Archive for 'Email'
Kill a Whole Tree of Birds With Digsby
Posted on July 3, 2008, under Email, IM, Networking, Social Networks, Twitter.
I came across Digsby earlier today, and have been playing around with it all morning. Digsby is a IM client for all of your IM networks, much like Pidgin, Trillian, etc. However, Digsby also does your social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. If that were not enough, it will also do your email: Live Mail, GMail, Yahoo, Pop, etc.
It packages all of your social connections into one easy to use desktop application, with a lot of features to allow for almost complete customization.
It’s defiantly worth a download, it might just replace all of your desktop clients at once.
Popularity: 29% [?]
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Why Is There Still No GMail API?
Posted on June 23, 2008, under Email, Tools and Services.
So Google has made a huge dent in hosted email for businesses. They have now flexed there power in yet another market. Why, oh why is there not an API for GMail yet? Seriously! Mobile smart phones becoming more widespread, even Google has the Android coming out; how are we suppose to build applications against GMail? Google released an API for Outlook integration, but no official API.
There is so much potential in building applications around GMail. It’s long overdue.
Popularity: 19% [?]
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@Mail Releases Open Source Version
Posted on May 19, 2008, under Email, Open Source, Tools and Services.
@Mail, an excellent mail application and server, has released an open source version. Last year, @Mail launched their PHP version from the PERL build, and recently the company renamed the company from CalaCode to @Mail. From the company:
We have released the open source edition of AtMail to further promote the usage of AtMail, offer users looking for “more” an upgrade path to the commercial AtMail version, and provide the open-source community a fresh look at Ajax Webmail.
Seems to be a lot of change at the company lately. Not sure if they are struggling with more and more companies outsourcing their mail services to companies like Microsoft, and Google. Kind of an interesting move.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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Don’t You Think Plaxo Has Backups of Their Databases?
Posted on May 16, 2008, under Email, Tools and Services.
It’s all over the new "evil" Comcast acquired Plaxo, and everyone, including myself, is all upset. I immediately switched to Schedule World, which was a change coming anyway due to my frustration with the continued lack of support for Google Apps from Plaxo. Polls are popping up on the web asking if people are still going to use their accounts or delete them. Leo Laporte was on Buzz Out Loud and said he immediately deleted his Plaxo account, and I have heard the same from others.
But honestly, don’t you think Plaxo has backups of their database? Now yes, it would be "illegal" for Comcast to use information from accounts deleted, but their policy says Plaxo has the right to change their policy at any time. And lets be honest folks, this is exactly the kind of bonehead move Comcast would pull.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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How I Dropped Outlook Like a Bad Habit
Posted on September 26, 2007, under Email, How To, Software, Tools and Services.
I have had a couple questions lately on how I handle all of my emails, so here goes:
Like many out there I have used Outlook for the longest time, longer than I can remember actually. I had a huge PST file with emails dating back to college. When I got a PDA for work purposes, all of a sudden having my email in one place on my desktop did not work unless I wanted to setup an Exchange server. It has always upset me that Outlook does not support IMAP completely, and they have made it difficult to use; so this wasn’t an alternative. I had fears about giving up control of my mail server, which I have always chosen to run myself. Lastly, how was I going to sync up my calendar? After testing many setups, this is how I dropped Outlook like a bad habit.
Let Go of Mail Server Control:
I always ran my own mail server because I didn’t have to worry about spam signatures being attached to my emails, running out of storage space, or any of that other crap. GMail came along and changed the game with Google Apps, and Yahoo has been ramping up it’s offerings as well. I needed my email in a central place where any of my devices could hit it. An Exchange server was too pricey and with it came support problems, and any other software was just going to be something else I would have to set time aside to get up and running and keep running. I finally let go control of running my own mail server, and haven’t looked back since. Gmail is fast, works with my domain, has plenty of storage, improves it’s services without me having to upgrade anything, requires no time investment from me, has a mobile portal, and just keeps getting better.
Got Used To Using WebMail:
It was hard to get used to using a webmail client as my only email client. Especially with GMail which uses tags instead of folders. Breaking out of the mentality that my email is here, I can physically handle it, and it’s mine proved difficult and I almost reverted at several points.
Mail Notification:
With a webmail client, unless you want to keep it open all the time, you need to know when you have new mail so you can stay on top of it. I found a little gem by a company called MassGrid called GAlert. I paid a hefty $20 for this little shareware application, which sits in the system tray and lets you know when you have new mail for more than one GMail account. This was actually a hard application to find, yes there are a lot of GMail notification tools out there but not that many work with Google Apps and even less that work well.
On The Road:
As mentioned before, GMail has a slick mobile interface which is easy to use; just point toward your regular login and Google knows you are coming from a mobile device. Calendar was the next problem. Right now there are limited API’s available for GMail and Google Calendar, so it was also a task trying to find a way to synchronize my mobile calendar with Google Calendar. GooSync does just that. A little application downloads to your Mobile device, and lets you sync with the mobile calendar. They have both a free and paid service. Perfect!
