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April 25, 2012
Today I noticed my Gmail storage had jumped form 7.5G to 10G. Maybe it's Google's way of compensating for the new ugly design. I suspect in most cases users didn't even notice the change and for even more users like me, who try to keep their account clean, this is really not much of an event.
Still, one never knows when the extra storage may come in handy, so it's welcome news.
April 23, 2012
 The good times are over and the ugly Gmail era has dawned. Google finally made good on the threat of making the new look permanent. Over the weekend my Gmail style switched to the new ugliness and there was no longer an option available to revert to the old look as before.
I can whine and complain about the new style but in the end it's Google's service and I'm using it for free. If I don't like it, I can leave, but not going to do that for now, I still like Gmail better than Yahoo and Hotmail. This attitude is not unprecedented at Google. When they took away the FTP feature of Blogger which was my blogging platform then, I complained too. In that case I decided to migrate my blog to Wordpress on my own site and have been happy with that decision.
What also ticks me off is that there are no themes to make Gmail look like its past version. That would have been so easy for Google but alas, there are no retro or classic themes. It's like Google wanted to wipe away even the tiniest connection to Gmail's past. For now the best choice for me is the compact mode with the high-contrast theme. That's neither compact nor high-contrast, but eventually I'll get used to it. Meanwhile I'm sure Google is already working on an uglier next version of Gmail.
November 3, 2011
Yesterday I was greeted by an icon in Gmail to try their new look. I clicked, played with the new look for a while and ran right back to the old look. Alas, Google seems determined to push the new Gmail look on users, whether they like it or not, so the classic look may not last much longer.
I had two immediate negative reactions to the new design. The style is plain ugly and it also stinks of social networking. There are no clear cut delineations between the email area, the navigation, the ads, and the buttons. Elements seem to have been randomly placed on the page with very little contrast to differentiate the various areas.
Google will probably deny this but the new design is like Google+ crammed into Gmail. Everything has profile pictures in it and email threads look like wall posting timelines now. You can try the compact mode to squeeze everything together but that doesn’t help much. The elements never quite collapse like the classic version.
When will companies learn? You can't force people to like a product. This is the case of Gmail trying to push Google+ on the users and it doesn't work. The Gmail help forums are already rife with critical messages from disgruntled users. If Gmail wants to give its users new look and feel options, that's fine, but not allowing users to have the classic look is just heavy-handed.
Users can revolt and threaten to leave Gmail and hope Google pulls a BoA in the end. But if Google decides to push forward with the new look, it may be time to ditch Gmail for other services. This may be a golden opportunity for Facebook to beef up its pitiful email platform and steal users away.
June 26, 2011
A great idea that was way overdue. I always liked the simplicity of copy/pasting images into outlook. Now Gmail lets users do the same. Granted that for now it's only supported in Chrome, but that's my default browser anyways.
No more the old cumbersome copying, saving, naming, inserting, selecting, and finally deleting images.
Pasting images into messages just got easier - Official Gmail Blog.
May 26, 2010
One of my Web applications is hosted on 1&1 and it generally performs fine except for one problem. I have the application set up to send me emails based on certain events and I have noticed that some of those emails land in my spam folder. Here's why.
The problem with applications on 1&1 shared hosting (and maybe other hosting companies) is that outbound emails undergo Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS) which changes the return path in the mail envelope to a domain owned by 1&1. For example the return path is changed from me@mydomain.com to SRS0=pikB=NE=mydomain.com=me@srs.perfora.net and the email is launched from one of the 1&1 email servers, for example a server at ip address 74.208.4.194.
Since I don't own the domain srs.perfora.net, I can't add that ip address to the list of authorized senders. A quick SPF record check for srs.perfora.net shows the following:
"v=spf1 ip4:217.160.230.0/25 ?all"
This is telling other servers that any @srs.perfora.net email originating from 217.160.230.0/25 is legitimate, and all others may or may not be spam. And so receiving servers could route incoming emails from unknown ip addresses to spam folders and that is what's happening in my case.
I contacted 1&1 support regarding this issue, but they replied that spf record is not
supported for 1&1 domains and referred me to this link.
So at this point I have no choice but to check my spam folders frequently looking for misidentified emails. And if you have a 1&1 hosted application that sends emails, be warned. Those emails could be landing in your users' spam folders.
And finally to 1&1, the time to fix this issue is way overdue, and it's so simple to fix.
One of my Web applications is hosted on 1&1 and it generally performs fine except for one problem. I have the application set up to send me emails based on certain events and I have noticed that some of those emails land in my spam folder. Here's why.
The problem with applications on 1&1 shared hosting (and maybe other hosting companies) is that outbound emails undergo Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS) which changes the return path in the mail envelope to a domain owned by 1&1. For example the return path is changed from me@mydomain.com to SRS0=pikB=NE=mydomain.com=me@srs.perfora.net and the email is launched from one of the 1&1 email servers, for example a server at ip address 74.208.4.194.
Since I don't own the domain srs.perfora.net, I can't add that ip address to the list of authorized senders. A quick SPF record check for srs.perfora.net shows the following:
"v=spf1 ip4:217.160.230.0/25 ?all"
This is telling other servers that any @srs.perfora.net email originating from 217.160.230.0/25 is legitimate, and all others may or may not be spam. And so receiving servers could route incoming emails from unknown ip addresses to spam folders and that is what's happening in my case.
I contacted 1&1 support regarding this issue, but they replied that spf record is not
supported for 1&1 domains and referred me to this link.
So at this point I have no choice but to check my spam folders frequently looking for misidentified emails. And if you have a 1&1 hosted application that sends emails, be warned. Those emails could be landing in your users' spam folders.
And finally to 1&1, the time to fix this issue is way overdue, and it's so simple to fix.
