need new e-mail addy soon?

[Peter T. Chattaway]

The first e-mail address I ever got was the one I'm using now, at UBC. I
got it back in 1994, after coming home from an archaeological trip to the
U.K. and getting the addresses of all the people there who had expressed
interest in keeping in touch. I still have some of those addresses in my
address list, even though I haven't sent anything to those people or
received anything from them in over a decade. But anyhoo.

Lately, UBC has been dropping hints that it will abandon the Netinfo /
Interchange e-mail system that they've been using since whenever. And I
just noticed that the my.ubc.ca website includes a message now saying that
this changeover will happen in August, at least for students.

It is not clear to me how, or when, this will affect alumni accounts such
as mine. But, after holding on to this account for so long, just for
sheer purposes of momentum and continuity, I now find myself thinking I
will probably need a new e-mail account in the next few months, and I will
probably have a loooooot of profiles and accounts to update (here, at
Facebook, at Amazon.com, etc., etc., etc.).

Side note: There are certainly e-mail lists that I'm on, where I wouldn't
mind if the people in question happened to lose track of me... but I'm
also a little nervous about updating my contact info with certain
publicists. They might ask who I'm writing for now, and, um, I don't want
to admit to them just yet that I'm currently *between* writing gigs...
which is to say, I'm not really writing for anyone at the moment, though I
hope to be once the kids are in kindergarten, or thenabouts ...

Anyway. What to do? I don't like Yahoo's interface. Gmail seems to be
okay, but I've already got an account that I started for my blog (at
Blogger, natch), and while I do use that account for all my other Google
stuff (like my Android, my Google Contacts, my Google Calendar), I'm not
sure I'm ready to make that my personal e-mail thingamajig.

What I'm really going to miss is writing my e-mails in Pine, or whatever
system I'm using right now. Until a few years ago, it was possible to
Telnet into my account; now, I'm using PuTTy. Would it still be possible
to PuTTy into whatever account I have *after* this? (Hmmm, would it be
possible to do that with my existing Gmail account? I don't know.)

And then there's my e-mail archiving. Until the summer of 2000, the only
way to download my e-mails to my hard drive was to copy each e-mail folder
as a single massive block of text; if I want to search for anything in my
e-mails from that era, I have to open the file in WordPad or some such
thing and do a word search within the open file. (And Windows, alas,
seems to think the files are too big to scan, so that if I want to know
*which* of the massive folders has a particular word or name, I have to
open each folder individually and search within it until I find it.)

*Since* the summer of 2000, UBC has let me download zip files whenever I
download each folder, so that I now have each and every e-mail as an
individual file (with a related subfolder containing attachments, if any).
So I've been downloading zip files and extracting their contents ever
since.

If I were to switch to another e-mail provider, though, how would I be
able to back up my files? Would I, indeed, be able to?

Hmmm. I suspect someone here is going to mention Outlook Express or
something. But the one time I tried it (for reasons I can't remember
right now), I didn't like it.

Sigh. I hate change.

[Lowell Prange]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Peter T. Chattaway]

Post by Lowell Prange
Have you thought of registering your own domain name. For about $10 a
year you can forever control the destiny of your email.

I actually *have* registered my own domain name (two of them, in fact) --
for several years now, I've been sitting on a couple URLs that I might
want if I ever create my own website etc. I just haven't gotten around to
actually *doing* anything with those URLs.

But, hmmm, you say I can set up my own e-mail that way?

Side note: Back in the '90s, I think, my parents and/or brother
registered chattaway.com, and each member of my family got a page of his
or her own, e.g. mine is peter.chattaway.com. I wouldn't necessarily mind
holding on to that -- and, indeed, I have an e-mail address associated
with that domain -- but the family members who are in charge of that
domain can be a little... how to put this... difficult to get ahold of
when problems arise, as they have occasionally. So I'm reluctant to make
that my regular domain, or my regular e-mail address.

Post by Lowell Prange
After that, I or many others here could provide hosting. My hosting
options would be all the typical email protocols + a webmail interface
through roundcube.

See, already, the jargon is flying over my head. Roundcube? What's that?
I feel lost. (And I've still got my church's tax forms to finish, sigh.
I've got no time or energy to learn even *more* new things right now.)

Post by Lowell Prange
But like I say, registering your own domain name leaves you ultimate
control to point your incoming email to another server if anything
changes on the hosting side. I don't recommend you doing your own
hosting because that can be a much greater expense and headache, yet
trivial to add your email account to an existing host.

Okay... so "registering" and "hosting" are two different things, then?

[Lowell Prange]

Post by Peter T. Chattaway

Post by Lowell Prange
After that, I or many others here could provide hosting. My hosting
options would be all the typical email protocols + a webmail
interface through roundcube.

Sorry for the jargon. It is simply a webmail client. It has been
pretty good when I have needed to check my email from another machine.
Most of the time I use Thunderbird connected by imap. It allows me to
keep my email synchronized between a lot of different machines.

Post by Peter T. Chattaway
Okay... so "registering" and "hosting" are two different things, then?

Hosting is simply a machine that is simply a computer connected to the
net running all the time, it could be an old computer in your garage. I
really would be happy to step up and help but I have a rather cheap
hosting plan of $5 a month that gives me pretty much what I need. But
it does not give me full install access to set up your email the way you
are used to.

Owning your domain name, gives you the option of pointing your email to
go to the IP address of whatever machine you want to provide email.