Conclusion:
I haven’t been happier. In the process I dropped having to invest time in running a mail server and manage my mail and calendar, made myself more mobile and able to grab my data anywhere, and dropped ActiveSync which is a blessing of it’s own.
Popularity: 10% [?]
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All the Right Reasons Microsoft Should Be Worried
Posted on September 18, 2007, under Email, Software, Tools and Services.
Mint just launched its new online money management service at TechCrunch40 this week. I was part of the beta and it is nice! Also this week Google unveiled it’s PowerPoint Competitor. This puts two more thorns in the side of Microsoft, because you can now not only replace Microsoft Office, but you can do it with online services, and best of all you can do it for free.
Microsoft Word: Google Docs, Zoho Writer
Microsoft Excel: Google Docs, Zoho Sheet
Microsoft Power Point: Google Docs, Zoho Show
Microsoft Outlook: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Zimbra (recently acquired by Yahoo), Zoho Mail
Microsoft is one of those companies that needs to compete in every market, and can’t just sit anything out. With the exit of Bill Gates coming up quickly one has to wonder what, if any, change will come to Microsoft. Meanwhile as Microsoft readies its answers to all of these new services, we sit and wait for Vista SP1.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Time For Thunderbird to Grow Up
Posted on September 18, 2007, under Browsers, Email, Software, Tools and Services.
The Mozilla Corporation is going to spin Thunderbird out into it’s own company, and fund it with $3 million. This is great news, and with the recent news of Yahoo acquiring Zimbra, means more exciting things are coming for email.
Thunderbird has been real slow to release features that could have made it a true Outlook killer. With it spinning off into it’s own company it will now get the focus, dedication, and funding that it has always needed. There are loads of opportunity here in the form of partnerships with GMail, or Yahoo, but probably not Hotmail. There has also been rumors of a new GMail desktop client which may lead to a long awaited API to GMail. Things are definitely still evolving in the email space, even with all of the new Twitters and IM services popping up.
On another note pulled from the article, it was interesting to hear Mitchell Baker, chair of Mozilla Foundation, being quoted in saying “There have been very public complaints about bloat coming back to Firefox and lack of innovation”. It’s good to know that the Mozilla Foundation knows when it’s been spreading itself too thin, and can be flexible enough to fix itself; unlike some other companies.
Popularity: 7% [?]
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Microsoft vs. Google Apps Round One
Posted on September 11, 2007, under Blogging, Email, Tools and Services, Web Hosting.
To bring you up to speed if you have not been following: Yesterday in a total PR move Microsoft publicly released a series of questions about Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE). Today Google has not officially responded, but it has made it’s way onto several Google related blogs. I agree with what most are saying, thatsome of the questions bring up reasonable points, but on the other hand there are some questions that I would give a big old ‘?’ to. The simple fact that Microsoft needs to pull this PR stunt means they are worried, and they might just have a good reason to be worried.
So lets take a stab and see if we can’t answer these questions for Mircosoft, after all I am a customer of Google Apps.
1. Microsoft asks: How many enterprise users does GAPE really have?
Do companies ever release statistics about things like this… really Microsoft? You want to pull this kind of stunt, why don’t you tell us how many Vista users you really have, and how many are holding out for the first service pack? No accounting tricks, just raw numbers that you are pulling from WGA that you swear is not spying on us. No? Didn’t think so.
2. Google often releases incomplete products to then issue incremental improvements without any official schedule – this is not what enterprise users want, says Microsoft.
Yes, Google was known for starting the whole “beta” trend, but they really have been getting better. The difference here Microsoft is Google is always improving their products instead of just walking away from them for a while, and releasing service packs over a year past the original release date because they are too busy failing to compete with Googles Adsense, or Apple’s iPod, or Nintendo’s Wii; OK the XBox 360 kicks ass… but the Zune? Really?
3. Microsoft argues Google says GAPE is a low cost office option, but if enterprises still need to support MS Office, they will then actually have additional costs and complexity.
Yup, that’s what happens when you have a Monopoly Microsoft, and I am fairly sure that this is what Google and others are trying to change. Additionally enterprises could always use Open Office on the desktop to “support” your MS Office. It’s not a pretty solution, but the Free price tag sure makes it attractive.
4. Google makes most of their revenue via ads, with other services only on the 1% fringe, says Microsoft, wondering if Google will shut down their office products line if it doesn’t generate the right revenue.
Google doesn’t seem to be hurting on ad sales, and Google also has services that users and enterprises pay for that are ad free.
5. Microsoft says Google Apps are mostly usable for non-power users and have less features than MS Office tools. Also, they mostly require the company to be always-online.
Didn’t you have to redesign Office this year because you did a study to find out what features users would like in MS Office, and the majority of people were coming back with features that were already built into MS Office but they just didn’t know how to use them or where they were? Yeah thought so… for most simple is better. Take a look at your Apple competitor for a lesson on this one.
