Forgetting to add the attachment to the email. Everybody does it.

An adjustment to your workflow when sending files via email (eg Right Click - Send to Mail Recipient on PC, I use Quicksilver on my MAC) can help negate the problem somewhat but I have a suggestion (maybe others have had it too) for what I think is a killer mail client feature.

Upon clicking the "Send" button the program should scan the body (and perhaps subject) of the message looking for key words like "attached", "attachment", "files", "included" etc. If these words a present and there is no file attached the system could present a polite dialogue asking if the user is in deed attempting to send an attachment. If the user is they have a chance to add the file and prevent both the minor embarrassment and time wasting hassle for both themselves and the recipient.

Can't see that being too hard to do. Surely even web mail solutions could do it with all that AJAX action happening.

I deactivated my less than a week old facebook account.

Why? Wasting too much of my time. No. I didn't like it that is why. (more later)

Stephen Collins over at AcidLabs makes a good point of media outlets (here in Australia at least) preferring to do negative stories on all things Web 2.0 and social computing.

I suspect there is a lot of this around and as I asked via a comment on Stephen's blog, "When are we going to hear a report on the cost of Golf to business and industry?"

So why did I ditch Facebook?

Well I Twitter a fair bit and use it to keep in touch with friends and with what is happening with Adobe RIA, Flex and AIR folks.

With the use of Tweetr as a desktop Twitter client I can now send files/photos to my friends as well as all the regular Twitter features.

The immediacy of using Twitter on the desktop is really what killed my Facebook experiment. Especially for messaging.

I would perhaps be interested in a Facebook desktop client. A 30 second Google search uncovers very little. It would also have to be able to run on my MacBook and if it was in AIR I'd install it straight away.

I have been talking around a similar topic a few times lately with some of my business partners so I was curious to read Seth Godin's post on Toxic Employees. This paragraph caught my eye ...

"Managers can hire the non-toxic, re-assign the toxic and be really clear with themselves that they're willing to pay almost any price to keep toxic employees away from everyone else."

I especially liked the bit about being willing to pay almost any price to keep toxic employees away from everyone else. As a small development shop that doesn't at yet have employees I am more interested in this idea as it applies to Toxic Clients.

I am making some kind of resolution around the idea of Toxic Clients and being willing to pay almost any price to avoid them. Notice ALMOST any price. I guess if I am starving I might bend but in conversation of late I have mused as to what the design/development world would e like if more providers simply refused to work with toxic clients.

Don't say you don't know who they are. I am convinced that there are usually so e tell tale signs. Just wondering if I am game to stick to my guns and say "Thanks but no thanks"

I am spreading my wings a little and getting more and more offers to work on projects that have Flex, Flash and HTML front ends where ColdFusion (my only server side language) is not an option.

It would be nice to say yes to at least some of this work and I would if I could get access to some developers with "other" server side know how.

I'd be looking for people I can trust who are interested in doing things "properly". South East Queensland would be nice but in this modern world it could work wherever you are.

I'd be looking for folk who know their way around Mod-X, Typo3 and Drupal etc, Ruby on Rails, and even perhaps ASP.

I am not really looking for front end folks as I would be delivering HTML skins etc or building out a Flash/Flex front end.

I am looking for freelance developers and not employees.