I'll look into it. Sorry to drop another technical term but you will be
better with someone with "full root access" than my budget setup.

[The Voice Of Objective Truth]

The other option is google hosted email/apps for your domain. The
basic service is free but at some point it becomes a commercial
service that you pay for. I don't know all the details, but James'
ladan.ca and my tvot.ca both use it for email -- and through it every
google service. If there are parts you don't want to use, or want to
host elsewhere, that's fine. Last I checked, you're limited to 25
email addresses, but they may have increased that. Plus, you can use
the gmail interface or use IMAP or POP to use your preferred program
-- but I'm pretty sure pine & telnet/SSH access isn't possible :(

We don't use ladan.ca or tvot.ca for much aside from email and
back-ups these days, but we have the google hosted email and documents
and then a server in my basement for web & automated back-ups of our
computers.

Jeremy

[Karl Swenson]

It bears mentioning that most registrars (godaddy of NSI for example) offer
email and web hosting. That's where I do all my hosting at...at no extra
charge.

-----Original Message-----
From: dadl-ot-bounces-***@public.gmane.org [mailto:dadl-ot-bounces-***@public.gmane.org] On
Behalf Of The Voice Of Objective Truth
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2011 10:31 AM
To: DADL (off topic)
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] need new e-mail addy soon?

The other option is google hosted email/apps for your domain. The
basic service is free but at some point it becomes a commercial
service that you pay for. I don't know all the details, but James'
ladan.ca and my tvot.ca both use it for email -- and through it every
google service. If there are parts you don't want to use, or want to
host elsewhere, that's fine. Last I checked, you're limited to 25
email addresses, but they may have increased that. Plus, you can use
the gmail interface or use IMAP or POP to use your preferred program
-- but I'm pretty sure pine & telnet/SSH access isn't possible :(

We don't use ladan.ca or tvot.ca for much aside from email and
back-ups these days, but we have the google hosted email and documents
and then a server in my basement for web & automated back-ups of our
computers.

Jeremy
--
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot

[James]

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 5:31 PM, The Voice Of Objective Truth

Post by The Voice Of Objective Truth
The other option is google hosted email/apps for your domain. The
basic service is free but at some point it becomes a commercial
service that you pay for. I don't know all the details, but James'
ladan.ca and my tvot.ca both use it for email -- and through it every
google service. If there are parts you don't want to use, or want to
host elsewhere, that's fine. Last I checked, you're limited to 25
email addresses, but they may have increased that. Plus, you can use
the gmail interface or use IMAP or POP to use your preferred program
-- but I'm pretty sure pine & telnet/SSH access isn't possible :(

Yeah, no PINE or SSH. If you had a server you could SSH into, though, I
think PINE could handle an IMAP connection. :)

Google also gives around 7.6GB storage for the free edition of hosted apps,
now, so as much as you download your mail for local backup/archival, it'd be
a long while before you needed to delete anything in the account to free up
space.

[James]

Looks like you can maybe run PINE on Windows:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/pcpine.html

Although for connecting to Gmail, you'd need the IMAP & SMTP to run over
SSL, which might require use of stunnel (http://www.stunnel.org/).

[Bruce Geerdes]

Owning your domain name, gives you the option of pointing your email to go
to the IP address of whatever machine you want to provide email.

Not sure Peter wants to go that deep. :)

I have my own domain (with hosting!) but like Gmail enough that I've
been using it for my email. I just have everything from my domain
address forward to my Gmail account and then set the "reply-to" to
make it look like it's coming from my domain address. Of course, no
one looking at the headers is fooled, but it gets you 90% of the way
there with minimal effort.

Peter, you could do the same thing if you got your family
administrator to set the forwarding up. After that point, it should be
pretty maintenance-free.

[Lance McLain]

No sure if it is a concern or not, but whoever hosts your email (or even just forwards it) has access to view it/send it/store it, etc.

Sometimes family members aren't the best people to allow that access (personal experience speaking there).

Regards,
-Lance

Sent from my iPhone

Post by Bruce Geerdes

Owning your domain name, gives you the option of pointing your email to go
to the IP address of whatever machine you want to provide email.

Not sure Peter wants to go that deep. :)
I have my own domain (with hosting!) but like Gmail enough that I've
been using it for my email. I just have everything from my domain
address forward to my Gmail account and then set the "reply-to" to
make it look like it's coming from my domain address. Of course, no
one looking at the headers is fooled, but it gets you 90% of the way
there with minimal effort.
Peter, you could do the same thing if you got your family
administrator to set the forwarding up. After that point, it should be
pretty maintenance-free.
--
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot

[Bruce Geerdes]

Post by Lance McLain
Sometimes family members aren't the best people to allow that access (personal experience speaking there).

Good point!

Peter has a couple of his own domains, maybe creating an email address
there would be more prudent.

[Bruce Geerdes]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Peter T. Chattaway

Post by Peter T. Chattaway
What I'm really going to miss is writing my e-mails in Pine, or whatever
system I'm using right now.  Until a few years ago, it was possible to
Telnet into my account; now, I'm using PuTTy.  Would it still be possible to
PuTTy into whatever account I have *after* this?  (Hmmm, would it be
possible to do that with my existing Gmail account?  I don't know.)

I doubt Gmail supports PuTTy. But it does have a good set of keyboard shortcuts.