[tech] Gmail Users Can Has IMAP Naow–So What?

1049. That sound you heard over the net everywhere today was the sound of power users having a simlutaneous techgasm over the revelation that Gmail, the service pretty much everyone (including me) uses to stay connected, now offers IMAP (Internet Messaging Access Protocol).

There's so much fanfare over it that made me wonder about it–what it was and why I'd want to use it. So I went looking for information, my question: I've used POP for years now. It works just fine. Is this something I really need to care that much about?

IMAP, stripped of all the tech-jargon, is an email protocol that differs from tradtional POP mail essentially in that what you see on your home machine is what you got on line. Right now, the way my email is configured, I use POP and have Gmail trash the messages as I download them.

In an IMAP setup, the configuration of read and unread messages, folders, everything, is mirrored on my mail server. With POP, if I log in anywhere else, I see what hasn't been downloaded to my home yet. With IMAP, I see in Gmail what I have on my home machine, no matter where I log in.

But I still wondered why I would want to move over to an IMAP setup vice POP. I found a page at Columbia University that put it into perspective pretty well:

IMAP keeps the mail folders on the server, and it is compatible with Webmail and Pine. You can switch between different computers, mail programs, Webmail, and Pine, and they will all show the same mail folders and have the same messages marked as seen. If you want this flexibility, use IMAP.
POP keeps the mail folders on the PC. This has some advantages for speed and offline use, but requires that you always read mail with the same PC, which may be true if you carry a laptop around, or always read your EE Columbia mail from the office.

So, if you're lucky enough to be reading email from multiple computers (as in that fabulous future when I finally have the MacBook Pro I so richly deserve) then IMAP would be of a benefit, but the way it looks, if you just have a desktop machine or just one computer and read all your email on that computer, then at best it really doesn't matter how you do it.

Of course, me, with my one computer, all I really care about is that my email get to me. And I get that either way.

Technorati Tags: Gmail,tech,webmail,techgasms

[tech] Ever Wonder What Happens When You Send An Apple Crash Report?

983. So did I.

Paul Krummenacker at Extensis draws back the curtain a little.

Takeaway: Send the crash report. People do look at it.

Technorati Tags: tech,tech tools,design tools,Extensis

[tech_life] Master of My MySpace...and other things.

844 Wonders technological, and, for better or worse, they're mine for now.

The biggest give that the Tree of Life has dropped lately is an iPod. Yes, a long-held dream has taken shape. I've known I've wanted an iPod ever since I saw the first generation models, and have never been able to get me one. Never in the budget, you see.

Well, this last weekend me and The Wife™ stopped in at a little store on SE 82nd Avenue at Otty Road called "Stuff". Those of you who knot about it know what they do there. It's the pawnshop that geeks love, it's the place where there's "nothing you need, but everything you want".

We walked out of there with a 30GB 5th Generation video iPod. I have been getting drunk on using this thing. I now have something that will hold every song and album I've ever loved and carry along also videos like Is There Something I Should Know and podcasts.

I quite realize this makes me look like some naïf who's been living in a cave for years. In a way, I think I am. A great many of you may be indeed privileged to live in a world where a cool gadget or thing is just something you throw a few bucks away on. We do not live in that world. It is not something I am proud of or ashamed of, it's just a basic physical law; what I want is not something I can just go out and get. Frequently, I have to wait years for it. We just got DSL from Qwest, them having made me an offer we finally couldn't refuse (and we are also drunk on DSL...after years on dialup, it's...well, beyond words, kind of. Our first modem was an Anderson-Jacobsen 300 baud acoustic. Savvy?).

Anyway, I'm having as much fun as I thought I'd of had with it. It's not Firewire, of course, just USB, so you can't boot from it, but that's what the 60GB LaCie Brick is for. I can, if I so chose, mirror my desktop's home directory on the iPod, though, and keep it there, for safeties.

Music and video make my happy. Now I can have my happy wherever I go...even in the middle of the night, on a very dreary job.

I am rambling big time. The blame must be laid at the feet of Vitamin R. What I actually meant to prattle on about is that I decided to get myself a MySpace account (which, if anybody could possibly be bothered, is http://www.myspace.com/zehnkatzen). This was primarily to make myself a facilitous contact channel between myself and two very inspiring cow-orkers from my night job.

It's interesting, what you find on MySpace. I've avoided it for the longest time because a MySpace page usually equates to dog's breakfast as far as design goes, and most MySpace pages make me want to yank my eyes right out.

That much is, unfortunately, true. I'd say that right now the two biggest gripes I have about MySpace is 1)Gratuitious use of eye-crossing backgrounds (in most cases, overwhelming the page content), and, 2)MySpacers are incredibly fond of this music-having plugin that starts up when you load the page. I don't mind the music so much, but I'm usually listening to music of my own, and it's irritating to have that music play at the same time as I'm listening to somethng else.

Tags: zehnkatzen, myspace

[tech_life] Fish, Barrel, Shooting; Telemarketer pwned by Chris Pirillo

840 Via UtterlyBoring.com, a clip which most of you may have already seen:



I comment on this only because, in the many jobs I've held during my lifetime so far, I have tried telemarketing. Horrid business. I'm polite (but firm, as I clearly enunciate the words "Add me to your no-call list") with them only because I've been there; if you're earning your daily bread by telemarketing, you don't need any more grief (unless, of course, you simply talk over me whilst I tell you to add me to the no-call list, or continue to inveigle me, then, of course, it be on).

The phrase "telemarketing professional" is the definition of an oxymoron.

Unforntunately for this telemarketing professional, she called Chris Pirillo on his call-in show. The experience was painful...having been there (and having f*cked that), I couldn't last the whole thing. Pirillo pwned her, and big time. My sympathy toward her only went so far, but when it was clear that she was hyping the same thing (enhanced access to the Seatlle Times/Post-Intelligencer website) over and over and over but just not quite understanding what it was she was selling.

I hope she finds a better job, though it sounds like she needs some intelligencing herself. Her diligence should count for something though, as well as credit for the newest Intertube meme:

This is better than Google. It’s the complete newspaper.

So, that's something, anyhow.

Tags: Chris Pirillo, telemarketing, pwned, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer