Archive for September, 2005

Gmail and Me

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Almost a year ago to the day I got my hands on a gmail account. They were a lot harder to aquire then they are now. Now I have 100 invites to give out which replenishes itself every month. I was giddy with anticipation at the newness of the account. Gmail’s interface was, and still is, unlike anything I had ever used before. The concept of labels (as opposed to folders) was a radical concept that instantly lended itself to fun possibilities.

But with that was also apprehension of leaving my in place MUA, Thunderbird. Thunderbird held nearly five years of emails, all of my contacts and was customized to work within my needs. Truely a testament to a glorious application, unlike other corporate code heaps I know. *cough*Outlook*Cough* I also didn’t like the prospect of advertising a new email address, it is always a major pain in the neck. So my new shinny Gmail account lay unused for nearly a year because the change would be to disruptive to how I work.

But recently Gmail added a new feature that revitalized my longing to use that account. Basically, the feature allows me to send emails from Gmail as if they from another email address. This combined with forwarding my current emails to the Gmail account wouls allow a seamless changeover for everyone who emails me. So seamless, they don’t even realize I made a change at all. Well that is one obstacle down.

But my corpus of email was still stored in Thunderbird with no nice way transferring it to Gmail. Doing a simple forward wouldn’t work, I’d lose all the useful metadata (sender namely) of the original emails. So I hit the search once again to find a solution. And stumble upon I did the Mail Redirect extension that allowed a true forward of my emails. Sweet!

So I implemented these changes sometime last week and I must say I am loving it. I’ll be honest, Thunderbird can be a memory hog if you don’t give it candy every hour. To not have to run it 24×7 is such a relief.

I have also made the same changeover with my work address. Gmail just became my email client for two of my email accounts. And I can add some many more, it’s great. I will miss Thunderbird. It served me well. It deserves every ounce of my respect. It is just time for me to move on because the need for mobility is becoming very high. Gmail offers me that mobility in a way Thunderbird never can (unless Mozilla creates an Exchange-esque email server).

More to come as Gmail and myself evolve.

Welcome Home, Don’t Mind the Me

Friday, September 23rd, 2005

As the two people who have been reading my site have noticed, I have made a few changes here. The look has changed along with an overhaul/upgrade to the software running this site. It is just shy of year since my last post on this blog. To say things have changed in that time would be an understatement. I am taking part-time classes now. I have been making great strides in helping my company develop its product. On a side note, working with overseas developers is laboriously slow.

As I try to get back into a blogging rhythm, I will undoubtedly change my focus concerning the topics I write about. Before, my focus was to write about web technology in general with a few flourishes into related threads. I found that doing so restricted my material and I quickly lost the drive to keep up the experience. Now, I think my topics will be farther reaching and will change with what has captivated my interest for that particular moment in time. As of yet, I hold no pretenses as to any schedule but rather I hope to make this a come and go thing for me. I am not the first to say so, but blogging is hard. A lot of thought and time is required to make it happen. This is a challenge for one such as myself who has a hard time staying motivated on laborious tasks.

So with that I leave you in the precious void of my mind and I do hope you find your way and find it well. It’s a precarious place filled with many things unexplored as of yet. Not just yet…