E-mail geekery; also applicable for 'non-tweeters'
E-mail.
I really do take my e-mail seriously. Despite the availability of Tweets and text messages, and FaceBook (not having an account, I'm almost laughing at everyone who's got all their personal information in the hands of FB and their advertisers), I still think a well-crafted letter and a nicely-handled IMAP back-end go hand-in-glove like ... um ... a hand in a glove (?).
This is why I tell them who ask to use GMail for general use, but to step up a level to Fastmail.FM if they do more than just casual notes back-n-forth.
Before the ubiquity of web-interfaces ('webmail'), I also thought the Thunderbird e-mail reader (from the same folks who bring us 'Firefox' web browsers) was a good interface for general use; lots of nice and useful features, and had the ability to work with multiple accounts -- just a lot of good things to it.
Webmail, however, brought e-mail to peoples' phones and places where only a web-browser might be available, and once Google brought their IMAP back-end into play, it was really a game-changer for Mr. and Mrs. Casual Consumer: Web-access, storage, tags -- everything most everyone wanted was right there.
Only I stopped suggesting 'Thunderbird' as a front-end because it wasn't keeping up with the technology as fast as it should have been. It started feeling clunky.
I regularly suggest that those who want a better e-mail experience to use an actuall e-mail application like Thunderbird because it offers a more robust features (formatting, storage/retrieval of old mail, automation and so on) than a web interface -- and it still uses Gmail (or Fastmail.FM, or whichever) as the back-end. And you don't get the advertising; the front-end bypasses the web-based advertising most webmail has.
And for a couple of years, my favorite Thunderbird just hadn't been cutting it. At least not for me. So I went back to my old text-based standby: PINE. Only PINE had evolved, and is now released as "Alpine" -- and I must say it is a real pleasure to use. Sure, there's no graphics, no formatting; but the plain text is efficient and consistent. And the keyboard commands are simple keystrokes that are much much faster than hunting for the right spot to click with a mouse.
So after nearly three years of dedicated text-based e-mail (which is still fun to use and robust in its implementation of end-user IMAP standards (Can your e-mail client 'bounce' mail to other people? Do you know what 'bouncing' an e-mail really is? Probably not, to both. Not that it matters.), and manages mailing lists better than any other program I've seen), I decided to check out the most recent 'Thunderbird' release.
And I think I can safely say they've gotten it nearly right this time.
If you're not using Thunderbird as your e-mail program; if you're still using Outlook or Outlook Express, or even Microsoft Mail; if you're always firing-up Firefox to read your mail -- you owe it to yourself to check out the most recent Thunderbird ( www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/ ).
Tag-support is present, native support for Gmail Tags, too. Full IMAP compliance (as far as I can tell, with the two exceptions of 1) a bounce/redirect feature and 2) proper 'virtual inboxes' (although the 'Smart Inbox' feature mimics it very well)). Multiple account support, cross-account threading.
It's pretty much where I want a graphical e-mail program to be: Easy to use, and full of the features I want and use.
It's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
I really do take my e-mail seriously. Despite the availability of Tweets and text messages, and FaceBook (not having an account, I'm almost laughing at everyone who's got all their personal information in the hands of FB and their advertisers), I still think a well-crafted letter and a nicely-handled IMAP back-end go hand-in-glove like ... um ... a hand in a glove (?).
This is why I tell them who ask to use GMail for general use, but to step up a level to Fastmail.FM if they do more than just casual notes back-n-forth.
Before the ubiquity of web-interfaces ('webmail'), I also thought the Thunderbird e-mail reader (from the same folks who bring us 'Firefox' web browsers) was a good interface for general use; lots of nice and useful features, and had the ability to work with multiple accounts -- just a lot of good things to it.
Webmail, however, brought e-mail to peoples' phones and places where only a web-browser might be available, and once Google brought their IMAP back-end into play, it was really a game-changer for Mr. and Mrs. Casual Consumer: Web-access, storage, tags -- everything most everyone wanted was right there.
Only I stopped suggesting 'Thunderbird' as a front-end because it wasn't keeping up with the technology as fast as it should have been. It started feeling clunky.
I regularly suggest that those who want a better e-mail experience to use an actuall e-mail application like Thunderbird because it offers a more robust features (formatting, storage/retrieval of old mail, automation and so on) than a web interface -- and it still uses Gmail (or Fastmail.FM, or whichever) as the back-end. And you don't get the advertising; the front-end bypasses the web-based advertising most webmail has.
And for a couple of years, my favorite Thunderbird just hadn't been cutting it. At least not for me. So I went back to my old text-based standby: PINE. Only PINE had evolved, and is now released as "Alpine" -- and I must say it is a real pleasure to use. Sure, there's no graphics, no formatting; but the plain text is efficient and consistent. And the keyboard commands are simple keystrokes that are much much faster than hunting for the right spot to click with a mouse.
So after nearly three years of dedicated text-based e-mail (which is still fun to use and robust in its implementation of end-user IMAP standards (Can your e-mail client 'bounce' mail to other people? Do you know what 'bouncing' an e-mail really is? Probably not, to both. Not that it matters.), and manages mailing lists better than any other program I've seen), I decided to check out the most recent 'Thunderbird' release.
And I think I can safely say they've gotten it nearly right this time.
If you're not using Thunderbird as your e-mail program; if you're still using Outlook or Outlook Express, or even Microsoft Mail; if you're always firing-up Firefox to read your mail -- you owe it to yourself to check out the most recent Thunderbird ( www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/ ).
Tag-support is present, native support for Gmail Tags, too. Full IMAP compliance (as far as I can tell, with the two exceptions of 1) a bounce/redirect feature and 2) proper 'virtual inboxes' (although the 'Smart Inbox' feature mimics it very well)). Multiple account support, cross-account threading.
It's pretty much where I want a graphical e-mail program to be: Easy to use, and full of the features I want and use.
It's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.