seemed like there was no way of hiding the chat (a feature I don’t use) and invite friend panels on the left bar of the web interface to Google Mail.

My solution was to use a custom CSS rule for Gmail which consists of the following CSS:

.nH.pp.T0 .nH.s,
.nH.pp.T0 .nH.pY
{
    display:none;
}

Minor Issues

Now this is not ideal CSS but it seems Gmail have no id’s or specific hooks to target the panels, so I went with the best specificity I could get to not affect other plugins you may have in the left rail (I also have a calendar panel). The downside to this CSS rule is I am left with some container borders as you can see in this snapshot.

Alternative solution

The alternative approach I could have taken would have been to add some custom JavaScript but I figured out CSS would be the fastest and most reliable way of hiding the panels. I may explore this as the anal side of me is not happy with the stray borders.

What would be nice is if Google allowed us to disable these items in the first place!

Making custom CSS rules work in Chrome

It seems Chrome (my browsing browser of choice) has no built in custom/user CSS functionality so I installed the Personalized Web extension which is nice as you can specify a regex pattern to match a url so I know I am only targeting Gmail using the pattern ^http[s]*://mail.google.com

Not too long ago dealing with my personal and work emails was turning into a full time job. Having countless subscriptions to mailing lists, trying to handle critical projects, trying to keep on top of communication regarding relocating to another country, it was all getting rather stupid. This is my solution to the hassle of email communication — project:inbox zero.

• Set up an archive folder
• Move all emails in your inbox older than a month to the archive folder
• Decide on the remaining emails in your inbox which need actioning, keep these ones there, move the others to the archive folder
• Now you have reached an inbox state that is maintainable and you will continue to maintain
• Remove all automatic redirection filters to folders. Any email should enter your inbox and you decide if it gets deleted or filed in that folder
• For new incoming messages be quick to archive messages that may be useful later but not actionable or delete messages with no later action/reference
• Your goal now is to action off all the items in your inbox at all times to get your inbox message count to read the majestic ’0′ figure
• Close you email client when you need to get on with work, else it will act as a distraction. Read your emails in the morning, lunch and 30 minutes before you go home, if anyone has something urgent they are likely to phone or instant message you.

This post was originally going to be about some of my favourite applications on the Mac, things changed when the trial period expired on one of these applications, prompting me to pay to continue use.

Regardless of this issue, my favourite set of applications for the Mac are currently:

• EventBox – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr desktop integration
• Things – Tasks Management
• LittleSnapper – Screenshot organisation
• Spotify – Music
• TextMate – Text editor, IDE
• iPhoto – Photo management
• Vienna – RSS reader
• Quicksilver – application launcher

In here are a mixture of paid-for, open source, bundled and freeware applications. The thing that persuades me to ‘favourite’ these applications is the relationship I have with them. Relationship, come on your kidding me! No, I have a relationship with these applications (and more), I work with them all day, sometimes night, they frustrate me, impress me and help me to enjoy my experience in trying to reach an objective.

My issue; parting with my hard earned money. I have paid for two pieces of software in the past; Windows XP (Home Edition) and Salling Clicker, both of which being an eventual waste of money. No later than two weeks after buying Windows XP, I bought a new laptop that came pre-installed with Windows XP (Pro) and similarly soon after purchasing Salling Clicker to remote control my Mac Mini, Apple released some remote control software for the iPod touch and iPhone to do the same job but better (native).

These bad experiences could be said to be coincidental, but the issue is prevalent, software is über competitive and fast paced.

Open source has instilled me with confidence in adopting software, I enjoy open source projects tremendously as I feel comfortable with using a product that has been impartially constructed by extremely passionate developers.

Freeware and bundled software: Spotify and iPhoto respectfully are great for me as they offer superior interfaces and functionality for free, can’t complain there.

Admission time, I am tight, it takes a lot for me to part with my money and I am extremely cautious. Bad thing? Not in my book, keeping tabs on personal finances is fundamental to ensure financial stability.

Conclusion

Why pay for something when there is a perfectly reasonable free alternative? Lets keep this simple, of the above paid for favourites here are some free alternatives.

• EventBox – Twitterific
• Things – iCal
• LittleSnapper – Paparazzi
• Spotify – Last.fm (for the paid for services)
• TextMate – Eclipse

Looking around London and most other cities, skyscrapers are everywhere, out of necessity, due to the race for space. So the end result for this competition for land is often elegant structures with solid foundations, designed to last, designed to cater for many people. A perfect analogy (in my mind) for how to explain intangible websites.

There has been much discussion on the subject of scaling websites, something becoming increasingly relevant with the advent of sites such as digg.com, stumbleupon.com, delicious.com that allow small sites to rapidly shoot to success with relative ease.

The social web is exploding, causing sites that embrace sharing, entity connections, open services etc. to take scaling seriously. Scaling is the art of ensuring your service/website will remain performant and available to every user and consumer service. This article, however, is not about scaling, but it is a look at the differences of skyscraper sites vs. personal blog’s and company brochureware sites (studio sites).

