The Wired Jester

Lots of people these days are down on email – my friend (the “internet famous tech writer”) Wil Harris and Stan Schroeder at the nifty Frantic Industries blog are two of its most recent critics, and both have good points: Wil’s bogged under with spam and Frantic Industries complains about email’s slow, relatively inflexible nature compared to instant messenger and clever web 2.0 stuff such as Wikis or Basecamp.

However, I still love email. For a start, it’s easy and low-tech: anyone can use it, and *everyone* has it. I love checking Flickr and seeing my contacts’ new photos, but only a couple of my friends regularly update it, despite all my advocacy. Same with Twitter. Same with blogs. I like all these things, but there’s no doubt they just don’t fit with a lot of people’s lives just yet.

Secondly, just because email isn’t great for co-ordinating projects with co-workers doesn’t mean it’s totally screwed. It’s great for newsletters. Low-tech, pre-filtered, focussed and personal: I know that doesn’t sound terribly sexy, but seriously, try a couple from this list, and if you don’t start feeling better disposed to the moment your inbox says (1 new mail), then I’ll give you your money back and access to this bank account I have where I’m keeping $100 million dollars of diamonds in trust for a guy from Nigeria who died in a plane crash.

These are the e-mail newsletters I’ve never wanted to unsubscribe from. They’re the ones I’ve forwarded to friends, quoted at them in the pub and the ones I read straight away when they ping into my inbox:

5. OTHER MUSIC
This is the most recent one on my list, but I already love it. One of the things the net does really well is music recommendation, and while I use Last.FM, I find not algorithms but people and their very specific POV that I seek out: Pitchfork, my friends (like Hi-ReS’s regularly updated list of ‘insanely catchy tunes caught in our heads’) and the Other Music email newsletter. Other Music is a store in NYC (which I’ve never actually visited) and their weekly email is great: a list of diverse new music accompanied by pint-sized articles that are interesting and passionate without ever tipping over into garbled music geekery:

“Of course this is on Sub Pop. I can’t think of another record that so perfectly captures the winsome vaguely-twee, sugary, acousti-pop energy of Seattle’s finest label, so much as Loney, Dear’s Loney, Noir. One memorable hook after another, even the Shins’ last record doesn’t quite “out-pop” Loney’s hailstorm of glockenspiels and vintage keyboards and saxophones, and blissfully unapologetic nasal vocals. In fact, this little unassuming album so damned perfectly captures the whole “indie” zeitgeist I’m surprised it doesn’t come with a deluxe edition pre-packaged with a cardigan sweater and horn-rimmed glasses.”

All the emails are archived here and you can subscribe by going to the site and adding your email to the box on the top left.

4. GamesIndustry.biz
The web is awash with games content, so why do you need more emailed directly to you? GI send out a daily list of headlines, but once a week, the email contains their editorial. It’s like the Leader article in a broadsheet newspaper: opinionated but mature, a carefully written argument with a point – the complete antidote to the instant snotty-sneering and fanboyism that’s far too common in games journalism. It’s business orientated sure, but it makes you think:

“2007 [will] be an interesting year for PC gaming. Unlike console developers, PC developers have no transition period to struggle with – they are used to aiming at a moving target in terms of PC specifications, after all – and unlike publishing on a console, PC games are not subject to the whim of a single platform holder who can delay launches or provide insufficient hardware, rendering your product commercially inviable in a single swoop.”

You can sign up here – the box is on the left hand-side.

3. Photojojo

“You just found one damn fine photo newsletter” says the Photojojo website, and they’re not wrong. Once a week, one great tip or piece of creative inspiration (or at least a link to one). If you’re a regular reader (yes, both of you) you’ll know I’ve just bought a fabulous Nikon D40 dSLR, and Photojojo has proved a great companion. Take the advice they found about getting round people blinking in a group photo – simple and practical:

“For groups smaller than 20, divide the number of people by three if there’s good light and two if the light’s bad. That’s how many shots you need to take.”

You can sign up here.

2. IA

A bit of a cheat this one since it’s not an email newsletter, but an email notification of when Information Architects‘ web notebook is updated. You do get the first few lines of the new post though, so you can tell how good it’s going to be. And yes, it is a question of how good. IA are a firm of advertising/branding creatives in Tokyo, founded with the idea that “usability and branding should be brought together, as for the users they are essentially one.” The very smart Adam Greenfield used to work there, and the site buzzes with a serene, simple creativity. You might have seen their WebTrend 2007 map which did the rounds on Digg a while back: a representation of ideas in the form of a subway map. It’s well worth keeping an ear open for what they have to say.

You can sign up here.

1. J-Box / J-List

Absolutely my favourite email on this list are those from Peter Payne, who runs online retailer J-Box, which sells all many of Japanese stuff – t-shirts, manga, books, iTunes credit for Jpop downloading – over the web. He’s a long term Gaijin resident of Japan, fluent in Japanese and doesn’t live in Tokyo, which makes him a very different type of voice than many of the Japan based foreign bloggers. Although each email is nominally sent out to plug new additions to the J-Box store, they also contain anecdotes on life in Japan, bits of cultural info, and best of all, Japanese language tips. Japanese is a fascinating language, especially in its written form, and the J-List email provides really entertaining insight into it.

“Without a doubt, one of the most famous words of Japanese is “baka,” the all-purpose insult that takes the place of many more anatomically colorful words in English. Meaning “stupid” or “idiot,” the word is used by Japanese of all ages, from three-year-olds to the elderly. Someone nearly hits your car in an intersection? Let fly with a “baka yaro!” (“stupid jerk!”). Your gaijin husband mistakes a mimikaki ear scoop for one of those spoons used in Japanese tea ceremony? The proper response to this would be, “baka ja nai?” (“what are you, stupid?”). The word is also used to describe someone who goes overboard with love of something, like “oya-baka,” parent-fool, the word for mothers and fathers who are absolutely ga-ga over their own kids; and “tsuri-baka,” meaning fishing-fool, someone who likes to fish so much that he does it whenever he can.

The word is also found in Japanese proverbs, like “Baka ni tsukeru kusuri wa nai,” or “there is no cure for stupidity.” The word baka is written with the characters for “horse” and “deer,” and there’s an interesting legend about how this word came to be. It seems that in ancient China there was an Emperor who was not very well liked by his retainers. One day, one of his underlings presented the Emperor with a deer, instead of a horse as was customary back in those days. When the Emperor pointed out that it was a deer, the man insisted that no, it’s a horse. He kept this up until he convinced his lord that the deer was, in fact, a horse, and thus Emperor became famous throughout the land for being so stupid that he couldn’t tell the difference between the two animals.”

You can subscrine to the email from J-Box here. There’s also a J-List version which includes references to the adult content J-List sells.