Archive for the 'Web 2.0' Category

I’ve started using Gmail at work and I like it. The conversation view really grows on you, and little things like filtering out duplicate mails (think replies to a mailing list) are really handy. After using it for a few weeks it made Squirrel Mail, which I was using for my personal mail, feel really basic. So I decided to setup Gmail to be my main mail client, but with my regular email address. Here’s what I did:

1. Register your personal email address with Gmail. This allows you to send mail from your regular address instead of your Gmail address. You might also want to set that address to be the default one messages are sent from.
2. Start forwarding your other mail to Gmail. This step really depends on your ISP, I have shell access so I use procmail:

   PATH=$HOME/usr/bin:$HOME/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
   MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir
   PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
   LOGFILE=$HOME/procmail.log
   SHELL=/bin/sh
   
   # ... SpamAssassin stuff omitted ...
   
   
   # Forward to Gmail (if not from Gmail, e.g. bcc’s)
   :0c
   * ! ^Sender: user@gmail.com
   ! user@gmail.com
   
   
   # Default entry to make sure mail is delivered
   :0
   $HOME/Maildir/
   

   N.B. replace user@gmail.com with your email address.

   The bold bit forwards all mails to Gmail unless it’s sent by your Gmail user, e.g. if you’re bcc’ing each mail to yourself (useful for normal mail clients to maintain a conversation view but unnecessary for Gmail), but the main idea is to stop loops.
Optional step
3. I like to send a copy of each mail to myself using BCC. This means I can backup sent mail, and still see the whole thread if I’m using another client. This can’t be done automatically with Gmail, but can be done with a greasemonkey script, I’m using Gmail Auto BCC. The procmail rule above allows you to BCC your main email address without sending a copy back to Gmail, but it’s not perfect. When you bcc yourself Gmail spots this and marks it as a new message in your inbox, I haven’t found a way around this yet with only one address. But I have my own domain so I can have as many addresses as I like, so I setup a bcc@ address for my auto forwarding.

With this setup a copy of all my email is forwarded to Gmail, I can send mail from my regular address, and a copy of each message I send is backed up to my ISP. It’s working well at the moment, the only downside being I have to sort through mail twice, first in Gmail, and secondly went downloading the backup from my ISP, I’ll have to see how that works out in the long run. My next tasks will be to see if I can upload my old mail, and to try out the new mobile Gmail app.

I’ve been using Google Calendar for a few weeks now. It’s a great piece of software, and the first computer based calendar that has stopped me from updating my paper diary. If you haven’t tried it yet, check it out.

Here are some tips from Google’s new Visual Design Lead, who I believe has some input into Google Calendar.

Another tool worth checking out is GCalSync, which can synchronise your Google Calendar with your phone’s calendar. It’s still early days, but it imported most of my events, but it did struggle with the reoccurring ones. If they get this working well, that signals the end of my paper diary!

I’ve wanted to add some sort of analysis package to my site for a while. My preferences were Google Analytics and Measure Map (also purchased by Google. Unfortunately both are invitation only. I looked at Mint, but with all the free stuff out there, I’m too cheap to fork out $30 a site. I never managed to succeed registering with Performancing. There were a few other things on my radar, but none of that matters now because I just received an invitation to Google Analytics.

Once I get it setup I’ll finally get a chance to see what Simon and David read. Then I can cater my posts to their tastes or I could write a few inflammatory posts about Rails to get some other readers.

Yahoo! has released a bit of code to add action buttons to your blog. It’s a good idea, but I don’t like the look of the buttons (I know I could tweak the CSS) and the actual functions aren’t that useful. The actions they have are:

• Bookmark with del.icio.us
• Email it
• Blog with 360°
• Print

Most browsers have the ability to email and print from the file menu, so they’re not too handy. Given my lack of interest with 360°, I wasn’t too interested in that button either. But I do like the idea of the buttons, if only to feed my ego that other people might be interested in what I have to say.

I like what one Yahoo! blogger, Jeremy Zawodny has. His actions are:

• Find related posts on Technorati
• Bookmark with del.icio.us
• Submit to digg
• Submit to reddit

So in the true tradition of the web I nicked his idea and converted it to run with Wordpress. I’ve attached the HTML you need to embed in the templates if you want to add it to your own blog.

Yahoo! has released a UK version of Yahoo! 360°. I remember reading some hype about this when it was first released in the US but couldn’t get through to it because I add a UK account. I’m not sure exactly what it is, at first glance it looks like some community building tool + your own little home on the web.

It might become the place Yahoo! decides to unify all these startups they’ve bought in recent months. Or it might just be another portal. Definitely worth investigating because of all the things Yahoo! is doing in the web 2.0 and social networking space.