Background on Skyscraper sites

Creating components of a skyscraper website takes a huge amount of time, money and resourcing. A component may come in the form of an article page, widget or homepage redesign and may take months to reach a production ready state. There is a good reason for this inefficiency and it comes from enterprise organisation traits. Building sites to serve millions of users has taken much inspiration from the traditional enterprise software world through having to be agile, organised and technically superior from the competition.

For most departments or domains within these huge website companies you will find a vast array of employee positions. A typical website or service within the skyscraper organisation would consist of the following roles:

• Product Manager
• Program Manager
• Engineer
• Web Developer
• Architect
• Quality and Assurance

There are many more intricacies behind this setup which could include additional roles such as database experts, infrastructure, security, SEO, process etc. but for engineering and demonstration purposes, this model will be sufficiently accurate.

If you take a step back you can tell that involving this many people for every product will inherently incur inefficiencies over a single all-round developer. There is good reason for this setup, though; every member of the team will be highly skilled and recognised in their field of expertise, leading to world class teams. World class teams create world class results, something that world class companies demand to stay competitive.

What constitutes a skyscraper site?

We are talking about the sites you should all be familiar with: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Ebay, MSN, Amazon, Wikipedia. Sites with reach to hundreds of millions of users every week.

The Joys of building skyscraper sites

Building large sites is for the most part a privilege, something to aspire to if you are involved in any way in developing websites or software. Here are just some of the highlights of working for one of these large sites:

• Audience reach
• Cutting edge technologies and techniques
• Team of elite colleagues
• Great prestige

Pain points

Building websites with so much public exposure can bring pitfalls in working on these sites including:

• Politics involved at most stages of development
• Slow turnaround in projects through the vast considerations in delivery
• Narrow range of expertise exercised

The studio site

This is the site you go to to find information in a specific domain, a company, service, product, place or person, for instance. These sites are usually served to at most a few thousand users per month. You will normally find studio sites being produced by web agencies or individuals.

The love for developing studio sites

Studio scale sites can be really enjoyable to develop. Here are just some of the plus points:

• Quick turn around in developing websites
• Overall control over the site(s)
• Ability to diversify skill sets and projects

Downsides to working on studio sites

Generally speaking it is hard to flaw working on studio sites. You have the ability to move away from what does not work for you, they are usually quick to complete and once a development framework has been established you can reap the rewards of efficiency and concentrate on spending your time on new initiatives. Issues can arise when working for small, dynamic, young agencies where clients could be pestering and site design requests can be annoyingly denting for your portfolio.

Respect to the Skyscraper Organisations

Building large scale websites is a joy. For myself the main experience has been working for the company itself. Yahoo! treats their staff amazingly. We are all encouraged to aspire to be better at what we do, to have an open attitude and simply enjoy what we do. Yahoo! is by no means the only great employer in the web sphere, Microsoft and Google among others are renowned for their employee development, appreciation and respect. Probably one of the driving forces towards creating world renowned and respected websites is through their number one assets, their employees.

In Summary

If you are in the business of building websites and you are not happy with what you are doing consider the flip side industry of your work, for example, if you build skyscraper sites, consider working for an agency to gather more freedom and control in developing studio sites.

So, if you are observing skyscraper sites wondering why it takes them so long to release products, think for a minute that they may just be frantic behind the scenes trying to ensure they release a secure, pleasing, rock-solid world class website.

What i took from the presentation

It all finally hit home, the message that Jason and 37signals were trying to make; keeping things simple. I realise things should be simple anyway, just having it spoken, made a whole lot of sense, and the general idea is to avoid over-complicating tasks. As humans we strive to make our lives more efficient, but in the process we inadvertently make more distractions resulting in a poor productivity.

Getting things done for me is a hard task. My process in doing things usually involves first thinking:

• Is there is a better way of doing something?
• If i do not find some magical batch task solution, i will usually ponder on the best way of tackling the matter, again taking up time that could otherwise be spent doing stuff.

Why is this, man it gets annoying as i like to see results, and fast!

Tapping into my thoughts on task execution efficiency

I set myself some kind of mental note now (not a todo/task as that would be too constrained and definite), to try and hit the task on the head and get it done. This is the only way i managed to get this very blog live, by just doing it, instead of worrying on the design, the mark-up on the front end, the way i will market it etc… Its here and it may or may work but at least it got done.

Moving on from the talk

One of the subjects covered in the talk was to avoid certain things, such as avoiding talking to people, which can be considered a distraction, but instead use email/IM/etc. to leave communication to a passive mode, to allow productivity. This is a hard task and i think if taken to literally, could be bad for picking up inspiration, relevant information, and not forgetting you may be conceived as a recluse!

I will do stuff, i will create those apps that i have been meaning to release, i will blog more, i will get more stuff done at work, or maybe not?