To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Technology April 5, 2000 URL: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/04/05/zaplets Throbbing e-mail It's alive: Can a Zaplet tame your bloated in box? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Katharine Mieszkowski The Silicon Valley P.R. mafia was buzzing -- not about some new technology, but instead, coincidentally, over its own public image. A snickering piece in the April Harper's Bazaar (the fashion mag's "dot-com issue"), titled "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" cast "P.R. bunnies" as the closest thing to old-fashioned gold diggers in the new economy. Two weeks ago, Chris Holten Hempel, the "chief detonator" at Spark Public Relations in Palo Alto, fired off an e-mail to 20 of her P.R. cohorts with the subject line: "Congrats! P.R. Bunny/Bimbo!" "OK, since I've been receiving so much e-mail on the latest Harper's article on 'P.R. babes' I thought I'd open up this issue for vote/comment (see the poll I put together below) among the industry. PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL THE P.R. PEOPLE YOU KNOW." It was the kind of contagious message that could turn out to be a plague on its recipients' already overloaded in boxes: Imagine all the potential replies and replies to replies and replies to replies to replies. But this wasn't an ordinary e-mail; it was a new kind of message, called a Zaplet, that brings a kind of interactivity to e-mail. And so after 48 replies to Hempel's message, there was still only one e-mail in her colleagues' in boxes. At first glance, a Zaplet looks like a typical HTML-enhanced message, with whizzy color, graphics and formatting. But a Zaplet doesn't just look like a Web page, as HTML-based mail does; it acts like one. When you scroll down, you can interact with the message, by commenting on a bulletin board within the e-mail or voting in a poll. If your e-mail client doesn't accept e-mail with HTML, and you receive a Zaplet, you see a link to a Web page along with text explaining who has sent you the message. In the case of Hempel's message, she'd included a poll asking recipients how they should respond to Harper's Bazaar's slur on their profession: "Flood Harper's with complaints about the article? Do nothing and let it go? Send a crapogram to the reporter's house? See www.crapogram.com for more details! Create a 'Ditzy Reporting Award.' Hey, after all, we keep getting slammed by the press. Let's fight back. We deserve respect!" Vote results are tallied live in a graph on the Zaplet itself. Reporters take note: After 48 votes, the ditzy reporting award option was clearly in the lead, with 25 votes, or 52 percent. "It's better than sending out e-mail," says Hempel -- who, just for the record, doesn't represent FireDrop, the Redwood City-based (and Kleiner Perkins-backed) start-up that has created Zaplets. "Because it stays in your e-mail box and you can keep going back to it, and you don't have 50 e-mail messages on a particular topic -- all the data is in there." "Opening a Zaplet feels like walking into a meeting that's already going on," says FireDrop CEO David Roberts. But this sort of dynamic e-mail takes some getting used to. In my own experiments with Zaplets, I found myself wondering petulantly why not one of four friends had sent an e-mail response to my Saturday night dinner invitation. Then it occurred to me that, of course, I had to open the original Zaplet again to see if anyone had RSVPed, rather than wait for new mail to arrive. So here I was, the sender of the message, specifically trying to test out this new nifty gizmo, not quite getting it: Imagine what it would be like for someone who just got a Zaplet out of the blue. Right now, FireDrop offers free Zaplets for a variety of typical office-worker functions like setting up a meeting, planning a party, gathering contact information for a company phone list or discussing someone's résumé. But even these display what makes Zaplets more than just a way to consolidate (though that's certainly useful). These messages use the computer not just to relay information, but to perform another function such as making the calculations for a chart. The product is still in beta, but it's easy to see how it could be extended to commercial applications such as running a private auction or a sale on a specific product, good only for one day, after which the message expires. Click here right in this message to buy now! In the works, according to FireDrop co-founder Brian Axe, is the "Mission Impossible" Zaplet: "This Zaplet will self-destruct in 30 seconds!" he laughs. Thankfully, the company isn't placing ads on Zaplets, but instead hopes to make money by selling its services to companies who want customized Zaplets for their customers. So for the moment, the business model seems to depend on keeping development of new Zaplets in FireDrop's own hands. Right now FireDrop is only giving away the handful of initial Zaplets to consumers, while developing more customized versions for partner firms. But, Axe mentions suggestively, that's just Phase 1. "We don't want to be the world's biggest bottleneck to creating Zaplets," says Axe, choosing his words carefully. The company has more than a dozen patents pending on the technology, which has competitors raising eyebrows and calling their lawyers. Josh Silverman, CEO of Evite.com, an online invitation company in San Francisco, says that it experimented with the same concept over a year ago, but customers didn't understand it. "The technology behind Zaplet is super easy," says Silverman. "When you open your e-mail, it's the same as hitting a Web page except it's in your e-mail box." Axe counters that the hard part is making the application understand what kind of e-mail client you're using to make what you see work for you. Every time you open the message, the Zaplet contacts FireDrop's server to look for new information. Of course, this means opening a message may involve a delay, just like calling up a Web site; in effect, the Zaplet is clicking on a link for you, which brings up the new dynamic information in the message. The result: As long as you're online, the information is current when you open the message, not just when it's sent. If live e-mail sounds like a computer version of the ebola virus waiting to happen, don't be too nervous about getting zapped. Zaplets do use JavaScript, as well as HTML, but work even if JavaScript is turned off. "What they're doing is not risky," says Richard M. Smith, a computer security expert in Brookline, Mass., who recommends shutting off JavaScript as a preventive measure against viruses. Web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen, who is on the advisory board of FireDrop, thinks that wide use of Zaplets could cut down the number of e-mails we all receive by as much as 75 percent. Reducing in-box obesity may sound like a Holy Grail for time-starved, information-overloaded Internet users. But though Zaplets may help reduce the number of clicks between us and the information flowing toward us, they won't necessarily reduce the volume of that information. And cutting down on the number of messages doesn't cut down on the number of times that we'll have to open them to see what -- if anything -- is new. Still, Zaplets might make it easier to tune out some interminable e-mail thread that you never wanted to join in the first place. And, now, instead of compulsively checking to see if you have new messages as a handy form of procrastination, you can compulsively open old messages to see if anything's happened since the last time you looked. Neat. The other promise of Zaplets is to bring some of the functions of Web sites conveniently into your e-mail. In that spirit, I've sent a Hunger Site Zaplet to myself. I used to have to try to remember to visit the Hunger Site every day -- making my infinitesimal contribution to charity -- by pulling down the bookmark in my browser. Now, I have to remember to call up my e-mail program and dig up my Zaplet. In this case, I'm not sure that I've gained anything, except another e-mail awaiting my attention. salon.com | April 5, 2000   - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon Technology.