Both of these services analyse your patterns and email behaviour to make suggestions…..leaving the only question as “when will Gmail write the email for me, sent it and respond so I can spend all day on the beach?”

*Got the wrong Bob*  is a new Labs feature aimed at sparing you this kind of embarrassment. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings, and based on the groups of people you email most often, Gmail will try to identify when you've accidentally included the wrong person — before it's too late. When's the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, "Are you sure you meant to send this to me?" and promptly realized that you didn't? Sometimes these little mistakes are actually quite painful. Hate mail about your boss to your boss? Personal info to some random guy named Bob instead of Bob the HR rep? Doh!
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-in-labs-got-wrong-bob.html

*Don’t forget Bob* ….Have you ever realized you mistakenly left someone important out of an email, or just spent too much time trying to decide who from your long list of contacts to include?

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-in-labs-suggest-more-recipients.html

Location should have created substantial new value on a mobile operators’ balance sheet.  In their rush to control and lock down this valuable data set, the operators set the charges to high and put up an impossible API; these actions meant that by-pass and alternatives would flourish and they have. Location is in so many ways unique to mobile, therefore we are right to question how an operator could try to capture some value back.

Here is an idea for you (free)   I would like my operator to control the location that my applications sees, I want someone to become the intermediately and offer me a “trusted service”, as the value has migrated from the knowing location to managing it.

Some example:-

Rich and Famous - you want to tweet your latest update with your location. Would be good but this means the Mr Robber and Mrs Burglar know that you are out or somewhere.  Please can someone allow me to put a false location on my tweets for a period to protect my privacy.

Celebrity – you want to tweet your latest update with your location. Would be good but this means you can be found by the hoards of fans who will mob you.  Please can someone put a 20 minute delay in my location.  Make it available but not in real time, unless I want to party with my fans.

Single female – I want to update Foresquare, but I am worried about …..  Please can my trusted location provider/ manager make my location available later, at some time period I am happy with.

The trusted service is to add a user control layer that adds a time delay to when your location become public.  Mr Operator, you could do it, but I expect that someone will do it before you.   Is this a big money spinner NO, this is about control, trust and loyalty; YES - think branding!

The FT do some fabulous podcasts The first part of the Digital business one this week is quite thought provoking. Peter Whitehead speaks about what he terms the "satnav generation" and how we may be placing too much emphasis on technical ability over context. http://podcast.ft.com/index.php?pid=723

He explores the idea that the digital natives (those who have grown up in the digital age) have a downside insomuch as they are a “mapless” generation.  Digital natives can get from A to B beautifully and easily, follow the instructions; however they don’t know where they are.  They don’t have any context.   Peter extends this to the idea they can answer any question, but do not know where the information fits.  The point being that information without context is dangerous and naïve as growing up is the move from information and data to become knowledge and intelligence. 

He rounds the short piece off with the concept that digital native generation may be poor decision makers as they  become narrow and cannot see the wider context.

Whilst I am sure that the example given is true in some selective cases, and as any consultant will tell you, it actually all depends.  Yes this satnav generation can find data, some will stop at this point lifting their status from numb-nut to hunter whilst other will immediately understand or be able to get context. 

Foursquare could be a good example. One side of the service is you know where your friends are but also they know where you are and it is your social crowd that gives you context. They (your friends) will be able to say what is near by, check out this, go here, even search secret London  Surly the issue is not about the generation but rather those who don't have a social crowd to provide the rounding and diversity.

All generations bring up those who cannot make decisions, however the satnav generation with its public vocal voice may produce more blaggers than other generations.  Therefore for me, digital reputation becomes even more important. 

Knowing that your or my digital footprint is what I say about myself, what others say about me and it is how we react to our content within the community. However, digital footprint data is also about information that electronic devices automatically add to content, location, attention, how I reached something, who sent me the content, who I send it on to.

Therefore I am considering using this model/diagram to help explain My Digital Footprint, Your Digital Footprint and what digital footprints are about.   Love any feedback to make this a simple model.

On it's own your digital footprint has little value - yes it provides a representation (if open, honest and transparent) of the physical you, therefore can link to reputation and identity. However, you trade yourself and your data in the exchange for free web services (search, email etc). Knowing how to reach you and your interests and who you influence is some of the important value from your digital footprint.

March 5th 2010

Footprinting as a term, I did not know of until yesterday. However it does what it says on the tin; depending on your preference. In a computing world it is used in reference to deep stuff such as DNS and other IP data from the ‘system’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprinting

Outside of the tech world footprinting is an audit that provides an assessment of substances, so a footprint could show the carbon emissions that a mobile phone manufacturer is responsible for in a 6-month period across its total organisation, or the carbon impact from the manufacture of a single handset. More and image from http://www.wspenvironmental.com/expertise/footprint-definitions

Why is this interesting to My Digital Footprint – more data. As I expand the data input model from just your digital data, footprinting (outside tech) could give you more information on the consequences of what you have done – that does become interesting.