Tag Archive for 'gmail'

Is it just me, or is the GMail Spam Filter sucking it up right now

Published
by
jk
on November 13, 2007
in Personal
. Comments

I’ve gotten at least 4 spam messages in my inbox today. What’s the deal, google?

It seems like this recent spammage can be categorized to two:

  • Chinese: I have no idea what the actual email means… but I bet it probably has to do with the Internet boom going on in that country.
  • Very cleverly disguised: Starts out with a simple hello, and really seems like a human being wrote it. Minus the small 2-line random alphanumeric mess at the bottom of the message. (Oh, that and the actual content of the message.) You even see the people this message was sent to in the CC field.

So I don’t know… I’m sure google will fix it. It’s just kinda annoying clicking on “Report Spam”.

Goodbye Meebo & Co: GMail + AIM

Published
by
jk
on November 8, 2007
in Web Applications
. Comments

Screenshots of Google Talk’s Integration with AIM with Gmail

From the start, Meebo reeked of being a feature turned into a company. I’m sorry, but really? Taking a proprietary messaging service, building on top of it, and trying to pass it off with a profit?

Meebo was nice. I used it from time to time when I had to get online and the computer I was on didn’t allow for installing AIM. But that was it.

I’ve always wondered why none of the bigger companies like Google or even… Facebook didn’t do this. Especially Facebook: Heck, they could start their own internal instant messaging suite, upping their ridiculous “time spent” stat.

I’m sure uncov’s going to have a field day with this one.

UIUC Express Email hasn’t changed much…

Published
by
jk
on October 3, 2007
in Web Applications
. Comments

Wow. This thing really hasn’t changed over 5 years. It’s still got this 90s era color/table/frame scheme, and just… doesn’t sit right in terms of design. It’s not aging well.

Why do I bring this up? I’m just checking if I have to forward my UIUC student account to a new address. I just got an email address with NCSA, and so I need to make sure that all is right in my little electronic world.

Thank goodness I made the switch to Gmail all those years ago… September 9th 2005 was when I got my first piece of email. The funny thing is, I stopped backing up my emails on a hard drive because of the simple fact that Gmail does it all so very well. And because of this, there’s absolutely no way I can use any other email provider (unless Gmail decides to create an exporter of some sort).

Hooray for vendor lockdown… The same goes for Google Reader, where there are just mountains of data on what I’ve read in the past and what I’ve starred: is there any solution out there that will let me export data out?

Lessons From Yet Another Reformat

Published
by
jk
on March 29, 2007
in Project Ideas, Web Applications and Web Development
. Comments

As I’ve discussed earlier, I love reformatting my computer… At face value, it might seem like a waste of time, but in the end, lots of lessons are learned. That, and, you get faster every single time… and you get a squeaky clean computer.

Let me just go through where my data lives, and how it made my life so much easier to get back on track after my reformat.

  • Email

    • Gmail: I think I’m going to start using Gmail as my sole email application. It seems like for some reason, this time around, SMTP doesn’t want to work in Mail.app. Also, since I’ve already gone Google for RSS feeds as well as my budgeting/documenting/spreadsheet-ing, might as well commit to… er… submit to the Google overlords.
    • I have to go and somehow find a way to match the folder structure I have on my desktop to Gmail’s labeling structure.
    • Is there a way to move all your mail from one service provider to another? Is Yahoo really going to provide unlimited storage? This really isn’t a selling point, though, since I don’t think I’m even hitting 10% of my storage space yet.
      • But, of course, through the wonders of gDisk, I’ve begun backing up my most important documents, like blog post rough drafts and such.

  • Contact Information

    • Plaxo: I love it. It’s free for us normal users… plus, there’s a little bit of the social magic built into the app: you can send “eCards” to people with their information and such.
    • I don’t use Plaxo much, but I do use the synchronization tool with Address Book, and you know how I love to think that syncing is going to be one of the many killer web apps.

  • Calendar

    • This is next… to go with Google Calendar? How about Plaxo? How about something completely new?

  • Bookmarks

    • What? Delicious? The only thing I needed to reinstall to get back into bookmarking was the bookmarking extension for Firefox and Safari.
    • I’m satisfied with delicious to even think about moving to ma.gnolia.

  • Feeds

    • Google Reader: I love it. I think I might start integrating the “Starred Items” on the blog like Alex Argo has done.

After all… they’re all bits and bytes. It’s the application that brings that information to life. With web apps, though, you get a handy method of not having to deal with keeping track of your own data: the system does it for you.

Actually, more like… the system administrators of the web applications are doing that management of data for you.

Hey, it’s less work for me! But… alas, advertising revenue for them…