If you missed the Google I/O conference last week, here is the video of Google’s largest announcement, Google Wave, which in short aims to replace the 40 year old email standard and become a new open standard for electronic communication and real-time collaboration. It’s a whole new way of thinking about online communication and there are a number of components to the system so if you work in tech it’s worth watching the video from beginning to end. Google Wave is a major power play by Google, and the biggest question is how Microsoft will embrace or deflect HTML5 in it’s browsers, a requirement for Wave, and the new Wave protocol itself.

As a side note, I was hoping Google would talk about how the new Wave system potentially ends the largest current issue with email — SPAM. It’s implied by the architecture of the system but I’m not sure everyone will grasp this and in my mind is a huge selling point for any protocol, as least in-part, aiming to replace email.

Buying a new computer in a down economy might not make sense but there are plenty of ways to upgrade and get more horsepower out of your existing machine. The most obvious upgrade is to add more memory. The next is to upgrade to a larger, higher RPM drive with faster read/write times.

As many Mac laptop users know, Apple doesn’t offer post-sale hard disk upgrades. The hard disk you specify at the time of purchase is the hard drive Apple expects you to live with for life, short of buying a new laptop. This said, there are plenty of third party Mac hardware sites that offer compatible laptop drives and Do-It-Yourself upgrade kits.

Out of disk space, frustrated with the slow read/write times of my existing 5400RPM drive, and with assurances from reading multiple guides that hard disk replacement was a breeze, I decided to give it a go. (Note: upgrading internal Apple laptop components will void your Apple warranty and Applecare agreements.) Here is the process.

1. Locate a replacement guide for your machine.
iFixit.com has a number of great laptop and iPod DIY articles. I used this one specific to my MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo. (Thanks to fiveinchpixie on Twitter for the iFixit.com resource.)

2. Find a replacement drive.
For the hard drive, I used the Mac hardware finder at Other World Computing and found this compatible Hitachi Travelstar 320GB 7200RPM drive for $89.99 after mail-in rebate. Sweet!

3. Make sure you have the correct tools.
Based on the iFixit.com guide, the only required tool I didn’t have was a T6 Trox screwdriver. I ended up ordering this Newer Technology tool kit which has the T6 Trox and also comes with two nylon pry tools (a.k.a. “spudgers”). Another bonus is that all of the tools have magnetic tool tips which made holding on to the tiny laptop screws a breeze.

4. Backup the drive you are replacing.
There are a number of options here depending how you wish to populate the new hard drive.

Some hard disk upgrade kits from Other World Computing come with USB enclosures and software which allow you to copy over the contents of the existing drive before making the switch. Note: this is probably the simplest solution if you do not consider yourself very tech savvy or do not have an existing backup strategy.

A second option is Time Machine. In this case, replace the drive, boot from the OS X install CD, format the new drive (can provide instructions if anyone needs them), then restore from your last Time Machine backup.

The method I used was to copy my existing drive using SuperDuper to an external Firewire 800 drive which is bootable, installed the new drive, then booted from the external drive. I used Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) to format the new hard disk, then used SuperDuper to copy the data back over.

5. Replace the drive and restore from your backup.
Follow the iFixit.com guide for your machine, format and copy your data over. The hardware replacement was super easy and took me about 20 minutes total. It then took about 2 hours to let SuperDuper copy the data back to the new drive.

That’s it! Enjoy your upgraded laptop.

I now have roughly three times the amount of disk space I had before and the 7200RPM drive is lightening fast compared to the old 5400RPM OEM Apple drive. It’s like having a new computer! Not bad for a $89.99 investment.

Above is a video from Google demonstrating how to setup IMAP email on the iPhone. The primary advantage of IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) over POP (Post Office Protocol) is that IMAP maintains the state of messages across email clients. For example, if you delete an email at Gmail.com, then that email is automatically deleted from your iPhone and vice versa. This means that you never have to deal with the same message twice and can save a lot of time when it comes to filing and deleting messages.

With IMAP, folders are also synced across email clients. When you switch to Gmail IMAP, the Gmail spam folder will appear on your iPhone. This allows you to flag messages as spam directly from your iPhone, something you couldn’t do previously with POP.

Follow the video above or these simple instructions to make the switch.

(Image by: rbeforee.)

Not for lack of will, I tried a number of things to improve the email experience. I set my mail application to only check email every 15 minutes. I turned off the email alert sound so arriving email would not distract me from the current task at hand. I would make heroic efforts to clear my inbox each day before shutting down the computer but the more difficult emails would survive and sit in my inbox along with half-written email drafts in the drafts folder until the next cleaning battle which was essentially a never ending saga. On the eve of every third new moon, I would sheepishly and with great guilt, looking over my shoulder to ensure that not even the office janitor was around, file the oldest unanswered emails away as if they had been taken care of properly. My email experience was clearly broken; my inbox weighed me down every time I looked at it and there seemed to be no way out.

That all changed two weeks ago when an innocent Twitter message from Scott Beale of Laughing Squid appeared on my screen. “SpamSieve, Kills Spam Dead on Mac OS X.” Boy, I needed less spam. I started reading the short post and had SpamSieve installed before I was finished. I then read the related post on Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero”, a system for keeping your inbox clear. I had heard of the system before but never really got into it. Now that there was a video about it, I figured it would be easy enough to watch (video). From that hour on until now, this is the view of my inbox…

That’s correct, it’s empty. My email inbox is completely empty. Zero inbox, zero spam.

Now, you maybe thinking, “Yeah sure, it looks like that for the screenshot. For a few hours maybe, but tomorrow there’ll be a growing list of emails again.” I assure you that my inbox has been completely empty for two weeks solid.

You too can experience email Nirvana. (And you don’t need to be on a Mac and use SpamSieve. If you have corporate email with spam filtering, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. you probably have spam filtering that is good enough. If you host your own domains and use POP or IMAP mail, find a good third-party spam filter for your mail application.) Apply Merlin’s sustainable “Inbox Zero” approach and henceforth live in email bliss. It really does work.