Category: Web/Tech

Postal Confirmation

I may have been the last to learn this, but I just found out that the confirmation site for the United States Postal Service allows you to request status email to three names when you put in your confirmation number. I sent something priority mail to Nevada on Monday, and I just received the notice that it was delivered this morning.

Firefox and Gmail Loading Page Icon

A few days ago, I noticed that when I looked at my gmail account, the icon indicating that the page is loading never stopped spinning, even when I clicked the “stop loading this page” icon. I wrote a bug report to Google, and then decided to do a little googling and see if perhaps it was a Firefox problem instead. (The problem may or may not have been related to my upgrade to Firefox 0.9.2 on September 3rd.)

I suspected I had a Javascript problem, and someone mentioned clearning the cache as solving a Javascript problem. I cleared both cache and cookies, and exited from Firefox completely. When I started Firefox again, the problem was fixed.

Although I think everyone who wants a gmail invite has one at this point, I have a few to give out. Send an email to en01 at stardel dot com and I will invite you.

Copper.net

Fortified with milk and cookies, I spent some time this afternoon setting up my mother’s Internet access. We are trying Copper.net, a low cost Internet provider. This provider has a three month trial period of $1/month, with a monthly fee of $10 after that. Unlike many of the low cost providers, there is no yearly contract required, nor do they push advertising. So far I am pleased: I didn’t have any trouble getting her PC to connect to the service, and when I left her email and web surfing were both working. Before I left, she walked through booting her PC and logging on to the Internet.

I used the TheOpenCD to load Mozilla on her machine to use for email and web surfing. This is the second copy I’ve burned and distributed, and I appreciate not having to download Mozilla over dialup connections.

Gmail, Archiving, and Spam (aka UCE)

Despite having long thought web mail a necessary evil, I am beginning to enjoy using Gmail, the recently introduced web mail application from Google. Although I am not interested in it for my “personal” email, I have been routing most of my email discussions lists there. It is nice to know that I can search for information that I once read via email, rather than having to use the limited search facilities provided by yahoogroups, for example.

I’ve also been interested in the way that Gmail filters Spam. If something spam-like ends up in the Inbox, I can mark it and click on a “Report spam” button. (Did Google get a special dispensation from Hormel? Or has Hormel decided to stop fighting this battle?) When I check the spam folder, I find not only those things that I have marked, but an accurate filtering of spam items I never saw in my inbox, including mail that discusses spam. Drive-by spammers are not unusual on some of the art discussion lists which I frequent, and one spam will frequently lead to five posts condemning it, which seems rather pointless.

Gmail

For the past few days, I have been using Gmail. I now have a few invitations.

I think this is a very smart type of viral marketing by the gmail group. What better way to get people to start using your product than restricting initial invitations? Then everyone in the initial group invites their friends, and it becomes cool, and people check it out rather than saying “oh just another webmail application.”