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
! diwaker.received@gmail.com
For outgoing mail, (I use KMail as my client), I simply specified diwaker.sent@gmail.com 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.