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When Gmail first introduced the ability to import Contacts, I prompty exported my addressbook from KAddressbook. And then I mostly forgot about it, until recently. In the meantime, Google happily kept adding “suggested” contacts to my addressbook.
I decided to revisit my Google Contacts after reading some blog posts about new functionality. Sure enough, Contacts now even has its own URL (google.com/contacts). I figured this was a good time to clean out the contact and start from scratch with a clean list not polluted by the automatic suggested contacts. So I went ahead and deleted all the contacts and re-imported them from my desktop address book.
Surprisingly, there are weird interactions between my Google Contacts, and my Google Talk buddy list. A lot of people on my buddy list silently disappeared, without any kind of message or confirmation from either GMail, Talk or Contacts. And since then, my attempts to add back all the deleted buddies has failed miserably. Every time I add someone to my list, they show up just fine, but if I log out and log back in, they are usually not there.
What is even worse, this behavior is non-determinstic. Some additions persist across multiple sessions, while others are more ephemeral. I still don’t know exactly what the interaction between these three properties is, but it is very confusing. Google should clarify this more — what exactly is the impact of modifying my Contacts on things like Google Talk etc?
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I’m sure everyone has seen the Google Talk interface within GMail by now. They’re activating it in some weird order — its enabled on all my email accounts but one — the one that I use the most! Anyways, its just a matter of time I guess.
Initial reaction? Well, it works. But so does Meebo, and a host of other web based IM services. So whats new? Clearly, the archival of chat transcripts is a big plus. I wish I had this feature common across ALL my IM accounts. Right now I just have to use Kopete’s history plugin, and keep histories synced across all my different machines with [[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/|Unison]] and its a pain.
But its good to see that Google is trying hard to open up Google talk. I just checked whether I could add my Google Talk account to my regular Jabber account (@jabber.org) and it works! And with all the work behind [[http://code.google.com/apis/talk/about.html|libjingle]], soon all of the IMs would be able to provide voice chat through a single, open, standardized protocol (I believe Kopete already has implemented support for Jingle in their development branch). I wonder how Skype will react to this development — my guess is that they will emphasize more on the telephony and VoIP aspects of their service.
Another priceless greasemonkey script: [[http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2283|GMail unlabelled]] adds an “Unlabelled” label to quickly display emails with no label.
I really wish that GMail used fixed width fonts for the email body. So I was delighted when I found [[http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2431|this greasemonkey script]] to do it! And with a one line change, I //start// in fixed-width mode by default now ;-)
Woooooooohoooooooooooo!
Gmail now allows you to specify alternate “From” addresses. In Gmail, go to Settings -> Accounts
This is //so// cool!
There’s been so much news about Google lately that its all been a blur. Ironically, searning for actual information regarding on Google using Google is quite painful. Inevitably the first few pages are link on Google’s website or affiliate pages, none of them give any new insights or information. But I digress.
So I was talking about Google. Hell, everyone’s talking about Google. Just look at them: first the search engine, then desktop search, then blogging, then photo management, then gmail, then google maps, then google scholar, then local search, then sattelites, then video searches. Using innovative user interfaces built using existing technology, Google has taken web applications to an entirely new level. Google maps and gmail are just as interactive and perhaps more responsive than most of our desktop applications. Combine that with the fact that in the near future, a signifant fraction of Internet users will be connected using broadband and we’ve potentially got the next **big** thing happening.
No wonder a lot of people are worried. Grapevine has it that Google might be working on a whole slew of web based applications. If Google can do for desktop publishing and home office what it did for maps and mail, it could revolutionize the desktop market. Consider this scenario (this idea is not original, I read it somewhere, but can’t locate the source now. Please let me know if you find it): you have just one software on your desktop: a web browser. The rest of the stuff is hosted on Google: Google Mail, Google Photos, Google Maps, Google Office, Google Telephony. The cost of your desktop goes down tremendously! all you need is a thin client able to run a browser, and a good Internet connection. You don’t even need a hard drive, Google stores everything for you. Best of all, you’ve got instant accesibility from all over the world for free. Would you even need a laptop now?
Here are some interesting recent reads on Google:
* [[http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,1050065,00.html|Search and Destroy (on Fortune.com)]]
* [[http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050322.gtflgooglemar22/BNStory/Technology/|The God Good Google]]
* [[http://adamjh.blogspot.com/2005/05/graduation.html | Graduation speech]]
* [[http://www.betanews.com/article/Google_Preps_Video_Distribution_Service/1113441557|Video distribution platform]]
I had tons of Gmail invitations lying around, and it seems everyone already has a gmail account these days, so I was looking for a way to make some use of these accounts. Then today, due to a bug in [[http://kmail.kde.org | KMail’s]] disconnected-IMAP operation, I lost an important mail, and then it struck me! It seems like a good idea to use Gmail to backup my email. No, I’m not Newton and hundreds of others are already doing it, but it struck me today as a good idea, thats all.
However, I did things a bit different. My requirements were simple: backup all email, both incoming and outgoing, and make optimal use of Gmail’s search capability. So, I create two Gmail accounts: diwaker.received and diwaker.sent
For incoming mail, I put the following in my .procmailrc: (for explaination on how this works, see ”man procmailrc” and ”man procmailex”)
:0 c
! [email protected]
For outgoing mail, (I use KMail as my client), I simply specified [email protected] as my default BCC address, and thats it, I’m all set!
Just thought some of you might find it useful :)
PS: those email addresses are not real, in case this page is harvested by bots :-D
* Gmail == 1 GB
* Aventure Mail == 2 GB
* Yahoo! Plus == Virtually Unlimited Storage (2 GB)
* Lycos == 1 GB
Thanks to Gmail, a lot of non-Gmail users are also going to be able to enjoy larger storage space for their inboxes. Yahoo! is deploying larger inboxes for both free and premium email members over the summers. A mostly obscure Aventure Mail is offering 2GB for free for the first 10000 customers.
I thought the way people were buying and selling and swapping Gmail accounts was almost ridiculous. I mean, Gmail is so hot simply because it symbolises “cool” — I’m not sure how many people are after Gmail from the point of view of its utility or functionality. But where is all this going to lead? I mean what after 1GB? And how does this impact spam?
With Yahoo’s anti-spam proposal gaining momentum, we’re hoping that the amount of spam will reduce in the future. But it seems to me that more storage for inboxes might also imply more spam as well. Though that relationship is quite obscure, its more like a gut feeling. As Gmail suggests, archive, don’t delete.
Most people I know hate spam because they have to delete the stuff manually. If spam filtering really becomes effective, at what point will spam stop being a PITA, if at all it ever will. If you look at the most popular networking applications through the decades, starting in the 1970′s, you’ll see that email has been a constant contender. And it still remains, and will probably remain for the next decade as well.