March 31, 2008
Like many people I have a 401(k) account through my employer, invested in a few mutual funds. I can appreciate that by law mutual fund companies have to send their clients their prospectuses (prospecti?) whenever there is a change in their investment strategies, but I was getting tired of receiving these booklets in the mail.
I would just give them a cursory look and then toss them in the trash. I assume many people do the same. I doubt even a small number of people would actually read these from cover to cover and then promptly file them with their important documents.
So when the retirement management company gave us the option to receive these documents via email, I jumped at the chance. Alas, I'm still getting these tree-killers, like a large one arriving today via mail weighing in at 70 pages. Makes me wonder why I even bothered signing up for the electronic format.
Now I know these companies are erring on the side of caution. With so much fraud and mismanagement swirling around the financial institutions, they reckon it's better to be safe than sorry. So they just keep mailing the stuff, hoping to avoid a small chance of someone accusing them of hiding material facts.
That's all fine and good, but in this day and age of green living and electronic transactions, shouldn't they at least try to respect the wishes of those of us who opted in for email and adapt their systems? If they're incapable or unwilling to join the digital revolution, they can hire a bunch of Nigerian spammers to handle the task. The Nigerian scammers figured out years ago how to conduct their businesses via email and apparently they are very successful at it.
Even the U.S. government, the paragon of technical backwardness, has been going digital with programs such as e-Filing income taxes. It's about time mutual fund companies learned how to save those documents in PDF and attach them to email.
mutual funds,email,pdf,taxes,spam,nigerian scams
July 29, 2007
 Beginning about 3 or 4 days ago I've noticed a change in the way Gmail groups emails together. It seems to be a subtle algorithm change but it appears that the glue has been watered down a bit. Email messages definitely don’t hang together the way they used to. Now many come In as separate items.
Back when Google introduced the free email service, Gmail, it also introduced a relatively radical shift in the way emails are displayed to the users. There are no folders, instead one can use filters to apply labels to emails which sort of mimics the folder functionality of organizing and categorizing messages. There was also a new approach in displaying emails in that conversations within a thread are grouped together in a thread-like format (much like a forum) and a counter is applied to show the number of messages in a particular group.
It took some getting used to Gmail's way of displaying messages, but I have grown accustomed to it. I don't consider it revolutionary though, it's just different. I'm fine with the traditional way used in Outlook or Yahoo mail. The difference with Gmail, at least at the time it was introduced, was their superior search capability. One could easily recall past messages given a keyword or two.
I'm not sure what the exact grouping algorithm of Gmail is, but I suspect it has to do with the timestamps, senders and receivers, titles and contents of the messages. At any rate, that algorithm has now been tweaked to loosen the condition by which messages are grouped together. This became evident to me a few days ago when I noticed that my inbox suddenly had a large influx of messages. My Gmail inbox receives a number of automated messages that used to be grouped together, perhaps based on their titles. A closer look revealed that those messages that used to clump together, are now presented as separate items.
I assume the change was introduced to make the inbox more usable for most people who were unaware of new messages arriving and getting filed under existing messages with similar titles. In my case it meant adapting to the new methodology and creating new filters to keep my inbox from getting too unwieldy. I suspect many others won't even notice the subtle alteration.
gmail,google,email
December 11, 2006
A colleague of mine sent me a note today regarding a new addition to Gmail, Google's free email account. It's called mail fetcher and it allows a person to import mail from other email accounts using the POP protocol. It's a trivial feature which other services such as Yahoo and Hotmail have had for years, but it gives Gmail another advantage to attract new users who might have needed that excuse to join, while holding on to their current base of users who might have defected to other services if Gmail didn't have this feature.
Not all users have this option yet (including myself), but I assume it will be rolled out to all Gmail users soon. This is indeed a convenient service for those who have multiple accounts and would like to have all their emails flow into one inbox. The catch is that those external accounts would need to provide the POP service for this to work and not all services do. This is specially true of other free services like Yahoo and Hotmail who block POP access as some users might opt to import their emails elsewhere and that would mean fewer page views (thus fewer banner views) on their respective sites. Ironically in a show of goodwill, Gmail has provided its users with a POP download service to allow them to view their emails from other locations. If all services provided a two-sided POP access, it will be up to the users to choose the service that best suits them for viewing their messages. That would mean that the site with the superior interface and features would claim a bigger slice of the much coveted eyeballs.
Personally, I don’t have a need for a POP service. I converted to Gmail years ago when they blew away the competition with their giant 2 Gigabyte storage, and I have been a faithful user ever since. What concerns me however is the old adage of putting all my eggs in one basket. And this is a free basket with no guarantees. What would happen if Gmail suddenly decided to cut off my access? Of course they wouldn't just block access to their users willy-nilly, but suppose they decided to pull the plug on some of their users for whatever reason? Perhaps you unknowingly violate an obscure term of service; off with your head. What would be the recourse? Who can you complain to? How or where would you defend your case? You can write to Gmail support, but who knows if they will answer, or how long it will take before they restore your service, if ever?
It's a free service after all, and I suppose they have every right to terminate whoever for whatever reason. Meanwhile all your incoming emails, all your existing emails, all your calendar appointments, and all your contact lists will be out of reach. What would happen to your business, that solely relied on Gmail for customer contacts, now that your access has been cut off? I wonder if people ever consider the downside of this arrangement. It's easy to forget that when the service has been working flawlessly for years. I do wonder about that sometimes. When I enter my account and password and wait for the screen to reload, I wonder if this will be the time when I will be greeted with the message:
Sorry, your account has been disabled. For more information about Google Accounts, please consult our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/.
gmail,mail fetcher,google,pop,yahoo,hotmail,email
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