6. Google Apps “don’t have essential document creation features like support for headers, footers, table of content, footnotes etc.”.
You are correct, they do not. If I were Google I would add this to the top of the list of features to incorporate.
7. MS says that Google defines a downtime for Gmail (for which they promise 99.9% uptime) as over 10 consecutive minutes of being unreachable. What, MS asks, if Google is down for 7 minutes every hour of a day?
Why don’t we wait for that to happen before we call it a problem? I have only seen Google down once, and I checked everything little cord on my Internet connection first because I couldn’t believe Google was actually down.
8. Google’s direct tech support has limited opening hours. MS writes, “… M-F 1AM-6PM PST – are these the new hours of global business?”
I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, Google’s thought process that computers are better than humans does not carry over well to technical support. People want to talk to humans, especially when they are footing the bill. Microsoft has much more experience in this department, but they are still not perfect. Ever called Microsoft technical support?
9. Microsoft writes that Google argues most people only use 10% of the features in today’s office products. Microsoft argues that however not everyone uses the same 10%.
Again, I kind of feel we have covered this. Google’s Office product is going to prioritize bring to market the features that it’s users want and need. Was MS Office built over night? Well it was acquired overnight, but you have put many years work into it. In a shorter amount of time Google has passed you on some things.. don’t be jealous.
10. As Google rolls out features on a constant basis, Microsoft says customers lose control of planning the update, and also aren’t able to sufficiently train their employees.
The key words in this sentence are “Google rolls out features”. And honestly can you really tell me that Microsoft customers have control of their update schedule? Why aren’t more enterprises adopting Vista? If you asked most customers, would they not tell you they are waiting for Vita to be stable which means a service pack? Did I not have to go back to XP because Vista did not support three monitors on two graphics cards, which XP has supported for years now?
So Microsoft, I hope this helps you out a little. It’s not an official Google response, but I am sure these and more are some of the thoughts going through the minds of those wicked smart Googler’s. Next time lets not call someone out publicly and act like your shit don’t stink.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Why Google, and Other Services Don’t Make Off-line Backup Tools for Their Services
Posted on August 20, 2007, under Email, Operating Systems, Software, Tools and Services.
Web services are everywhere, I do not need to go into examples like Google Docs, Gmail, Office Live, etc. Everything is moving toward the web, and the security of having everything on your local hard drive will be no more. The one thing that will prevent a lot of people, and corporations, from moving everything to a web based email or document solution is the feeling of not owning the content. To that point, the one thing that you do not see for these online services are backup tools. Why is this?
A backup tool in mine and most definitions, is an automated way of exporting all data in the event of a failure on either the service or the client side. This does not mean manually going in an exporting emails or documents, rather pressing a button and getting a local copy.
I understand that a lot of these web services are new, and a backup tool is probably not the first, or the second, feature that a Google or Microsoft would bring to market. Beyond that, what is taking so long? GMail still does not have an API, and if you apply this time line to Google Docs; it will be a while before we see it for that as well. An API would open up the ability for third party developers to create a backup application.
The way I see the answer is control. If Google or Microsoft make a way to easily backup your email or documents, it makes it that much easier to go to another service. If I were a betting man I would say that Microsoft will create a backup tool for its online services long before Google will, because Microsoft already owns the desktop and Word Processing market. For them, they need to give the ability to go from Microsoft Office on the desktop to Office Live on the server and back again seamlessly. The same goes for Windows Mail on the desktop to Live Mail on the server. This in itself is a backup solution, the ability to download your email or documents on a web service to your local hard drive. In true Microsoft fashion I see it being a closed source formats you can’t easily go over to GMail or Google Docs.
Additionally with the soon-to-be released Windows Home Server, Microsoft has another opportunity to one-up Google by giving the ability to backup Office Live or Live Mail, after all this is what the Home Server is all about; seamless backups.
The ironic thing about all of this, is choosing a business model over your customer wants and needs is sometimes enough to push someone to another service. Your thoughts?
Popularity: 6% [?]
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How to Remove Word Smileys from Outlook 2007
Posted on August 7, 2007, under Email, How To, Software, Tools and Services.
With Outlook 2007, and even with Outlook 2003 Microsofts little smiley faces 
will be replaced for the standard 
smiley you type. THis is both annoying and unnecessary; so how do you disable it? Not too difficult, here are the steps:
- In Outlook 2007 go to the “Tools Menu” and click on “Options”.
- Click on the “Spelling” tab and then on the “Spelling and AutoCorrection…” tab.
- Select the “Proofing” tab on the left, and then the “AutoCorrect Options…”
- You will now see the a list of character. ON the ride side is the symbol that will be replaced with the text on the left side. You all 4-5 smiley faces and click the “Delete” button.
- Click “OK” and back out of your dialogs.
With all of the steps you have to go to jut to get to this option dialog, no wonder it’s not commonly known.
Popularity: 9% [?]
