The Titanic: A Guide to the Movie

TOPIC: The Durable Impossibility of Email.

This week, Dan and Merlin return to an evergreen topic: the impossibility of email.

Chaotic, paradoxical, debilitating, frustrating, buoyant, and occasionally capable of causing short-term madness, email is still the medium that we'll never get right.

But, quixotically, it never stops us from trying.

Links for this episode:

• Engineers4Engineers 2014 Developer Conference
  
• [VIDEO] Two-Wheelin’ Per this week’s Back to Work. ... | kung fu grippe
  In which Merlin's kid scoots like a big kid.
• Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews
  
• Jackal Podcasts
  A weekly interview show with fans of podcasting
• DaisyDisk - Analyze disk usage and free up disk space on Mac
  
• Iron Maiden - Flight Of Icarus - YouTube
  
• Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail - Gmail Help
  Learn them. Love them.
• Mailbox
  We redesigned the inbox to make email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash and scan entire conversations in a chat-like view. It's a whole new inbox.
• Dispatch: TextExpander-enabled Email App for iPhone
  Dispatch makes it easy to act on mails even when you're on the move. Based on Merlin Mann's idea of managing your inbox, it helps you tame your inbox by letting you delete, defer, delegate, generate actions and even respond to your mails with ease.
• ParisLemon — Yes, Another Email Rant
  I know all of this sounds crazy. But given my hatred of email, I often find myself thinking about the psychology behind it. And thinking about if there’s something here to give me the upper hand.
• Fresh Start: The Email DMZ | 43 Folders
  Like a lot of the best fresh starts, this one's a total psych-out
• Guardians of the Galaxy - Rotten Tomatoes
  
• Infinite Jest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-satiric future version of North America, centering on a junior tennis academy and a nearby substance-abuse recovery center.
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  In the title essay, originally published in Harper's as "Shipping Out", Wallace describes the excesses of his one-week trip in the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship MV Zenith, which he rechristens the Nadir.
• Le Show - Harry Shearer
  
• Sodium laureth sulfate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Sodium laureth sulfate, or sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES), is an anionic detergent and surfactant found in many personal care products (soaps, shampoos, toothpaste etc.). SLES is an inexpensive and very effective foaming agent
• Amazon.com: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1: Cosmic Avengers (Marvel Now) (9780785166078): Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli: Books
  
• Guardians of the galaxy 1 : cosmic avengers . (Book, 2014) [WorldCat.org]
  
• Dropbox - How do I save space on my computer?
  Selective Sync is a feature of the Dropbox desktop application that allows you to select only the folders you want to be synced to your computer. Selective Sync gives you the control to ensure you have only the files you need on any computer. It's especially handy if you want to save space on netbooks and other computers with small hard drives.
• Satisficing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
• Contrast | Launch Center Pro
  
• Autopen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  

This episode was sponsored by our friends at lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/backtowork and get a free 7-day trial where you can access all of their 2,400+ courses), and Varonis DatAnywhere (Try turning your own network shares into a private cloud free for 30 days with an unlimited amount of users and if you visit varonis.com/backtowork you get 5 users free forever).